AL Jazeera is filled with anti-American propaganda. It is also awash in anti-Semitism. The material broadcast stokes terror and violence.
Why would the person who Barack Obama appointed to be the Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, advocate American cable companies carry the channel-a channel that cannot help but inflame tensions and anger and one that is not known for unbiased accuracy.
From an op-ed by Kayyem in the Boston Globe:
FOR THE past few weeks, a parallel plot line to the revolutions in the Arab world has been playing out in the media. With rare exceptions, the largest American cable and satellite providers simply do not provide viewers access to Al Jazeera English, the cousin to the powerful Qatar-based world news network. AJE has launched a full-fledged campaign - including advertisements quoting, of all people, major US news figures - to convince cable carriers to open their programming. But most have declined: Burlington, Vt., is the closest city to Boston where viewers can see the network on television.
AJE's battle with the cable carriers is major news in the Middle East. Not carrying the network sends a message to the Arab world about America's willingness to accept information, unfiltered, from the very region we spend so much time talking about. These television wars began not in Tunisia or Egypt, but in Iraq.
We have enough terror apologists in the media already without an entire station devoted to obscuring the truth being beamed into America's homes.
February 16th, 2011, 06:34
vector7
Re: Obama administration official urges cable companies to carry Al-Jazeera
As the crisis in Egypt continues to escalate, The Huffington Post has spearheaded a campaign to pressure American cable companies into carrying Al Jazeera English. On Monday, they provided a forum for the Qatari government-owned network’s director general, Wadah Khanfar, to make his case to an American audience.
Khanfar begins his appeal by highlighting the importance of the events taking place in Egypt, events which HuffPo insists are to Al Jazeera “what the Gulf War was to CNN.” He then points to Egyptian censorship of Al Jazeera in a bid to gain sympathy and portray his organization as a hard news network speaking truth to power.
Elsewhere, in the United States, Al Jazeera faces a different kind of blackout, based largely on misinformed views about our content and journalism. Some of the largest American cable and satellite providers have instituted corporate obstacles against Al Jazeera English. We are on the air and on the major cable system in the nation’s capital, and some of America’s leading policymakers in Washington, D.C., have told me that Al-Jazeera English is their channel of choice for understanding global issues. But we are not available in the majority of the 50 states for much of the general public.
We believe all Americans, not just those in senior governmental positions, could benefit from having the option to watch Al-Jazeera English — or not to watch us — on their television screens.
Re: Obama administration official urges cable companies to carry Al-Jazeera
If I had al Jazeera I would watch it. They were pretty much it when it came to boots on the ground news coverage for the Egypt crisis in the first few days. Would have much rather watched it on my 50" plasma than on my smartphone.
As a good capitalist American pig I say let the market decide. If no one watches it, it will go away. Personally, as events continue to rapidly unfold in the middle east, I wish I had access to al Jazeera on tv.
February 16th, 2011, 13:41
American Patriot
Re: Obama administration official urges cable companies to carry Al-Jazeera
I thought for a time Direct TV has Al Jezzera.
February 16th, 2011, 17:32
American Patriot
Re: Obama administration official urges cable companies to carry Al-Jazeera
What is "TV"? What is "Satellite" TV?
I don't have TV at all.
February 17th, 2011, 06:15
catfish
Re: Obama administration official urges cable companies to carry Al-Jazeera
I saw a documentary a few years back that I highly recommend called "Control Room". It was all about al Jazeera and the people working there. There are some good people working there which gives me hope. It's not perfect but at least its coverage of the Middle East.
April 19th, 2011, 16:50
vector7
Re: Obama administration official urges cable companies to carry Al-Jazeera
In fact, Qatar is a dictatorship with no freedom of the press.
President Obama on Thursday hosted Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar, otherwise known as the Boss of Al-Jazeera, for a meeting in the Oval Office. Obama called him “Your Highness” and “His Highness,” even though the Emir dropped his robes of royalty for a business suit. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani financially sponsors Al-Jazeera and its most famous personality, anti-American and anti-Semitic cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has just returned to Egypt from Qatar to supervise the transformation of that one-time U.S. ally into an Islamic state.
