Al-Jazeera Buys Current TV

[Flagg]

NBCNews

Arab Al-Jazeera buys Current TV from Al Gore

Al-Jazeera has a growing reputation for serious news gathering and its reporters have won some of the biggest awards in journalism. What the Pan-Arab news network doesn't have is a significant presence in the U.S.


That's about to change now that Al-Jazeera is spending $500 million to acquire Current TV, the left-leaning cable news network co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore. The deal gives Al-Jazeera access to about 50 million homes. As part of an expansion, the network is promising to hire more journalists and double the number of U.S. news bureaus it has.


Still, some big questions remain for Al-Jazeera, which is owned by the government of Qatar: How will it stand out in a crowded field of cable TV news channels? And how can it overcome an image that was cemented for many Americans when it gave voice to Osama Bin Laden in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks?


Marwan Kraidy, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on Arab media, said Al-Jazeera needs to overcome the perception among some Americans that it is a "toxic brand."

"The U.S. market has been the nut they wanted to crack, and this is why they pursued Current TV so assiduously," he said. "A small country like Qatar has very few tools to exercise global influence, and they've figured out that media is one of these tools."


U.S. resistance to Al-Jazeera isn't logical, Kraidy said, because Qatar's foreign policies "are very much aligned with U.S. policies at the moment."


The network, which will be rebranded Al-Jazeera America in 90 days, isn't likely to make its mark covering U.S. news events. Its expanding coverage of U.S. news may be of more benefit for its 260 million subscribers abroad.


Instead, U.S. viewers may tune in if the news channel can jump into a big international story and repeat the success they had covering the Arab Spring in Egypt and Bahrain, said Al Tompkins, a broadcast and online professor at The Poynter Institute, a journalism school.


"There will be an opportunity for them to have some play in a world story that will unfold, and we'll see if they can step into it and provide something no one else can," Tompkins said. "It only takes a few moments of brilliant work and people start noticing you."

The deal faced an initial setback, as Time Warner Cable Inc. said it will drop Current TV for business reasons, though it left open the possibility of picking up Al-Jazeera America if there is demand.

Great news. I've been boycotting Current since they fired Olbermann and then let that twat Uygur air their dirty laundry in public. Now I'll have some international news to watch from a non-western standpoint.

[Mr Bean]

Great news. I've been boycotting Current since they fired Olbermann and then let that twat Uygur air their dirty laundry in public. Now I'll have some international news to watch from a non-western standpoint.

I'm confused by your statement
Olbermann to my knowledge quit/was fired as he burned the last bridges he had left after burning down every bridge he's ever built his entire life, as far as I can tell since he was fired last March he's tweating and no one in any industry wants to touch him since he has literally departed every single company he's worked for. He burned his bridges at ESPN, then at FOX Sports, ABC, MSNBC and then Current. In fact if Wikis to be believed the only place he did not leave and badmouth was Salon.com where he wrote a column.

And Cenk's a twat for airing dirty laundry? About the Olbermann departure or something else?

OAN: Current was supposed to be coming to my local cable stations this December then they pushed it back now they got bought out... so I've never seen a single minute of Current programing but a few clips posted to Crooks and Liars.

[Flagg]

I don't dispute Olbermann's dickitude. But he was flat out fired by Current. And then Cenk spent 3 weeks spamming facebook with anti-Olbermann articles from conservative sources because Kieth advised against Current giving him a show.

[Losonti Tokash]

Isn't Cenk also a denier of the Armenian genocide in Turkey?

[Mr Bean]

I don't dispute Olbermann's dickitude. But he was flat out fired by Current. And then Cenk spent 3 weeks spamming facebook with anti-Olbermann articles from conservative sources because Kieth advised against Current giving him a show.

I looked it up, yes my memory was faulty on Olbermann's departure, and having no facebook I never heard about the second thing.

Isn't Cenk also a denier of the Armenian genocide in Turkey?

Back when he was a Republican in 1991 and 1993 he wrote to pieces which implied that Armenian genocide was not a genocide, since then he's stated it's a genocide (If you search cenk uygur armenian genocide) you can even find videos of him talking about how wrong Turkey is to not say it was a genocide. So he did awhile go he does not now.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'll be honest, I hate Olbermann and love Cenk, but I don't watch television generally so it doesn't matter much. Still, al-Jazeera has matured incredibly as a network and will be a worthwhile addition in the US, so despite having the exact opposite opinion about Current's decisions, I also think it's a very good thing.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

There's a surprising amount of debate in academia over whether the Armenian Genocide was a genocide as such (not that I think the distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing is really particularly substantive or important, and very few people who dispute the term disagree that it was an ethnic cleansing). I know first-hand that the Director for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers tends to go a bit apoplectic when someone calls it a genocide.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There's a surprising amount of debate in academia over whether the Armenian Genocide was a genocide as such (not that I think the distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing is really particularly substantive or important, and very few people who dispute the term disagree that it was an ethnic cleansing). I know first-hand that the Director for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers tends to go a bit apoplectic when someone calls it a genocide.

