It was my own desperate need for information and my frustration with American news sources during my son’s two deployments to Iraq that led me to foreign and independent journalism. Escaping the world of corporate, establishment media is like a breath of fresh air and you cannot go back or settle for the old guard any more.

Nothing illustrates the need for real investigative reporting better than the current uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and the governments’ efforts to keep their people in the dark. Why is Al Jazeera effectively blocked in the US? Why are Americans uniquely denied the right to choose from the full spectrum of international and investigative reporting?

Compared to American news channels, AJE is remarkably staid. With bureaus on four continents, and reporters based in places such as the Cote d’Ivoire, Caracas, and Gaza, AJE’s news format tends to feature long-form, on-the-ground reporting, often by area natives. Aesthetically, the channel looks nothing like the sensory assault of Fox News or MSNBC, with their constantly updated tickers, red, white and blue graphics, and endless talking-head chatter. AJE runs one headline at a time on the bottom of the screen, and the font is small, so as not to distract from the newscast. Most images are from the field, and reporters tend to use voiceovers instead of stand-ups, so that the pieces end up being about the people and places that are being reported on, as opposed to the personality and appearance of the reporter or anchor.

On the day after the Pennsylvania primary, when U.S. cable news ran nearly nonstop coverage of the democratic race for president, AJE had reports on post-election violence in Zimbabwe and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s calls for an arms embargo on the south African nation, the resumption of fuel shipments from Israel to Palestine, General David Petraeus’s promotion, an elephant rampage in India, bombings in Mosul, Iraq, and a documentary program on the veterans of the Falklands War.

At a little before 5P.M., McCullough began gathering her things. I assumed this was my cue to leave.

“Oh, you don’t have to go with me,” she said. “We make it hard to get in, but once you’re in, you can stay.”

Remember, during Jon Stewart’s impassioned on air plea for the 9/11 responders bill he pointed out that Al Jazeera was the only network that gave the bill ‘the full twenty two minutes’ of coverage it deserved.