Hillary gave Congress a little home truth yesterday:
“In fact viewership of al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million 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,” she added.
This wasn’t widely covered, probably because her press person didn’t share an email from one reporter with another reporter.
Gin & Tonic
To me, al Jazeera feels like CNN did 20+ years ago.
4tehlulz
@Gin & Tonic: Selling CNN is something I’ll never forgive Ted Turner for.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
But Fox news gave us news about violence in the palm trees of Wisconsin!
El Cid
@Gin & Tonic: I never got that. To me, it sounds like an Arab-region based BBC World News. Which for me is pretty much the only real broadcast TV news in English.
It doesn’t matter, though.
This is final proof that Hillary Clinton and the administration will turn the US into a colony of the new Islamic caliphate under Shari’a law.
RoonieRoo
Al Jazeera has become my daily “channel” I check and watch. I don’t think I’ve watched any US news channels for at least a year now. Maybe close to 2. Our channels don’t actually cover news at all and when they cover it, the misinformation is so bad and obvious as to be comical.
Culture of Truth
Hillary Clinton’s statements deserve wider coverage. Let’s get Pat Buchanan and Harold Ford to debate it.
El Cid
@El Cid: And without the BBC’s subtle but existent nationalism. Which I really couldn’t avoid during Gulf War 1. However, the fact that I noticed such things made my love Saddam Hussein and want to have his babies, perhaps the same babies he didn’t throw out of Kuwaiti incubators.
Xenos
I have been getting al-Jazeera for about a month now. It is far superior to any American news operation, even if they mangle the English now and then. Right now they are heavily promoting David Frost’s show, which they have titled “Frost Over The World”. Is that a description, or some sort of evil command given to Mr. ColdMeister?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
I guess she’s not running for president in 2016 after all.
Let it rip, Hillary.
David Koch
I’d watch al-Jazeera if their hosts were a piece of ass like Mika Brzezinski and Anderson Cooper.
kay
That’s wonderful. Good for her.
I love that Issa thinks he has to “rebuild trust” with media, and they agree wholeheartedly.
Not a word about any duty Issa may have to non-media Americans, and not a word about how media might have to rebuild trust with their viewers and readers.
Viewers, readers and regular people are completely excluded from this circle. Issa talks to media, they talk to him, and each other. Closed.
Svensker
Always knew she was a commie. Proof right there, gentlemen.
Davis X. Machina
My first experience with CNN was in ’82, when the Israelis invaded Lebanon and chased the PLO offshore — the leadership wound up in Tunisia, the rank-and-file scattered, leaving the vacuum that Hamas filled. CNN audio ran, with local commericials, on Atlanta AM radio, and it was the closest thing this life-long BBC World Service listener ever heard, now or then, to the Beeb on American airwaves….
How the mighty have fallen….
jrg
I’m afraid I won’t be able to make up my mind on this issue unless I see a panel discussion with Justin Bieber, that whackjob from Christian Dior, and Tom Friedman.
kay
I don’t think the Issa story is inconsequential. I think Issa would have been feeding them garbage about trumped up-scandals in the Obama administration, and they all would have dutifully repeated everything they were fed, until there were actual investigations and inquiries.
Because that’s exactly what happened with Bill Clinton. We all saw it happen. They were primed to do that again.
I think they should release the emails so the public can judge their credibility on all matters Issa going forward. He actually has a lot of power. That’s not silly.
shawntos
@kay: I would add it is the same thing that they did to the run up to the Iraq War as well.
Punchy
Would al-Jazeera be illegal according to Tennessee’s new anti-Muslim-anything law?
Jane2
How true. Al Jazeera has informed commenters, real researchers, and real reporters. It’s a little shaky on the finer nuances of American politics (treating “Senator John McCain” as the credible voice of the opposition is a little weird), but it can’t be beat on Europe, Africa and Asia. Give me Jacky Rowlands over Anderson Cooper any day…and I’ll bet she doesn’t even own a khaki shirt to show she’s reporting on the ground with the little people.
El Cid
A Pakistani newspaper accuses captured US CIA agent Raymond Davis (whom the New York Times reported as a CIA team member monitoring local extremist groups) of working closely with and supporting the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban).
It’s a terribly weak article based yet again on “unnamed officials” from the Punjab (a region spanning India & Pak). Such ‘sources’ were the root of the conservative-shouted charge that Obama was spending a billion dollars a day on his India visit.
However, it makes specific claims about the evidence: the cellphone records. If revealed by official Pakistani police agents, it will have much more weight. And of course possibly be true, as the CIA or other covert agencies or private agents do this sort of thing all the time. Or he could be charged with this in his charges in front of Pakistani military court.
It’s more interesting in its significance in local and regional news media.
