Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera English correspondent Melissa Chan is back in the U.S. after being expelled from China last week, the first accredited foreign journalist to be barred from the country in 14 years. Before her expulsion, Chan knew she was on “shaky ground,” she tells the Los Angeles Times:

In March, she wrote about a distraught mother seeking a daughter who had been forcibly sterilized and put in an illegal “black jail” for violating China’s one-child policy.

“A lot of journalists have done black jail stories,” she said, but hers “was probably the first” to get coverage on TV. “It’s also the first time that we got a government official to respond to a question about the existence of black jails.” The official denied the black jails existed, “but it was on the record, Chan said, “so that was useful for human rights groups. And that could be one reason why there’s the perception that I’m a go-getter.”

Chan also said there is a “strong possibility” her Twitter account, which she used to detail her dealings with Chinese authorities, contributed to her expulsion.

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Al Jazeera English is closing its bureau in Beijing after Chinese authorities refused to renew a correspondent’s press credentials and visa. The correspondent, Melissa Chan, has filed more than 400 reports for the network in China since 2007.

From Al Jazeera English:

“Salah Negm, director of news at Al Jazeera English said: We’ve been doing a first class job at covering all stories in China.Our editorial DNA includes covering all stories from all sides. We constantly cover the voice of the voiceless and sometimes that calls for tough news coverage from anywhere in world. We hope China appreciates the integrity of our news coverage and our journalism. We value this journalist integrity in our coverage of all countries in the world.

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Al Jazeera wants to grow, but as a news channel there are severe limitations. News is commoditized, and there is heavy competition. In the world of television, the most valuable content is content that viewers cannot get anywhere else.

That is why in the U.S. and cross the globe the most valuable TV content is live sports. Al Jazeera knows this, and as Reuters reports, it is setting its sights on acquiring some of the most high-profile sports rights around: The English Premier League. The EPL is currently broadcast in the U.K. by Sky Sports, but that may change:

“The Qataris see sport as being an entree for themselves on the world stage, and the next piece in the jigsaw puzzle is a really big rights acquisition,” said Graham Shear, a lawyer specializing in sports matters.

“The Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore is trying to generate a competition; he would love to see Sky and Al Jazeera go head to head.”

Talking Points Memo gets a hold of a memo sent by Al Jazeera English managing editor Al Anstey, outlining the channel’s new U.S. strategy. As part of the changes, the channel will be downsizing in Washington D.C., instead using more reports from bureaus across the country. In addition, it will be moving its show “Empire” from Washington to New York.

This change is part of the wider restructure which began over two years ago in order to enhance one of our core strengths of news gathering and reporting from the field. We recently started up our bureau in Chicago. We are soon to formally open our office in Los Angeles. And we are now fully operational from Miami. These bureaux add to our existing presence and strength in Washington DC, and New York, and our bureaux across Latin America.

TVNewser hears that around 75% of staffers in Washington will be let go as a result of the moves. Update: AJE says that only two dozen staffers will be affected, far fewer than 75%. Read Anstey’s full memo over at TPM.

The man who killed seven people in France last week–and was killed himself during a shootout in Toulouse, France–mailed a video of the killings to Al Jazeera before his death. French President Nicholas Sarkozy reportedly pleaded with the network not to air the videos, though the channel had already made up its mind regarding its decision.

In a  statement, Al Jazeera said that it would not televise the video or any excerpt from it, and would not make it available to anyone that requested a copy.

“The Paris bureau received a video from an anonymous source [on Monday] entitled “Al-Qaeda attaque la France” (Al-Qaeda attacks France) that appears to show the recent killings in Toulouse and Montauban. Given its contents, we immediately passed the video on to the French police as we were duty bound to do and they are conducting their investigation. In accordance with al-Jazeera’s code of ethics, given the video does not add any information that is not already in the public domain, its news channels will not be broadcasting any of its contents.”

A day after being named a winner of their first duPont Award, Al Jazeera English announced another milestone: they’re now in a quarter billion households around the world. But only a fraction of those homes are in the world’s largest English-speaking nation: the U.S.

Al Jazeera English is available in 130 countries, but in the U.S., the channel can only be found on cable systems in Washington DC, New York, Burlington, VT, Toledo, OH and, recently, Chicago and Los Angeles. AJE has also announced it will open a Chicago bureau next month and already has bureaus in DC, New York, Los Angeles and Miami. (Al Jazeera as a whole has 70 bureaus around the world.)

And while it’s only available in 5 million homes in the U.S., 40% of AJE’s web traffic comes from the Unites States.

AJE faces stiff competition for news viewers in the U.S., and not just from American networks. Last week, the BBC announced their 24-hour BBC World News had struck a deal with Comcast, adding the channel to 15 million American homes in markets including Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Minneapolis. BBC World News is available in 300 million homes around the world.

CBS News, NBC News and, for the first time, Al Jazeera English, have just been announced as winners of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards.

CBS News “60 Minutes” will be honored for Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Lara Logan‘s report from the frontlines of the war in Afghanistan, and NBC News, along with Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel, will be honored for breaking news coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Al Jazeera English will receive its first duPont silver baton for a documentary about shortcomings in the recovery efforts in Haiti and NOVA, on PBS, will be honored with a duPont award for a documentary on Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

“This truly dynamic group of news organizations and journalists represent the best in broadcast and digital news reporting,” said Bill Wheatley, duPont Jury chair and former executive vice president of NBC News. “Journalists are using technology in new ways to effectively tell these important stories covering the news, issues and events that are critical to our society.”

In all, 14 awards will be presented during a ceremony on Thurs., Jan. 19. CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley and Michele Norris from NPR will host the 70th anniversary of the duPont awards, presented each year to honor excellence in broadcast and digital journalism.

TVSpy has more on several local news stations who will be honored with duPont Awards.

Last week we noted that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised Al Jazeera for its coverage in the Middle East during an interview with Sir David Frost. Today, Al Jazeera aired another interview with Rumsfeld, taped the same day but with a markedly different tone.

Abderrahim Foukara was quite confrontational with Rumsfeld, who evaded the interviewer’s line of questioning:

You can compare Foukara’s interview with the relatively tame Frost interview, which is embedded after the jump.

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Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who once called Al Jazeera’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable” has apparently made amends with the broadcaster. The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone reports that in an interview to air tonight, Rumsfeld praised the channel for its recent reportage:

“Its audience has grown and it can be an important means of communication in the world,” he said of the channel.

“I am delighted you are doing what you are doing.”

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The director-general of Al Jazeera, Wadah Khanfar, has resigned after eight years leading the family of cable news channels. His resignation comes after U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks seem to indicate that Khanfar was willing to change editorial content at the request of U.S. authorities, as the AP notes:

The leaked U.S. diplomatic cable dated October 2010 indicated that Khanfar was in constant contact with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, responding to U.S. complaints of negative coverage and promising to tone down items on the station’s website. The cables referred to Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs as “MFA” which passed him some of the DIA reports.

Al-Jazeera said in a statement that Khanfar expressed his desire to resign in July, and that his replacement was arranged one month ago to “to ensure a smooth transition.” The statement did not refer to the leaked cable.

In an email to Al Jazeera staff, Khanfar said that the networks had no agenda:

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