For years it has been a joke that news in the United States is terrible: obsessed with trivia and celebrity; fronted by Botox bimbos; forever interviewing citizens about some artefact of small-town life when a major news story is breaking elsewhere.
It's not the absolute dearth of real news that is the problem, however. It's the fact that the news that is presented isn't news but mindless, misleading gossip.
So where do you get your news while living in the US? News-starved Americans usually hold up National Public Radio, NPR, as the best option. But with interlude music fresh from the 1920s and a twee, kitchen-table-chat approach, this is news wrapped in a tea cosy.
The first time I met Al Jazeera’s Gaza team lead, Tamer Almisshal, was in July last...
