Eat The Press

Al Jazeera's Brilliant PR Move: Submitting To The Will Of "The Daily Show"

Comedy Central |  Posted Thursday December 14, 2006 at 04:45 PM

What an inspired, genius move on the part of the underexposed and under-carried Al Jazeera English network: Offer yourself up with abandon to "The Daily Show" for a long, meaty, hilarious, humanizing clip. Outstanding. Last night, crack correspondent Samantha Bee (and most senior correspondent, I might add) did a long segment on the new network which culminated in Bee's hilarious attempt to re-make the network in a manner appealing to Americans (Bee: "Whoa. News hour?"). The segment drove home the point that Al Jazeera is actually serious about serious news, with a pared-down no-nonsense style heavy on actual news content while at the same time humanizing the network by highlighting its employees, and the mission, which has not been overly popular, to say the least (and, in fairness, Al Jazeera is sort of associated with videos from terrorists who take credit for atrocities and shout about the glories of holy slaughter of American infidels, which sort of works against domestic viewer goodwill). Anchors Dave Marash and Ghida Fakhry are particularly excellent sports. It's a brilliant, hilarious segment, and is probably the best commercial Al Jazeera could have in this country. An amazing PR coup.

It's worth seeing in full (especially for Bee's impromptu Al-Jazeera disco jam) but is not yet available on the Comedy Central "Motherboard" (though, by the time the thing actually loads, it might be). Honorable mention goes to the subsequent segment on the French 24-hour news channel, "Les Newserables."

p.s. Watch Samantha Bee in this segment and don't ever tell me women aren't funny again — she is freaking hilarious all the way through, especially during the Al-Jazeera song. Last I checked, she wasn't Jewish, unattractive, or a lesbian, either.