Is Al Jazeera Trying to Be CNN or Fox? - Washington's Blog
by David Swanson
Some weeks back I got a call from Al Jazeera wanting me to be on a show, but insisting that I couldn’t do it from a local studio via satellite or from my computer via Skype. No, I would have to fly to New York and back, and they would pay for the flight and pay a “per diem” as well (they didn’t specify how much). I was not eager to take a whole day out of my life to fly to New York and back, but they sold me on it. This, they told me, would be the premier edition of a new Sunday morning news program to compete with the existing ones. And it would include different perspectives.
I thought the taping went well, such as it was. There were no glaring problems, and all sorts of executives and bigwigs shook our hands and thanked us. I thanked one of them for airing (I thought that the show would in fact be airing) something that the other networks would never air, and the look I got back disturbed me. I wondered whether they actually found that idea unpleasant. I flew back home on their dime. I started telling people that Al Jazeera was going to air something different from the norm of Sunday political TV.
I heard little from the Al Jazeera folks for some weeks. They’d been eager to know when I’d be back in New York, but when I told them they didn’t seem so interested anymore. I asked them about paying my “per diem” and they weaseled out of it with a claim that they would only pay for food and cabs with receipts. I’d given them a receipt for a cab when their car hadn’t shown up at La Guardia. They’d never hinted that I needed to get receipts for food or that that was what they meant by “per diem.” In the same email that included that weaseling, the out-of-the-loop producer who’d first contacted me said “I hope you got to watch the premier this past Sunday!”
That was odd. Nobody had told me it was going to be on or that they’d seen it. What good was this show if nobody saw it? I asked where the clip was online and got no response. Some days later I found a website for the show. Here it is: http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/third-rail.html The show is called The Third Rail, but it’s not exactly electrifying. It’s the same old, same old, with Judith Miller and Alan Dershowitz and such types. The guests fit with the attitude I picked up on in the studio of wanting to be CNN. These videos don’t make for something worth announcing to the world as new and different from the usual gang of corporate hacks regurgitating talking points. The show I taped is not there.
Complete story at - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/is-al-jazeera-trying-to-be-cnn-or-fox.html
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