PDF An unlikely audience Al Jazeera s struggle in America 1st Edition Youmans download
PDF An unlikely audience Al Jazeera s struggle in America 1st Edition Youmans download
PDF An unlikely audience Al Jazeera s struggle in America 1st Edition Youmans download
com
https://textbookfull.com/product/an-unlikely-audience-al-
jazeera-s-struggle-in-america-1st-edition-youmans/
OR CLICK BUTTON
DOWNLOAD NOW
https://textbookfull.com/product/fridays-of-rage-al-jazeera-the-arab-
spring-and-political-islam-1st-edition-cherribi/
textboxfull.com
https://textbookfull.com/product/al-jazeera-in-the-gulf-and-in-the-
world-is-it-redefining-global-communication-ethics-haydar-badawi-
sadig/
textboxfull.com
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-right-in-latin-america-elite-
power-hegemony-and-the-struggle-for-the-state-1st-edition-barry-
cannon/
textboxfull.com
https://textbookfull.com/product/public-speaking-an-audience-centered-
approach-to-public-speaking-steven-a-beebe/
textboxfull.com
Singapore: Unlikely Power 1st Edition John Curtis Perry
https://textbookfull.com/product/singapore-unlikely-power-1st-edition-
john-curtis-perry/
textboxfull.com
https://textbookfull.com/product/behavior-trees-in-robotics-and-al-an-
introduction-1st-edition-michele-collendanchise/
textboxfull.com
https://textbookfull.com/product/al-kharida-al-bahia-an-abridged-
english-commentary-1st-edition-keys-to-the-unseen/
textboxfull.com
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-police-in-america-an-
introduction-charles-katz/
textboxfull.com
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-lumbee-indians-an-american-
struggle-malinda-maynor-lowery/
textboxfull.com
An Unlikely Audience
An Unlikely Audience
Al Jazeer a’s Struggle in Amer ica
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
When I received my first gate pass granting me access to enter Al Jazeera’s com-
pound in Doha back in 2010, I could not anticipate where it would eventually
take me. I was a graduate student just beginning my dissertation research. I was
fascinated by Al Jazeera English (AJE) from a distance, as a viewer. It was an
experiment in international journalism that offered a notably divergent edito-
rial perspective on a world, especially by staking out an interest in the parts
of the world neglected by western news channels that claim a global expanse,
namely the BBC and CNN. Al Jazeera English claimed to be a direct challenge
to the traditional patterns in the flows of global news, producing news from
the global south and making it available to viewers around the world, but most
subversively, those of the global north. As a budding scholar concerned with the
world’s inter-relations through media, this was an alluring promise.
The more time I spent at AJE’s headquarters in Doha, the more I appreciated
the magnitude of the technical, reportorial, and managerial complexities behind
making good, international television. It was my first extended exposure to the
innards of a daily TV news operation. It all began with a degree of awe at the
spectacle of television production. I was struck by the ongoing coordination of
so many individuals in a bewildering, nonstop manufacturing process.
The Doha headquarters was a research site where the professional practices
of journalism met the unique, and seemingly contradictory, politics of a mis-
sion aiming to subvert the global news order—to generate reporting from a
conscientious position of alterity. The channel could reconcile these purposes
through an embedded multi-perspectivality, identifiable both in the channel’s
distributed organizational map that had personnel all around the world and in
the makeup of the workforce. In the channel’s headquarters, I found a distinctly
multinational medley of professionals with very different personalities, politi-
cal outlooks, career paths, backgrounds, visions, and job descriptions. It was
among the most diverse institutional settings I ever witnessed at work. Yet, this
vii
viii P reface
This book would not have been possible without the care, encouragement, and
inspiration I received from so many people, peers, friends, mentors, and family.
The saying that “it takes a village to raise a child” is just as apt to describe the
community it takes for an author to complete a book. I could not name every-
one, so excuse any absences.
