Al’s Jazeera: Gore Sells Current to Network with ‘Aligned’ Views?

Are Current TV and Al Jazeera birds of a feather?

Are you tired of having to go to YouTube to watch video of terrorists killing U.S. soldiers? Do you get annoyed when slow download speeds interrupt hearing your favorite Islamist cleric call for infidel blood to restore the Caliphate? Wish you could see suicide bombers lovingly read their last statements in crystal-clear HD?

Well, great news, kids! Al “no controlling legal authority” Gore is selling his far-left vanity network, Current TV, to Al Jazeera – the anti-western terror mouthpiece bank-rolled by the emir of Qatar.

Al Jazeera is planning on making it into a new channel named Al Jazeera America, featuring a combination of programming from its Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera English network and other content produced in New York. And it’s a mix American news consumers should be wary of.

As The New York Times’ Brian Stelter wrote, “Current will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms. Current is available in about 60 million of the 100 million homes in the United States with cable or satellite service.”

As the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute previously reported, Al Jazeera English (AJE) has struggled over the last two years to break into the U.S. market. Of course, its attempts have been cheered by liberal journalists like Stelter and his Times colleague Nicholas Kristof.

Even with the backing of elite media types, AJE hasn’t found its way onto many cable systems. And with good reason. Aside from the sheer economics against it, Al Jazeera is a purveyor of propaganda, consistently toeing the anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Islamist line at a time when America has been threatened by Islamic terrorists and has gone to war against them.

Here is just a taste of the anti-American, anti-semitic and often pro-terrorist views found on AJE and its Arabic language parent:

  • In 2006, CNN’s Frank Sesno interviewed Al Jazeera talk show host (and former CNN International journalist) Riz Kahn. Sensno asked Kahn if Hamas is a terrorist organization. “I’m not one to judge,” Kahn demurred. Hezbollah? Sesno asked. “Same thing, you know, I'm not going to judge.”
  • In the midst of the “Arab Spring” celebrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Feb. 11, 2011, some 200 men sexually assaulted CBS correspondent Lara Logan. AJE, which was credited by Western liberals for its ubiquitous and even activist coverage of the uprising, completely ignored the crime. Called out by liberal Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, AJE responded that it “believes, as a general rule,” that journalists “are not the story.” Capehart pointed to an AJE article proving the opposite.
  • Also in 2011, in the Israeli settlement of Itamar, someone stabbed to death five members of a Jewish family as they slept. Among the dead were three children, including an infant. The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack, but there was celebration in the Gaza Strip. A search of AJE's website for the Itama murders turned up no report on the murders themselves, and just two stories about Israeli reaction to the crime.
  • In 1979, Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar was imprisoned for shooting an Israeli civilian in front of the man's four-year-old daughter and then bashing in her head with his rifle. In 2008, Al Jazeera threw a televised birthday party for Kuntar, then newly released from prison in a prisoner exchange. Amid the cake and fireworks, an Al Jazeera interviewer told Kuntar, “You deserve even more than this.”
  • A stroll through the opinion section of Al Jazeera’s on Jan. 3, 2013, turned up an accusation the U.S. is “Reviving the Cold War,” that Westerners promote “The Myth of the Murderous Muslim,” that American “oligarchs” love guns but hate “America's already notoriously weak and undersized welfare state,” and, thankfully, that “Theatre of the Oppressed is found everywhere, providing possibilities for restorative justice from Los Angeles to Guatemala.” In other words, it’s chock full of warmed over Marxism, post-colonial twaddle and left-wing group think.

 

Apparently, conservative radio/TV personality Glenn Beck also tried to purchase Current TV, but was told, “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.” So Al Gore, the impresario of the multi-zillion-dollar global warming industry has more in common with the anti-American/Israel/capitalist play thing of an oil sheik than with a conservative American? Keep that in mind next time a liberal gets in high dudgeon and sputters, “Are you questioning my patriotism?!”