Did Al Gore Give Jihadis A Foothold in U.S. Cable Market? Probably Not
January 5, 2013 | Filed Under Al Gore, Business, Cable, Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, Islam, Islamofascism, Jihad, Journalism, Koran, Media, Media Bias, Progressives, Terrorism, TV, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off
-By Warner Todd Huston
When the Arab-owned TV network Al-Jazeera bought Al Gore’s Current TV Network, it likely imagined that it finally had its “in” into the U.S. television market, something the jihad-supporting network had for sometime hoped to find. But is it likely that Al-Jazeera’s purchase assure it of a ready-made American audience? It seems doubtful.
The first bad news for Al-Jazeera’s hope of pushing its Jihad-centric ideology came as soon as the purchase was announced and TIME-Warner cable announced it would immediately drop Al Gore’s little seen network once its sale to the radical Islamist broadcaster was announced.
Naturally, lefties in the U.S. slammed TIME-Warner along “free speech” lines for its common-sense business decision.
As John Nolte wrote Thursday,
Naturally, some on the Left are already screaming INTOLERANCE! At Time-Warner: “Time-Warner cable shows abject political and journalistic cowardice by dropping Current because of Al Jazeera deal,” tweeted Dan Gilmor, a technology writer and founding director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University.
In the name of “tolerance” we’re going to be hearing a lot more of this from the institutional left in defense of Al Jazeera, even though it’s a network that advocates intolerance.
As Nolte also noted, the principals at Current TV turned down an offer by Glenn Beck to purchase the network because Gore and company felt Beck’s ideology was repellant to them. Since the Jihad-supporting network ended up being the winning bidders, we can logically deduce that Al Gore and his cohorts have no problem with radical Islam even as they staunchly oppose fellow Americans who are right of center.
There is little doubt that Al-Jazeera is anti-western and anti-American. The network even hired a prominent American anchor for its broadcasts but he soon quit over the bias.
In 2008 former Nightline correspondent David Marash quit his high profile job at Al-Jazeera over the increasingly anti-American focus the network had taken on.
All this leads Guardian columnist Michael Wolff to scoff at any idea that the purchase of Current TV will bring Al-Jazeera U.S.A. a new air of “respectability” or a new, larger audience.
Wolff’s main reason to assume that Al Gore-Jazeera will fail is less its radical, anti-American, pro-jihadi ideology than its downright boring programing. Amusingly, he also feels that Current TV in its pre-purchased state isn’t much different than Al-Jazeera on that level. And Wolff thinks that few will be very interested in rising to the effort to defend the “free speech” rights of Current TV’s new owner.
Curiously, al-Jazeera’s programming is not all that different from Current TV’s bland and earnest line-up. Current’s one notable moment in the sun was its hiring of Keith Olbermann, whom, proving too cantankerous, it shortly fired.
If al-Jazeera were more passionate, more gutsy, more jaw-dropping to Muslim-fearing Americans, that would be something to defend, with joy in the cause. And even, perhaps, an audience to follow.
But who is really going over the barricades for some super-rich Qataris and their roster of sanctimonious and boring news shows?
Who, indeed?
Of course, Al Gore had another motive to get the sale of Current TV done before the calendar turned to 2013. He wanted that sale done ASAP so he could avoid Obama’s new confiscatory tax rate that was to hit only days after the sale was completed.
In the end, while it is pretty disgusting that Gore would sell his flailing network to an avowed enemy of the United States of America, it may not make much difference in that what little audience Current TV has will likely dissipate further once Al-Jazeera starts its pro-Islam programming. If no one is watching, if cable providers start dropping it, who will witness any trees falling in that forest?
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
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