“In addition to our efforts in Libya,” Obama said, “we have a strong relationship between our two countries. It is an economic relationship. It is a military relationship. It is a cultural relationship. And obviously, Qatar has done very well under His Highness’s leadership, but his influence extends beyond his borders. And so we’ve had discussions about how we can continue to promote democracy, human rights, increased freedom and reform throughout the Middle East.”
The influence “beyond his orders” could be a reference to Al-Jazeera, described in one of the WikiLeaks cables from the U.S. as an instrument of foreign policy for the Qatar regime.
The Emir gave an interview to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer the same day he met with Obama, and made the rather absurd comment that although he, and the government of Qatar, finances Al-Jazeera, “it is impossible for me to have influence to tell Al Jazeera what to do. Because they are journalists, and they will understand if the emir of Qatar is interfering in their—in their job.
They will not respect the job they are doing. Even internationally, Al Jazeera will not be respected.”
This is laughable, of course. In addition to the WikiLeaks cable about the regime using Al-Jazeera as a foreign policy instrument, the U.S. State Department’s own human rights report on Qatar notes, “Al- Jazeera and the government claimed that the channel was independent and free of government influence, but the government exercised editorial and programmatic control of the channel through funding and selection of the station’s management.”
Maybe Blitzer believed the Emir—he certainly didn’t challenge him—but the idea that Al-Jazeera’s journalists won’t respect him if he influences their reporting, and therefore he doesn’t, does not pass the laugh test. The Emir pays the bills—and the salaries of the journalists who work there.
Although Obama talks about human rights and democracy in the Middle East, the White House report on the meeting said nothing about the imprisoned Qatari blogger, Sultan al-Khalaifi, who was apprehended on March 1 by Qatar’s security forces and has not been heard of since. His detention is further proof of how the Emir controls the media in that country.
The White House said, “Qatar’s location in the Persian Gulf has made it an important ally in a region vital to U.S. economic and security interests. As democracies continue to grow and flourish throughout the Arab world, working with nations like Qatar will become ever more important.”
In fact, Qatar is a dictatorship with no freedom of the press. It is also a state sponsor of terrorism, though not officially designated as such, even while hosting a U.S. military base.
As we have noted, “…the 9/11 commission demonstrated (page 90) that Qatar has been protecting terrorists, including the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. A recently released cable from WikiLeaks goes further, saying that Qatari nationals were involved in 9/11 and may still be on the loose.” One cable released by WikiLeaks said that the regime has “adopted a largely passive approach to cooperating with the U.S. against terrorist financing” and that terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda “exploit Qatar as a fundraising locale.” The cable adds that Qatar’s security services “have been hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals.”
An AP story said, “Obama said afterward he appreciated the emir’s leadership in Libya, where rebels, spurred on by popular uprisings elsewhere in the region, are trying to force Gadhafi to step down.” The story made no mention of reports that the rebels include members of al-Qaeda.
The story noted a moment of levity, saying, “Obama also congratulated the emir on Qatar’s selection as host of World Cup soccer in 2022. He noted he’ll be an ex-president by then and made a pitch for good seats.”
“I will not forget to send your tickets for the World Cup,” the Qatari dictator said. Obama replied, “Thank you, my friend.”
Once again, the United States is getting rolled by an Arab dictatorship, this time Qatar, and the major media pretend not to notice.
As I put it in a recent column for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “…Qatar’s Arab monarchy cultivates good public relations by spending lavishly on American politicians and congressional staffers—as well as journalists and academics—to come to the capital of Doha for junkets and opulent conferences. The tours usually include visits to Al-Jazeera.”
Qatar is represented in Washington, D.C. by Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, a Republican-oriented lobbying firm that worked with the staff of Barack Obama on behalf of Qatar when he was a senator.
The money also continues to flow to the media. Former CNN anchor Tony Harris has joined Al-Jazeera English in search of the petro dollars flowing from its owner, “His Highness” the Emir. Harris, however, is not the first journalist to bolt from CNN to Al-Jazeera. Lucia Newman, who is based in Buenos Aires for Al-Jazeera English, had been CNN’s Havana bureau chief and correspondent.
