Al Jazeera Blows Up On YouTube

Ignored or shunned by almost every cable TV provider in the U.S., the Al Jazeera English news channel has turned to the Internet to reach American viewers.

Since April, when Al Jazeera struck a distribution deal with YouTube, the popular video site owned by Google Inc., the channel has received 2 million hits and on one day last month was ranked first, ahead of Paris Hilton and other staple fare.

Described by Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former Defense secretary, as a "mouthpiece of Al Qaeda," the Arabic channel's English-language offspring was given a hostile reception in the U.S. when it started broadcasting in November.

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