Update (8:44 p.m.): Current TV founder co-founder Joel Hyatt confirmed Al Jazeera will purchase the network in an email to staff this evening. 

Mr. Hyatt's email contained several interesting details including that Mr. Gore asked Colin Powell's for advice on working with the Arab network and "Colin Powell told Al that Al Jazeera is the only cable news network he watches." In the email Mr. Hyatt also revealed he and Mr. Gore will both serve on the advisory board of Al Jazeera America and that Time Warner Cable is dropping Current because it "did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera." Read Mr. Hyatt's full email below. 

Since its inception, Current has suffered from low ratings. In 2011, the network attempted to counter this by bringing on ousted MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann and former MSNBC contributor Cenk Uygur to help them re-brand with a focus on left-leaning talk. That experiment didn't help the network revolutionize its ratings. In March, Current acrimoniously parted ways with Mr. Olbermann and replaced him with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Last month, when asked about his show, Mr. Spitzer quipped, "Nobody’s watching, but I’m having a great time."

According to the Times, if the deal goes through, Al Jazeera won't use Current to distribute Al Jazeera English, which is based in Qatar. Instead, the company will begin a new, New York-based English-language venture. Though some Current TV staff members may stay on, Mr. Stelter wrote that the network's "schedule of shows will most likely be dissolved in the spring."

Al Jazeera has gained a growing audience with its journalism over the years, but the network has also earned criticism its coverage is anti-American.

Though he often uses Twitter to trash his (many) former employers, as of this writing, Mr. Olbermann has yet to weigh in on the rumored deal. Mr. Gore and Mr. Spitzer have also not responded to requests for comment from the Observer.

Joel Hyatt's email to Current staffers:

From: Joel Hyatt 
Date: January 2, 2013, 6:36:46 
Subject: BIG NEWS FOR THE NEW YEAR!
Al and I are thrilled and proud to announce that a few moments ago Current was acquired by Al Jazeera, the award winning international news organization. 

When considering the several suitors who were interested in acquiring Current, it became clear to us that Al Jazeera was founded with the same goals we had for Current: To give voice to those whose voices are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the important stories that no one else is telling. Al Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us. 

Al and I did significant due diligence as part of our evaluation process. We were impressed with all that we learned about Al Jazeera and its journalistic integrity, global reach, award-winning programming, and growing influence around the world. That influence has recently been demonstrated by Al Jazeera’s important and impactful coverage of the Arab Spring, which was widely credited as being the most thorough and informative coverage from any media company. Colin Powell told Al that Al Jazeera is the only cable news network he watches (which he is able to do because Comcast carries it in the Washington, DC market).

As you may know, Al Jazeera is funded by the government of Qatar, which is the United States’ closest ally in the Gulf Region, and is where the United States bases its Middle East Air Force operations. I have had first-hand knowledge of Qatar’s policies as a result of my tenure on the Board of The Brookings Institution. The Saban Center for Middle East Policy is a joint venture of The Brookings Institution and Qatar, and it has offices in Washington, DC and Doha, Qatar. Its purpose is to propose practical public policies that can contribute to peace in the Middle East, and its founding Director is my friend, Martin Indyk, the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

While considering this decision, I spent a week in Doha, Qatar, where Al Jazeera is headquartered, and I am pleased to tell you that I could not have been more impressed with their operation. First of all, they are bringing large-scale resources to journalism – something which we have not been able to do. Al Jazeera has more than 80 bureaus around the world, and is seen in more than 260 million homes in 130 countries. Al Jazeera has a staff of over 4000 people, including 400 journalists. Its journalists hail from more than 50 countries, with every conceivable nationality and religion represented on its professional team. Al Jazeera is a major global media player. 

The rest of the world thinks so too. Al Jazeera English has won many, many awards including an Alfred I DuPont Award for Best Documentary, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Four Freedoms Awards for freedom of speech and expression, an Amnesty International Award for International TV and Radio, the prestigious Peabody Award, and the Huffington Post Ultimate Media Gamechanger award.

All of this is compelling, but what really convinced Al and me that Al Jazeera would be a great home for the people of Current was their publicly stated Values and Core Capabilities. Their mission includes the following: Diversity (“bringing stories from the underreported communities, societies and cultures from across the globe), Journalistic Integrity (“committed to the uncompromising pursuit of truth and the ideals of journalism”), and A Voice for the Voiceless (“promoting the basic human right of the freedom of expression for people everywhere”).

Al Jazeera is planning to invest significantly in building “Al Jazeera America,” a network focused on international news for the American audience. Al and I will both serve on the Advisory Board of Al Jazeera America, and we look forward to helping build an important news network.

Obviously there will be a lot of transition work in the coming weeks. Al Jazeera does not have a management team in place in the U.S to run this new venture. They are extremely impressed with our people and our accomplishments. I will be holding staff meetings in the next few days and will introduce the senior folks from Al Jazeera who have led the planning for this entry into the United States. (I will separately communicate as to the day and time for those staff meetings.) We will communicate more of the details of this acquisition during those meetings.

Getting this transaction done was very difficult. One of Current’s distributors, Time Warner Cable, did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera. Consequently, Current will no longer be carried on TWC. This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will earn significant additional carriage in the months and years ahead. In the United Kingdom, it has become the number three news network (behind the BBC and Sky News). It did that by investing in great programming – as it intends to do in the United States. 