Yes, but it's part of the political litmus test of ideological correctness for some people to demand you accept it is a genocide.

[Vympel]

I don't watch Current TV, but I do enjoy keeping up with the Young Turks. I should probably tune in to Current TV more often, Al Jazeera owning them now might give them more resources.

Cenk's co-host on TYT is Armenian, btw. (Ana Kasparian - yes, every Armenian I've ever met and heard of has a name that ends in ian).

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

There's a surprising amount of debate in academia over whether the Armenian Genocide was a genocide as such (not that I think the distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing is really particularly substantive or important, and very few people who dispute the term disagree that it was an ethnic cleansing). I know first-hand that the Director for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers tends to go a bit apoplectic when someone calls it a genocide.

Yes, but it's part of the political litmus test of ideological correctness for some people to demand you accept it is a genocide.

Frankly, considering how the United Nations definition of genocide is extraordinarily broad, and there really is no other widely-accepted definition which clearly separates genocide from other instances of ethnic cleansing, I'm not honestly sure what the purpose of disputing the term is, rather than specific factual claims which only serve to better our understanding of the tragedy and the way its existence as a political tool still affects Caucasian conflicts and people today (eg, the complete lack of apparent direction from Istanbul and what it says about the CUP's ethnic nationalism among its intellectuals vs adherents). I mean, I would hope that just allowing people to call the awful events their ancestors went through a genocide honestly wouldn't lend sudden new legitimacy to the Megali idea.

On the other hand, I try not to be cynical about how different narratives and terms become secured as truths in the popular imagination, but I remember the day I was working in the provincial legislature and our provincial government passed a bill recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide specifically as a benny in a pending resource deal with the Ukraine.

Man, semantics are complicated.

[Ralin]

There's a surprising amount of debate in academia over whether the Armenian Genocide was a genocide as such (not that I think the distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing is really particularly substantive or important, and very few people who dispute the term disagree that it was an ethnic cleansing). I know first-hand that the Director for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers tends to go a bit apoplectic when someone calls it a genocide.

I'm not really up on the subject, but a professor I knew who was an Ottoman specialist once told me the question is really more a matter of whose genocide it was; i.e., did it happen in the last days of the Ottoman Empire or at the beginning of modern Turkey.

[madd0ct0r]

In other news, Al Gore will make approx $70mill from the State of Quatar in this deal.

[xt828]

Cenk's co-host on TYT is Armenian, btw. (Ana Kasparian - yes, every Armenian I've ever met and heard of has a name that ends in ian).

Rather off-topic, but the ending -ian in Armenian names is a patronymic, broadly similar to O'- and Mac- in Celtic names.

[Losonti Tokash]

I don't know what the hell "it's part of the political litmus test of ideological correctness for some people to demand you accept it is a genocide" is supposed to mean, but some quick googling turned up an op-ed written by Uygur where he flat out says it is a complete lie made up so Armenians can try to steal half of Turkey. Not trying to distinguish who did it or the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing, just saying it never ever happened.

[Thanas]

Frankly, considering how the United Nations definition of genocide is extraordinarily broad, and there really is no other widely-accepted definition which clearly separates genocide from other instances of ethnic cleansing, I'm not honestly sure what the purpose of disputing the term is, rather than specific factual claims which only serve to better our understanding of the tragedy and the way its existence as a political tool still affects Caucasian conflicts and people today (eg, the complete lack of apparent direction from Istanbul and what it says about the CUP's ethnic nationalism among its intellectuals vs adherents)

Complete lack of apparent direction seems a bit soft considering the German mission had no problem classifying it as a state-directed operation.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Many of the Germans probably really didn't like the idea of being allied with a Muslim power killing Christians.

I would tend to classify the whole thing though as a lot more similar to what happened in Israel in 1945 - 1950 than a genocide. You see, a lot of the Muslim inhabitants of eastern Anatolia had originally been Europeans. They were Ottoman Turks who had lived in Europe from the 1400s and 1500s to the 1870s through 1913, and had been driven out by the catastrophic loss of huge Muslim majority areas. All of Eastern Bulgaria was Muslim Majority Ottoman Turkish/Pomak, all of whom were loyal to the Ottoman government, and they were driven out, along with the more or less completely Muslim areas at the mouth of the Danube and the Romanian littoral, let's not also forget in Macedonia, southern Serbia, northern Greece, all the same thing. Ataturk himself was born in these areas of Europe, most of the Young Turks had grown up in places like Thessaloniki which were lost to the Empire in 1913, and during this process more than a million Muslims were murdered, in an event directly equivalent to the Armenian massacres. The survivors were then expelled.

Where did the Ottoman government move them to?

Lightly populated Eastern Anatolia, of course. It was the only place for so many refugees.