Admiral_Komack
“I’d watch al-Jazeera if their hosts were a piece of ass like Mika Brzezinski and Anderson Cooper.”
-I don’t think my cable provider has al-Jazeera, but I’d pay extra not to see those two twits.
Napoleon
@kay:
I think that story is a really really big deal that shows just how corrupt the media is.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina: And also tens of thousands of Lebanese were killed, and then in Southern Lebanon Hizbullah filled in. The US also shelled Lebanese civilian areas, though attacks were launched from centers in such areas by various Palestinian armed groups.
kay
@Napoleon:
I agree. Oh, and I didn’t say it. One of them did:
Right now, none of them are credible on Issa’s investigations as far as I’m concerned. I’ll assume everything they print came from his PR arm.
eemom
omg, Hillary’s a Moooslim too! Somebody alert Suckabee.
piratedan
anyone else see TRMS last night and that farce of a House foreign affairs committee meeting that Ms. Clinton was subjected to? They would ask her a question, many with multiple point items and before she could finish her response to Q1, the chair would interrupt her and move on to the next question and rinse and repeat. They weren’t interested in her responses, they just wanted to mess with her. As Rachael so aptly put it, government for the petty by the petty.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@El Cid: if the allegations are true, it wouldn’t be surprising. penetrating an organization often means working with it.
Bob L
Oh no she didn’t!
Why does Hilary hate the freedom of the press to make shit up?
lou
@piratedan:anyone who has sat in a House hearing knows that is pretty typical. I wasted a couple of mornings on those and gave up. better to read the transcript where you can ignore the bloviating fools that pass as Representatives.
Chris
There was a conservative blogger years ago smugly proclaiming that they were doomed to lose the information war with us because “Their government and their culture and especially their religion had relied on tight control of information given to their people in order to indoctrinate them to get them to act in a way which is to the advantage of the leaders. Our system, on the other hand, is designed precisely so that it works best when our people are best informed and make decisions for themselves.”
Wonder what that guy’s up to now? “They” have news networks that answer to no government and do not tightly control information (the U.S. government’s most common gripe with Al Jazeera involves things they air, not things they suppress), and lookie lookie – those networks are beating the crap out of ours.
Bill H.
Well, I think she makes a good point, about the “million commercials” and the “arguments between talking heads” which “is not particularly informative” to anyone, but she does so in the course of a bad argument about how we are failing to let the world know how strong and noble and wonderful we are.
MikeJ
@Chris: I wonder what that person thinks of Rupert’s latest buying spree?
shawntos
@Bill H.: I think the word you are looking for at the end of your paragraph is “exceptional” we are “exceptional”.
Bulworth
Holy shitshibah. She really said that? That kind of talk is not going to get her invited to all the cool parties.
Elizabelle
I am glad to hear that Secretary Clinton said this. Thank you.
Violet
Thanks for this post. Go Hillary. Tell it like it is! And can I please have Al Jazeera on my TV. Thank you.
catclub
@El Cid: To be found on Windows8:
MyDocuments, MyPhotos, MySharia
Elizabelle
Link is a Jake Tapper ABC News blog. As Sec of State, Clinton is discussing the US falling behind in trying to win hearts and minds, as with VOA (Voice of America).
Strange that we all jumped to the conclusion she was speaking of our addled domestic broadcast “news” options.
Bulworth
You mean we don’t broadcast Faux around the world? Foreigners would see how we’re so fair and balanced in our hatred of them.
Rupert Morlock
@David Koch: Heh indeedy.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
They know perfectly well what’s up with the Cold War and World War Two. If you’re from Iran, Guatemala or Zaire, it’s kind of hard to miss the fact that you’d have been a working democracy as early as the 1950s if the Dulles brothers at CIA hadn’t gotten frisky. Later examples of such behavior abound and thrive.
Even World War Two and its aftermath weren’t nearly as happy as we remember them: ask the Greeks and Turks, or even the French and Italians.
This notion that it’s “them” who need to learn to appreciate what we do for them, rather than “us” who need to change our policy, is a perfect example of the hubris that turns off the rest of the world.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
They don’t have “talking heads” on radio. She was testifying about VOA and other propaganda programs, but the point she was making in the pull quote above is not that al-Jazeera is the propaganda equivalent of VOA, but that al-Jazeera is doing very well in the United States because they present actual news, unlike the US cable stations.
So, yes, she’s saying exactly what we’re saying she did.
Brachiator
I expect Glen Beck to offer this as proof that Obama has Islamafied Secretary of State Clinton by use of his mystical teleprompter powers.
I expect to see a … bipartisan … protest from CNN to Fox to NBC and the rest of the Western media all up in a HuffPo over Clinton’s well aimed barb.
Elizabelle
@Chris:
Your comment at 40. Word.
@Mnemosyne: Oh, agreed.
