You’re going to see a ton of links to Fouad Ajami’s New York Times Magazine article on Al Jazeera, What the Muslim World Is Watching. Ajami thinks Al Jazeera is bad, really bad. I have no idea if it’s as bad as he says, but I’m willing to give it more credit for being a positive force than he seems to be willing to. I could definitely hear the sound of an axe grinding as I read the article. It’s important to remember that one’s impression of a media outlet is filtered through the lens of the observer’s biases. CNN seems middle of the road to me — it seems liberal to conservatives. By the same token, conservatives feel like Fox News is balanced, whereas I see it as radically conservative. Ajami does little to explain what biases he carried into his evaluation of Al Jazeera. Another thing I wonder about when the radicalism of Al Jazeera is discussed is whether Al Jazeera is indoctrinating its audience or reflecting its views.