In the weeks and months after 9/11, the American news media's gaze turned beyond our borders in a way it hadn't since World War II.

And a new wave of international news channels is still expanding viewers' horizons.

One of these upstarts has a familiar-sounding name: al-Jazeera English. Launched last fall by the same oil-rich emirate of Qatar that runs the Arabic al-Jazeera, it was offered free to cable companies across America. Exactly one took up the offer -- a tiny Vermont carrier serving 2,000 households.

Even at no charge, it seemed, adding al-Jazeera English wasn't worth the potential backlash from customers who consider al-Jazeera the official network of Osama bin Laden and every nut job with a jihad to declare against the West.

I've been monitoring the new channel for several months over the Internet, paying $6 a month to watch a video stream supplied by Real Networks. It's global, meaty, consequential and compelling in the best sense of the word. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.

"I'm sitting in the Ambassador Hotel in Arab East Jerusalem glued to the TV," veteran Chicago City Hall reporter Ray Hanania wrote on his blog during a recent trip. "I'm watching the al-Jazeera English-language satellite news station report things about the world that we never hear about in America. It's amazing."

Since the launch, only a few U.S. cable operators have signed up, the largest being Block Communications, which serves Toledo, Ohio, and its large Arab-American population. "After our announcement, 50 to 100 people called to express their displeasure," said Tom Dawson, Block spokesman. "But we've always told them, ... 'Don't criticize it until you see it.' "

So what will you see on al-Jazeera English? A well-produced, straightforward, mostly British-accented mix of live news and documentaries from around the world. The channel's high-tech studios, graphics and theme music will remind some viewers of the BBC newscasts that air on public TV and BBC America. Many of the reporters hired for the new channel have BBC on their resumes.

Here were the stories on a recent midday update: news of the Fatah party pulling out of the ruling Palestinian coalition; early results from the Labor Party vote in Israel; video supplied to al-Jazeera by the Muslim Brotherhood, purporting to show ballot-stuffing in Egypt; and three non-Middle East stories about a cease-fire by a Kurdish separatist group, U.N. peacekeepers in Turkey and the deadly heat wave sweeping India and Pakistan.

That afternoon most American news outlets limited their foreign news to stories of destruction: fighting in Gaza and bombings in Baghdad.

Others who have watched al-Jazeera Channel see something less virtuous.

Louis Wittig, who writes for The Weekly Standard in Washington, D.C., said he noted "a distinctly pro-Arab bias" when he watched the channel. "It was quite a slanted perspective, but it was delivered with the tone of a BBC program. It wasn't the over-the-top language that you might have expected. It's a little creepy because it looks and sounds so familiar," he said.

Also in Washington, co-anchor Dave Marash -- who for years was Ted Koppel's go-to guy, parachuting into countless hotspots for "Nightline" -- has his own twist on his current employer's approach to news: "Before al-Jazeera English, all English-language television news was 'direct current,' with a single flow from the authorities in North America and Western Europe to the rest of the world. What al-Jazeera English does is introduce the concept of 'alternating current.' "

Marash is proud of the scoops his network gets and the time it devotes to major stories. On the day we talked, a member of the U.S. joint chiefs had come into the studio. Under questioning from Marash, the official confirmed that American gunships were giving cover to Ethiopian troops and private contractors as they drove the radical Islamist government out of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu. I searched the news wires and found no earlier verification of America's role in the coup.

Marash knows people inside the Pentagon and the State Department watch, because al-Jazeera English is carried inside those buildings. But editors at the wire services don't watch as much. It frustrates Marash when they don't pick up his exclusives.

"But ... I don't think it's going to last," he said. "We have had more than enough hits on the Web site to demonstrate to any cable system operator that there is a market for this news channel."

By AARON BARNHART McClatchy
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