No one sacrificed as much for the book as did my great partner, Sharon, who
gave up many evenings and weekends with me in support of what must have
seemed a never-ending project. As she observed, she is present in this book,
between the lines and in its spaces, holding it all together because without her
loving support and forgiveness I could not have completed it. I must also thank
my immediate family—Ed, Nadia, Samer, and Scott—and my extended relatives
who all saw me a little less than I would have liked in order for me to produce this
manuscript. My closest friends who were patient with me as I became a hermit
are also owed a debt of gratitude. Dr. Ammar Askari, in particular, was a great
help in always asking about the book’s progress, giving thoughtful remarks on
draft chapters, and inducing me to meet deadlines.
Of course, I could not have written this book, literally speaking, without the
many Al Jazeera personnel, present and former, who spoke with me, provided
me information, and gave me so much time and attention in the process. Some of
them were much more instrumental to this book than this flat acknowledgment
admits, but for the sake of protecting their identities, they must go unnamed.
Also, this book could only exist in this form thanks to my editor Hallie
Stebbins and her diligent team at Oxford University Press. I am honored they
believed in this project. Their touch on the manuscript improved it greatly. The
book’s reviewers were also especially influential in directing me to strengthen
the book’s arguments and flow.
The project’s seeds lay in my time in graduate school at the University
of Michigan. The Department of Communication Studies supported me
xi
xii Acknowled gments
tremendously, beginning first and foremost with the faculty and mentors who
educated me: Susan Douglas and Robin Means Coleman taught me how to teach
and research, and championed me through the doctoral program. I also called
upon various other faculty members during my time there and in the years after
for advice, support, and education: Nojin Kwak, Shazia Iftkhar, Nick Valentino,
Sean Jacobs, Amanda Lotz, Sonya Dal Cin, Rowell Huesmann, Josh Pasek,
Julia Sonnenvend, Mike Traugott, and Derek Valiant. Amy Eaton and Orlandez
Huddleston were also very supportive. My classmates and friends there were
instrumental, especially Katie Brown for our collaborative research on AJE and
other topics that informed parts of this book.
Deserving of special thanks are my dissertation advisers, who set me on
this path and shaped my scholarly identity. W. Russell Neuman crucially set
my sights on studying Al Jazeera English when I was searching for an idea and
offered instrumental advice on all matters of graduate student existence. Paddy
Scannell greatly expanded my theoretical horizons as my teacher, adviser and
inspiration, and he encouraged me with his continued, engaged passion for my
work. Aswin Punathambekar’s generous commitment of time and wisdom as a
mentor and friend and his scholarship were formative in my development (and
he introduced me to many of the core concepts in the book). Finally, my out-
side committee member Andrew Shryock did so much to push my thinking and
taught me to strive for more complexity.
The book’s authoring really began while I was an assistant professor at the
School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. I owe so
much to the excellent encouragement, constructive feedback, and occasional
interventions I received from my colleagues. Kim Gross’s support and mentor-
ship, as well as Steven Livingston’s critical reminders and generous book-lend-
ing, supplemented their gracious commitment of time to reading and editing
my proposal early on, and then giving me useful guidance on the whole book
process. The SMPA’s tireless director Frank Sesno was a champion, offering his
assistance, as well as commiseration, as he completed his own book. I would be
negligent to exclude a special note of appreciation for Jason Osder, my collabo-
rator on another project, who both let me neglect our work so I could complete
this book, and offered terrific feedback and inspiration. Babak Bahador also let
me shelve our coauthored work and gave me intellectual encouragement dur-
ing our many lunches. Nikki Layser, Silvio Waisbord, Dave Karpf, Bob Entman,
Kerric Harvey, Janet Steele, Pat Phalen, and Matt Hindman coached me through
various stages of this book and energized me with occasional pep talks. I received
kernels of wisdom, inspiration and substantive feedback from my outstanding
colleagues Nina Seavey, Catie Bailard, Imani Cheers, Steve Roberts, Sean Aday,
Al May, Lee Huebner, Cheryl Thompson, Ethan Porter, Chris Sterling, and Mike
Shanahan, my departed colleague. Maria George, the heart of the SMPA, was of
course essential to so many facets of this work, as well as my sanity.
