In its new issue, Newsweek puts this as #4 on their list of "31 Ways To Get Smarter In 2012":

4. Get News from Al Jazeera

Don't shut yourself out from new ideas. A 2009 study found that viewers of Al Jazeera English were more open-minded than people who got their news from CNN International and BBC World.

That's a nice idea. Someone should tell my cable company, who make me pay way too much for the privilege of having Fox News Channel.

Elizabeth Jensen has an interesting piece in the New York Times today (6/20/11) about Los Angeles public television station KCET. After deciding to cut its ties to PBS, the channel is experimenting with different programming options, including Al Jazeera English.

And the results so far, according to one station official:

Mr. Marcus said he had been braced for some criticism from viewers about Al Jazeera English’s point of view, but “most people think it’s been very even-handed.” He praised the scope of coverage, noting that last week the program carried reports from Argentina, China and Sri Lanka. “I would guess those are all stories you would not see on a domestic newscast,” he said.

Perhaps one way to improve public television is to get away from PBS.

New York Times TV reporter Alessandra Stanley (2/2/11) had a piece discussing why you can't watch Al Jazeera English on your television. After noting that "demand was pretty low" for the channel until recently (unlike, I don't know, Fox Business Channel, which must have dozens of die-hard fans), Stanley warned that

zeal sometimes outstrips the thirst for accuracy. The channel reported on Tuesday that 2 million protesters defied a curfew to gather in Tahrir Square; most Western news organizations put the number in the hundreds of thousands.

Seriously--the New York Times is going to lecture other media outlets on the proper way to report on the size of the crowd at a massive demonstration? And the person to do this is Alessandra Stanley, a reporter whose record of inaccuracy led Gawker to wonder, "How Many Corrections Does It Take to Get Fired at the Times?"

Come on now.