I am trying to envision Johnny Foster Dulles, Secretary of State for President Eisenhower in the Cold War 1950s, raising hosannas upon learning that the Soviet Union’s largest television network had just acquired ABC Television and was planning unprecedented expansion of coverage into every American burg and metropolis.
Imagine Mr. Dulles telling reporters:
“Viewership will go up in the United States because (Soviet television) is real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of millions of commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.”
Mr. Dulles, naturally, would have been appalled by such lunatic statements about a tyrannical government trying to enslave or kill us.
Can You Think of a Lunatic?
Lunatic sentiments these days often ring the bell for a member of the Clinton clan. Our present embarrassed and embarrassing Secretary of State Hillary (Truth Always Is Relative) Clinton actually made the above outrageous observation before Congress a year and a half ago about the disgusting Al Jazeera network.
Wasn’t Benedict Arnold punished for less?
A daily practitioner of the vaunted family legacy of lying for a living, it also was a year and a half ago when Hillary proved again that she is a peerless judge of character. Fearlessly, the lady rated “America’s Most Admired Woman” for 11 consecutive years, sized up Assad of Syria as “the kind of reformer we can work with.”
It was little noted at the time that Hillary had to project her voice more forcefully than usual if she wanted to be heard over the screaming in the distance of tortured Assad victims. At the moment, he was in the process of slyly bumping off 60,000 fellow Syrians while hardly anyone noticed, least of all President Obama, who turned down his hearing aid while sunning himself in Hawaii.
Playing the Role of Mum
For the last two days, nary a dissenting peep has been heard from the liberal sheep who form the mainstream media since the news broke that the Al Jazeera network, tool of the Muslim Brotherhood, had bought Al Gore’s tiny Current TV network with ambitious plans to make it the biggest cable net of all.
During his re-election campaign, our remarkably naive President called the Bro’hood a “secular” organization. You see, he believes that Islamic extremists seeking to murder us are as scarce as dinosaurs.
Handicapping the Deal
The most whacked-out response I have seen to Al Jazeera’s invasion of America without firing a shot came this morning from the crippled mindset of David Zurawik, the Baltimore Sun’s lightweight television critic for the past 23 years. Predictably, Mr. Zurawik is a Berkeley graduate. For kicks, he plays a “professor” at a thankfully tiny suburban Baltimore college.
Like the core of today’s emotions-first left-wingers, he cheers Al Jazeera’s full front arrival. He argues that it brings diversity to a media he says is onesided, too pro-America.
When Communism was in its ascendancy in the middle of the 20th century, the Soviets would have labeled Mr. Zurawik a useful idiot, a casting neatly tailored to the narrow confines of his tapered left-wing mind.
Who needs guns, bombs, sneak attacks when journalists like Mr. Z are willing stooges for those who seek our destruction.
He is so thrilled Al Jazeera will be marching, openly, across America that this morning he lengthily quoted himself from last August when A.J. screened a documentary on Baltimore not available on any Baltimore cable channel. Oh, was he upset. Here is what he wrote:
“In August, Al Jazeera English offered a powerful documentary, ‘Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City,’ on the politics and sociology of Baltimore’s war on drugs. In reporting on the documentary, I became outraged that viewers in Baltimore would not be able to see it on cable TV.
“I had been a fan of Al Jazeera for its coverage of the Middle East for years, but this hit much closer to home. This was an informed and provocative critique of urban life, and viewers who could be enlightened about the city in which they lived were denied access to it.
“Here is some of what I wrote, and why I am so pleased about this sale. It makes American media a smarter and more diverse mix – and that makes this a better country. If you don't believe me, at least listen to the experts I quoted.
“The lack of access to Al Jazeera English on cable TV makes me wonder what kind of sheep we are as media consumers – and what kind of mice we have as media critics that cable companies can get away with not offering this option even as they offer a sea of channels devoted to shopping and reruns of lame network shows from previous decades.
“Philip Seib, author of ‘The Al Jazeera Effect: How the New Global Media Are Reshaping World Politics,’ had a one-word answer when I asked him why the channel is not available in cities like Baltimore: ‘Politics.’
“ ‘There's ample evidence that the viewership is there,’ he said. ‘It’s still the hangover from the days when particularly the [George W.] Bush administration was blasting Al Jazeera. [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld was the main one.’
“Seib, a professor at the University of Southern California who directs the Center on Public Diplomacy there, added, ‘When things go crazy in the Middle East, Al Jazeera English is where you go if you don't speak Arabic. And the television sets throughout the U.S. government last year when the Arab revolutions were getting under way were all tuned to Al Jazeera English.’
“Seib, who also edited a book of scholarly writings on the channel that was published in February under the title ‘Al Jazeera English,’ concluded, ‘It’s depriving the American public of a different voice. No one is compelled to watch it. But it should be available.’
“Al Jazeera is available on three cable systems in Washington, D.C., two in New York and one each in Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island. That's it.
“Mohammed el-Nawawy, author of ‘Al Jazeera: The Story of the Network That Is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism,’ says, ‘I am really appalled, to be honest with you, that even after the increasing popularity after the coverage of Arab Spring, that is not being reflected in the U.S. market.’
“El-Nawawy, an associate professor at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina, explains the lack of access in part by saying, ‘The cable carriers are afraid to carry it because they don't want to alienate their constituents. They don't want to alienate their viewers. They don't want to go out of the box. They want to stay in their comfort zone. They play it safe.’
“But how much of a risk is it when you have the secretary of state endorsing the channel as ‘real news’?”