Al and I are incredibly proud of what all of us have been able to accomplish together. Throughout our short history, Current has been a thought leader for the media industry, innovating many exciting features that became standard after we introduced them. (Tweets on television anyone?!) Just this past year, we’ve been able to provide our viewers with fantastic interactive and social TV 2.0 coverage of the Presidential Election, including a peek inside the Obama Campaign headquarters, in depth analysis of the Libor Scandal, the breaking and relentless coverage of the Trayvon Martin scandal, and the list goes on and on. We have won most of the important awards in the journalism profession. We have stayed true to our independence and courage. And in our choice of new corporate parent, we are continuing to strive to make a difference – to provide the American people with information and analysis they need to live better, more secure, happier lives. I am confident this will continue into the future. 

As I reflected deeply about this decision – both to sell the company and to whom – I kept coming back to one basic notion: The purpose of journalism is to provide those who don’t know with information and knowledge so that they can become those who do know. Bias and hatred are fueled by ignorance. Information and knowledge are the only antidotes to that ignorance. That is the role journalism must play – to provide the knowledge that sweeps away the bias and hatred caused by ignorance. It is a noble pursuit. I am proud of each and every one of you for your dedication to pursuing that noble goal. And it is a privilege to have worked with all of you these past few years.

Please accept my best wishes for a happy, healthy, exciting and fulfilling New Year! 

All the best,
Joel

Mr. Rushing is heading back to Iraq today, roughly four years after his last trip, and nearly three years after his big-screen debut in the documentary Control Room—Jehane Noujaim’s surprise hit that explored Al-Jazeera and the dynamics of the media war during the chaotic early days of the Iraq invasion. His star turn made blue-state audiences swoon and marked him as a matinee idol for the nervous new century: a U.S. Marine, clean-cut, thoughtful, culturally sensitive.

These days, the blue eyes and Texas drawl are the same, but the new vest won’t be the only change from his last trip to a war zone. His hair is longer now; the combat boots are long gone. And this week, when Mr. Rushing joins a team of American military advisors headed to northern Iraq to help train the Iraqi Army’s Second Infantry Division, he will be an embedded observer, not an officer. “This is my first time ever to enter a combat zone not armed, and not with other Marines, and that—it feels like going to prom in your tighty-whities,” he said. “It feels very naked for me.”

Mr. Rushing, 34, is making his way across uncharted terrain, as one of only a handful of Americans—and the only former military officer—to go to work for the controversial, Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera. Still, he seems so confident in his new path—so at ease with his choice—it’s easy to forget that he initially debuted as an unwitting, and unwilling, media star. He first heard of his role in Control Room via a voicemail from an anonymous stranger shortly after the movie’s film-festival debut: “You don’t know me, but I just saw your movie at Sundance, and I wanted to say thanks.” The veteran public-affairs officer hadn’t signed a release to appear in the documentary; he barely remembered chatting, just once, with a few film students from the American University in Cairo during a single afternoon at CENTCOM. Heart thudding, he headed for the Web. “I Googled ‘Sundance’ and ‘Josh Rushing,’ and there I was,” he said.

Even for a veteran flack like Mr. Rushing, the media learning curve that followed was breathtakingly steep. As his story made its way from the entertainment section to the front page, he found himself muzzled by the Pentagon, his 14-year military career essentially over. As it happened, Mr. Rushing had already started to imagine life outside uniform. “I left [the military] because it occurred to me that I finally had a platform to say something that only I could say,” he said as he perched on the edge of his chair, sleeves rolled up, just a few feet from the buzzing Al-Jazeera newsroom. The bureau is housed on several floors of a nondescript K Street building just a few blocks from the White House; Mr. Rushing’s sunny office is dominated by Longhorns paraphernalia and family snapshots. “Only I could—because I was the only one who had that vantage point. And also, I had the right background where I could go onto Bill O’Reilly’s show and tell him that he should reconsider Al-Jazeera, and he couldn’t dismiss me as some lefty from somewhere.”

Now Al-Jazeera English has given Mr. Rushing a permanent platform—albeit one that’s still virtually unavailable on U.S. cable systems (“Thank God for YouTube,” he said). The network went live less than five months ago, but Mr. Rushing has already churned out an impressive stream of investigative pieces—reports on rural America and foreign child soldiers, the mechanics of military training and Hollywood’s portrayal of Arab characters; soon after he gets back from his embed, he’ll be heading to Moscow to report on a special on the weapon of revolution, the AK-47. “Josh is a natural,” said Joanne Levine, an AJE executive producer and Nightline vet, who puts Mr. Rushing in the same category as other high-profile news personalities she’s worked with, like Peter Jennings and Bob Woodruff. “He has that charisma—a presence that pops just off of the screen.”

