Al Jazeera’s new app, AJ+, hopes you’ll quit “60 Minutes” and try their video service instead, suggesting the coverage will be bias-free. As we’ve reported, “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan is in voluntary quarantine following her travels to Liberia to report on the Ebola outbreak. Logan’s exposure to the disease has gotten most of the post-story attention, but there have been critics of the story, among them, author Howard French who called Logan’s report “Africa without Africans,” noting that “60 Minutes” failed to talk to any of the people impacted most by the outbreak.
“Liberians as screen extras,” French called it. To be fair, Logan herself noted in the story that “we want to talk to some of the patients, but you have to keep your distance.”
Al Jazeera has seized on the criticism in a new video promo for the network’s AJ+ app, asking “is there a better way to cover the Ebola crisis?” Posted to the AJ+ page on YouTube, the video’s description says of the CBS story, “is this another example of a larger media bias in reporting on Ebola? Or is this the only way to get attention in the U.S.?”