It is significant that Al-Jazeera is a member of the U.S.-Qatar Business Council, which includes several major U.S. oil companies, Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Airways, and Brown Lloyd James, the public relations agency trying to get more carriage for Al-Jazeera in U.S. media markets. Brown Lloyd James also represents the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar.
April 19th, 2011, 16:53
vector7
Re: Obama administration official urges cable companies to carry Al-Jazeera
By: Keach Hagey and Byron Tau
April 17, 2011 04:31 PM EDT
In the halls of American power, the Arab Spring has brought Al-Jazeera in from the cold.
Seven years after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the broadcaster’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable” and President George W. Bush joked about bombing it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised it as “real news” in her recent Senate testimony.
Not only that, her staffers, as well as those of the CIA and the Obama White House, were attending the Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner as Al-Jazeera’s guests.
“They are a really important media entity, and we have a really great relationship with them,” said Dana Shell Smith, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international media engagement, who speaks Arabic and has frequently appeared on the channel. “This administration has empowered those of us who actually do the communicating to be in a close relationship with Al-Jazeera. They understand that the relationship can’t consist of complaining to each other about the differences we have.”
The differences also have shrunk as the big story in the Middle East has shifted from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the democratic movements sweeping the region. In the recent uprisings, U.S. interests tended to line up with Al-Jazeera’s, and President Barack Obama alluded to both the network’s influence and its pro-democracy bent in remarks caught on an open mic during a closed-door fundraiser last week.
“The emir of Qatar come by the Oval Office today, and he owns Al-Jazeera basically,” Obama said in remarks recorded by CBS News’s Mark Knoller. “Pretty influential guy. He is a big booster, big promoter of democracy all throughout the Middle East. Reform, reform, reform. You’re seeing it on Al-Jazeera.”
But even an in an Al-Jazeera-friendly Obama administration there are tensions. The president continued, delivering some harsh criticism that conflicted directly with his diplomatic comments earlier in the day, when he had praised the emir for his leadership “when it comes to democracy in the Middle East.”
“He himself is not reforming significantly,” the president told the donors. “There is no big move towards democracy in Qatar.”
But even if the president thinks Al-Jazeera’s Qatari owners might have a blind spot, his remarks before an audience of the rich and powerful reflected how recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have accelerated the shift of Al-Jazeera’s brand from “anti-American” to “pro-democracy” in the American consciousness.
“It’s like Rip Van Winkle — you wake up and, my God, it’s a different world,” said Tony Burman, Al Jazeera English’s chief strategic adviser for the Americas. “Hosni Mubarak did in 18 days what I thought it would take two years to do.”
Burman, a former editor in chief of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News, served as managing director of AJE in Doha before coming to Washington last fall to take on his new strategic role that includes helping get AJE the national cable and satellite distribution it still lacks in the U.S.
When he arrived, he could never have guessed that within a few months, protests would erupt across Al-Jazeera’s backyard and that its reporters would be there on the ground to cover them, often before anyone else, making his case for him.
“In the autumn, I met many people in the political and media realm here in Washington, and in New York City as well, and it was still, at that point, a lot of curiosity of Al-Jazeera, but not much understanding of it,” he said. “Now, almost overnight, the situation has changed. The impact and importance of Al-Jazeera seems to be visible to all, particularly people in Washington.”
Today, when he visits the White House, officials tell him they watch AJE to monitor the protests, and at the State Department, “when you go down the hallway, you see it on virtually every TV and computer.”
The channel’s coverage of Tunisia and Egypt, in particular, and the 2,500 percent surge in traffic to the broadcaster’s website that they caused at their peak — 60 percent of it from within the U.S. — has prompted scores of glowing newspaper profiles, with The New York Times going so far as to press 10 cable providers for comment about whether they would consider carrying it. (Right now, the channel is only available in a handful of American cities, including Washington, D.C., via the nonprofit broadcaster MHz Networks.)
Recognizing an opportunity, AJE began running full-page newspaper ads touting testimonials from its fans, in hopes of inspiring cable and satellite customers to nag their providers about adding the channel. To date, more than 50,000 of them have obliged, Burman said.
Students and activists unaffiliated with the channel took up AJE’s campaign for cable and satellite carriage as a kind of political cause, organizing a national call-in day and setting up a Demand Al Jazeera Facebook page.
