Faked Al Jazeera Syria story

Abu Heitham Qasqos, who was quoted by Al-Jazeera as an eyewitness to the Jisr al Shagoor killings, said that the network offered him $200 and a meal and asked him to say what they wanted him to say. Abu Heitham disclosed his allegations with regard to the bribe on 29th November 2011 in an interview with Iran's Fars newsagency. This is one of a number of allegedly false reports by Al Jazeera at this time.
See this link

Al Jazeera under attack in Libya.

Ali Hassan Al Jaber, a cameraman working for Al-Jazeera was shot and killed in Benghazi, Libya on 13 March 2011.

During the turmoil of the last month in the Middle East, Al- Jazeera has been praised for its daring and courageous covering of the unfolding events. Often this coverage has seen resistance and opposition from the countries from within which it has been reporting from.

Al Jazeera issued a statement saying that the killing of the camera man "comes as part of the Libyan regime's malicious campaign targeting Al Jazeera and its staff".

Abu Mazin bans Al Jazeera

Abu Mazin has banned Al Jazeera in the West Bank - because they claimed he killed Arafat. I am doubtful Abu Mazin was culpable. But I am quite certain Arafat was assassinated. I visited him with a press delegation a couple of days before he was taken ill - and he was as fit as a fiddle.

The Palestinian Authority said Wednesday it was suspending the West Bank operations of al-Jazeera, alleging incitement and unbalanced reporting by the Arab news station from the Palestinian territories.

Al Jazeera Honoured

Adel sends this with the comment: "I often wondered as why Arab academics are the most ill informed about current affairs world wide!"

Al Jazeera assessed as the most reliable source of news in the Middle East by Arab Academics

DOHA, Qatar, 30 January 2008: In an extensive poll of Arab Academics in over 19 countries, Arab polling agency The Knowledge World Centre for Polls found that Al Jazeera was the most respected news agency in the Middle East, and over 98% of Political Science and Media professors in the region claimed to watch at least 3 hours of Al Jazeera per day. Demonstrating its unrivaled popularity in the region, the poll found that Al Jazeera's viewership was over three times that of its closest rival, and over twenty-eight times that of its third closest competitor.

Senior Al-Jazeera Talk Show Host: U.S. Media Has Further Developed Goebbel's Propaganda Methods

...No wonder the US has such a distaste for Al-Jazeera. It is well worth following the trail of his piece. The article he cites as a source for his inappropriate assertion includes a reference to the US perpetrating 'staged' terror attacks on its own soil, to blame Iran.

Excerpt:

"Lest anyone think that comparing the U.S. media, which is the most respected media in the world, to Goebbels's propaganda is a distortion of [reality] and grave injustice, here is a big, fresh headline [that appeared] in a American paper on Tuesday, September 4, 2007: 'Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran: Fox News, Wall Street Journal instructed to launch PR blitz for upcoming military strike.' This headline is not taken from an Arab newspaper or any [other] communications channel that wishes to denigrate the American media; it comes from an article written by prominent American journalist Paul Joseph Watson for the Prison Planet (a paper which gets most of its information from important U.S. papers and magazines such as the famous New Yorker).

Full Item

Sudanese Islamic Leaders Threaten U.S.

Felix sends this item with the comment: "What a sweetiepie. Master at using knowledge and information incorrectly and turns it it to lethal threats ending with the casual cry of Allahu Akbar in which probably he does not even believe. A classic tyrant." Our concern here is the role of Al Jazeera Satellite TV in giving a platform for this kind of hatred and xenophobia. If standards of good practice are expected from the Western Press, those same standards should apply to a sophisticated news organisation like Al Jazeera:

Dr. Hassan Al-'Audha, Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood: "America believes that it is the master of the world, and that all other people are its slaves, who are subordinate to it and must obey it. America believes that it owns the oil discovered in Sudan. These are not my words. [Former U.S. president] Carter declared some two years ago: 'We wanted the oil of Sudan to be used for the pleasure of the American people after 2005.'"

