Al Gore is not merely the face of the Green Movement

Essays, books and at least one movie have been created, documenting how Al Gore was robbed of his presidency of the United States of America. Clearly, many intelligent people have given the events of the 2000 US presidential election much thought, and many feel aggrieved that Gore did not serve a term of office. Given his recent activities over the last 10 years, however, it seems Gore himself has not dwelt too much on the disappointment.

Gore has since become the unofficial de facto face of the Green Movement, primarily thanks to his part in the documentary feature, An Inconvenient Truth.

His central role in that film has hoisted his profile and influence well beyond what is typically attributed to former vice presidents, American or otherwise.

And given the success and exposure of the movie, most people could be forgiven for assuming that was all in which he was involved.

That would be a mistake. Unbeknown to most, Gore, along with businessman Joel Hyatt, form the leadership of Current TV, the young adult-programmed news and information service that pioneered the concept of user-generated content.

To those aware of Gore’s history as a newsman, the move is not that surprising. He recently made an unpublicised visit to South Africa to attend the launch of the country’s newest pay television network TopTV, which includes Current TV as one of its channels.

Leadership had the opportunity to chat with Gore about what makes Current TV unique, and the face of journalism today.

What is Current TV, and what makes it different?

Television as a medium evolved in ways that rolled back the dynamism and creativity which came into world culture with the creation of the printing press.

More than 500 years ago, the media environment was very tightly controlled by the medieval church – this is a Eurocentric analysis, but with variation it applies to other parts of the world – and then the printing press broke up that old controlled model.

All of a sudden, individuals could take part in the conversation, and the ancient texts were translated into popular languages and then new forms of expression emerged, such as Shakespeare.

But then more than 60 years ago, television – because of its great reach, its ability to connect with a mass audience – actually began to recentralise the flow of information that was more easily controlled by one or a few small groups of people.

And television continued to grow in its dominance to the point where, in many parts of the world, newspapers have seen their business models challenged. Many have let go a large number of their reporters. Many newspapers in the US have had to close their doors.

But then the Internet began to play an increasing role, and it is similar in the structure of its information marketplace to the early days of the printing press. Bloggers or young video creators can easily enter the conversation and if they find an audience, then their message resonates.

Even though newspapers have suffered because of television’s dominance, even though the Internet is coming into centre stage, television is still very, very dominant. So Current TV has to be understood in the context of that historical development.

Our purpose is to connect the dynamism and energy and creativity of the Internet to the mass audience. We’re seeing small, low-cost, high-quality video cameras in the hands of individuals and we’re seeing laptop editing systems replacing expensive, large consoles from before – and now a single person, a young woman in her 20s, can shoot video and edit it on a laptop and upload it to the Internet and connect to millions of people. That’s a very exciting and hopeful development.

In the past, it has been extremely difficult for young creators of video content to reach a mass audience. Yes, it’s true that on YouTube, a few videos go viral and find millions of eyeballs, but there has not been a reliable connection between the Internet and the mass audience of television.

So Current TV was created five years ago to do that – beginning in the US, then spreading to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy and now – thanks to TopTV – South Africa. It has become the fastest growing cable and satellite television channel in history.

We are still in the early days of Current TV’s growth, but already we have 70 million subscribers around the world and young, creative videographers and citizen journalists are able – whatever country they live in – to connect with a global audience.

So what is the purpose of Current TV?

The heart of Current TV is citizen journalism and investigative journalism. The ability of the people in any democracy to make good decisions and to hold elected officials accountable and to give them feedback so they can do a better job always – the key to all of that is for citizens to be well informed and to have the ability to express themselves freely and forcefully without any kind of censorship.

Current TV is an open platform – open in the sense that our viewers determine what gets on and it’s driven by the merit of the material as perceived by our viewers.

How will this benefit South Africans?

What is unique about Current TV, is that individual content creators in South Africa can join the conversation of democracy through the medium of television, including investigative journalism.

