How much does presidential election loser Al Gore hate conservatives? Enough that he wouldn’t sell his little-watched Current TV to conservative Glenn Beck, but he would sell it to anti-American terror mouthpiece Al Jazeera for half a billion dollars.
According to The Wall Street Journal, "Glenn Beck's The Blaze approached Current about buying the channel last year, but was told that 'the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view,' according to a person familiar with the negotiations.” So, Gore, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 after producing the climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," thinks conservatives are bad but Al Jazeera is his kind of folks.
Al Jazeera, known as the network of the Arab street, is also known for taking anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-terror positions. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, it "became famous in the U.S. about a decade ago when its Arabic-language outlet aired videos of Usama bin Laden in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks."
The network is based in Qatar, an oil producing country, and is state-funded.
In 2008, the network celebrated the birthday of a released terrorist who had shot and killed one Israeli and then beat to death a 4-year-old Israeli girl.
Back in 2006, Al Jazeera talk show host (and former CNN International journalist) Riz Kahn wouldn’t call either Hamas or Hezbollah "terrorist organizations" during an interview. “I’m not one to judge,” Kahn said.
The network doesn’t call out Arabs for crimes either. In 2011, even liberal Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart criticized the network for ignoring the attack in Egypt on CBS News reporter Lara Logan.
But lefties love Al Jazeera. The network gained a bigger name for itself covering Arab Spring and is also the outlet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called “real news” back in 2011.
The sale gives Al Jazeera access to a large potential U.S. market. According to The New York Times’ Brian Stelter, “American cable and satellite distributors have mostly refused to carry Al Jazeera English since its inception in 2006.” Under the deal, the network will launch a new channel for the American market. “Al Jazeera said it plans to create a channel based in New York. Tentatively titled Al Jazeera America, roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States, while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English,” wrote Stelter.
Al Jazeera’s entry into the U.S. market remains rocky. As soon as the sale was announced, Time Warner Cable dropped the channel. The purchase is part of a larger trend of foreign media outlets not just covering the United States, but using anti-American or state-sponsored outlets to influence Americans.