Hi Tony, always nice to see you round the Zone.

The article mentioned that Al Jazeera has a huge online audience in North America. The problem isn't lack of audience, it's entirely political/big business. But owning a cable channel is of less and less value anyway, given the alternatives, so I think AJ is tilting at windmills to obsess over it half a gigabuck's worth.

I'm part of their online audience. I have a full page of news apps on my tablet, and my morning news junkie rounds include visits to Fox "News" and Al Jazeera. Let me tell you, AJ comes across as a whole lot more level-headed and reality-based than Fox. It's a pretty straightforward news operation, as it has to be considering its ambition to be a major global player. The idea that they could prosper as a "terrorist network" is just another of the typically whacky paranoid fantasies of the American right.

I got a laugh out of Tom's attempt at a bumper sticker smear. Sure, if all your thoughts fit on a bumper sticker, there's nothing to add if you can manage to fit "Al Gore" and "Al Jazeera" into the same sentence. Your work is done when it comes to reaching low information voters. But reality, as always, has nuance.