All of this scares the living daylights out of Cliff Kincaid, director of the Accuracy in Media Center for Investigative Reporting and president of America’s Survival, who organized a “Stop Al Jazeera”conference at the National Press Club in Washington earlier this month.
Kincaid said he organized the event — headlined by Pamela Geller, the blogger best known for breathing life into the so-called ground zero mosque story — in part, to counter the campaign to get AJE wider distribution throughout the U.S. and in part, to put pressure on Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) to include an investigation into Al-Jazeera as part of his House Homeland Security Committee hearings on homegrown Muslim radicalization.
“To Comcast, and other cable and satellite providers, we say, do not expand Al-Jazeera throughout the U.S. Otherwise you will increase the chances of Americans being killed by those manipulated by ‘Jihad TV,’ the terrorist network, and you, Comcast, will have blood on your hands,” Kincaid told an audience of about 30 at the press club.
Kincaid pointed to a statement by Judea Pearl, father of the slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who called Al-Jazeera “the most powerful voice of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Kincaid has been one of the most consistent voices raising concerns about AJE’s spread into the U.S. since the channel’s inception in 2006. Both organizations that he is associated with, AIM and America’s Survival, have received some of their biggest grants from foundations controlled by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, an investor in the conservative Newsmax magazine and the owner of the right-leaning Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Scaife’s foundations have also funded David Horowitz’s nonprofit, which has sponsored aggressive scrutiny of American Islam.
So far, neither Comcast nor King’s office has gotten back to Kincaid on his requests. A Comcast spokeswoman told POLITICO only, “We do not have a carriage agreement with Al Jazeera English,” though AJE programming does air on Comcast in the Washington market through MHz Networks.
Kincaid said he met with King and Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) seeking an investigation into, among other things, “the activities of foreign propaganda channels Al-Jazeera, Russia Today television and Iranian Press TV on American soil.”
King’s chief of staff Kevin Fogarty said that “no hearing is planned” and declined to comment further. Gingrey’s office confirmed that the meeting took place, but declined to comment about Al-Jazeera.
In fact, few Republicans seem to have an appetite for criticizing Al-Jazeera at the moment.
Even Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), the one Republican who was willing to speak to his concerns about AJE’s possible expansion in the U.S., framed his fears in the conditional.
“Dr. Broun has misgivings about an increased presence of Al Jazeera English in the United States,” his spokeswoman, Meredith Griffanti, told POLITICO. “If Al Jazeera English hopes to establish itself more so on American soil, it must prove to the United States that their intentions are primarily improving our relations with the Middle East — rather than promoting anti-American rhetoric.”
Al-Jazeera’s brand problems in the U.S. were set in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, when the Arabic channel owned by the Qatari government ran video tapes of Osama bin Laden before anyone else got them, and its critical coverage of the Iraq War made it deeply unpopular with the Pentagon.
By 2005, the Bush administration’s displeasure with Al-Jazeera was so intense that it was straining the U.S.’s relationship with Qatar, an important ally in the region, and Qatari officials were considering selling off the station, The New York Times reported.
That same year, Qatar hired Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the lobbying and public relations firm founded by Haley Barbour, on a $300,000 contract to improve relations with the Bush administration, according to O‘Dwyer’s PR Daily.
A person familiar with the Qatar contact confirmed to POLITICO that BGR and Al-Jazeera have a long-standing relationship, and that the network embarked on a PR push during the latter half of the Bush administration.
“The PR campaign, to a certain degree, was successful,” said Suhail Khan, who served in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Bush administration. “They just began booking Republican guests.”
AJE’s leadership had high hopes that Obama’s inauguration would begin a new era of relations with the U.S., but his decision to give his first interview to Al Arabiya, its Saudi-owned rival, reflected ongoing uneasiness with the Al-Jazeera brand.
“When President Obama can out, the first network he spoke to was Al Arabiya because of a bit of an allergy that I think was wrong,” said Steve Clemons, founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, who recently participated in the Al-Jazeera Centre’s three-day forum in Doha.
The Arab Spring has done more to change that than anything else to date.