Love the dig. It’s effective and honest. And if you’re a “journalist” — ouch. She’s not speaking to the Frontline producers.
Roy G
Newsflash, Hillary tells the truth about something…if only to her fellow villagers.
Huzzah! At least compared to her internet freedum debacle, and impotent speechifying about Wikileaks and dumocracy in the Middle East.
Madame Thatcher probably told the truth once, too.
Cris
All of a sudden, I heart Hillary, even if just for a little while.
Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy
Eh, I’m sure that Crowley will be walking that back any minute now . . .
Maude
@Cris:
All her remarks before Congress are pre prepared and vetted by the WH.
Sounds like the WH put that in there.
Original Lee
Go Hillary! Real news for real people! I watch CNN International (much better than straight-up CNN), C-SPAN, and BBC News, so maybe I’ll add al-J to the mix, too. Late-night C-SPAN can be very interesting. I still remember watching a hearing on Alzheimer’s where Maria Shriver testified about her father – very moving.
Part of the problem as I see it with U.S. news is that the networks used to keep their news divisions as loss leaders. Plus most adult Americans back in the day felt it was important to keep up on the news (TV, newspapers, or radio). But somewhere along the line the networks got the brilliant idea that news=entertainment and therefore needed to make a profit (maybe during Gulf War I when people watched the war on CNN in the evenings), and adult Americans I guess decided it was easier to watch “Married with Children” re-runs than to try to find something that wasn’t infotainment. Now that cable has more choices, it’s too late.
Emma
Kay: This. Repeatedly. With Chantilly cream on top. The scandal here is that the so-called journalists were ASKING for scandals about the president.
losingtehplot
@Bulworth: Broadcasting Faux round the world – now that WOULD be interesting. We’d have wars coming out the wazoo in minutes!
neff
One of the interesting aspects of life in DC is that whereas you have to pay money to be able to watch Fox or CNN or MSNBC, the English versions of al Jazeera, France24 and Russia Today are all available free over the air (the public TV stations in Northern Virginia broadcast them as digital subchannels).
goblue72
@neff: That’s because PBS is an Islamo-fascist-communist-socialist Kenyan anti-colonialist conspiracy.
goblue72
@neff: Ack. Previous comment stuck in moderation b/c it had that Kenyan word that included a penile enhancement drug. FYWP.
Let’s try this again:
That’s because PBS is an Islamo-fascist-communist-soshulist Kenyan anti-colonialist conspiracy.
Steve LaBonne
The Onion has CNN’s number.
kay
@Emma:
I just remember the Clinton hysteria so vividly, and there’s twice as much “news” now.
I literally took up gardening. The vegetable garden expanded to the point where I was thinking about a bigger location, like, acreage. I completely dropped out. I could not listen to it anymore. It seemed completely insane to me, right from the start, and it seemed the whole country went crazy right along with media.
uptown
You can watch a selection of foreign news channels on http://www.mhznetworks.org, including al Jazeera. It’s available from many sources, including over-the-air in some locals.
RT (Russia Today) is a fun to watch, their reporting slant brings back memories of the cold war.
Calouste
@losingtehplot:
Fox wouldn’t last long in most countries because they have a somewhat different emphasis in the free speech vs hate speech/libel balance than the US has. Libel lawyers in the UK will make a detour to the Porsche dealer on the way home to pick up the latest catalogue the day Fox announces it will broadcast there.
LanceThruster
HRC might have well as said, “Al Jazeera is making it harder to get away with the same old lies.” So does she want a *stronger* vast right-wing conspiracy that she spoke of previously? How about, “Just give me some truth.”
Former Marine Capt. Josh Rushing resigned his commision to work for Al Jazeera International in response to seeing first hand the difference between propaganda and reporting painful truths.
XAs far as HRC’s credibility, this story says it all as for as I’m concerned –
“In the summer of 2002, as the Senate was preparing to conduct hearings about alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and the possibility of war, former Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq and U.S. Marine Major, Scott Ritter, came down to Washington from his home in upstate New York to share his first-hand knowledge with as many senators as possible.
To those that let him in the door, he showed that the “intelligence” adduced to support U.S. claims that Iraq still had WMD was fatally flawed. This was the same “intelligence” that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller later branded “unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”
Sen. Hillary Clinton would not let Ritter in her door. Despite his unique insights as a U.N. inspector and his status as a constituent, Sen. Clinton gave him the royal run-around. Her message was clear: “Don’t bother me with the facts.” She had already made up her mind….”
I took my passage from here:
mondoweiss.net/2011/02/…
and they got it from a Ray McGovern piece here:
original.antiwar.com/mc…/
What Sec. of State Clinton has to say about assessing the credibility of others should be viewed through that lens.
Bob
@Svensker: I thought Americans didn’t do sarcasm!!