EDITOR AL JAZIRA TELEVISION SACKED ON ESPIONAGE CHARGES
DOHA 29 MAY (IPS) Mohammed Jassem al-Ali, the Chief Editor of the Qatari-based Al Jazira Television has been "sacked" Tuesday after being accused of collaborating with the downed regime of Saddam Hoseyn.
His departure comes after accusations based on documents found in Baghdad that some of the popular Arab network’s journalists were working for the former Iraqi brought down by the Americans.
Al-Ali, who had held the top job at the Doha-based station since it launched
the Arabic-language channel in 1996, denies the charges and an Al-Jazira
spokesman insisted that his situation has nothing to do with those allegations.
Al-Ali had visited Iraq before the US-led war, where he conducted an hour-long interview with the Iraqi dictator.
Al Jazira's coverage of the Iraq war was bitterly criticised in the Western media for giving more time to officials of Saddam's government, becoming a mouthpiece of the former Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammad As-Sahhaf, than to its opponents.
But because it’s freewheeling, Western-style programs, some of them very critical to most of the authoritarian Arab states, it was banned in countries like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Libya and censored elsewhere in the Arab world.
Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, has accused several Al-Jazira journalists of working for Saddam's secret services.
The origins of Al-Jazira date back to 1995 when the BBC, which had built a strong tradition of objective Arabic-language news coverage through its World Service radio network, signed a deal with the Saudi-owned company Orbit Communications to provide Arabic newscasts for Orbit's main Middle East channel.
However, the BBC's insistence on editorial independence clashed with the Saudi government's unwillingness to permit reporting on controversial issues, such as executions and the activities of prominent Saudi dissidents. In April 1996, when the BBC broadcast a story on human rights in the Kingdom, which showed footage of the beheading of a criminal, Orbit pulled out of the deal.
A few months later, the new Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, took advantage of this fortuitous development by establishing Al-Jazira and hiring most of the BBC Arabic Service's editors, reporters and technicians to form the nucleus of its staff.
The Emir, who had launched a sensational campaign to end censorship in Qatar (going so far as to abolish its information ministry) since ousting his father in 1995, contributed $140 million to finance Al-Jazira's operations for the first five years, after which the company would supposedly sustain itself through advertising revenues. ENDS ALJAZIRA EDITOR SACKED 29503