Acknowledgments xiii
The SMPA, the Columbian College, and the Institute for Middle East Studies
in the Elliott School of International Affairs provided funding for the research,
writing and formatting of this book. Various student researchers helped along
the way, most notably: Rawan Alkhatib, Phillip Waller, Lenin Hernandez, and
Rania Said Abdalla.
Other GWU colleagues helped me with the book a great deal. Libby Anker
provided spirited mentorship and excellent feedback on both prospective titles
and drafts of chapters. Dawn Nunziato and Arturo Carrillo, my friends and co-
conspirators in the law school, cheered me on through this and allowed me to
slack in our collaboration to see the book through. They also gave me a vital
social outlet.
I enlisted help and support from outside my home institutions, as well.
My friend and colleague, Niki Akhavan, met with me occasionally to share her
insights on book-writing and served as an occasional sounding board. Shawn
Powers and Mohamed Zayani read drafts of chapters and improved them greatly
with feedback. I am indebted to Monroe Price, who took me under his wing in
many ways and is a role model. Many more inflected the project’s development
in their own ways, indirectly and directly: Shakuntala Rao, Nasir Khan, Bilge
Yesil, Raed Jarrar, Amelia Arsenault, Rhonda Zaharna, Daya Thussu, Terry Flew,
Phil Seib, Adel Iskander, Marwan Kraidy, and many others.
Although this village is an expansive one, I am responsible for the book’s
shortcomings and oversights.
An Unlikely Audience
Introduction
First then we must understand that place would not have been
inquired into, if there had not been motion with respect to place.
—Aristotle, Physics IV.4
1
2 AN Unl ikely A udi enc e
Without TV distribution agreements in place, AJE did not have the reach of
the mainstream cable news companies it wanted to compete with: namely,
MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. With the Arab Spring moment, AJE hoped to
convert the carriers to gain substantially wider television distribution, which
was still the primary means of reaching American news viewers. It failed to
convince them; the channel was absent from almost all American television
sets. Being widely available online was no substitute for placement on cable
and satellite TV listings. After years of floundering to grab an audience share
in the coveted American news market, the network gave up on the idea of
AJE being widely seen in the United States and adopted another market entry
strategy.
In the first days of 2013, the Al Jazeera Media Network announced that it
bought Current TV, an American youth-oriented news channel cofounded by
former Vice President Al Gore and a few others. The deal for the flailing outlet
gave the Arab network what its English enterprise could not obtain—a sizable
cable and satellite TV distribution footprint. Rather than keeping the acquired
property in place as it was or simply replacing its signal with AJE’s to get the
international channel on air, Al Jazeera adapted it into a US-only operation,
rebranding it as Al Jazeera America (AJAM). The network converted Current
TV’s offices in New York City to AJAM’s headquarters. After only eight months
of preparation and test piloting, AJAM’s first programs went live in August
2013. Despite its cable and satellite availability—60–65 million households—
the channel only pulled in a minuscule audience in the low tens of thousands
after nearly two years.7 It was too little to show for the estimated $2 billion
expended up to that point. In late 2015, the network faced budget cuts due to
diminished financial support from Qatar. It shuttered the channel in April 2016,
after less than three years of broadcasting.