“There has been a switch on the perception of Al Jazeera Arabic, simply because right now, the U.S. and Al Jazeera Arabic are more aligned in backing the democracy movements,” said Marc Lynch, associate professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University and blogger at Foreign Policy, who was also at the forum. “It’s not like Al-Jazeera or the U.S. have changed that much. The issues have changed.”
April 19th, 2011, 17:01
vector7
Re: Obama administration official urges cable companies to carry Al-Jazeera
But Hillary Clinton calls it the only real news channel and Obama kissed the feet of its Qatari owner. And now the White House is making a big push to get al-Qaeda’s favorite media outlet into American homes everywhere.
http://barenakedislam.files.wordpres...eg?w=240&h=160 -
Not only that, Clinton’s staffers, as well as those of the CIA and the Obama White House, were attending the Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner as Al-Jazeera’s guests.
“They are a really important media entity, and we have a really great relationship with them,” said Dana Shell Smith, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international media engagement, who speaks Arabic and has frequently appeared on the channel. “This administration has empowered those of us who actually do the communicating to be in a close relationship with Al-Jazeera. They understand that the relationship can’t consist of complaining to each other about the differences we have.”
The differences also have shrunk as the big story in the Middle East has shifted from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the democratic movements sweeping the region. In the recent uprisings, U.S. interests tended to line up with Al-Jazeera’s, and President Barack Obama alluded to both the network’s influence and its pro-democracy bent in remarks caught on an open mic during a closed-door fundraiser last week. (Pro-democracy? What a joke, al-Jazeera is sharia compliant reporting.)
And NBC parent, Comcast, is the likely cable network that will be bringing the Terrorist News Network into millions of American homes. Before there was a Muslim in the White House, every cable network in America refused to carry the station. If you don’t want Comcast to carry AJ, call Homer Gonzalez at 215-286-4821 (Comcast Marketing) or check their website: COMCAST)
All of this scares the living daylights out of Cliff Kincaid, director of the Accuracy in Media Center for Investigative Reporting and president of America’s Survival, who organized a “Stop Al Jazeera”conference at the National Press Club in Washington earlier this month.
Kincaid said he organized the event — headlined by Pamela Geller, the blogger best known for breathing life into the so-called ground zero mosque story — in part, to counter the campaign to get AJE wider distribution throughout the U.S. and in part, to put pressure on Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) to include an investigation into Al-Jazeera as part of his House Homeland Security Committee hearings on homegrown Muslim radicalization.
“To Comcast, and other cable and satellite providers, we say, do not expand Al-Jazeera throughout the U.S. Otherwise you will increase the chances of Americans being killed by those manipulated by ‘Jihad TV,’ the terrorist network, and you, Comcast, will have blood on your hands,” Kincaid told an audience of about 30 at the press club.
Kincaid pointed to a statement by Judea Pearl, father of the slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who called Al-Jazeera “the most powerful voice of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Al-Jazeera’s brand problems in the U.S. were set in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, when the Arabic channel owned by the Qatari government ran video tapes of Osama bin Laden before anyone else got them, and its critical coverage of the Iraq War made it deeply unpopular with the Pentagon.
By 2005, the Bush administration’s displeasure with Al-Jazeera was so intense that it was straining the U.S.’s relationship with Qatar, an important ally in the region, and Qatari officials were considering selling off the station, The New York Times reported.
Danny Moloshok/Associated Press Al Gore, a co-founder of Current TV, which will be shut down by the Qatar-based news organization Al Jazeera.
9:16 p.m. | Updated Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news giant, has long tried to convince Americans that it is a legitimate news organization, not a parrot of Middle Eastern propaganda or something more sinister.
It just bought itself 40 million more chances to make its case.
Al Jazeera on Wednesday announced a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore, a former vice president, and his business partners seven years ago. Al Jazeera plans to shut Current and start an English-language channel, which will be available in more than 40 million homes, with newscasts emanating from both New York and Doha, Qatar.
For Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, the acquisition is a coming of age moment. A decade ago, Al Jazeera’s flagship Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing videotapes from Al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now the news operation is buying an American channel, having convinced Mr. Gore and the other owners of Current that it has the journalistic muscle and the money to compete head-to-head with CNN and other news channels in the United States.
