WASHINGTON, DC —In another major setback for the Al-Jazeera spin-off network known as Al-Jazeera International, a new public opinion poll conducted for Accuracy in Media finds that a majority of Americans opposes the channel coming into their homes through U.S. cable and satellite systems. The poll also finds that, by 2-1, Americans think the U.S. Government should oppose giving the new channel access to the U.S. media market.

AIM, the nation’s oldest media watchdog group, has been leading a national campaign to keep Al-Jazeera International out of the U.S. AIM has released the sensational DVD, “Terror Television,” exposing the channel’s ties to the perpetrators of 9/11 and the old Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and sponsors the website www.stopaljazeera.org. 

Al-Jazeera International, an English-language sister network to the Arabic Al-Jazeera, has been desperately seeking carriage on U.S. cable and satellite systems. It has hired well-known media figures such as David Frost, Dave Marash and Riz Khan, and its expensive new television studios are under construction on K Street N.W. in Washington, D.C. 

But the new AIM poll finds that the channel’s launch is opposed by more than one-half (53 percent) of the American people, a figure which dwarfs the number of those (29 percent) supporting it. What’s more, 38 percent of the American people were adamantly against the channel.

“Al-Jazeera International has been tainted by its association with the channel that regularly broadcasts propaganda from the terrorist killers of almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” declared Cliff Kincaid, editor of AIM. “That is an association, however, that it will not be able to escape as long as it is funded by the same Arab government sponsoring Al-Jazeera. The poll backs up our contention that the American people don’t want to take a risk on a new channel bringing more terrorist propaganda into the U.S. media market and inciting more anti-American violence.”

The poll was conducted for AIM by The Polling Company, which declared in its analysis of the results that an inference could be made that a large portion of adults might favor congressional action actually stopping Al-Jazeera International from reaching U.S. homes. The results and the analysis are available at www.aim.org/pdf/AIM_Poll_on_Al-Jazeera_International.pdf (PDF).

Accuracy in Media (AIM) is a non-profit, grassroots citizens’ watchdog of the news media.
For more information, please visit www.aim.org.

To schedule an interview with AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid, contact Sarah Schaerr Norton at (202) 364-4401 ext. 107 or Carisa E. Bergen at (202) 364-4401 ext. 110.

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