Pillock of Arabia

Mark Lawson reviews the English al-Jazeera news channel:

The lead headline in all the debut bulletins was a "humanitarian crisis in Gaza", with reports from a hospital in the Palestinian territory. Views rather than news - this report could have run at any point in the last few years, and especially as it was soon followed by a "first-person testimony" from a Palestinian ambulance driver - will confirm British and American fears that al-Jazeera intends to be a polemical network.

Fears, he means, that it will report without spin what British and American broadcasters systematically ignores or plays down.

Other parts of the coverage seemed to anticipate the most likely criticism of the service: an Arab bias.

Well obviously they're missing a massive hole in the market for solipsistic coverage of US views - I mean "news". Still, it will make a change from the cultural cringe before all things American out of which Mark Lawson has made a career.