Al Jazeera broadcasting Election Night ... from Phoebus?

Al Jazeera, the news agency sometimes called the CNN of the Middle East, is considering a live Election Day broadcast from Phoebus, that funky neighborhood in Hampton, the DP's Matt Sturdevant reports.

Their goal is to show the political diversity of small towns in swing states like Virginia.

Phoebus Coffee House owner Anne W. Doop told Matt that a news editor for Al Jazeera English, based in Washington, D.C., visited the coffee house on East Mellen Street last week and was looking at different parts of Hampton before choosing Phoebus as a broadcast location.

"After picking my jaw off the floor, I was waiting for her to say, 'You’ve been Punk'd,'" Doop said.

Doop said she was told the news agency is looking to broadcast from three places in Phoebus: the coffee house, Sarah’s Irish Pub just across Mellen Street from the coffee house, and someone’s home.

The broadcast is tentatively scheduled to air from 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 4, until 5 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5.

Al Jazeera English news editor Nahedah Zayed, who was in Chicago Wednesday scouting other possible locations, said nothing has been confirmed.

One of the challenges Al Jazeera faces with its coverage in America, and of the presidential election, is misunderstandings about the organization. It is a Qatar-headquartered television and Web-based news agency with satellite feeds around the globe. But the news agency became well known across America shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when it was the source of videos featuring Osama bin Laden taking credit for the terrorist attacks.

Doop said there could easily be a lot of confusion about, and animosity toward, Al Jazeera, despite the fact that it is a news agency, not a terrorist organization.

But she promises to keep the peace on election night.

Comments

[Independent-Moderate]

Here's my promise to Ms. Doop, I will not patronize her business or any other business that allows this propaganda machine to set up shop. While I have never been to her establishment before, I had planned to visit it this weekend during the Phoebus Days Festival, but instead will be taking the money I would have spent there and will be making a donation to the VFW Post just down the street. After all, the veterans are the ones who helped secure Ms. Doop's ability to exercise her free speech and free will to allow her business to become a staging area for propaganda Al-Jazeera is famous for.