Al Jazeera might be critically acclaimed, but the network appears to carry little weight with Time Warner. As news broke last night that Al Jazeera had acquired Current TV and was planning to change it to Al Jazeera America, Time Warner was cutting the cord.

There has been no official word from Time Warner on why, exactly, it decided to drop Current TV right in the middle of programming. That is, nothing beyond “Our agreement with Current will be terminated and we will no longer be carrying the channel.” However, you don’t have to be an expert to surmise that it might be politically motivated.

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Most of the nation has a rather tumultuous relationship with Al Jazeera. This stems from a few things, but mostly it’s just ignorance. A majority of people still see Al Jazeera as some radical Islamic media company, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Despite all the negative feelings toward the network, New York City has consistently embraced  Al Jazeera - The Huffington Post reports that New York provides more traffic to its websites than any other city in the world - so now it’s hugging us all back.

Last night, at midnight, Al Jazeera English launched on Time Warner (Channel 92), and it will launch on Verizon’s FiOS in the near future. Al Anstey, Al Jazeera English’s Managing Director, said that New York’s support is critical for the network succeeding:

New York is a very important city. It’s looking at all directions on the globe and all directions are looking back at New York City. So it’s a truly global city. It’s got a very outward looking, diverse, intelligent audience – obviously an influential audience in some quarters as well. So it’s a key part of our strategy.

While the network has strong support here (and from Hillary Clinton), it still has a long way to go to get people to switch from either their local news or CNN, MSNBC or any of the other news mainstays. But getting a foot in the door in New York is a good place to start.

Everyone get ready to freak out! Al Jazeera English has been selected to win Columbia Journalism School’s highest honor, the Columbia Journalism Award. The annual award recognizes an individual or organization that produces extremely high quality journalism “for the public good.”

According to a press release obtained by Poynter, Al Anstey, the Managing Editor for Al Jazeera English, will accept the award during Columbia’s commencement ceremony.

Al Jazeera – only the second organization to ever win the award – won for its unparalleled coverage of the uprisings in the Middle East, but we’re sure someone will be mad about this. But who cares, right? Al Jazeera definitely deserves this honor, and they shouldn’t let a few idiots ruin it for them.

• TVNewser: Al Anstey, the Managing Editor at Al Jazeera English, told CNN last night that the network is completely unbiased, which might be true if it was run by a bunch of Watsons, but since it’s not, he’s wrong.
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