Gore Turned Down Glenn Beck for Qatar

The Wall Street Journal reports that Glenn Beck–who approached Current TV about a sale last year–was too right-wing for the network to even consider his offer. But an authoritarian-Islamist government that has criminalized homosexuality, discriminates against non-Muslims, prosecutes journalists, and has a “Not Free” rating from Freedom House? That was fine:

Before Al-Jazeera, there was Glenn Beck.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Glenn Beck’s media company, The Blaze, approached Current Media about a sale last year, but was told in the words of one source that “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.”

The Blaze “reached out to them to buy it,” a source familiar with the talks told POLITICO. “They would have replaced Current programming with The Blaze programming, but were told on initial calls that [Current] wouldn’t sell to someone they weren’t ideologically in line with.”

In explaining the reasons for selling to Al-Jazeera, Current co-founder and CEO Joel Hyatt told the Journal that the Qatari-based broadcaster “was founded with the same goals we had for Current,” including “to give voice to those whose voices are not typically heard” and “to speak truth to power.”

Sure, Al Jazeera can “speak truth to power,” as long as the powerful are not in Qatar.

Whatever your feelings about Glenn Beck, he doesn’t advocate government censorship of the Internet or crackdowns on dissidents for “insulting” the nation’s leadership. He also isn’t funded primarily by the oil and gas industry, which Al Gore has spent his post-government career criticizing. So the fact that Qatari-owned Al Jazeera is supposedly more ideologically compatible with Current TV than Glenn Beck gives you an idea of how far off the left is from any genuine position of liberalism.

But Al Jazeera’s Qatari funding also raises other questions for Current TV. While foreign, authoritarian government-funded networks aren’t required to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, they often act as propaganda arms for their respective regimes (a prime example being the Kremlin-funded Russia Today, which now goes by the inconspicuous moniker RT). Al Jazeera is no exception, pushing an editorial line that supports the ruling emir’s interests, along with a clear anti-Western and anti-Israel slant. This isn’t something that will play well with advertisers or cable providers–Time Warner Cable dropped Current TV almost immediately after the sale was announced. If outside pressure mounts, others could follow suit. After all, it’s not as if Current TV had strong ratings to begin with.