“Al-Jazeera,” Miles concludes, “is probably less biased than any of the mainstream American news networks.” All to his...
From an award-winning young journalist, a revealing account of the rise of the network the Bush administration, Fox News, and London tabloids love to hate.
And why not? The virulently right-wing, pro-American Fox News, writes English media critic and business consultant Miles, isn’t aired in the UK because it violates that nation’s strictures on “due impartiality,” whereas Al-Jazeera is by comparison a model of restraint and balance. And if American viewers find Al-Jazeera biased, it is largely because “the popular American media has not reported particularly comprehensively about foreign affairs for years,” such that the messenger who brings the news that the Arab street is full of hatred for America will be the one to be shot. Miles describes the birth of Al-Jazeera only a decade ago as the voice of a newly democratic—and newly fabulously very, very rich—Qatar; the network’s name means “the peninsula,” as Qatar is. Soon after, the reformist emir abolished the Ministry of Information, and Al-Jazeera was suddenly free to report as it saw fit. Which it has done with careful balance (its slogan is “The opinion and the other opinion”). Which is precisely what has outraged the Bush administration and its handful of allies, Miles notes: By giving Osama bin Laden a voice, Al-Jazeera put itself on the side of the enemy, though, Miles adds, the network’s Washington bureau chief observed that bin Laden’s sending videotapes to Qatar was much the same as the Unabomber’s sending faxes to the New York Times. But Al-Jazeera is used to such controversies, Miles comments: in recent years, the Palestinian Authority has denounced Al-Jazeera as a Zionist tool after the network exposed its corrupt leadership, even as Israel denounced Al-Jazeera for being a PLO front and American soldiers busied themselves shooting at Al-Jazeera correspondents in Iraq for their crime of having aired images of atrocities and burning cities.
“Al-Jazeera,” Miles concludes, “is probably less biased than any of the mainstream American news networks.” All to his credit, he makes a strong case.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1789-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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