TO VIEW THIS CLIP CLICK HERE

Qardawi promotes violence - AGAIN and AGAIN

One of Al Jazeera's greatest sins - probably its greatest by a mile - is the airtime it gives to the Egyptian zealot preacher, Yousef Qardawi. Felix writes: This is truly very sick and must be on your blog as an example of hatefulmisrepresentation of history meant to mislead today's generation concerninghistory -both the history of the holocaust and the history of the near East.Regardless of Quradhawi's official titles within Islam, he purposefully misrepresents history in no less a fashion than past and present falsifierssuch as Hitler and his ilk, religious or secular, who simply refuse to facefacts well recorded. In that sense he is worse than a flat earther whosimply refuses to face reality but otherwise has no further influence inmankind. Qaradhawi engenders hateful thoughts and ideas to help stoke thefire of lothesome self immolation in the name of a religion whose essentialshe has perverted.

Hamas Leader Khaled Mash'al Praises Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi for HisSupport of Suicide Operations and States: Holocaust Exaggerated, Being Usedto Extort Germany, and Zionist Holocaust Against Arabs Much Worse

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML click here

The following are excerpts from speeches delivered by Hamas leader KhaledMash'al and Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi at a conference honoringAl-Qaradhawi. The speeches aired on Al-Jazeera TV on July 16, 2007.

To view this clip click here

The Ballot Box alone does not Constitute Democracy

From Memri (with thanks to Felix) and well worth reading in full:

Egyptian Liberal Sayid Al-Qimni, London Islamist Hani Al-Sibai Debate Secularism, Fundamentalism in Arab World

The following are excerpts from a debate between Egyptian liberal Sayid Al-Qimni and London Islamist Hani Al-Sibai, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on July 10, 2007.

Sayid Al-Qimni: "The ballot box alone does not constitute democracy. The ballot box is just a box made of glass, and nobody knows what goes on inside. People put a piece of paper in it. By no means does the ballot box constitute democracy. We are the prey over which two types of [predators] compete: ruling families and military governments on the one hand, and Islamic dictatorships on the other hand. These two types of dictatorships compete over us, the prey.

"When the mufti of the government bans a certain book, the mufti of the [Islamist] groups bans a movie. The former places a ban on words, and the latter places a 'ban' on an entire person, by killing him. The women wear a uniform like soldiers. You see them in the street, and they all look like soldiers. The government flogs anyone who goes to the police station to file a complaint. The Islamists legitimize flogging. If you legitimize flogging, why are you angry when the government does it? How can you be angry at the government for flogging you, when you are the ones legitimizing the flogging? Flogging is part of Islamic law.

"When you go to the mosque they humiliate you, saying: 'You are responsible for what happened to the nation.' This poor man merely came to fulfill his religious duties, and they pile this dirt on him in the mosque. They humiliate him and attribute all the sins of this nation to him. All the nation's defeats are due to this wretched man's defiance of God. They are constantly setting new red lines. Is there such a thing as red lines in democracy? The government has its own red lines, the ruling families have their own red lines, and so do the military and the Islamists. I also have red lines, but it's useless.

"As you've said, these people issue fatwas about saliva, about the urine of camels, about the urine of the Prophet, and so on... Look, all these people, this entire process, all the candidates, the people who won the elections, the people who helped them succeed - they all belong in the madhouse."

View the piece

AL JAZEERA GATHERING DRAWS FULL MINYAN

The Forward reports on the invited participation of Jews, including the keynote speaker, at Al-Jazeera's third annual form in Doha, Qatar - personally I don't see it as any big deal:

AL JAZEERA GATHERING DRAWS FULL MINYAN TO HEART OF OF ARAB WORLD By Orly Halpern - The Forward April 27, 2007
Some participants at the third-annual forum of the Arab satellite network Al Jazeera were sorry they didn’t bring matzo with them — had they known how many fellow Jews were attending the media conference, they would have made a Passover Seder.
“We could have used the hotel wine to fill our cups,” Mark LeVine said only half-jokingly. A professor of Middle East studies at University of California in Irvine, LeVine was one of several Jewish participants who attended the invitation-only conference in Doha, organized by Al Jazeera.