I’m biased, of course, but I believe our Vanguard team [Current TV’s in-house journalism department] is the best investigative journalism team on television. We have already won two Emmy’s. We have now won every major award for top quality investigative journalism on television in the US and we’re still young.

I look forward to the day, not too long from now, when young creators and investigative journalists and citizen journalists in South Africa will be regularly connecting with a global audience, and perhaps most importantly, with a large audience here in South Africa, telling stories that no one else is telling.

It’s an effective way to bring new dynamism and health to democracy, to make the conversation vibrant and dynamic – and I’m very, very excited about it.

It has been said that part of your motivation for starting Current TV was your disillusionment with the current crop of news channels – is that true?

Current TV is about storytelling – news and information and investigative journalism – not only on politics and government policies and things like that which can sometimes be boring, but don’t have to be.

We try to make them all exciting, but we also report on developments in culture and in the lives of everyday people, particularly young people.

We have viewers of all ages, but what we found, is that the core of our audience is made up of young adults in their 20s and 30s. That’s really the core of our audience.

We’ve had some incredibly exciting pieces made by 14- to 15-year olds and I’m just astonished at the ability of some of these kids to master the new digital media.

I was once a journalist. After I graduated from college, I went to the army and went to Vietnam and when I came back to the US, I had no idea what I was going to do.

I became a journalist and I was actually a working reporter for many, many years before I got into politics. I taught at a journalism school after I left the vice presidency.

I have tremendous respect for journalism and I have tremendous respect for the television journalists who do a terrific job, but many of them now find themselves trapped in a system that has pressures which serve to restrict television journalism.

The journalism profession became the “news” business and then the news businesses were bought by conglomerates. And then news was mixed with entertainment and became too frequently ‘infotainment’ in search of a higher rating, sometimes at the cost of pushing down the quality.

Watching the traditional network news, often the anchor will come on and say: “And now for tonight’s in-depth piece” and I look at my watch and time it. And the in-depth piece is rarely more than two minutes long. That’s supposed to be an in-depth investigation of very complex subject matters!

Increasingly, many media companies have crowded into that same space and it’s left the audience who actually wants high-quality journalism – which is presented in a compelling and engaging way – with no options.

Current TV wants to provide exactly that kind of citizen journalism and investigative journalism.

Regarding citizen journalism, does the issue of libel ever come up, considering the fact that some of your contributors may be ignorant of the laws or because laws vary as you cross borders?

Let me separate that question into two parts.

First of all, when citizen journalists provide material to Current TV, our audience helps to pick what they believe is of highest quality, but then our producers, editors and graphic artists help the citizen journalist by adding the highest quality production values so that the core of what they are trying to represent is surrounded with the highest quality of graphics and editing, so the production is as engaging as it possibly can be.

Simultaneously, our lawyers and copyright specialists will do their best to ensure that no one’s material is taken unfairly, that the rights holders are compensated, that there is not a violation of some law, such as libel laws.

So we protect the citizen journalists in that manner and, by the way, one of the features of the Internet is that our audience reviews the pieces before they go on television.

You may or may not be surprised at how vigorously the audience picks up everything it thinks is not right or not fair, and so we take all those comments into account when we are reviewing pieces before they go on the air.

No system is perfect. You are inevitably going to have mistakes, even newspapers make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean that the newspapers aren’t doing their very best.

And if you’re so afraid of making mistakes that you don’t go after important material, then you’re not doing your job.

But we haven’t had problems like that. The system has worked extremely well.

Finally, how does Current TV work into your passion for the environment?

We have a very high percentage of our investigative pieces and journalism pieces devoted to the environment. But we’re not an environmental channel.

We cover the full spectrum of news and information, including the environment, but not so much because of my being co-founder with my partner Joel (Hyatt) and the chairperson of Current TV, but I think mainly because our team is predominantly made up of young people who are more tuned into environmental issues – the largest of which is the climate crisis. ▲

Zaid Kriel