Tag Archives | Cable News

Al-Jazeera in Talks With The Number One U.S Cable Company, Comcast, Over U.S. Distribution

By on February 25, 2011 in News 10

Comcast Plus?This is what the White House is watching now, along with CNN. Don’t the American people deserve the same opportunity? Sam Gustin writes in WIRED’s Epicenter:

Al-Jazeera is in discussions with Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, about bringing the network’s English-language channel to millions of U.S. homes, the Qatar-based news service said Tuesday.

Al-Jazeera hopes to capitalize on its growing reputation as a serious provider of top-quality journalism from an increasingly tumultuous Middle East.

“We’re very grateful for all the support and appreciation we’ve been receiving,” Al-Jazeera English managing director Al Anstey said in a statement. “Clearly the demand is there for Al-Jazeera, and people want to see us on their screens.”

Anstey arrived in New York City on Tuesday to lead the talks, the network said. The Comcast meeting was the first move in a new push by Al-Jazeera to get on U.S. cable systems, which have been reluctant to carry the Qatar-based news network.

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Al Jazeera English Blacked Out Across Most Of U.S.

By on February 1, 2011 in News 16

Al JazeeraFreedom of the press? Ryan Grim writes on the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — Canadian television viewers looking for the most thorough and in-depth coverage of the uprising in Egypt have the option of tuning into Al Jazeera English, whose on-the-ground coverage of the turmoil is unmatched by any other outlet. American viewers, meanwhile, have little choice but to wait until one of the U.S. cable-company-approved networks broadcasts footage from AJE, which the company makes publicly available. What they can’t do is watch the network directly.

Other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. — including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. — cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egypt attempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting.

The result of the Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States has been a surge in traffic to the media outlet’s website, where footage can be seen streaming live.

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Keith Olbermann Out At MSNBC

By on January 21, 2011 in News 52

Alex Weprin reports via TV Newser:

Tonight is Keith Olbermann‘s last night on MSNBC.

The Countdown host and the network say that the two parties “have ended their contract.”

The network’s statement is:

“MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of Countdown with Keith Olbermann will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”

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Fox News: Elie Wiesel is ‘Holocaust Winner’

By on December 22, 2010 in News 4

This is one hell of a typo (it occurs around the 0:50 mark). Jon Bershad writes on Mediaite:

Wow. We all make mistakes and typos. There will probably be at least one in this post alone. However, some typos are worse than others. This is one of those typos. Last week, Fox & Friends had on Elie Wiesel to talk about human rights injustices. However, eagle-eyed viewer Young Manhattanite was rewatching the clip online and noticed that they accidentally combined “Holocaust Survivor” and “Nobel Prize Winner” in the chyron so as to identify Weisel as a “Holocaust Winner.” Again, wow.

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America’s 30 Hackiest Political Pundits

By on November 29, 2010 in News 8

friedman07Salon’s War Room has unveiled the Hack Thirty, counting down America’s worst political columnists and television pundits, with representative quotes of their most dismal work. The focus isn’t on obviously-partisan loons such as Glenn Beck; rather it’s on “respectable” and “moderate” writers and cable news commentators who use their enviable positions to spout banalities, unthinkingly regurgitate accepted wisdom, and bow down to those in power. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman comes in at No. 3:

Thomas Friedman is an environmentalist, now. When he’s not jetting around the world on the literally unlimited expense account his money-bleeding newspaper provides him, pondering KFC billboards he spots outside the windows of gleaming office towers in Delhi — or when he’s not lounging beside the pool at his absurd home — the second-most-influential business thinker in the country is worrying about carbon emissions. Which is, I freely admit, a nice change of pace from back when he was telling the world that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would lead to a glorious new dawn of freedom/democracy/whiskey/iPods/Old Navy in the Middle East as a whole.

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Finally, Some Goddamn Truth Expressed on U.S. TV News

By on October 19, 2010 in News 60

Don’t freak with the BS topic of yesterday in this clip, wait until around 2:45 minutes in where Dylan Ratigan (the only mainstream journalist as far as I’m concerned has been calling out these Wall Street crooks for some time) goes on a well-deserved rant on MSNBC’s Morning Joe regarding the unsaid truth about America’s “War on Terror” — he directly calls out the “extraordinary failure of our politicians and our media” to explain the money route behind these operations.

Thank you, Mr. Ratigan.

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Dan Rather: Watermelons, Washington, and What We Call News Today

By on March 13, 2010 in News 0
Dan Rather reporting from Vietnam in 1966

Dan Rather reporting from Vietnam in 1966

Dan Rather writes on the Huffington Post:

I must confess that until recently I had no idea what Twitter was. Even now, I’m not completely sure how it’s best used. When I want to post something, the younger, more tech-savvy people in my office help me out. But I do know this: if you searched Twitter for “Dan Rather” over the past few days, you probably could guess why I feel the need to write this column.

It started this past Sunday when I appeared on Chris Matthews’ syndicated talk show. I’ve known and respected Chris for many years and I enjoy doing his show. I take the train down from my home in New York to Washington D.C. and as I approach Union Station my thoughts often turn to the years I spent covering the Johnson and Nixon White Houses. It was a turbulent time for the country and a formative period for me as a reporter and a young father.

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