BUT MR. RUSHING'S APPEAL AND APPROACH aren’t quite that of the traditional broadcast newsman; his method seems inextricably linked with the audience’s perception of his persona and story—the political as personal as political. One of his early projects for the network was Spin: The Art of Selling War—a mea culpa of sorts, where he systematically debunked talking points he’d spouted in his former career (the special featured a parallel penitent appearance by a regret-wracked Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff). After an innovative, extended series of cuts from press-conference footage of President George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to eerily similar Gulf of Tonkin–era remarks by Lyndon Johnson, Mr. Rushing steered the special to unusual territory for a foreign-policy piece: the reporter himself. As a result, the broadcast—a scathing j’accuse directed at administration policy—wound up in a place far more raw than traditional, objective journalism, with Mr. Rushing as a sort of Al-Jazeera Anderson Cooper: the same earnest emotiveness, the same blue-eyed magnetism. The production values were top-of-the-line, the reporting rock-solid—but clearly, for good or ill, 60 Minutes this wasn’t.

In an early draft of his upcoming book, Mission Al-Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World (coming later this spring from Palgrave Macmillan), Mr. Rushing keeps up that balancing act, trying to reconcile the advocate he was and the journalist he’s become into some crusading combination of the two. “This is a strange time for America. Everywhere it seems people are seeing things through a prism of their own fears and stereotypes,” Mr. Rushing wrote, adding that he was “trying to practice a form of journalism that is skeptical and challenging in a news environment that seems increasingly less so.” The book chronicles his journey from a teenage Marine out of small-town Texas to the public face of Al-Jazeera English, including a behind-the-scenes look at CENTCOM’s press operation during the early days of the conflict, and a bracingly candid account of his growing disillusionment with the war on terror. “I [often] find myself traversing the battle lines of American’s struggle with the worst of itself,” he wrote. There have been no terror attacks since 9/11, but “reports from the front lines of America’s greater jihad—the struggle for our soul, for what is best in us—are much more grim.”

For the past few months, Mr. Rushing has been edging his way back to the battlefield, feeling around the margins of the story that helped define Al-Jazeera: the Iraq War. If Mr. Rushing is his network’s own Anderson Cooper, then this is his return to the Big Easy. “I feel personally responsible for what’s going on there [in Iraq],” he said last week. “Not that I did all of it, but anyone, I think, who was involved in the beginning and believed in the reasons we were doing it and thought we were creating a better situation for these people—now, clearly, it’s not a better situation—has to feel some sense of personal responsibility and desire to some way be involved in trying to make that right. And if my way of making that right involves asking the right questions, the tough questions, and examining what we’re doing there, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Mr. Rushing’s wife Paige, he says, is “nervous as hell” about his embed. He pauses. “Um, I don’t blame her …. I think there was some sense she had that when I got out of the Marine Corps, she was like, ‘Whew, we made it through; we’re done.’ And now the fact I’m going back—she thought she was done with that, and, of course, we’re not. We’re not done with that.” His son Luke is nearly 15; baby Ethan Coltrane is getting close to his first birthday. Meanwhile, back in Lone Star, Tex.—where his father is a volunteer firefighter and his mom works for the city council—his supportive parents are already dealing with the fallout from their son’s new line of work. “I feel for them in many ways, more than anyone, because—it’s easy for me being in Washington and taking the heat. But they have to explain to their friends on the fire force … to their friends at church, who—it’s not the same kind of international crowd as here,” he said quietly. “And it shouldn’t necessarily be their burden to have to explain. But, of course, they do. So I really feel for them, because in many ways they have the tougher fight to fight than I do.”

This resistance to Mr. Rushing—less to the man himself than to the ideas and ethos he has come to represent—has, at times, gotten in the way of his reporting. His recent attempt to join U.S. forces in Iraq wasn’t his first try at an embed slot. In the months before Al-Jazeera English’s official launch, he made a futile bid to join U.S. forces in Iraq—but, he says, U.S. officials in Baghdad told him that military policy prohibited Al-Jazeera from participating in the embed program. (Actually, the Arabic-language network was given permission to embed in the early days of the war, before its relationship with the Pentagon soured completely.)

IN THE IRAQ WAR'S EARLY DAYS, relations between the administration and the Arabic-language network famously fractured over the latter’s editorial leanings. Now, new leadership in military public affairs is trying to change the way the coalition deals with Al-Jazeera and the rest of the Arab media. (This reassessment of existing policy extends to American reporters as well—recently, a Defense Department representative embarked on an informal listening tour of major broadcast bureaus in New York and Washington, sounding out producers and correspondents on ways the military might alter the evolving embed program, among other issues.) It’s still a work in progress, but the changing attitudes are part of what made Mr. Rushing’s journey possible.

Meanwhile, although the Marine Corps may not have come around (“The Marine Corps [and I are] a bit like a bad relationship,” Mr. Rushing said. “They haven’t quite gotten over the breakup. ”), large swaths of the officer corps in the other services have quietly embraced the former captain. At least once or twice a month, Mr. Rushing is invited to address large military gatherings on bases nationwide. He’s made repeat appearances at West Point and Annapolis—including the former’s counterterrorism training center—and spoken at the commencement ceremonies of most of the military’s freshly minted public-affairs officers. In the months before he left for Iraq, he addressed the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, as well as the National Defense University. “There’s a sense, if you’re doing the right thing, that you have nothing to hide and you want everyone to see it—particularly those who accuse you of not doing the right thing,” Mr. Rushing said. “So I think [military officers] see in Al-Jazeera an audience that they would very much like to see what they’re doing here, because they believe in what they’re doing.”

