Hillary Clinton's Opinion of Al Jazeera

Americans are blind when it comes to good news; this is true according to Hillary Clinton. In the article “Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: Al Jazeera is ‘Real News’, U.S. Losing ‘Information War’” Clinton said “Al Jazeera has been the leader in that are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective”. She continued by saying “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,” . Clinton said that ever since the Cold War news in America has never been the same or very informative “We have not really kept up with the times,” Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton also said that we are at war “We are in an information war and we cannot assume that this youth bulge that exists not just in the Middle East but in so many parts of the world really knows much about us. I mean we think they know us and reject us, I would argue the really don’t know very much about who we are,” This article was very interesting to me because here we have a woman who is deeply involved in politics and knows her stuff. The question that hit me after reading what Hillary Clinton said was why is nearly every other political figure and person in government is so against Al Jazeera? Especially when someone as educated and who has the political credibility of Hillary Clinton backing them up. And why won’t American cables give Al Jazeera a channel.

I did some research on this and found out why American cable systems won't carry the Al Jazeera Network in the article called “Why American Cable Systems Won't Carry the Al Jazeera Network”. The Article said it is because many cable companies agree with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and feel that Al Jazeera is “a mouthpiece of al Qaeda” and “inexcusably biased,”. Most importantly many cable companies feel that if they do get a deal and are shown all over the U.S. all of the other American News shows would get canceled or at least they fear that because “Cable and satellite providers in the U.S. have received more than 40,000 e-mails from customers urging they carry Al Jazeera English, according to AJE managing director Al Anstey. The network’s website traffic shot up 2,500 percent in the wake of the ongoing revolts, with half of that originating in the U.S.”. Another reason that this article gives to why some cable providers don’t carry Al Jazeera is “largely because cable operators have no interest in carrying it”.