-By Warner Todd Huston
Just as Al Jazeera America prepares for its national debut, employees of Al Jazeera’s parent network are resigning in anger over the network’s blatant bias in favor of Egyptian President Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood. Many in Egypt feel that Al Jazeera is clearly promoting the agenda of the extremist Islamist organization and working to thwart those that stand against it.
MEMRI.org, a website dedicated to translating into English news sources from the Middle East, reports that one well-known female presenter, Fatma Nabil, resigned early in July because Al Jazeera was reporting stories from the Muslim Brotherhood’s point of view not to mention that Mursi was supported heavily by network executives and programmers.
The Middle East-watching website quoted Fatma Nabil as criticizing the network’s coverage of the current unrest in Egypt. “We had the feeling that the channel is partisan in favor of political Islam, and in most cases selectivity is exercised in broadcasting the text messages [of the viewers] on the channel, and even more so in the selection of guests and interviewees,” she said.
Up to 22 other employees have also resigned in protest over the obvious bias that Al Jazeera indulges in favor of Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
“This tilt by the channel has many facets,” Memri points out.
[C]ontinuous broadcasts of protest demonstrations by Mursi supporters at the Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo, compared with the more limited coverage of the anti-Mursi demonstrations in Tahrir Square;[1] exclusive and continuous coverage from the headquarters of the Republican Guard on July 8, 2013, where dozens of MB supporters were killed by army gunfire when they tried to storm the headquarters where Mursi is being held, while repeatedly displaying pictures of the dead and calling the events “a massacre”; the vast majority of text messages from viewers that the channel runs as subtitles at the bottom of the screen convey support for the MB; an incident that the channel’s correspondent provoked during an Egyptian army press conference on July 8, 2013, during which she attacked the army’s behavior and was expelled from the auditorium by the other correspondents;[2] and claims raised in the Facebook account of one of the channel’s presenters, Ahmad Mansouron, purporting that provisional president ‘Adly Mansour is Jewish.
MEMRI also reports that some attempts are being made by the Egyptian military and other anti-Muslim Brotherhood supporters to have Al Jazeera’s Egyptian broadcast license revoked for it entirely one-sided reportage.
In the meantime, Al Jazeera America is about to debut on U.S. cable systems across the country. The Muslim-owned news network based in the oil-rich nation of Qatar bought Al Gore’s Current TV cable network in December of 2012 netting Al Gore a windfall profit of some $100 million.
In May the nascent network announced that it wanted to hire “800 American journalists” and has already hired several high profile Americans such as Michael Viqueira and former CNN business reporter Ali Velshi. The network also hired Soledad O’Brien after she was fired by CNN.
On the other hand, Former Al Jazeera anchor Dave Marash, who came to the network from Britain, quit Al Jazeera because he realized that it was not a free and open news source but was controlled by the Qatari government all the way down the line.
Simply put, any American that goes to work for Al Jazeera is a traitor to his country and to western civilization.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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