U.S. media is reporting that the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera
network has purchased a cable channel owned by former Vice-President Al
Gore and his partners. According to an AP
report:
LOS ANGELES — Al-Jazeera, the Pan-Arab news channel that struggled to
win space on American cable television, has acquired Current TV,
boosting its reach in the U.S. nearly ninefold to about 40 million
homes. With a focus on U.S. news, it plans to rebrand the left-leaning
news network that cofounder Al Gore couldn’t make relevant. The former
vice president confirmed the sale Wednesday, saying in a statement that
Al-Jazeera shares Current TV’s mission ‘to give voice to those who are
not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and
diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is
telling.’ The acquisition lifts Al-Jazeera’s reach beyond a few large
U.S. metropolitan areas including New York and Washington, where about
4.7 million homes can now watch Al-Jazeera English. Al-Jazeera, owned by
the government of Qatar, plans to gradually transform Current into a
network called Al-Jazeera America by adding five to 10 new U.S. bureaus
beyond the five it has now and hiring more journalists. More than half
of the content will be U.S. news and the network will have its
headquarters in New York, spokesman Stan Collender said. Collender said
there are no rules against foreign ownership of a cable channel — unlike
the strict rules limiting foreign ownership of free-to-air TV stations.
He said the move is based on demand, adding that 40 percent of viewing
traffic on Al-Jazeera English’s website is from the U.S. ’This is a pure
business decision based on recognized demand,’ Collender said. ‘When
people watch Al-Jazeera, they tend to like it a great deal.’ Al-Jazeera
has long struggled to get carriage in the U.S., and the deal suffered an
immediate casualty as Time Warner Cable Inc., the nation’s
second-largest cable TV operator, announced it is dropping Current TV
due to the deal. ’Our agreement with Current has been terminated and we
will no longer be carrying the service. We are removing the service as
quickly as possible,’ the company said in a statement.
The New York Time
reports on the pivotal role played by Mr. Gore in the sale who will personally be receiving $100 million:
Al Gore’s Current TV was never popular with viewers, but it was a hit
where it counted: with cable and satellite providers. When he
co-founded the channel in 2005, Mr. Gore managed to get the channel
piped into tens of millions of households — a huge number for an
untested network — through a combination of personal lobbying and
arm-twisting of industry giants. He called on those skills again after
deciding in December to sell Current TV to Al Jazeera for $500 million.
To preserve the deal — and the estimated $100 million he would
personally receive — he went to some of those same distributors, who
were looking for an excuse to drop the low-rated channel, and reminded
them that their contracts with Current TV called it a news channel. Were
the distributors going to say that an American version of Al Jazeera
didn’t qualify, possibly invoking ugly stereotypes of the Middle Eastern
news giant? “The lawyers for the carriers couldn’t find their way
around it,” said a person briefed on the negotiations who described them
on condition of anonymity.
The NYT also cited Mr. Gore’s additional praise for the network:
Their global reach is unmatched and their coverage of major events like the Arab Spring is thorough, fair and informative.
A
post from
September reported that Wadah Khanfar had resigned as the Director
General of Al-Jazeer and that same post detailed his close ties to Hamas
and the Global Muslim Brotherhood. An
analysis posted
by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs also notes these same ties
but expands upon the networks connections to the Global Muslim
Brotherhood:
The meteoric rise of the network and its increasing
popularity have led many political and media commentators in the Arab
world to wonder exactly who or what was behind what appears to be its
main purpose: encouraging opposition and promoting incitement against
Arab regimes, exposing the corruption of their leaders and their
entourage, while holding to an extreme Arab nationalist attitude against
the US and Israel and extolling the values of conservative – and
sometimes extremist – Islam. It did not take long for one name to
emerge: the Muslim Brotherhood. This hypotheisis is supported by a
number of facts. The director-general of the network, Wadah Khanfar, was
a member of the organization in Jordan, where he was arrested. Today he
is one of the closest advisers of the emir. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is
also a member of the inner circle of the emir and is known to work
closely with Khanfar. Both support Hamas. Arab researchers have
succeeded in uncovering a number of other Brothers working for the
network, but it is surmised that there are many more. The general
consensus is that Qaradawi is the visible tip of the iceberg. In an
article published in 2003 in the London-based Arabic daily Asharq
al-Awsat, Maamun Fendi, a well-known Egyptian liberal thinker today
living in the US, wrote that some 50 percent of the network’s personnel
belong to the Muslim Brotherhood. He added that their influence in Qatar
was rising both in the network and among government circles. According
to him, the Brotherhood had intended to hold its world summit in Qatar
in 2003 but had to scuttle its plan when it became known. These summits
are usually held in a European capital far from Arab countries, in
conditions of the utmost discretion, if not secrecy. Fendi believes that
Qatar, by embracing the Brotherhood, an extremist Islamic organization
quite popular in the Arab world, while hosting American bases, has found
the perfect formula against retaliation by Arab leaders and attacks by
all other Arab and Islamic extremists including al-Qaida.
Last month, Bloomburg News
posted
an article titled ”Rising Islamist Movement Has Small But Wealthy
Patron” that looked at tensions resulting in the Gulf as a result of
Qatari funding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. A series of other
recent posts have detailed the growing importance of Qatar to the Global
Muslim Brotherhood:
- A post from October
reported on the visit to Gaza by the Emir of Qatar described as the
“biggest diplomatic victory” for Hamas since taking power five years
ago. A post from earlier
that week reported on the announcement of the biggest contribution of
reconstruction aid for Hamas-ruled Gaza since the destruction
accompanying the Israeli-Gaza conflict four years ago.
- A post from August
reported on the plans for an Egypt-Qatar summit where the Egyptian
President Mohamed Morsi was to receive the Emir of Qatar. AP had reported earlier that Qatar was granting Egypt a $2 billion loan to help the country’s troubled economy.
- A post from March
reported that the Deputy Chairman of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was
visiting Qatar for meetings with Qatari official.
- An earlier post discussed
the relocation of Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal from Syria to
Qatar in yet another sign of the country growing importance as a center
of the Global Muslim Brotherhood
In addition, a
series of recent and important Global Muslim Brotherhood
events have
been held in Qatar illustrating the increasing importance of the
country to the Global Brotherhood. Other items of interest include:
- A Gulf newspaper recently posted an article by academic Dr. Ahmad Jamil Azem titled “Qatar’s Ties with the Muslim Brotherhood Affect Entire Region.”
- The Atlantic Council Web site recently posted an article titled ”Egypt’s
Muslim Brotherhood: Between a Present with Qatar and a Future with
Libya” that discusses the future of Qatari-Egyptian relations in light
of the failure of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood to prevail in recent
elections.
- The Voice of America recently posted an article that discusses the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in driving Qatari foreign policy.
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