He understands the military’s mission, he said, and he supports it. But he no longer views it as his own. “I’m at a point in my life where the questions are more important than the answers,” he said. “It’s a new way of approaching things for me …. I started out with all the answers, and now I’ve worked my way back to the questions.”

The reporters—two from each of the five television networks and another pair from the Associated Press; altogether, a little election night Noah’s Ark—had been stripped of their cell phones, BlackBerries and pagers. Those devices were sealed in individual manila envelopes and placed in the drawer of a desk. Three guards monitored the room. There were four pizzas (broccoli, sausage, pepperoni, plain), salad, soda, water, ice and chocolate-chip cookies. A Kremlin-style aura of secrecy prevailed, although attendees were permitted supervised bathroom breaks.

“I was told last week not to comment on the inner workings of the Quarantine Room or what happened that day,” said Dan Merkle, the decision-desk director for ABC News, who was among those sequestered. “All I’ll say is that it was a civil, collegial situation.” Twelve Not-Angry Statisticians.

The room was the creation of the National Election Pool, a union of Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and the A.P. It was designed to coordinate election coverage generally and, in particular, to prevent early exit-poll numbers from leaking out online, as they have in every previous national election since the advent of the Internet. News organizations spend millions of dollars each cycle to commission exit polls. From their point of view, early leaks have been annoying, at best.

This year, in what may also be considered a dry run for 2008, the networks were determined to keep the poll results quiet until they were ready to call races that night. Were these Mission: Impossible–style cloak-and-daggerisms effective?

“In one planning meeting,” said Kathy Frankovic, the director of surveys for CBS News and a member of the N.E.P. steering committee, “I actually suggested that maybe someone would tape a BlackBerry to the inside of the toilet, the way Michael Corleone did with the gun in The Godfather.”

Apparently, none of the quarantined reporters thought of that.

Per the N.E.P.’s strict guidelines, each network’s pair of analysts was to arrive at Columbus Circle no later than 11 a.m. They were permitted laptop computers without wireless cards, and notes, binders and other personal effects. They had access to by-the-minute poll results but had to promise not to contact anyone in the outside world for six hours.

The polls were conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International and only tracked the Senate races. The television networks relied on the A.P. for information from the House races and the actual vote tallies.

Throughout the day, those in the Quarantine Room combed through results and drafted memos back to their networks’ decision desks. The embargo ended at 5 p.m. sharp. Cell phones, BlackBerries and pagers were redistributed, and the Internet connection was switched on.

“We assume that once data gets to six news organizations, something’s going to get leaked to people,” Ms. Frankovic said.

Exit-poll numbers appeared on the Internet almost immediately. The Observer’s Politicker Web log published, with caveats, exit-poll numbers at 5:26 p.m. But no numbers appear to have leaked before 5 p.m.

CNN and Fox immediately began absorbing the exit-poll results into their broadcasts. The major networks began their coverage on the evening news at 6:30 p.m.

The following day, critics praised TV news for being conservative in their election-night calls and not relying heavily on exit-poll data, which, as Ms. Frankovic put it, “might not always be the best.” At 10 p.m. on election night, Fox stopped using those polls entirely, citing wide and implausible margins for Democratic candidates.

Well. Not totally implausible.

“Both the innate problems that exit pollsters have been finding and the closeness of races make those early exit polls almost useless,” said independent pollster John Zogby. “They certainly were in 2004. Frankly, they weren’t so hot in 2006 either.”

Mr. Zogby cited the exit-poll results he obtained around 1 p.m. on Election Day: Jim Webb was leading George Allen in Virginia by a solid five points; in Montana, Jon Tester was leading incumbent Conrad Burns 53 to 46. The only close race, it seemed then, would be in Arizona, where four points separated Democratic challenger Jim Pederson and two-term Republican Senator Jon Kyl.

Of course, the Virginia and Montana races turned out to be breathtakingly close. Arizona was resolved early in the evening, with a nine-point victory in Mr. Kyl’s favor.

“I like exit polls, and I need them to help me determine who votes, how they voted the way they did, and why they voted the way they did,” Mr. Zogby said. “But in terms of framing the conversation, framing the conventional wisdom or projecting the winner, I have a real problem with people using them.”

“He doesn’t know anything about this,” said Mr. Merkle. “He has no part in it.”

Mr. Merkle said his colleagues were pleased with the Quarantine Room and would likely be in favor of keeping it for 2008. Exit polls are useful, he said, as long as they’re used cautiously.

“Exit polls essentially were invented by Warren Mitofsky,” said Quinnipiac University pollster Mickey Carroll. “Warren was an acerbic, opinionated, volatile, voluble guy who was also brilliant. The first time he came to my attention, I was a reporter at The [New York] Times—I don’t remember the year. It was a Presidential primary someplace or another. Everybody called it, but Warren wouldn’t. Well, it turned out they were wrong; he had been right. So were the networks too cautious? I don’t know. If they’re a little slow, no harm—the election still came out all right. The only difference is, one network will be 30 seconds ahead of another. I mean, who gives a damn?”

“We’re still having a lot of technical problems,” said Dave Marash, the Nightline veteran and lead anchor of Al Jazeera English, the international 24-hour English-language cable channel that will launch, after a two-year delay, on Nov. 15.

