Our own Libby Casey worked her way from a public radio reporter in Fairbanks, where she lived for 10 years, to D.C. reporter for APRN. She went on to host C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”  And most enviable of all to this shallow writer, she made the list of the Hill’s 50 most beautiful people in D.C.

Casey is now working for Al Jazeera, which began airing this week in this country.

In the lead up to the debut, Al Jazeera has promised that it is working to cure what ails cable news. The channel’s chief executive, Ehab Al Shihabi, said that Al Jazeera was going to be “fact-based, unbiased and in-depth news,” with “less opinion, less yelling and fewer celebrity sightings.”

As at least one writer noted, however, the channel, which is owned by the government of Qatar, has to be careful.  According to the New Republic (peace be upon it):

Of course, in its own sly way, Al Jazeera pushes its politics with the same insistence as Fox or MSNBC, if not with nearly the same theatrics; an undercurrent of Bush-era exasperation with American blinkeredness still runs through every report from the Middle East. And it’s strange to see #pray4Egypt flashing on the bottom of the screen, a subtle bit of community-building that makes audience participation seem more ideological than ever. But Al Jazeera’s coverage is fueled by a placid faith in the reasonableness of its position rather than a knee-jerk ideological defensiveness

I’ve long been a fan of Al Jazeera, and I’ll take placid faith in reasonableness over knee-jerk any day, regardless of the source. And, in any case, what’s most important is that from all accounts, Libby did great and was as beautiful as ever. Unless Alaskans have Dish or Direct TV, however, they’ll have to wait until GCI gets wise.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com