Al-Jazeera Decline

Anti-Syrians semi-international war has not only used the takfiri, extremist and multi-national terrorists, smuggling of weapons and ‘non-lethal’ sophisticated technology, but further exploited media means as a weapon of fabrications, lies, psychosocial war, propaganda and even as a means of giving directions and orders to the terrorists on the Syrian ground. For example, the Qatari Al-Jazeera Satellite TV has almost put aside all world news and accorded all of its efforts to the crisis in Syria, but in flagrantly biased and fabricated coverage. Thus, according to its all-knowing Analyst, Safwat Al-Zayat, Syria exists on more on the map, to its Faysal Al-Qassem, every Syrian is against his/her government and President, not to mention the many false news aired and  inaccurate non-Syrian pictures shown as taking place in Syria, and  the fatwas of its Qaradawi.

According to a recent news report by United Press International (UPI) News Agency, Al-Jazeera is no longer a voice for change, but of propaganda for its royal owner, journalists who used to work for the network say. UPI quoted the German Der Spiegel as reporting that in recent months, Al-Jazeera has been used to serve the political agenda of its owner and founder, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir of Qatar.

“Before the beginning of the Arab Spring, we were a voice for change, a platform for critics and political activists throughout the region,” said Aktham Suleiman, who worked at al-Jazeera’s office in Berlin. “Now, al-Jazeera has become a propaganda broadcaster.” “If a differentiation is no longer made between activists and journalists, then that poses a danger to everyone,” Suleiman said.

The Agency quoted another former correspondent as saying that  decisions at the network were no longer based “on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar.” The network ignored mass protests against the Bahraini government, an ally of the emir, the journalists said. In Syria, where Qatar supports the opposition to Syrian government, al-Jazeera favors the foreign-backed armed terrorist groups.

The resignations by al-Jazeera journalists in cities such as Paris, London, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo came as the network paid $500 million for Current TV in a gamble to enter the U.S. market.

According to Akhtham Suleiman, the truth is being twisted. It is about politics, not about journalism, adding that for example, in Aleppo, December 2012: An Al Jazeera correspondent had images relating to Syria that didn’t suit the station’s headquarters and which were not broadcast. This is no isolated incident.

Suleiman added that the correspondent Ali Hashem had  told TV presenter Rola Ibrahim, who was working at the network’s headquarters in Qatar, that he had seen and filmed armed Syrian revolutionaries- terrorists- on the border with Lebanon in 2011. The channel didn’t broadcast the images because they showed an armed deployment, which did not fit the desired narrative of a peaceful uprising. “My bosses told me: forget what you have seen!” Hashem wrote to Rola, as published. She is said to have replied that she was faring no better. She had been “massively humiliated, just because I embarrassed Zuhair Salem, the spokesman for the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, with my questions during a news broadcast. They threatened to exclude me from interviews relating to Syria and to restrict me to presenting the late night news, under the pretext that I was jeopardizing the station’s balance.”

 “Desirable” and less desirable images? Penalties for interviews that are “too critical”? At Al Jazeera? Here it must be said that in the online propaganda war between supporters and opponents of the Syrian regime, anything is possible, including lies and deception, as the months since the outbreak of the uprising in mid-March 2011 have shown. Regime supporters wanted to show that the rebellion is solely waged by “armed gangs.” Regime opponents wanted to show that the Syrian army is the only [party] committing [acts of] violence.

That’s why I asked Ali Hashem, who also resigned in protest at Al-Jazeera biased and inaccurate news coverage,  whether the story was true. His answer was devastating: “Yes, it’s true. Those are really my emails with Rola. I do not know what to do now.” This is about politics, not about journalism. More precisely: about Qatari foreign policy, which had subtly started to employ Al Jazeera as a tool to praise friends and attack enemies.

It was not the first incident. When Al Jazeera’s Japan correspondent, Fadi Salameh, came to Doha at the end of 2011 to help out for a month at the channel’s headquarters, colleagues asked him how he – as a Syrian – assessed or felt about their Syria coverage. He responded evasively with something like: So-so. And why was that? He said: well, the issue of accuracy is no longer taken as seriously as it ought to be, and mentioned the story of his cousin, who  had been depicted as a deserter from the Syrian military only a few days earlier in a video broadcast on the channel. He was said to have defected to the Free Syrian army in a short recording placed online by the rebels.

But that could well be true, replied a colleague. “Not at all.” Fadi replied. “That was a hostage video. The fear apparent on my cousin’s face, having just been captured by the rebels, was unmistakable.”

Later Fadi went on to say that Al Jazeera now presumes to know better than one’s own family members what is happening to someone in Syria. “Only when I said that my cousin had disappeared two days before his wedding, were some people willing to reconsider,” Fadi said. “Thank God no one got the idea that the groom was trying to escape a forced marriage.” He doesn’t muster a laugh. His cousin never returned and is presumed dead. When the story was leaked to a Lebanese newspaper, this was the response from a person in charge at Al Jazeera: “Oh, those [damn] yellow papers…”

“This is an office of the Muslim Brotherhood”

Al Jazeera has become the mother of invention: Those who have protested to the editorial board or turned their backs on the station are “supporters of the Syrian regime,” as  Yaser Al Zaatra, the Jordanian author affiliated with the Islamist camp, wrote this spring in a guest article published on –  it almost defies belief – Al Jazeera’s very own website.

The attacks against its employees [waged] on its own website are meant to obscure the fact that Syria is not the core issue in this internal conflict, but rather the station’s lack of professionalism. Cairo’s Al-Jazeera correspondent Samir Omer moved to Sky News earlier this year not because of Syria, but rather, as he told his colleagues: “Because I could not stand it anymore. This is no longer an Al-Jazeera office. This is an office of the Muslim Brotherhood” – in other words, the very group that is supported by Qatar in all Arab countries, and is heralded as the winner of the” Arab Spring.”

The Paris bureau chief Ziad Tarrouch was Tunisian, not Syrian. He left in silence last summer, shortly after the presidential elections in France. Unsurprisingly, after weeks of continuous suffering and following repeated subpoenas from the French authorities, because Al Jazeera’s regular guest, Sheikh Yusef Al Qaradawi, had appeared on the station and called for the killing of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. This had invited a lawsuit against the station in France for “incitement to murder.”

 ”Damn it, I’m a journalist!” Ziad had mumbled to himself during his last days at the station. When the Russia correspondent Mohammad al-Hasan also left later that summer, he replied to media queries about his departure by saying that he was expected to deliver incendiary reporting on Russia. In response, the fanciful minds at AJ’s editorial department sought salvation in the claim that Al Hasan was leaving to open a kabab shop in Moscow.

Dr. Mohammad Abdo Al-Ibrahim