The network was not completely out of the American news market. It had a
side-bet in place. Starting with the Current TV purchase in early 2013, Al Jazeera
also developed a digital media channel, AJ+. The network transformed Current
TV’s San Francisco offices into the home base for this project. Empowered to
operate independently of AJAM and AJE, AJ+ assumed a unique editorial voice,
one that was not typical of traditional journalism. The news presenters spoke to
the younger generation of 18-to 35-year-olds, addressing them colloquially, as
peers. AJ+ videos are opinionated, humorous, and even activist at times, a far
cry from the objective news voice of its sister channels. That was not the only
difference. Rather than relying on cable and satellite companies to reach the
public, AJ+’s primary distribution modes were custom mobile phone and tablet
apps, social media platforms and YouTube. This self-identified “start-up” was
designed to be future facing, ahead of the news-technology curve, in contrast to
AJAM’s assumption of the form, style, and distribution modes of a traditional
news broadcaster. In contrast to AJE’s exit and AJAM’s closing, AJ+ became
I n tro du ctio n 5
something of a smash hit, amassing billions of online video views in its first two
years. The network hailed AJ+ as a success, and it launched other language ver-
sions, chiefly in Arabic and Spanish.
An Incomplete Globalization
On its surface, the story of Al Jazeera in the United States reveals an under-
appreciated tension between two orthodox theories from different corners of
social science. On the one hand, we have heard so much about the vigorous
power of communication technology to expand news and information flows
around the world; this conception has come to define media globalization as
an era of unfettered access to knowledge. On the other, Al Jazeera is irretriev-
ably ensnared in the volatile US–Arab relations of the war on terror era, which
undoubtedly militates against its market success. These two forces give us dif-
fering guidance about what we should have expected with Al Jazeera’s arrival in
the United States. Yet, we can see why these lenses are ultimately dissatisfactory
starting points for this analysis.
Media and communication scholarship and popular thought have been so
dazzled by the seeming dominance of networked logics underpinning Internet
technology, which followed a prior history of techno-bewilderment at the vast
capacity of satellites, concerns about the magical powers of broadcasting, and
before then, how the telegraph would change the world. There tend to be grand
pronouncements about the newest mechanisms that provide access to media
content. At the same time, the conventional view of globalization is that borders
have weakened greatly under a constant pluralism brought on by the rapid flows
of people, information, goods, and services, altering the relationships between
places, arguably making them more networked and interconnected across space.
These come together in the idiomatic terminology to describe forms of mediated
experience like online community, network society, virtual worlds, cyberspace,
and telecommuting. They reflect a re-conceptualization of media geography that
collapses traditional categories of social life, such as the distinct lifeworlds of
places, into wider, technologically hosted spaces.* The transnationalized media
lifeworld is the new normal.
This case of Al Jazeera in the United States calls into question positive prog-
nostications about the cosmopolitan openness of the information society, or the
imagined emboldening of the public sphere often thought to characterize this
*
David Seamon, borrowing on Buttimer (1976), defined the lifeworld as the “taken-for-granted
pattern and context of everyday life through which the person routinely conducts his day-to-day
existence without having to make it an object of conscious attention” (1979, 20).
6 AN Unl ikely A udi enc e
†
Popular articles such as the 2011 “Al Jazeera English Blacked Out Across Most of U.S.” (Grim
2011) and network officials, like longtime director-general Wadah Khanfar (2011) furthered this
impression by using words like “banned” to describe AJE’s lack of cable and satellite distribution.
Bloggers also characterized AJE as being blocked for similar political reasons (Bebawi 2016, 87).
I n tro du ctio n 7
G L O C A L I Z AT I O N : T H E G L O B A L I N T H E L O C A L ,
AND VICE VERSA
Corporate media have long embraced the practical imperatives of customization
that expansion to external markets warrants. In the 1990s, the founder of News
Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, said that global media networks had to adjust by
presenting the “best international programming and mixing it with local con-
tent.” That was why “[l]ocalization is playing an increasingly crucial role” in the
growth of global news institutions.8 The awkward portmanteau “glocalization”
refers to the co-occurrence of “universalizing and particularizing” forces in the
8 AN Unl ikely A udi enc e
Scholars who deployed glocalization stressed the sorts of global-local interplay and interpen-
‡
etration Robertson (1995; 2014) emphasized. Rosenau (2003), Waisbord (2004), Holton (2005),
Sreberny (2006), and Jijon (2013), among many others, represent a broad range of disciplines of
study and also differ in how they describe the dynamics of “glocalization.”
