More on Al Jazeera, Worldfocus and Fox

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler's new column tackles the recent Fox News report on the use of Al Jazeera English television reporting on Worldfocus. Fox quoted a member of Congress that pubcaster PBS should not be airing the Middle East-based network reports. One point Getler makes: "Al Jazeera does view things through an Arab world prism because that is its main audience. And it also focuses heavily on the civilian costs of war — whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Gaza. So its filming and reporting became valuable from these regions, even if, at times, they are hard to look at. Yet it is better to know this as part of the mix of reporting, in my view, and to absorb it in context with all the ways we get information, than to have only the often sanitized version of warfare that one gets on American network television."