During the recent unrest in Egypt, even the uninitiated observer could see drastic differences between Al-Jazeera English‘s reporting in Egypt and the reports from world news leader CNN as well as the MSNBC and Fox News networks. While the different news stations talked to some of the same experts in Europe and elsewhere, CNN’s reporters on site in Cairo early in the protests were holed up in their offices while Al-Jazeera had a wide array of reporters on the street. Other American news giants obviously had trouble expending the money and taking the risk to get reporters in place in Egypt and instead talked to American leaders and analyzed President Obama’s speeches on the unrest.

A few days into the protests, CNN reporter Anderson Cooper and a small crew got into Egypt to report from the streets, showing a small ray of light in American TV reporting. I would say that Cooper is notably CNN’s best reporter and has never really been afraid of facing violence and opposition to do what he does (some of his early reporting was done from Myanmar on a forged press pass). But, the events in Egypt in recent days have even convinced Anderson Cooper to cry “uncle,” and he has decided that he will be able to better report on Egypt from a distance in coming weeks.

Looking back at Al-Jazeera, the prominent news agency in the Middle East, you notice that its presence is almost nonexistent in the United States. Over the last few decades, the Al-Jazeera news network has grown into one of the largest news networks on the planet and is seen as a relatively unbiased source of news by residents of the Middle East (compared to state-controlled news networks). But, don’t be expecting to find their news channel available on Mediacom or most other U.S. cable providers. They are only available on a few networks in Vermont, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., and of course you can pick up their satellite signal on the Galaxy 19 satellite or on the Internet for free. They seem to have unfairly received a negative connotation for being Middle Eastern in origin and being Al-Qaida’s news network of choice for video releases and interviews.

It is possible that Al-Jazeera may gain more goodwill as their footage is shown on the major American news networks in coming days and weeks due to the fact that they have decided to provide their Egypt footage for free under a Creative Commons license to other networks. All the networks need to do is note that their footage comes from Al-Jazeera. The current crisis, coupled with the massive surge in American Internet traffic to the Al-Jazeera English website, has convinced the network that they may be able to soon push into U.S. news markets in what may be a controversial move. They have even started a campaign to convince U.S. TV networks to carry their signal called “Demand Al-Jazeera” to encourage supporters to host social gatherings in support of the network in cities across the U.S. on Feb. 10.

I support this campaign to allow Al-Jazeera to be broadcast widely in the United States because while I don’t think that Al-Jazeera is unbiased, I do feel they provide a view of the world that is different from U.S. news networks. There is a theory out there that news networks can be unbiased, which is definitely a pie-in-the-sky ideal that will never happen. The only way to attempt to get unbiased news is to get your news from multiple sources with different perspectives so you can see all sides of an issue. Today that might involve getting news from the BBC and Al-Jazeera, as well as your favorite American news network. Even this sort of perspective is not unbiased, as you do not hear from news sources in Africa, Russia or the Far East, but it is much better than listening to American news anchors alone.

I also believe there is an over-saturation of “American” news networks. We have three (or if Fox is believed, 2.5) major 24/7 news networks on cable TV along with major news organizations at ABC, NBC and CBS. Over time these networks here have been pitted against each other in a battle for viewers. Each network says it is unbiased, but in reality you have the left-wing MSNBC, right-wing Fox News and twitter-following CNN in the middle somewhere. With the array of different voices in U.S. news, it is sometimes nice to see U.S. news from a non-U.S. company like Al-Jazeera or BBC. As one of my high school teachers noted, you usually get less American political bias when you get your news from a foreign news source looking at our country from the outside.

While you might debate whether Ames needs “another news network,” I believe that adding BBC America and/or Al-Jazeera would help us gain a better perspective of world events. We can’t live inside the protective sphere of American news any longer — it is time for global news in a global economy. I hope you agree.