Al Jazeera did not disclose the purchase price, but people with direct knowledge of the deal pegged it at around $500 million, indicating a $100 million payout for Mr. Gore, who owned 20 percent of Current. Mr. Gore and his partners were eager to complete the deal by Dec. 31, lest it be subject to higher tax rates that took effect on Jan. 1, according to several people who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But the deal was not signed until Wednesday.
A spokesman for Al Jazeera said that antitrust regulators had not expressed any objections to the deal.
Going forward, the challenge will be persuading Americans to watch — an extremely tough proposition given the crowded television marketplace and the stereotypes about the channel that persist to this day.
“There are still people who will not watch it, who will say that it’s a ‘terrorist network,’ ” said Philip Seib, the author of “The Al Jazeera Effect.” “Al Jazeera has to override that by providing quality news.”
With a handful of exceptions (including New York City and Washington), American cable and satellite distributors have mostly refused to carry Al Jazeera English since its inception in 2006. While the television sets of White House officials and lawmakers were tuned to the channel during the Arab Spring in 2011, ordinary Americans who wanted to watch had to find a live stream on the Internet.
To change that, Al Jazeera lobbied distributors and asked supporters to write letters to the distributors — but accomplished next to nothing.
Some activists accused distributors like Comcast and DirecTV of blacklisting a channel that is widely respected elsewhere in the world. But the distributors said there was scant evidence that many American viewers wanted to watch.
Current, similarly, has suffered from paltry ratings. “Nobody’s watching,” one of the channel’s prime-time hosts, Eliot Spitzer, quipped to a reporter last month.
Current was conceived in 2005 after Mr. Gore and another co-founder, Joel Hyatt, bought the small cable news channel Newsworld International. After several years in obscurity showing viewer-submitted videos and documentaries, Current tacked to the left in 2011 with the hiring of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. A year later, Mr. Olbermann was fired, but a channel made in his image remained, with Mr. Spitzer, Jennifer Granholm and other liberal pundits as hosts. But on a typical night last year, just 42,000 people watched their shows, according to Nielsen.
By selling Current, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt are giving up their vision for an alternative to MSNBC, which has much higher-rated liberal hosts.
On Wednesday, Mr. Hyatt praised Al Jazeera for “bringing large-scale resources to journalism — something which we have not been able to do.” In a letter to Current employees, some of whom are expected to lose their jobs, he said he and Mr. Gore would join the advisory board of the newly rebranded channel.
“We look forward to helping build an important news network,” Mr. Hyatt wrote.
Rather than simply use Current to distribute its existing English-language channel, Al Jazeera said it plans to create a channel based in New York. Tentatively titled Al Jazeera America, roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States, while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English.
Al Jazeera, which has bureaus in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago, intends to open several more in other American cities.
“There’s a major hole right now that Al Jazeera can fill. And that is providing an alternative viewpoint to domestic news, which is very parochial,” said Cathy Rasenberger, a cable consultant who has worked with Al Jazeera on distribution issues in the past. However, she warned, “there is a limited amount of interest in international news in the United States.”
And others are trying to elbow their way in. News channels financed by Britain, China and Russia are especially hungry for American cable deals. To date, the BBC has had the most success; its BBC World News channel is now available in about 25 million homes thanks to a deal struck last month with Time Warner Cable.
But the takeover of Current brings Al Jazeera to the front of the line. In recent weeks, Mr. Gore personally lobbied the distributors that carry Current on the importance of Al Jazeera, according to people briefed on the talks who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Distributors can sometimes wiggle out of their carriage deals when channels change hands. Most consented to the sale, but Time Warner Cable did not, Mr. Hyatt told employees.
Time Warner Cable had previously warned that it might drop Current because of its low ratings. It took advantage of a change-in-ownership clause and said in a terse statement Wednesday night, “We are removing the service as quickly as possible.”
Every once in a while a tweet appears that's so silly, it must be a joke. Like this one from Glenn Beck: "Before Al-Jazeera bought Current TV, TheBlaze looked into buying it but we were rejected by progressive owners." Guess what? He's totally serious. The Wall Street Journalcaught the detail in its coverage: "Glenn Beck's The Blaze approached Current about buying the channel last year, but was told that 'the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view,' according to a person familiar with the negotiations."