Mr. Marash was speaking from his office at Al Jazeera’s Washington, D.C., bureau, one of four that will provide programming to the nascent cable news venture. He was making the final preparations for his inaugural broadcast: a half-hour news program that will air at 6 p.m. Eastern time and, from the sound of it, will look a whole lot like the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

“We are, by golly, going to go a little bit slower, have fewer stories per half-hour, give you something to remember about all of the stories,” Mr. Marash said. He disavowed any similarities with Ms. Couric, except that “a 22-minute news hole is definitively limiting.”

There will be an investigative piece about Darfur, he said, and two stories out of Latin America. Any reports from the United States will “be playing off the news right now.”

Mr. Marash joined what was then called Al Jazeera International a year ago, after Ted Koppel left Nightline and ABC declined to renew his contract. His year at the network, he said, has just about matched his expectations, but for a few bumps along the way.

Among them: The international 24-hour English-language cable channel changed its name to Al Jazeera English 10 days ago, dropping the “International” because of some hurt feelings on the Arabic side of the operation. It will launch with between 12 and 13 hours of programming a day instead of the proposed 24 and, as of now, is available to American viewers only online.

At least one thing remains as promised, he said. Al Jazeera English will broadcast in English.

It’s not just NBC producers and writers who are terrified of losing their jobs at the hands of Jeff Zucker.

Mr. Zucker, the C.E.O. of NBC Universal Television Group, became Rockefeller Center’s resident villain when he announced that he was cutting 700 jobs a few weeks back. The news division stands to lose 200 people alone, 40 of whom—members of the staffs of Dateline, Nightly News and Today—will learn their fate this week.

Now, Mr. Zucker’s quotes from a recent Wall Street Journal article—particularly one about how news is no longer a “growth industry”—are being forwarded around like threatening chain mail at the other broadcast and cable news networks.

At ABC, where Writers Guild members have been without a contract for two years, managers sent the article around last week, said two of the 130 writers who received the e-mail. “The implication was, ‘You could be next,’” said one.

And if you were next, where would you go?

CNN isn’t exactly hiring in droves. Neither is Fox.

“It’s like losing your job as a typesetter,” said a network source. “There’s nowhere to go.”

Well, Al Jazeera English might be hiring some technical staff ….

"This is a real sort of marriage made in heaven in terms of journalistic ambition and interest," said Mr. Marash on the phone today.

Mr. Marash won three Emmys and one DuPont award during his time at ABC and left the network at the end of November, under not entirely amicable circumstances, after Ted Koppel's last broadcast of Nightline.

Mr. Marash joins a number of other Western journalists, including Brit interviewer Sir David Frost and former CNN talk show host Riz Khan, in jumping to the upstart network, a sister channel to the controversial Arabic language version. Both channels are financed by the benevolent dictator of Qatar. Mr. Marash will anchor two and a half hours a day. He will also report stories around the world and moderate in-studio discussions, a la Koppel.

"Our niche, if you will, in the satellite news channel competition is to be the high end," Mr. Marash said. "It is to be the most sophisticated, the most nuanced and the most sort of information-filled, and that all sounds great to me."

Mr. Marash said he first approached Al Jazeera International shortly after May, 2005, when Mr. Koppel announced his intentions to leave ABC after a contentious few years with network brass. The International channel also approached Mr. Koppel, according to sources close to the anchor, but nothing came of the meeting.

Rebecca Lipkin, a former London-based Nightline producer who was among the first American journalists to switch to Al Jazeera, recommended the move.

"When she went and started talking to me about what she was doing, and the atmosphere and the ambitions there, I mostly just kvelled for her," Mr. Marash said. "But then, when it became clear my Nightline future was drawing to a close, she said, 'You oughta call them.' I did, and I found them very receptive."

Al Jazeera, which has made headlines recently as a possible one-time target of President Bush's aggression (and bombs), is still in an uphill public-relations battle among Western audiences, distributers and journalists. Mr. Marash said he thought long and hard about that before signing with the channel.

"You'd have to be dumb and blind not to be thinking about these issues," he said. "The fact is, of course, that Al Jazeera has never aired any beheadings. Their news standards seem to me to be very similar to our news standards."

About the reports that President Bush was once narrowly dissuaded from bombing the Arab-language network's headquarters in Doha, Mr. Marash said, "I hope he was joking."

The Al Jazeera International announcement capped a flurry of other Nightline veteran news on Thursday. The New York Times announced that Mr. Koppel, in addition to serving as the managing editor of the Discovery Channel, will be writing a column for the New York Times. And NPR announced that Mr. Koppel will be providing commentary for its radio networks, as well. Michel Martin, a former Nightline correspodent, is also going to NPR, where she will host her own talk show.

"The Nightline Alumni Association is rockin' today," Mr. Marash said.

--Rebecca Dana

Especially Colin Powell and George H. W. Bush.

“I think they were a bit surprised when they asked what I was doing next and I said, ‘I’m helping set up Al Jazeera International,’” he said. “I saw the expression on their faces, you know, were curious. I explained it was a fantastic opportunity to communicate with a part of the world we’ve lost touch with.”

He said he told them: “This is an opportunity to put senior U.S. officials in front of Arab viewers.” Then, he added, “Both of them seemed to have a much more positive attitude after that.”