I n tro du ctio n 9
M E T H O D O L O G I C A L N AT I O N A L I S M
Layered between the global and the local scales is the nontrivial authority of the
state and the still-potent identity of the nation. Privileging national boundar-
ies and media flows between them has been at the core of thinking about how
media move in the world. The nation-state is often the primary unit of analy-
sis.15 The earliest research on “news flows” tracked the circuitry of news around
§
Kraidy (2005) operationalized hybridity to analyze media as the integration of multiple, distant
contexts in a state of admixture. Its adoption in this book is noteworthy because as a conceptual tool
“hybridity” traditionally features more prominently in cultural studies than journalism and news
media research.
10 AN Unl ikely Audi enc e
the world. Studies like the International Press Institute’s The Flow of News, pub-
lished in 1953, set the level of analysis of “where” news is made and consumed
only “in terms of states,” thus highlighting “the geopolitical borders of (nation-)
states drawn in maps.”16 There was presumed flow in countries’ domestic news
media covering other parts of the world, though skews in international coverage
created imbalances in representations.17 Media imperialism and other models
premised on international hierarchy, including the accounting of contra-f low18
in media, emphasized the nation-state to account for how more powerful coun-
tries set the international news agendas and dominated export of media. Even
in much of the media glocalization research, the included “local” usually refers
to the national, as Annabelle Sreberny observed.19 This shows how foundational
the national level is to thinking about media and communication.
Admittedly, there is cause for “thinking nationally” about media like AJ, given
that most media markets are national, governed by national regulations, such
that the state and national media systems have not withered away.20 No assess-
ment of Al Jazeera in the United States can deny that its perceived foreignness
from a nationalist perspective was a primary factor in its US market challenges.
The prevailing political context AJ navigated in the United States was largely
defined by the national government. The Bush administration framed AJ as
hostile to the country’s interests. On the sending side, Qatar’s national goals
of soft power and visibility imbue AJ’s expansionism.21 Yet, as the quick review
of Al Jazeera’s inflow into the United States shows, its performance was incom-
plete and variable through different parts of the country and at various times.
If we only approach Al Jazeera in the United States purely through the lens of
the national, then we miss vital, analyzable nuance at both the sub-and supra-
national arenas of action.
Thinking “glocally” about Al Jazeera in the United States requires what Ingrid
Volkmer described as a methodological transition from the frame of “ ‘national’/
‘foreign’ ” to “relativistic processes of local/global, space/place.”22 This permits a
downward shift in the scale of focus to AJ’s services in their respective cities, as
well as analytical openness to the interregional dimension, rather than starting
and ending with the country at large. This move, however, must be carried out
with an eye toward multi-scalar analysis, even if the local is the focus. It cannot
be divorced from the others, as national, regional, and global phenomena also
manifest in localities. There is no segregation between the scales, making com-
plete isolation of one level against the others an inherently artificial exercise;
we can only emphasize the unique attributes of action at one scale in relation
to the others. I take Volkmer’s call to suggest an instructive epistemological-
methodological shift from the language of flat generalities of national contain-
ers that standard assessments of international communication tend to presume.
This is tied to a methodological nationalism that Ulrich Beck identified as
I n tro du ctio n 11
equating “societies with nation-state societies” such that “states and their gov-
ernments [are] the cornerstones of a social sciences analysis.”23
Methodological nationalism is an ill-fitting approach for inquiry into AJ’s
services, which sprawl beyond the normal units of territoriality, being global-
ized, interregional and multinational, but with concentrated editorial, produc-
tion, and marketing functions in predominant cities. As intuitive as it is to
contemplate AJ’s services in terms of Qatari sponsorship and American receiv-
ership as a nation—even in an intensified political atmosphere like the “war on
terror”—it is incomplete for understanding the fuller breadth of how the sub-
sidiaries unfolded, as their particular urban contexts proved deeply influential.
They defied the categories of the national dimension, being neither excluded nor
fully welcome. This realization motivates the book’s orientation to the inflective
power of the three cities.