The exact same thing then happened in the Caucasus with lots of Muslim Cherkassians, Abkhaz, Georgians, etc, who weren't considered parts of their own ethnic group anymore because of their religion, and were driven out during the Russian conquest of those regions. Likewise, they were resettled in eastern Anatolia. Hell, this had been going on for a while, the Muslim Tatars of the Crimean who fled in the late 18th century were, again, settled in eastern Anatolia. It was the dumping ground for Muslims ethnically cleansed from their homelands by European powers as the Empire lost territory to the west.

So think about the fact that within living memory these people had experienced their relatives being murdered and their homes being lost and uprooted and moved to this remote, harsh environment with poor farming from the much warmer and bountiful areas they'd been living in, and oh now by the way the Russians are coming to take away this which is all you have left--and give it to the Armenians who live in the village the next hill over, just like they took your homes before and gave them to the Bulgarians in the next village over. And the government has given you rifles to harass the advancing Russian troops with.

Yeah, I don't think an organized genocide is necessary to kill hundreds of thousands of people in that situation.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I don't know what the hell "it's part of the political litmus test of ideological correctness for some people to demand you accept it is a genocide" is supposed to mean, but some quick googling turned up an op-ed written by Uygur where he flat out says it is a complete lie made up so Armenians can try to steal half of Turkey. Not trying to distinguish who did it or the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing, just saying it never ever happened.

The fucked-up thing is that even that kind of opinion isn't 100% wrong. Armenia does use the genocide as a political tool for revanchist purposes, including using it to lend a certain legitimacy to their own ethnic cleansing - which is on-going to this day - of Azeris in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Politicization of extremely loaded terms poisoning historical and social discourse? NO WAY.

[Stark]

Who cares? Lets talk about the huge lol of market capitalism making Americans upset they might receive ideas from outside their walled garden, while restricting access to American or Western media has long been a charge levelled against dictators and evil axes.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Great news. I've been boycotting Current since they fired Olbermann and then let that twat Uygur air their dirty laundry in public. Now I'll have some international news to watch from a non-western standpoint.

News agencies like NHK and NDTV have had online streaming for years now, if non-western news is your objective. For that matter so has Al-Jazeera though, so I guess streaming sources don't cut it?

[Flagg]

Great news. I've been boycotting Current since they fired Olbermann and then let that twat Uygur air their dirty laundry in public. Now I'll have some international news to watch from a non-western standpoint.

News agencies like NHK and NDTV have had online streaming for years now, if non-western news is your objective. For that matter so has Al-Jazeera though, so I guess streaming sources don't cut it?

I just like to watch TV for major news.

[Haruko]

Great news. I've been boycotting Current since they fired Olbermann and then let that twat Uygur air their dirty laundry in public. Now I'll have some international news to watch from a non-western standpoint.

News agencies like NHK and NDTV have had online streaming for years now, if non-western news is your objective. For that matter so has Al-Jazeera though, so I guess streaming sources don't cut it?

NHK and Al Jazeera are also aired on Link.TV, a channel available for DirecTV subscribers. Do not know about other cable/satellite providers.

[Iron Bridge]

To the best of my knowledge Al-Jazeera was founded by ex-BBC Arab Service employees and isn't all that crazy. The name sounds kind of like Al-Quaeda, which maybe is the source of the confusion. Other than that, it's biased only to the extent of the dominant Western soft-left media, going a bit further when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Taking random opinion pieces from today's website:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 04372.html - I don't think we'd see the phrase "Zionist Jew" in most Western media, and it's clear that the People's History means the Palestinians' interpretation of history, with Israeli authors referring to being just the few who agree with the Palestinian interpretation. But it discusses a lot of the internal divisions in Palestinian society in a lot more depth, because it knows a lot of its audience understands and will have personal stake in some of these factions. This is one of its key strengths in the West where most news outlets gloss over this sort of detail, not out of bias but just to keep the message simple and reduce research requirement.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 65193.html - imo a totally insane article, but then I'm a "market fundamentalist"; I could totally see being published in the NYT or Guardian.

[weemadando]

Al Jazeera is probably my No.2 global news service behind the BBC. Their coverage of Asia/Africa/Middle East blows away other networks.

And the people who call them a mouthpiece for terror are generally the same people who furiously pushed the WMD case for war in Iraq, so pretty much discredited themselves as news networks then.

[Block]

Al Jazeera is probably my No.2 global news service behind the BBC. Their coverage of Asia/Africa/Middle East blows away other networks.

And the people who call them a mouthpiece for terror are generally the same people who furiously pushed the WMD case for war in Iraq, so pretty much discredited themselves as news networks then.

Al Jazeera English is not really the same thing as the Arabic version, although it's gotten a lot better in its reporting Arabic since its founding. The English version has always been fairly unbiased as long as it's talking about issues outside of the Israel/Palestine one. In Arabic that wasn't case, although as I said it's gotten better, but there's still a fair amount of slant through word choice.

[Zinegata]

Their coverage of Asia/Africa/Middle East blows away other networks.

They cover Asia / Africa a little more but it's still pretty light. Better than other networks, true, but still not that great.