Mr. Khan continued: “The administration seems to have turned around and realized that, actually, the prospect of an English-language channel broadcast internationally is an interesting one. People I meet from the State Department, from elsewhere, are far more keen to engage.”

Al Jazeera signifies many things to many American television viewers—most of them bad. It is “Osama Television” to the Bush administration, a Qatar-based broadcast network precariously endowed by the tiny nation’s benevolent dictator.

It shows indulgent montages of graphic violence and welcomes guests with strong anti-American and anti-Zionist politics. It counts Mr. bin Laden as one of its more reliable freelance personalities. Former star correspondent Tayseer Alouni was recently sentenced to seven years in prison by a court in Madrid for collaborating with Al Qaeda. And according to a British tabloid report last week, in April 2004, another friend of Mr. Powell and the elder Mr. Bush—the current President, George W. Bush—was just barely dissuaded from bombing the bejeezus out of Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha.

All of which would seem to make the planned March 2006 launch of an English-language version of Al Jazeera—not a translation of the Arabic original, but an entirely unique network staffed by native speakers and broadcast for a worldwide audience—a curious business decision.

Except for one thing: Western viewers may be leery of the brand name, but some of the Western world’s most accomplished broadcast journalists see the new network as a last, great hope.

“What makes Al Jazeera International different, and therefore that much more appealing to us, is that if you’re interested in doing international news, there aren’t that many choices,” said Mr. Khan. “There’s the BBC and CNN. But for those of us who want to do international news on a day-to-day basis, there’s just not that much out there.”

Among those attracted to the promise of foreign bureaus and nearly limitless resources is Dave Marash, a former Nightline correspondent and onetime anchor of WCBS New York, who is negotiating a job in the Washington bureau, according to sources close to the journalist. David Frost, the veteran BBC journalist and the first to interview Richard Nixon after Watergate, signed on earlier this summer. Former Nightline anchor Ted Koppel had a meeting with a representative from Al Jazeera International in Washington this fall, according sources close to Mr. Koppel. But nothing came of it.

Mr. Marash couldn’t be reached for comment; Mr. Koppel declined an interview request through his assistant; and Mr. Frost didn’t return several calls.

Rebecca Lipkin, a former London-based Nightline producer, joined Al Jazeera International earlier this year as the executive producer for programming out of the London bureau. She jumped not out of any frustration with broadcast news, she said, but because of the opportunity to work for a network that will allow her to produce long pieces about parts of the world that the broadcast and cable news networks don’t cover well—or don’t cover at all.

“If you told somebody at one of the networks that you want to put 20 minutes on the air about Central Asia, they would say you’re crazy,” she said. “I think this network would say, ‘Well, let’s think about this.’”

She was one of the first network veterans to accept a job with Al Jazeera, she said. “I think what initially gave me pause was that there were some friends—who I considered to be very progressive, interesting people—who were scared for me to take this job.”

It helped Ms. Lipkin with her former colleagues when Mr. Frost signed on, lending his considerable credentials to the infant network. Now, she said, “the resistance to it has changed. It’s not because of the recent news [about the President’s alleged plans to bomb Doha]. It’s probably because of the reality of the universe—the small universe—in which U.S. and foreign journalists are working. There’s just not much opportunity to have an empty palette to create programming about topics that you think are important.”]

In total, each of the main newsgathering bureaus will hire around 70 staffers, including correspondents, producers, cameramen and technical-support staff, according to Nigel Parsons, the managing director of Al Jazeera International. About 60 percent of the job offers for positions in the Washington bureau have already been extended, he said, and the network has received more than 1,000 applications for editorial positions.

Al Jazeera’s Washington bureau occupies the first seven floors of a bland-looking but well-appointed office building on K Street, directly opposite the American Legion. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, there were a handful of diverse, thirtysomething producers working in the second-story newsroom, which is fitted with a row of flat-paneled televisions broadcasting Al Jazeera in Arabic as well as CNN. Otherwise, the building was basically empty except for Josh Rushing, the former Marine from Texas who joined Al Jazeera and was featured in Control Room, a recent documentary about the network; Mr. Khan’s longtime executive producer, James Wright; and Kieran Baker, the American news editor and a former editor and producer for CNN.

Al Jazeera International’s studios and newsroom will be on the seventh floor—someday. For now, the entire floor is open and gutted, with bright green spray paint mapping out desks, offices and places for the cameras. Where there is concrete and loose wiring now, there will be two studios six months from now, in front of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over a day spa whose motto—“An Oasis in the City”—is painted into a giant mural directly in view. (They plan to cover the windows.)

From these studios, the Washington bureau will contribute four hours of broadcasting every day. London and Kuala Lumpur will also be in charge of four hours each, and the other 12 hours will come from Doha. The outlet anchoring the broadcast will move with the sun, with the London bureau anchoring as European audiences are waking up, Washington taking over when morning reaches America, and so on.

Each hour will begin with a reading of the international headlines. The network will feature call-in talk shows, such as Mr. Khan’s show, and documentaries submitted by independent producers through an online screening process. In this way—and probably in only this way—Al Jazeera has taken a page from Al Gore, whose new television network, Current, solicits short documentary-style pieces from citizen journalists the world over in hopes of luring a young, news-savvy audience.

