Al Jazeera — and its Qatari-government funding — is coming to the U.S. market and it may be changing the face of American journalism. The network's announcement this week of over 100 new job listings had the media world abuzz, bringing to light the question of whether foreign media organizations could be the future of a struggling industry in need of a stimulus plan.
HuffPost Live's Ahmed Shihab-Eldin hosted a segment on how Al Jazeera is shaking up the American media industry on Thursday featuring New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter, Georgetown professor of Arab media Adel Iskandar, Cairo-based journalist Evan Hill, Journalism & Public Media Campaign Director at Free Press Josh Stearns, Wall Street Journal Corporate Intelligence blog editor Tom Gara and journalist and activist Zaid Jilani.
"Al Jazeera is determined to have a seat at the table, and they've bought their way in," Stelter, who broke the news that Al Jazeera was buying Current TV, said. "To put on Al Jazeera here, they've decided they have to be Americanized...it looks ilke they'd like to hire a lot of journalists and prove to the country that they are here to do journalism, not to do some kind of propaganda."
"Its going to shake the industry up in a lot of ways," Gara added. "I mean you've basically got a not-for-profit, 24-hour news network launching here. This is a company that does not do things based on a financial or economic rationale."
Watch part of the discussion above or a selection of clips below. Watch the full segment at HuffPost Live.
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Is Criticizing Al Jazeera 'Playing The Qatar Card'?