For anyone who still held out hope for Al Gore’s revolutionary assault on the cable news industry … it’s officially over. Gone are the heady days of Keith Olbermann, Cenk Uygur, and other leftists who were too unhinged for MSNBC. Current TV is dead, officially completing it’s metamorphosis from “network with zero viewers” into “Al Jazeera America.”
Al Jazeera America, to replace Current TV, already has a tumblr account, code of ethics and CNN's Ali Velshi: http://t.co/6eiBrRAsfn
— Eric Deggans at NPR (@Deggans) April 4, 2013
Look at its shiny new Twitter account!
https://twitter.com/ajam/status/319960677974433793
Wasting no time in rebranding its new network, Al Jazeera also announced its new marquee personality: CNN’s now-former business correspondent Ali Velshi.
https://twitter.com/ajam/status/319928634674663424
https://twitter.com/AliVelshi/status/319925763019268096
We assume that Velshi is meant to lend the type of gravitas that Olbermann and former Current TV host Jennifer Granholm never had. That seems to be the case according to the glowing statement issued on the channel’s new website.
[Al Jazeera official Ehab Al Shihabi] said that Velshi is exactly the kind of journalist that viewers will be able to find on Al Jazeera America. “As is the case with Ali, all Al Jazeera America reporters will be fiercely objective, substantively strong, and absolutely committed to the truth,” he said.
Something tells us that this move will damage Velshi’s credibility more than it will help his toxic new employer. Just a hunch.