[liberationtech] Hillary Clinton on Al Jazeera and Information War

[Kris Kotarski]

Hi all,

In case anyone missed it, this clip of Hillary Clinton testifying in  
the U.S. Senate is worth watching. Clinton laments the cultural  
message coming out to the world from private US television stations,  
and mentions first hand that America is known for men wrestling (WWF/ 
WWE) and women in bikinis (Baywatch).

Clinton: "We are in an information war and we are losing that war. Al  
Jazeera is winning."

A little later...

Clinton: “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. 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."

A longer clip (3.07) containing Clinton's full answer to the question  
from Sen. Richard Lugar is available at the bottom of this link: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/hillary-clinton-claims-al-jazeera-is-winning-an-information-war-that-america-is-losing/

I pulled the quote from here: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/03/sec-of-state-hillary-clinton-al-jazeera-is-real-news-us-losing-information-war.html

Clinton then goes on to outline outreach programs on the web (incl.  
social media). In any case, I find it very interesting to see the US  
State Dept. publicly conceptualize "information war" in this manner  
and, like all of you, I eagerly await Glenn Beck's response.

Best,

Kris Kotarski

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@Kotarski