"It's not a war on drugs," Burns says in words likely to resonate throughout the Global South. "It's a war on the blacks."
Walker says the filmmakers and Al Jazeera English try extra hard to be "objective" in part because of a legacy from the administration ofGeorge W. Bush, which made a concerted effort to brand the channel as a source of dangerous propaganda.
The legacy has resulted in Al Jazeera's being available only on a handful of cable systems even today, USC's Seib says.
The channel is on Comcast, Cox and Verizon Fios in Washington, but nowhere in Baltimore. Millions watch a live stream of Al Jazeera English, however, each week at watchaljazeera.com. The Baltimore documentary premieres at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday with multiple replays throughout the week. After that, it will be available on Al Jazeera's YouTube channel, which receives 8 million views a month, according to the network.
"It's quite a fair film, I think," Walker says. "I wouldn't want people to think we think Baltimore is this stereotype of this city with all of these urban problems that have gone wrong and is without hope… While it's a very depressing film, I hope that it just points out some of the expectations people have for the next president to make some real positive change in the city and try to stop some of the problems people are facing on a daily basis."
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