Via the Globe and Mail:

Today [Gore is] here to talk about Current TV, but also about the general state of TV news in the U.S. “We’re the only independent TV news organization on the entire television platform,” he says of Current TV. “And this is important to note. The country is in trouble. The dialogue about democracy is broken.”

He’s a bit steamed at the other all-news channels. Something that bugs him about CNN (one of his Current TV anchors, Cenk Uygur, would, at a later press conference, describe CNN as “drivel”), Fox News and MSNBC is the treatment of every issue as one with a 50/50 opinion context.

“What about the climate issue?” he says. “98 per cent of all the climate scientists in the world say that it’s real. Every national academy of science, every professional scientific society says it’s urgent. You gotta act. And then there are a couple of wackos who are on the payroll of large carbon polluters, so on TV it’s a 50/50 issue. It’s not a 50/50 issue, but both sides are given equal time.”

He also says that most all-news channel coverage is biased, not just politically, but because it aims to favour the rich.

“The dialogue that occurs on most of the other news networks is seriously tilted toward the top of the income ladder, the corporate point of view, the conglomerate view. Current TV isn’t part of any conglomerate.”

Now, Current TV isn’t a conglomerate, but its investors are. From the WSJ last year on the hiring of Keith Olbermann and Current’s failed 2008 IPO:

Current Media founders Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, and Joel Hyatt — founder of Hyatt Legal Services — are majority owners of Current Media, according to the IPO filings. Ron Burkle’s investment firm, cable operator Comcast and satellite-TV company DirecTV also were also listed as significant stockholders in the company.

How can you be “independent” when your investors are Comcast and DirecTV?

Even better, to sum up man-of-the-people Al Gore’s business model, he wants to create a news channel owned by very rich people that delivers news to poor people and in the process, makes the rich people even richer Viva the 1 percent!