Well no kidding! Current TV is the network founded by former Democratic Vice President Al Gore, later anchored by progressive hero-villain Keith Olbermann and recently featuring liberal former New York governor Eliot "I Do What I Want" Spitzer. This is the network that Glenn Beck, the far-right fanatic that was too extreme for even Fox News to handle, wanted to buy. It's entirely unclear how far negotiations between Beck and Current TV got, if anywhere beyond Current's executives laughing TheBlaze crew out of the room. And furthermore, who knows if Beck and company even had the money to throw down. Current TV's reported sale price of $500 million, minus a $100 million for Al Gore who owned 20 percent of the network, is well north of what AOL paid for The Huffington Post nearly two years ago. In other words, that's a lot money to pay for a fledgling independent media company.
It probably wouldn't have worked out anyways. Current TV didn't have the viewership that, say, MSNBC enjoys, but it does reach 40 million homes. We're pretty sure that the 22,000 that tune in during primetime aren't looking for the news according to Glenn Beck.
Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news organization, bought Current TV earlier this year, to ready its own cable channel for American audiences. Now it’s looking for headquarters and studio space—and the old New York Times Building on West 43rd Street is on the list.
The Doha-based broadcaster, which is backed by the royal family of Qatar, has tapped real-estate services firm CBRE Group to assist its search,
The building is 16 stories, and 11-12 floors on the top are apparently available. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The iconic building at 229 W. 43rd St. is one of several spaces that it has considered since announcing its plans for the new channel in January,
The old New York Times Building is a lot better looking than the new glass and steel eyesore and the Gulf sheikdoms have already bought up a lot of city landmarks.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Council already owns much of the Chrysler Building and the Piaget building was partly retaken from groups tied to the Iranian regime. The General Motors building is partly owned by Qatar and Kuwait.
But considering that the liberal American media has become hard to tell apart from the Middle Eastern propaganda media, Qatar could buy the New York Times and rename it the Al Jazeera Times and no one would be able to tell the difference.
Those puzzled by the notion of New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner accepting money accepting money from Al-Jazeera may want to consider a better question: Why is Al-Jazeera giving him money in the first place? We can’t figure it out except for one reason – his wife is a devout Muslim with extensive, irrefutable familial connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose propaganda is piped all over the Middle East by… Al-Jazeera.
Jewish leaders are kvetching over Anthony Weiner’s accepting campaign cash from a lobbyist for Al Jazeera — Osama bin Laden’s favorite TV network.
City Councilman Lew Fidler (D-Brooklyn), who has endorsed former city Comptroller Bill Thompson’s mayoral bid, called on rival candidate Weiner to return the $4,950 donation to lobbyist John Merrigan.
“Al Jazeera and its lobbyists are no friends to New York City or our Jewish community, and Anthony shouldn’t accept their support,” Fidler said. “They have spread hate and lies against Jews, not only here in New York but across the world. The right thing to do is to give this money back. Anthony should do exactly that.”
Bin Laden often leaked his propaganda tapes to the Qatar-based network, which aired several of his taped messages just months after 9/11.
“Anthony Weiner should know better than to accept contributions from friends [at] Al Jazeera, which has been a voice for terrorists and spewed hatred against Jews and the state of Israel,” Maisel said. “They have echoed and attempted to legitimize hate speech about wiping Israel off the map. It’s disgraceful.
Al-Jazeera is essentially the Muslim Brotherhood television network. For years, Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader – Yusuf al-Qaradawi – has had his own program on the network, which is headquartered in Doha, Qatar. The Brotherhood despises Jews. Qaradawi himself said in 2009, that the holocaust was “divine punishment… carried out by Hitler” through Allah and that the Jews “exaggerated this issue”. Yet, Al-Jazeera is contributing money to the only Jewish candidate for Mayor in New York City and who married a devout Muslim woman whose mother is a leader in the Muslim Sisterhood??!?!
As we mentioned earlier today, the Huma Abedin defense team hasn’t a leg left to stand on and is up against the ropes but no one wants to throw the knockout punch.
Apparently, they’d rather see the daughter of a Muslim Sisterhood leader become the first lady of the city that was hit on 9/11.
