Al Jazeera

Until today, it had not occurred to me that one of the many news sources that one can access from Google News would be the English language page of Al Jazeera. It reminds me of the BBC - they use the British English term "Sport" rather than "Sports" as we do in the United States. (As an aside, the lead sports headline was the Super Bowl.) Curious, I read their article on the Court-Martial of First Lieutenant Ehren Watada. I also popped over to a local paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and read their article on the same topic for today.

The P-I, went into a LOT more detail. This is unsurprising. For most of Al Jazeera's readership this is foreign news. But since the trail is being held at Fort Lewis, which isn't all that far from the Seattle-Tacoma area, its something of a big deal around here. Given the realitive brevity of the Al Jazeera piece, and the likely nature of its audience. Also, given the expected audience, I'm not suprised that the Al Jazeera story seemed to focus more or less exclusively on Lieutenant Watada's side of things, although it didn't veer into an anti-United States Government screed, or anything like that. I don't know if the goal was to illustrate dissention in the ranks of America (just in case there was someone who wasn't already aware of that) or to say: "See, there are even American SOLDIERS who know the war is wrong." I guess you could go either way. Perhaps I'll take some time and read more of their coverage - next time contrasting it with a source for whom it isn't the big local story of the day, and see how they stack up.