Executives of Al Jazeera America announced that they are terminating all news and digital operations in the U.S. as of April 2016. The announcement marks the rapid collapse of what, from the start, has been an incredible train wreck.
Per their announcement:
“While Al Jazeera America built a loyal audience across the US and increasingly was recognized as an important new voice in television news, the economic landscape of the media environment has driven its strategic decision to wind down its operations and conclude its service,” the company said in a statement. The Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera said it is planning to expand its existing international digital services with the aim of making it available across more platforms in the U.S. It said it will provide more details of those plans in the coming months. Al Jazeera was launched in 1996 with the aim of becoming the first independent news channel in the Arab world providing news and commentary.”
The network which is funded by the government of Qatar, launched in August, 2013 after buying Current TV, the cable news channel co-founded by Al Gore, for about $500 million.
Last May the NY Times reported:
The station has been a nonfactor in news, drawing about 30,000 viewers a night. To make matters worse, in the last week, a lawsuit and an exodus of top executives have brought to the surface a series of grievances that employees say reflects a deep dysfunction in management of the newsroom, undermining the network’s mission.
The truth is that too many people did not believe that Al Jazeera, funded by the terrorists supporting county of Qatar could ever come close to approaching fair reporting, even at the liberal U.S. mainstream media standards.
The Al Jazeera controversy began with climate alarmist Al Gore’s sale of Current TV to oil rich Qatar. The articles linked to below cover those initial controversies:
- Al Jazeera sues Al Gore
- Al Gore Claims Al Jazeera Is Using His Money to ‘Buy Favor With Its Distributors’
- Gore fraud suit against Al Jazeera ‘the height of hypocrisy’ – ‘Who gets to sue Al Gore?’ After the deal was announced, you might think that Gore would have chosen to modulate his criticism of the oil industry, given his personal debt to Qatar crude. Wrong. That month, Gore went on NBC’s “Today” to promote his book, “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.” In the book, Gore wrote, “Virtually every news and political commentary program on television is sponsored in part by oil, coal and gas companies” – like that was a bad thing.
- Al Gore Sues Al Jazeera for Fraud for Withholding Money From Sale of Current TV
- AlGorjeera — It’s Official: Al Gore is by far the most lavishly funded fossil fuel player in the global warming debate today – ‘Gore’s massive personal cash influx from oil-backed Al Jazeera makes him by far the most lavishly funded fossil fuel player in the global warming debate today. Will the media now accurately label Gore an industry funded activist every time they report on him?’
- Flashback: Current TV staffers lash out at Gore: ‘The mostly left-leaning group—some still in denial —weren’t buying what Al Jazeera was selling’ – ‘Gore’s supposed to be the face of clean energy and just sold [the channel] to very big oil, the emir of Qatar! Current never even took big oil advertising—and Al Gore, that
