Al Jazeera boss: "Americans, God love them, are the most uninformed people on the planet"

Tony Burman was at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for years. Now he's running Al Jazeera English, and gives a long interview to a blog from due North. AJE is proving to be a pretty popular brand everywhere but North America, and Burman with his deep understanding of the Canadian system seems poised to get it landed there as well. That would leave us.
And judging from this money quote, Burman knows it's going to be a tough sell here:
"Societies that see news media as a central part of their political and cultural lives do not trust market forces, commercial forces, to exclusively provide media. There's only one country that does that now, that effectively has no public system, and that's the United States. It's got a very small public television presence in PBS and a somewhat larger radio one with NPR. But there's a pride in the U.S. in saying most of our media is due to commercial companies. The result of that is that you have a lot of awful journalism being done in the U.S. Throughout Europe, Canada, in Britain, you have strong public broadcasters. The people of those countries have the opportunity through their taxes to ensure that at least there's one broadcaster that's working on their behalf.
"If the people of any country rely solely on private companies to provide essential information, the lifeblood of democracy, then you're really risking it. I think countries like the U.S. have done that to their peril. Americans, God love them, are one of the most uninformed people on the planet. A lot of it has to do with the failure of their media to keep them informed. Canadians should be very proud of the historical origins of public broadcasting. I think from afar that Canadian politicians are dropping the ball. Many of them think the American model is one to be emulated."
I still think that if the emir has a few million to spare, he should really think about paying to get AJE placed on cable systems in the U.S. Ten years ago, my readers were bellyaching for the Fox News Channel. But all the complaining in the world wouldn't have done much good had Rupert Murdoch not decided to pay the piper.