Al Jazeera's CNN Moment

It began in the dark, the opening hours of Operation Desert Storm and the allied air assault on Saddam Hussein's Baghdad.   The Western television networks had pulled out in advance.   One, however, remained to broadcast live coverage of the aerial reduction of Hussein's government and military installations - CNN.  Overnight, staffers like Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett and, yes, even Wolf Blitzer, went to the top of the journo pile as the major broadcast networks began to air CNN coverage.

Something similar is happening in the Middle East today and this time it's the Arab news service Al Jazeera that stands alone at the top.  AJ has been a thorn in the side to Middle Eastern governments and Western governments alike.  Yet these hurdles were gradually overcome, particularly with the introduction of the AJ English service. 

AJ's first breakthrough came with its release of the Palestine Papers, diplo docs showing that the pro-West Palestinian Authority had circumvented the democratically elected Hamas and, worse, had been willing to throw in the towel on a half-century of Palestinian grievances including the right of return to Israel and Palestinian control of East Jerusalem.

Barely a week after the Palestine Papers coverage, AJ  began reporting on growing unrest in a little known North African state, Tunisia.   Although banned from Tunisia, AJ used alternative media sources to get around the despotic Ben Ali regime and get live coverage on the air.   Even as the much larger North American networks got onto the story, AJ had by far the best coverage, the best sources, the best analysis.

What AJ achieved in Tunisia, it surpassed in Egypt barely a week later.  As protests turned into an uprising, Mubarak moved quickly to shut down television broadcasting in the country.   Al Jazeera managed to get its own Egyptian newsrooms back on the air and, like CNN two decades earlier, became the West's sole window on the revolution on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria.

Now Al Jazeera wants in - to the United States.   There is but one place where AJ is available on cable and that, predictably, is in Washington.   Outside the capital, no cable provider carries it.   Americans who know to search it out are able to access AJ on the internet but that's hardly the same as getting a spot on the cable listings.

AJ, which seems to have modeled itself on the BBC, is a high quality news service.   I hope it wins its own insurrection to get the place it deserves on American cable systems.