Goodbye BBC, hello Al Jazeera

I just started to regularly download podcasts of BBC Mundo to listen to on my way to work, when it was announced that this would be the very last Spanish language radio broadcast for Latin America ever due to funding cuts. After 73 years, I only got to listen to four or five broadcasts before they pulled the plug. So now I guess I'll have to tune in to Fox News Español for in-depth reporting on Latin American affairs. (Hmmm...my iTunes search is showing "no results".)

Instead, BBC Mundo is now offering a weekly news discussion thing...I gave the first episode a listen and thought it was kind of lame--the sort of "news" show they cobble together without actually having any reporters. This sad discovery coincided with some recent remarks Hillary Clinton made about the U.S. media in relation to Al Jazeera:

"You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news that is not providing information..."

Interestingly, Al Jazeera apparently now has more bureaus in Latin America than BBC or CNN. I don't think there's an Al Jazeera Español podcast yet, but maybe soon...