{"id":8774,"date":"2013-01-05T03:43:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-05T11:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8774"},"modified":"2015-06-15T10:54:33","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T17:54:33","slug":"fox-news-vs-al-jazeera-tales-of-terror-and-hypocrisy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8774","title":{"rendered":"Fox News vs. Al-Jazeera: Tales Of Terror And Hypocrisy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news that Qatar-based Al-Jazeera has agreed to purchase Al Gore’s Current TV has stirred controversy throughout the mediasphere. For the most part the debate has been driven by conservative xenophobes worried that Sharia law would be imposed on American viewers via x-rays emanating from their television screens.<\/p>\n

The usual suspects on the right have issued their predictably alarmist warnings about Al-Jazeera plotting to brainwash what they must regard as a gullible American public. Obviously their assessment of gullibility is based on their experience with Fox News viewers. The rest of us are quite capable of discerning fact from fiction and developing informed opinions from diverse news sources. But the censorious right-wingers insist on having only one mindset available to the U.S. television audience.<\/p>\n

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Some of the knee-jerk reactions from conservative critics include Bill O’Reilly saying that “Gore has shamed himself simply by selling to Al-Jazeera.”<\/em> Frequent Fox News guest Matt McCall saying of Gore that “To me, he\u2019s now associating himself with Al-Qaeda.”<\/em> Glenn Beck complained that his own sham attempt to bid on Current was dismissed and therefore Gore is un-American. Stuart Varney of Fox News defended Beck by castigating Gore for rejecting Beck but saying “Okay [to] big oil, the sheikhdom of Qatar.”<\/em> The uber-rightist Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor alleged that “lefties love Al-Jazeera”<\/em> and then whined that “The purchase is part of a larger trend of foreign media outlets.”<\/em><\/p>\n

There is a lot there to chew on. First of all, the trend toward foreign ownership of media outlets was never more pronounced than when Rupert Murdoch crossed the Atlantic to launch Fox News. And it is absurd to suggest that Gore is somehow more pro-Big Oil than those at Fox who defend foreign oil corporations while vehemently condemning the development of renewable, domestic energy sources, and disputing the scientific reality of climate change.<\/p>\n

Much of the criticism aimed at Gore was directed at his having cashed out to a state-based media enterprise. For some reason these alleged free-market proponents are all of a sudden opposed to a businessman making a profitable deal that will advance economic activity and create jobs. As for the involvement of the nation of Qatar as the financial backer of the new network, these small-minded critics conveniently forget that the second largest shareholder of News Corp, outside of the Murdoch family, is Alwaleed bin Talal, a prince of the Saudi royal family. And therein lies another hypocrisy. The critics complain falsely that Al-Jazeera is aligned with terrorists, but if they are intent on forming ludicrous associations between news networks and terrorism, they might do better to recall that the plotters and hijackers on 9\/11, including Osama bin Laden, were from Saudi Arabia, not Qatar.<\/p>\n

[Note: Qatar is friendly to the west, is a major supplier of natural gas to the U.S., and has been an ally in American military endeavors including in Libya and Syria, as well as providing bases for the United States Central Command in support of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan]<\/em><\/p>\n