Election Still Playing Second Fiddle...

By Matt Digby

md313208@ohio.edu

@MDigbyOU

So, we're within 10 days of finding out whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will spend the next four years as President of the United States. This means news outlets, both domestic and foreign, should be devoting at least a third, if not half of the time, to covering the election, right?

In Al Jazeera's case, the election takes a seat on the back burner. To Al Jazeera's credit, the top story at the time of this post was how the U.S. is preparing for the "biggest storm ever" in Hurricane Sandy.

It has also reported on the new voting laws that are less than two years old. Check it out here:

Still, I don't think Al Jazeera has done all it could have done to cover the election for a global audience. It had previews for each of the debates, but as far as I can tell, didn't have a U.S. election beat reporter posting daily stories to the website.

I've mentioned in previous posts that Al Jazeera can be excused to a degree because of the fact that it's responsible for covering world news, and doing so for an audience that isn't American (remember my one link about AJ being accused of anti-Americanism?). But the U.S. presidential election is an event that only occurs every four years, and it impacts the entire world.

Do you think Al Jazeera should spend as much time on the election as American news outlets? Is it too late for the organization to change your opinion about how it's done election coverage so far? Let me know what you think!