“We’re trying to reach educated decision-makers and young people,” said Mr. Parsons. “We would love to have an audience that regards us as their first source of balanced and impartial news. Beyond that, we’ll always be an interesting alternative source.”

Jehane Noujaim, who made Control Room, said that even with its flaws, the Arab network is valuable to American viewers.

As an example of how Al Jazeera’s coverage differed in a valuable way from Western outlets, Ms. Noujaim remembered the first day she visited the network’s cafeteria, before the war began.

“There was a group of journalists talking about what would come afterwards,” she said, “about what divisions there would be, what would happen with the Sunnis and the Shiites. Meanwhile, we were talking about how many troops we were gonna send, what kind of machinery there would be, when it was gonna happen.”

As security problems increasingly limit the ability of Western journalists to cover the region, Al Jazeera International will only become more important to people like Ms. Noujaim, she said.

“Regardless of whether people agree with what’s being shown on the channel,” she said, “I think people need to understand what that part of the world is thinking right now.”

But before Al Jazeera International can be a primary or secondary or tertiary news source for American viewers, it needs to get on American televisions. Mr. Parsons said that he’s had trouble finding distributors in the United States and Australia, and though the network isn’t dependent on commercial dollars, it’s been tough getting advertisers to sign on as well.

Al Jazeera was founded in 1996 with a grant from the fabulously wealthy and press-savvy Emir of Qatar, who still contributes the majority of the network’s estimated $85 million yearly budget. It was the first even nominally free press in the Middle East and quickly found trouble with government officials. Daring, sensationalist and somewhere between vaguely and overtly Islamist in bent, Al Jazeera made enemies with the government of Saudi Arabia after a few initial critical reports. The Saudis have led an unofficial pan-Arab boycott of the network ever since.

Nevertheless, Al Jazeera is seen by 50 million viewers in the Arab world and 200,000 in the United States who receive it by satellite. It has had an eventful first decade: In 1998, Al Jazeera scooped American television news outlets by airing a live feed out of Iraq during Operation Desert Fox. Two years later, it stoked anti-Israel sentiment with coverage of an Israeli crackdown on Palestinian uprisings. Beginning in 2001, it has aired taped interviews with Mr. bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda officials and sold those feeds to American cable and broadcast networks.

This last habit—of profiting from Mr. bin Laden’s messages—led Dorrance Smith, a former ABC News producer who was a senior media advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority, to write in The Wall Street Journal: “Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al Qaeda have a partner in al-Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S. This partnership is a powerful tool for the terrorists in the war in Iraq.”

Mr. Smith is currently awaiting confirmation as an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.

Many in journalism and government are skeptical of the international channel and its still-ambiguous relationship with the original network.

“They see it as a way to unravel the mystery of Al Jazeera to Western, English-speaking audiences,” said Jeremy M. Sharp, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service. Mr. Sharp wrote a 2003 policy paper suggesting ways of limiting Al Jazeera’s influence in the region. He said he believes the international network is a public-relations move intended to further endear the oil-rich nation to its Western allies.

It would be an outrageously expensive propaganda effort. “But remember: Qatar is sitting on the third-largest reserve of natural gas,” he said.

That, combined with a perception—false, said staffers—that the network is offering high salaries to accomplished journalists as a way of buying credibility, has led to an uphill P.R. battle for Al Jazeera.

Last week’s report in Britain’s Daily Mirror wasn’t so good, either. Citing two anonymous sources, the article described an alleged interaction between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in which Mr. Blair persuaded Mr. Bush not to bomb Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha.

“Al Jazeera is not just a TV station,” managing director Wadah Khanfar told The Guardian earlier this week, on his way to petition Mr. Blair. “It has become something people are very attached to.”

Whether it becomes something Western viewers are very attached to remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the staff of Al Jazeera International is scrambling to be ready for its official launch date next spring.

“People are going to have to judge,” said Ms. Lipkin. “Hopefully, people will be patient when it launches. And then they’ll have a chance to see for themselves.”

According to the Times of London, the presumptive PM, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, didn't take kindly to Hillary's suggestion that his rise is "grounds both for concern and for... vigilance."

"Clearly irritated, the candidate...brushed aside the remark yesterday. 'We are not at an American traffic light to be given a red or green signal. I am speaking on behalf of a collective decision. I will stop when the Iraqi people say to stop,' he said. 'Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American Administration and I don't know why she said this. She knows nothing about the Iraqi situation.'"

And over at a website called "Al Jazeerah" and apparently not related to the Qatar-based television network, contributor Sam Hamod added these kind words: "Once again, showing that she's as evil politically as her husband, ex-president Clinton, the shill for Israel--Hillary Clinton is in the infamous American fortress called 'the green zone,' telling the Iraqis who should be their next Prime Minister.... After all, who tells Hillary what to do, and gives her the money to remain in office--the biggest zionist voting bloc in history, in New York City. Thus, Hillary is there to do the bidding of her zionist constituency, not the American people's constituency, nor for freedom or justice in the world."

Juan Cole, who thinks Hillary's wrong on the merits, has a somewhat saner analysis of the situation.

