Politicizing the Infrastructure
Akamai has decided to jettison its customer, Al-Jazeera, for reasons it won’t talk about. Al-Jazeera is, of course, the Arab satellite news channel. It had asked for help from Akamai in dealing with hackers and general server overload.
It’s hard to imagine that this is anything but a political decision by Akamai. As many have pointed out, one of Akamai’s cofounders was on one of the flights that was crashed into the World Trade Center, so it is understandable that this is an especially sensitive issue for Akamai. But Arabs are not terrorists and Al-Jazeera isn’t Al Qaeda.
I know Al-Jazeera isn’t an objective source of news, but it’s a real good way to see how much of the world is seeing what CNN is presenting to us in unabashedly jingoistic terms. I’d rather have multiple points of view than just one, even if that one could be known to be the “best.” Akamai’s decision detracts from the Net’s value.
(Thanks to Paul Lehrman for the links to two MSNBC articles, here and here.)
Having multiple points of view to be aggregated over is key, as journalists always come with baggage, no matter how hard they try, and most of our news orgs (unlike the Brits, for reassons I dont understand) dont try and explicitly take sides.
Actually CNN is different abroad..my Mom in India tells me they showed a two year old dying in the bombing of West Baghdad a few days back, but i didnt see that here on CNN. The interesting part of this is that on seeing this, she told me, that she hoped Bush suffered a similar fate.
This coming from a woman who has seen her mom pouring hot oil from the terrace of her house to prevent a Muslim mob from entering in the days of India’s partition in 1947..in other words, she is frankly a bit biased against Islam I think..
So imagine what these images do in the middle east. And then ask why we are handheld and baby-sat here? Or why we are so hated..is it that we do bad stuff(I dont think so), or is it because we are ignorantly so holier-than-thou about it?
I only see the situation changing if we start paying for our news and insist, as ypu point out, on aggregating viewpoints. Thank the lord for the internet, atleast..
Rahul (who is a bit disiluusioned by all this..)
I don’t speak Arabic and haven’t seen Al-Jazeera, so I can’t speak to its quaility. But it is the only uncensored news organization in the Arab world. The war party keeps insisting that they want democracy in the Arab world. Well, Al-Jazeera is what Arab democracy looks like.
As a professional flack ( http://www.prestovivace.biz/ ) I think the American response is exactly wrong. Let us engage Al-Jazeera. Let us make our case. In any case, depriving them of server space, throwing them off the floor of the stock exchange isn’t going to shut them up.
The current leader of Turkey, Erdogan (sp?) said ‘in politics, he who gets mad loses.” Exactly so.
Al Jezeera broadcast the image of Arab’s celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Centre. Akamai doing business with Al Jezeera would horrify Dan Lewin’s family and many Akamai employees.
This is not censorship, blocking alternative opinions or anything sinister. Akamai has competitors, Al Jezeera is free to take their business there.
Akamai is practising basic self-respect and compassion.
Paul
“Al Jezeera broadcast the image of Arab’s celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Centre.”
Is that urban legend, or did that really happen? Because one of the things that separated the events of 9/11 (including the 189 people who perished at the Pentagon) is that the Arab world was horrified. The response was completely different from previous terrorist attacks and there were demonstrations of support for the United States. That is all gone now, but for a brief moment we had almost universal international support.
(not to argue with the idea that multiple points of view should be heard — that is self-evident)
but -maybe the infrastructure (even the internet) is always inherently politicized…;-)
ejn
Yes, the infrastructure is always politicized. I had hoped that Akamai’s politics – as infrastructure suppliers – would tend towards openness.
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