let
for stop i mean i i must say about this uh... discouraged thing although unless
you made me aren't aware of it
uh... it was announced yesterday uh... in the new york times
that car into had been sold to aljazeera
aljazeera has a plan to basically take the real estate that current eyes
uh... in terms of cable clearance
and create a new network may be called aljazeera america
they'll use part of their aljazeera english uh... material and then create a
a new channel it's unclear whether or not they're gonna keep
uh... dojo sick arent
or the staff there
and
uh... simultaneously time warner cable
which current has about clearance in about sixty million homes across the
country
much less than the other
uh... networks earn more other cable networks
time-warner which has about twelve million homes
basically said we're not going to approve the sale and it's gonna cancel
our clearance contract now
some people are saying this because time warner is
durham racist in some fashion i don't think that's what it is at least current
had
so few few words
that they wanted to get out of this deal
and uh... i'm not convinced that down the road they won't
comeback if aljazeera the
america does well but
at the course is harder to do if you don't have access to a big swath of new
york
and uh... the twelve million customers that uh... time-warner uh...
uh... services no you know
hot look
current fired keith olbermann they had basically
dick clark was then taking
uh... something like this was going to happen
they had to sell now because i think there uh... their ratings
were beneath
the threshold which would have maintained their clearances
uh... their contracts with places like time warner or uh... others i don't know
this for sure but that's my suspicion
the network is
fairly profitable because it gets attic somewhere around a dime per subscriber
uh... as part of their carriage deals which uh...
is a pretty impressive amount for something that's not being watched that
much
uh... my you know as far as i can tell al jazeera up
lease aljazeera english is uh...
extremely legitimate news
headed arguably more so than any of our american cable outlets are pretty darn
close a lot of respects
one of things that really struck me
dot bars not that hoti don't get me wrong here but
thelma's pieces d_w_ i think it was dot com nature with this is but it was an
interview
with a long time berlin correspondent relatives here again aim
outcome of the sum of money
uh... he recently resigned
from aljazeera
uh...
and he described the reasons why he he he says i have to say that
professionalism is now lacking in aljazeera
now this is guy this is really telling because
what you get a sense of what this guy's disguise standards are
says they used to have it they don't have it now
um...
he can be okay about order has an agenda as long as the operation has a high
level of professionalism
so that the owners agenda does not believe through
but he says but that's precisely what didn't happen when efforts were
obviously being made to impose out on al jazeera the agenda of the state of qatar
it is owned by the state of the uh... the nation of qatar out here
and that he's asked uh... can you give an example of what you mean
and he says the most important example as the conflict in libya
of course more margie dot it was a dictator and of course id ruled for far
too long
and of course it was a desire among the libyans to get rid of them all that is
clear
what's also clear that killing a dictator as happened with d dot e is
absolutely unacceptable on human rights grounds revolution or no
and that's not emphasize that is
we stressed the necessity of a revolution in libya in the humanity of
the revolutionaries
but said nothing about the murder of a dictator
and many others were killed after him including incidently demand a shotgun
dot he he was killed by another group of revolutionaries
that's the actual environment libya and that's exactly what you don't see on
today's aljazeera that's not professional
commute for one moment
if this guy came and worked at an american news outlet
say during the iraq a war
how shocked
this guy would be
athlete level uh... total lack
of professionalism
never mind during the
the living conflict
you know what i specifically remember i remember which news station but a new
station here in america
wendy dot the was killed
i've ever done going
on and on about had it was a picture of the guy was shocked about the and how
also there was a brand new york yankees at israeli new york yankees and
i mean
starlight just a fact
the fact that this guy would leave
aljazeera because he doesn't feel that that level
of professionalism is being kept
is
uh... the
it would be like this
imagine the guy gets up from the from a huge
mattress a sixteen inch mattress
and says i can't sleep there because there's a p their underneath a mattress
and he gets onto the huge mattress that is the u_s_ media
uh... he would find that not only is there a p there is an entire mountain'
under there
and the mattresses on the precipice of the peak of that mountain just doesn't
like this
and the wind is blowing in there's a massive storm coming through
like it's not just the fact that someone would leave aljazeera
on that level of a standard
weeds mate i believe that aljazeera standards as so much higher be aligned
what u_s_ immediate standards are in this type of situation
that's almost impossible for us to comprehend it
uh... so
i don't know i mean i think it's a huge disservice
to not allow
uh... the american public access to this type of milks because clearly it's
radical in the sense that they actually believe in
a certain level of professionalism that i think
we can't even conceive of in this country
if ox mentions the story
it will be
correspondent for hours as your resigns because the because he said the covered
the middle east unfairly not exactly
and and and you know the other thing which matinee to mention is that
i don't necessarily have a problem
with a uh...
a media outlet that's owned by a foreign government
okay because at least there's a certain amount of transparency there and then
you can judge the product on tax basis but i mean
uh...
when you talk about lack of transparency i don't know that i would feel
comfortable with the media outlet owned
by the u_s_ government at least domestically
um...
when you talk about transparency
n_b_c_
was owned by the number one arms dealer
one of the number one the top arms dealers in the world
uh... a_b_c_ owned by age huge media conglomerate
that has eight q-tip estimated discussions tax breaks in the
uh... in this this complex deal
uh... so there's a lot of of a lot
of of conflict of interest in what you're looking at the media
and as long as it's explicit
uh... i don't i don't have an issue on that uh... not levels um... i feel like
you know the fact that time warner's not gonna carry it i think is a disservice
to americans