I have a morning ritual: grab a cup of coffee, then wade through Channels 50 through 56 on Satellite for a download of the morning's news until the caffeine kicks in.

(For those on Welfare TV, this means I devour the news channels: BBC, CNN, Sky, SABCAfrica, Bloomberg, etc) .

Now, I have my favourites, as we all do I'm sure. Such a choice for me is based on the narrative of the Channel. Some would say they choose their news sources on criteria of impartiality, fairness, bias, yada yada. I prefer to look at what the channel's inherent message is - the stuff communicated behind the headlines an scriptwriters copy. I don't sit their consciously weighing up the types of narrative, but it happens on a broader level that a certain narrative portrayed by the channel seems to fit with me.

I now find myself wishing that I could have access to Al-Jazeera as another option. I only get to see (without streaming others form the web) Western channels punting their own narrative (i.e. take on the world events).

Al-Jazeera has always been, in my mind, the terrorist-friendly, anti-West news broadcaster who somehow get clips of Bin Laden and his cohorts. Interestingly, Marc Lynch, who has authored a book on the channel, Voices of the New Arab Public, comments:

"A nutshell of al-Jazeera's narrative is that the Arab status quo is a mess and that the fault lies with the Americans and Arab regimes."

Apparently, quite a balanced approach? Wish I could watch it.

Read a brief Q&A with him here.

Technorati : al-jazeera