Leo Africanus

If you live in the US, analysis of journalism (often referred to as “media criticism”) can across as half-hearted, overly focused on personalities and not terribly insightful. Take for example the Huffingtonpost.com’s “Media” section (for all their good stuff, they had an item about Perez Hilton yesterday). There are some exceptions, like MediaMatters.org (although they can appear rather humorless). When it comes to TV, the worst-best of the bunch is Howard Kurtz’s CNN Reliable Sources (I’d spare you the hyperlink to his program and instead point to Crooks and Liars, whose catalogued many of his offenses). For these reasons Al Jazeera English’s The Listening Post, a program about media hosted by the American journalist Richard Gizbert (a former London correspondent for ABC) is a much better option. Take some of its recent programs with Africa-related topics: coverage of the political and economic crises in Zimbabwe and of the civil war in Darfur. In the latter case the program assessed both Western and Arab media coverage of the Darfur crisis. The Listening Post features not just careful analyses of the issues, but interviews a wide range of experts, whether journalists, media researchers and politicians. Each episode features an insert dubbed “Global Village Voices,” where a range of media researchers or journalists record their opinion via webcams or camera-phones to be screened on the program. Hope Howard Kurtz takes notice.

The Listening Post archive (which is regularly updated) can be viewed here on Youtube.

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