As colleges throughout the country add new channels to their television listings, students are starting to watch other evening news sources besides Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings.
About 200 college campuses and 50 cable companies added Arab broadcast channel Al-Jazeera on April 1 to compete with major U.S. networks during the news hour two days a week. The campuses, including the University of Chicago, can see Al-Jazeera aired in its original language, without subtitles, from 5:30 to 6 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday nights.
Northwestern has received no requests for the channel, wrote Sheila Driscoll, director of business and finance in student affairs, in an e-mail.
The Office of Student Affairs, which controls the content of the on-campus television service NUTV, said a commercial channel will not be provided without a student body referendum, which will be offered some time this quarter, Driscoll wrote in an e-mail.
At other colleges, SCOLA, a nonprofit foreign language broadcast company, added the channel in response to demand for Arab language content after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, SCOLA spokesman Joe Kelly said.
Al-Jazeera recently has been criticized for showing controversial footage of American prisoners of war in Iraq, but Kelly said the channel’s war coverage has nothing to do with SCOLA’s decision to put it on the air.
“We do not specifically broadcast controversial footage and don’t endorse the editorial views of the station,” he said.
Rather, SCOLA seeks to air pieces of the channel’s content that best represent the Arabic language and culture, Kelly said.
NU history Prof. Frank Safford, director of the international studies program, said he liked SCOLA’s decision to air the programming.
“It is important for Americans to get an idea of attitudes in the Middle East from a Middle Eastern perspective,” Safford said.
Danish Qureshi, co-president of the Muslim-cultural Students Association, said he would support a decision by NU to air either Al-Jazeera coverage or any other foreign station.
“”Students should be open to different points of view from the rest of the world,” said Qureshi, a Weinberg sophomore.
He also said students might be able to better understand terrorist incidents such as Sept. 11 if they exposed themselves to Arab points of view presented on Al-Jazeera.
But some NU students said they disagreed with SCOLA’s decision to air the programming
David Edwards, a Weinberg sophomore, said he would support airing the station for educational purposes despite the language barrier — but not until after the termination of the war.
“It’s not educational right now — it’s so full of propaganda,” Edwards said. “I’m sure there’s another resource for Arab language besides that one network.”