TO VIEW FULL REPORT CLICK HERE

Nobel Peace Prize Stems from "Protocols"

Felix writes: Unique stuff. Hitler and Goebbels also used to complain that the Jews received too many Nobel prizes compared to ordinary Germans ! !

From: MEMRI memri@memri.org
Sent: 15 November 2006 16:13

Iraqi Researcher Living in Europe on Al-Jazeera TV: The Nobel Peace Prize is Racist; "Why Has the Prize Been Awarded to 167 Jews and Only 4 Arabs... All Considered Traitors?"; The Prize Stems from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, click here

The following are excerpts from an interview with Samir 'Ubeid, an Iraqi researcher living in Europe, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on October 31, 2006.

TO VIEW THIS CLIP CLICK HERE

Al Jazeera launch

Al Jazeera launches its new English language satellite service today.

For full report click here

The Middle East's reality

Interesting piece:

Al-Jazeera may transmit Islamist rhetoric, but that's the Middle East's reality

By khalid Hroub
Commentary by
Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Future media historians in the Middle East will conceivably distinguish two distinct though related eras: pre- and post-Al-Jazeera. Few would dispute the station's impact on free expression and the media in the region since its creation in 1996. However, despite its importance in the creation of an "Arab" public sphere, Al-Jazeera's contribution to political change is, at best, limited. This seeming paradox remains an enigma to many analysts.

For full article click here.

Al-Jazeera in the current conflict

Hezbollah's propaganda ministry
By Rafik Halabi

A month before the war in Lebanon broke out, the Al Jazeera channel began filming documentary programs, which have not yet been broadcast, about life in Israel and, among other things, the Hebrew press. In an interview that a reporter for the channel conducted with me, she read out questions that had been dictated by the office in Amman and the editorial desk in Qatar. I told her the Israeli press reflects, in many cases, the opinions of the government and the public's wishes. The Hebrew press has for the most part moved to the center and is even moving rightward. I asserted that the role of the media is not to join the cheerleading squad of the government and the street. To my mind it is natural and good that in Israel different approaches be represented and criticism of the press's functioning be expressed. Al Jazeera wanted to depict the ills of the Israeli press with respect to its attitude toward the Arab population in Israel, the Palestinian problem and the approach to Islam. However, the directors and editors of the channel need to examine their consciences with respect to their part in Lebanon War II.

I will begin by saying that it is to Al Jazeera's credit that it has changed the journalistic and cultural values in the Arab world. On its news and current affairs programs harsh criticism of their regimes is heard from Egyptian, Jordanian and even Moroccan and Saudi intellectuals. Al Jazeera is the Hyde Park of the Arab world. However, during the Lebanon War the channel set aside its journalistic values and enlisted on behalf of Hezbollah. Right during the first week Ghassan bin Jado - the director of the office in Beirut and Hassan Nasrallah's darling - was granted an exclusive interview with the chairman in his hideout. The field reporters for Al Jazeera, most notably among them Abbas Nasser, had no hesitations about describing the Israel Defense Forces' actions as a "barbaric attack." In their opinion, the air force was only seeking out "the weak" civilians, "the children, the old people and the women."

The claim that Hezbollah fighters were concealing themselves in underground hideouts beneath the homes of the miserable civilians did not interest them. They broadcast shocking, vivid descriptions and chilling footage of the killing at Qana, the likes of which have not been shown in the West for years. The Al Jazeera journalists wanted to provide a victory for Hezbollah in the psychological war. In a number of cases, when they invited an Israeli interviewee they treated him like a punching bag, as though they saw it as an obligation to insult him and in this way make their contribution to Hezbollah's war effort. When their Israeli interlocutor expressed criticism of the war or of the government, I felt the Al Jazeera people did not understand the freedom of expression and the democracy in Israel. The matter of the IDF spokesman's representative who in the interview with him evinced arrogance and insensitivity - merits investigation by the IDF. Nevertheless, he and all the other Israeli spokesmen were invited in order to "get hit on the head" more than to voice what they had to say.