G L O B A L C I T I E S A N D T H E S PA C E O F F L O W S
Examining the influence of cities on Al Jazeera draws from prior theorizing
about the import of the metropole on social phenomena, political might, and
economic power—processes in which media are intertwined. In traditional urban
sociology, the city was a self-enclosed unit defined by inherent, intrinsic struc-
tural dynamics as a social realm. It was a place on its own, and fit within a clear
ordering of cascading geographic scales: below the international and national.
Inter-city research in the 1960s began construing cities as related to each other.
Rather than being totally discrete, interconnected cities composed interdepen-
dent systems.24 Under this paradigm, the performances of cities impacted each
other; this required assessing their linkages and interworkings.25 The primary
model was of hierarchical relations. Efforts to measure and comparatively rank
cities guided much of the empirical work.
City research opened up further with critical research that denaturalized
urban formations and submitted that they actualized larger, spatial processes,
such as globally expansive political economies. David Harvey’s and Manuel
Castells’s works in the early 1970s followed Henri Lefebvre’s conception that
“(Social) space is a (social) product.”26 Castells’s early interrogation, La question
urbaine, examined how cities were spatially altered as a consequence of macro-
level phenomena like capitalism, making civic cultural divides not natural but
“problematic” and ideologically produced to privilege dominant class interests.27
The “inhabiting” of space through the social practices of “everyday life” defined
the urban milieus. Crucially, these forces also engendered trends in municipal
planning, from the limited quality and scale of free public space to structur-
ing street life to encourage consumerism. Capitalism construed the physics of
city life and design. For Harvey, space and the social were subject to mutually
12 AN Unl ikely A udi enc e
constitutive tendencies.28 That is, the spatial life of cities reflected and in turn
projected a range of social, economic and political forces. The spatial arrays of
cities gave shape to the local arenas of action. This laid the foundation for his
later work on the outcomes of capitalist accumulation on cities, arguing that
surplus capital fixed into new spatial formations; capital-intensive investments
from distant companies transformed urban architectures.29
Yet, cities contain their own relative economic power as centers of trade,
finance and other activities in the global economy. Jane Jacobs’s Cities and the
Wealth of Nations declared cities the prime moving units within national and
international economies to the extent their vitality is the barometer for broader
economic health.30 Research on “world cities” measured and identified major cit-
ies that serve as the most important connected points in the global economy’s
spatial architecture. It emphasizes inward/outward mobility between them while
recognizing that the metropoles possessed authorities and economic might vis-à-
vis national governments.31 Saskia Sassen depicted such global cities as the net-
worked command and control centers in the world’s finance-driven economy; they
could be identified by their clusters of advanced producer services that comple-
ment global firms.32 In this strain, media industries, Stefan Krätke and P. J. Taylor
found, helped elevate global cities through their own arrangements as agglomer-
ated multinational firms.33 Cities exercise independent influence within spatial-
izing processes then.
Cities have historically been principal hubs for trade. Janet Abu-Lughod showed
the linkages between great cities of Europe, the Middle East and Asia through
trade patterns in the 13th and 14th centuries.34 She likened the centers of the day,
such as Genoa, Damascus and Peking, to an economic “archipelago,” or series of
islands. Those pre-modern urban formations did not form an integrated, unified
network, but were autonomous routing points distinct on their own; trade merely
linked them.35 This historical snapshot gestures toward a prevailing interest in
the work on cities: whether the movement of flows and systemic inter-linkages
diminish the unique placeness and potencies of cities. This is a salient concern
because the book contends that cities leave their mark on foreign media firms set-
ting up shop within them. To do so, they must have their own identifiable traits
and means of leverage. They must be distinct—as places—from the structural
processes that tie them.
