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Al Jazeera is a Qatari government broadcasting service.

That said, I’ve always been pretty impressed by the quality of its English service.

They’ve just begun a new video series called “Start Here,” which are brief “explainer” videos which I think are pretty accessible to students. You can see the YouTube video playlist here.

Anytime I use Al Jazeera videos in the class (which is really not that often), I always preface the activity by telling students that it is funded by a foreign government. Whenever I show Voice of America videos, I also tell them that it’s U.S. government-funded.  I’m not impressed by the RT video series, which is funded by the Russian government, and have only used any of their videos once – and I obviously pointed out their funding source then, too.

Here’s an intro to the series, followed by their most recent one on climate change.

I’m adding this info to The Best Online “Explainer” Tools For Current Events