At the end of last week, when television crews were permitted to go down south, Bin Jado was accompanied by a Hezbollah fighter whose entire function boiled down to holding a microphone in front of the man who gave extravagant descriptions of his heroism in face of "the Zionist soldiers, who wept like women."

He acted like a spokesman and not like a journalist, in a way that only reinforced the sense that Al Jazeera was functioning as the Hezbollah's propaganda ministry.

Al Jazeera apparently has two distinct codes: The one relating to the Arab world is based on journalistic values of fairness and search for the truth; the other has to do with Israel. All of the commentators who appeared in the Al Jazeera studios in Egypt and in Beirut saw only Israeli failures. And what about the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese refugees whose world had come tumbling down on them? In Lebanon are they not mourning the hundreds of dead, the dozens of destroyed villages? Is it reasonable to assume that the $12,000 dollars that Islamic resistance activists are handing out in front of the cameras will be greeted with cries of "Long live Nasrallah?"; the impression emerged that Al Jazeera has an ideological line that is nourished by "the Arab nationalists" and "the Islamic resistance."

Al Jazeera, my favorite channel, severely disappointed me during the Lebanon War when it fled from fulfilling its journalistic obligation and preferred to serve as a bulletin board on which the Hezbollah hung its statements.

The writer is a journalist and lecturer in communications.

Think Again: Al Jazeera

Radwan submits this piece from "Foreign Policy" titled "Think Again: Al Jazeera"

By Hugh Miles
July/August 2006
It is vilified as a propaganda machine and Osama bin Ladens mouthpiece. In truth, though, Al Jazeera is as hated in the palaces of Riyadh as it is in the White House. But, as millions of loyal viewers already know, Al Jazeera promotes a level of free speech and dissent rarely seen in the Arab world. With plans to go global, it might just become your network of choice.

Al Jazeera Supports Terrorism

False, though the network makes little attempt to disassociate itself from those who do. This claim is one of the loudest arguments that Western critics have levied against the Arabic-language news channel since its inception 10 years ago, when the Doha, Qatar-based network pledged to present all viewpoints. Just as it describes in its motto, The opinion and the other opinion, Al Jazeera has lent airtime even to hated political figures and extremists, including prominent members of al Qaeda. Its this willingness to present terrorists as legitimate political commentators that has prompted outspoken critics such as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to refer to Al Jazeeras coverage of the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as inaccurate and inexcusable.

After all, when Al Jazeera offers its estimated 50 million viewers exclusive interviews of Osama bin Laden, its easy to confuse access with endorsement. And when a journalist who conducts those interviews is jailed for collaboration with al Qaeda, as Tayssir Alouni was in a Spanish court last year, the line between impartial observer and impassioned supporter is certainly blurred. In addition, al Qaeda is not the only terrorist group that reaches out to Al Jazeera. Besides the infamous bin Laden tapesat least six of which the network has still never airedAl Jazeera has also received tapes from insurgent groups in Iraq, renegade Afghan warlords, and the London suicide bombers.

But the network has never supported violence against the United States. Not once have its correspondents praised attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. The network has never captured an attack on the coalition live, and theres no evidence Al Jazeera has known about any attack beforehand. Despite claims to the contrary, the network has never aired footage of a beheading. As for Alounis case, conclusive evidence has yet to be presented to the public. And there is nothing to suggest that the networks funding is illegitimate. Allegations of supporting terrorism remain just that allegations.

For the full text of the article go to the link below or follow the link above in the heading

http://rd.bcentral.com/?ID=4231540&s=85467278

Hugh Miles is the author of Al Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel that Is Challenging the West (New York: Grove Press, 2005).