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this post, we mistakenly attributed Sam Hamod's views to the television network Al Jazeera; his op-ed is in fact posted on a website with a very similar name, Al-Jazeerah, but wilder-eyed views. We appear not to be the only ones who made this mistake.

In Month 1 after the attack, almost everyone responded well: sad, united, angry. Month 2 hasn't been so good, thanks to the anthrax scare.

The deaths we have suffered are grave, and since they were caused by weapons of mass destruction, they sanction any response that is necessary and just. But given what happened on Sept. 11, and what may happen in the future, we have panicked. Anthrax is a non-contagious disease that is cured by common antibiotics. Treating anthrax is closer to treating the flu than it is to treating many equally lethal and more common diseases. (What about cancer? What about AIDS?) Yet we have behaved as if the plague walked among us.

It would not be entirely fair to hammer the people who set us such a bad example: the TV anchors who showed too much emotion, the House leaders who adjourned their business, the Senate leaders who head-faked them into doing it so as to gain political advantages of their own. We are playing a new game, and it is still early enough that everyone can take a mulligan. But we have to learn from this episode the importance of mental readiness. The government and the medical system probably do have the capacity to save almost everyone's life even if the bin Laden–ite murderers manage to spritz a rush hour with spores. But the psychological front was woefully unprotected. Few politicians, it turns out, are naturally cool. Mayor Giuliani, until he began meddling in the election, had cool in spades. President Bush, after a rocky start, acquired it. If Tommy Thompson and Tom Ridge can't do better, then they will have to put Senator Bill Frist, a surgeon and a voice of calm, out front instead.

The jitters came from a delayed reaction to the horrors of Sept. 11; from the post-attack news hole (bombing runs and special-forces raids are not that compelling); from the bobbling on Capitol Hill and in the media. But the jitters also came from the fact that germ warfare is objectively scary, especially if you view it in the abstract. Six weeks ago, smallpox had vanished from the world. Now we read about its return in newspapers. Bummer!

We need to adjust our paradigms. Smallpox is coming back, with all its friends; live with it. There have been moments when I thought the remarkable Indian-summer weather of the last month and a half was sent to mock and torment us. But in fact, it is an invitation, if we will accept it, to live. The pious murderer sitting in his cave has affected our lives; he may even end them. But he does not control the weather. If we can see what kind of a day this is, then by definition it is a day in which he has failed of his objective. So enjoy it.

Mr. bin Laden probably did not win many friends in America with his last fireside chat. But the target of his propaganda assets-from the dervishes brandishing posters of him and Evil Bert at rallies, to the chickies reading his press releases on Al Jazeera-is opinion in the Muslim world.

Years ago, A.M. Rosenthal made a suggestion: an Arabic equivalent of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, broadcasting unfiltered information about oppression and corruption to the people of the Middle East. Such a network would have a lot to cover. It would have to be an arm's-length operation, since it would often tell unpleasant truths about regimes with which we were, for the moment, dealing. On the other hand, our alliances of convenience have been the justification for treating so many regimes with kid gloves over the years, and look where that has gotten us: a worldwide terror network directed and funded by the Saudis, our supposed friends.

We are in a losing race with demography. The nations of the Muslim world are producing cohorts of young men which they are too dictatorial, too ideological or too corrupt to employ productively. The poverty and the social disorganization that produces it are the real causes of Muslim shame and wrath, more than American policies or Israel's existence. If your country owned all the oil on the planet and still went broke, without having produced so much as a decent auto industry, wouldn't your thoughts turn to jihad, assuming that self-examination was too painful?

That is a long-range problem. In the meantime, we should not forget two proven ways of influencing Muslim opinion. One, already mentioned by Nicholas von Hoffman, is bribery. Cultures and individuals motivated by honor-from Alcibiades to Coriolanus to Benedict Arnold-often act in ways that strike outsiders as treacherous. Monetary inducements often do not shame the man of honor; they are tokens of esteem, acknowledgments of his inherent worth. Rent-a-Pushtun is now open for business.

The other avenue of influence is relentlessness. Sir John Keegan, the British military historian, made this point in an essay about Sept. 11. The treacherous attack exemplified the tribal mode of warfare, going back to the Persian Empire. It depends on surprise and deceit, and it can have spectacular one-shot successes. The Western mode of warfare, going back to the Greek city-states, prizes relentlessness-soldiers, often citizens, fighting face to face until the enemy surrenders or collapses.

The Battle of Shiloh was the first terrible battle of the Civil War, and its first day saw the Union side driven from most of its positions and penned against the Tennessee River. At a crucial point, Gen. William (Bull) Nelson arrived with reinforcements on the opposite bank. As they crossed the river, they could see that the landing swarmed with deserters-Union soldiers, fleeing or separated from their units, in confusion and disorder. "Draw your sabers, gentlemen," Nelson said to his officers, "and trample these bastards into the mud." That is what his troops proceeded to do, while their bands played "Hail, Columbia." When the Union soldiers who were fighting desperately heard the music, they cheered. Later that night, William Tecumseh Sherman saw Ulysses Grant surveying the carnage in a driving rainstorm. Sherman said that the Union had had "the devil's own day." "Yes, yes," said Grant, chomping a cigar. "Lick them tomorrow though."

There will be time enough to worry about our enemies' opinions tomorrow.