Brokaw: ‘I Watch Al-Jazeera’
Al Jazeera continues to find friends among the American news media. Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw plugged the anti-western, Qatar-owned news network during a May 30 appearance.
Brokaw commented during a HuffPo Live interview by host Alicia Menendez about his many years as a journalist. When Menendez mentioned that Al Jazeera, which recently purchased Gore’s Current TV, “is going on one of the biggest hiring binges in the U.S., media-hiring binges,” Brokaw interrupted her to announce: “I watch Al Jazeera.”
Menendez asked him why, and he replied, “Well, honestly, I think they do a pretty good job.” He went on to explain that he’s also motivated by old loyalties: “A couple of NBC people work there,” he said, “and they’ve reported back to me that they’ve been surprised, pleasantly surprised, by the quality of the work.”
He elaborated on his apparent endorsement of the controversial, anti-American news source by saying that he’d “been in Qatar, which is where it began, and talked to the emir about why it started.”
While Brokaw admitted that “at the early stages it was very provocative” and had “a very strong point of view,” he insisted that it’s different “now.” He gave an example of their long interviews with foreign correspondents, and concluded by saying that for him, “That’s very useful.”
Even though Al Jazeera has an awful past, it hasn’t stopped liberals in the journalism world – like Brokaw – from cheering the network on.
