Conservative writer Roger Simon has been traveling in Europe and reports that he’s finding the Al-Jazeera news network less biased and more professional than CNN.

Except for those stories when the “I”-word was prominent (you know, that little country south of Lebanon), Al Jazeera was clearly better, more honest, more informative and more entertaining than CNN International or the BBC. And kinder to the US. In fact, it wasn’t even close. Also, since much of the news they reported was coming from the Middle East, they seemed better informed about such things as the death of the Iraqi Shiite leader Hakim (they referred to Saddam Hussein flatly as a fascist, something you rarely hear on CNN) and the Al Qaeda suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia (they had nothing but withering contempt for Al Qaeda – no pussy-footing “insurgent” rhetoric for them).

It’s not that Al-Jazeera is actually good. It’s just than CNN is that awful.