Manuel Castells eloquently captured this tension between the realm of
quickly circulating movement and the place of the city in The Rise of the Network
Society.36 He articulated it though the difference between the “space of flows”
and the “space of places.” His distinction contrasted the effects of technologically
driven transformations in media ecologies, among other facets, with the per-
sistent role of place, constituted by legacy geographic concepts. For Castells, “a
place is a locale whose form, function, and meaning are self-contained within the
boundaries of physical contiguity.”37 Historically, place contained the universe of
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
que ell es el missatger de la mort, quan justament al destruir els
rosegadors y els insectes, no fa més que salvar de la destrucció molts
y molts elements de vida. Com que la Oliba viu molt aprop de la casa
(devegades sota sa teulada ó dintre de la soca d'un vell arbre proper y
es allavors que les ombres de la nit arriban quan l'animal comensa
son jornal precedit de sos ahuquets ó veus que no son ni més ni
menys que son cant d'alegría per haver arribat la hora de sos ápats),
no es estrany que la fantasia popular hagi pogut veure arrelada
dintre d'ella, la crehencia de quelcóm misteriós en la vida de la Oliba.
Més avuy no hi ha motiu pera seguir conservant aquesta crehencia, y
després de les esperiencies sobre el travall del aucell, ha d'ésser
aquest considerat com un dels més importants servidors de la
Agricultura y digne, per consegüent, del més gran respecte y
estimació.
Quan la nit vé, l'aucell, que durant el día ha estat amagat en son
domicili havitual dintre el qual la llum del día no hi penetra, va á
cercar son aliment: els insectes voladors, els escarabats y les orugues,
els ratolíns y petites rates. Aquests darrers, que son pot ésser els més
terribles enemichs dels conreus, son els preferits per l'aucell: es quan
no'ls troba, que arreplega lo demés.
En molts punts d'Alemanya, convensuts els agricultors de lo que
dihém, han donat aculliment en les mateixes cases de camp als
esmentats aucells. Al efecte han obert entrada á sota de la teulada y
en la fachada de llurs esmentades cases, donant pas á una espécie de
corredor d'uns 40 centímetres d'alsária per uns 20 centímetres
d'amplária, formant ángul recte y acabant en una cavitat un xich més
espayosa.
Bailly diu que la veu de la Oliba se composa tan aviat de sons forts
com els produits per una persona borratxa que dorm ab la boca
oberta y que poden traduirse per xei, xei, xei, y que l'aucell repeteix
durant una hora dalt de la teulada de la casa hont viu ó en les hortes,
arbrats, jardíns y torrenteres, ó be també de crits forts, precipitats,
dins del bosch ó sobre els camps. Aquests crits poden traduirse per
els mots grei, grei, grei.
Se diu que la Oliba fa grans danys en els colomars; més aixó es molt
difícil creureho, al veure la indiferencia ab la que els colóms veuen
que sels hi acosta l'aucell. Naumann assegura que un parell d'ólibes
se vingueren á establir dintre un colomar. Al arribar la nit sortían les
ólibes per fer sa cassa. De dia se podía veure les aus de rampinya
dormint mentres els colóms anavan y venían. Aquest fet prova de
sobres que la Oliba no fa cap dany als colóms.
La Oliba porta á son domicili totes les preses que li es dable trobar.
Aquestes provisións li son útils pera les nits de fosca ó de mal temps,
en les que l'aucell no pot cassar. Naumann parla d'una Oliba captiva,
á la que se li davan 15 rates cada nit.
Diu Lenz: “En tots indrets deuria procurarse atraurers' á les ólibes.
En la meva casa, y en ses quatre fatxades, he practicat una obertura
que dona pas als esmentats aucells, els que troban al interior de la
casa, lloch á propósit á modo d'uns caixóns, en els que hi viuen.”
Fi
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELS AUCELLS MÉS
ÚTILS A LA AGRICULTURA DE CATALUNYA ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the
United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the
terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying,
performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this
work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes
no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in
any country other than the United States.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you
provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work
in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in
the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or
expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or
a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original
“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must
include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in
paragraph 1.E.1.
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive
from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.F.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of
other ways including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.
textbookfull.com