Bahrain Mirror: After cutting ties with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt announced that the lifting of sanctions might come at the cost of no fewer than 13 demands, later reduced to six principles. Among the obligations was the closure of all news outlets which are directly and indirectly Qatari funded: Al Jazeera, Arabi21, Rassd, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Mekameleen and Middle East Eye.
The Middle East Monitor reported that in response, Giles Trendle, the managing director of Al Jazeera English, said: "It's as absurd as it would be for Germany to demand Britain to close the BBC."
"The Middle East is boiling, people are very passionate, for many years they have not had a voice, Al Jazeera is like a safety valve, there is a lot of pressure that has been building up," states Tendle, to place the channel in its highly combustible context.
The MEMO further noted that pressure and passions aside, many argue that for a media channel to be funded by an authoritarian regime remains problematic on credibility front.
However, MEMO stated that the roots of this recent Al Jazeera onslaught go back to 2011, the Arab Spring and Al Jazeera's unapologetic coverage of opposition groups in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and elsewhere, adding that it comes as no surprise therefore that the calls to shut the channel down are coming from those same autocratic leaderships. Bahrain's authorities for example would not have forgotten Al Jazeera's commissioning and broadcasting of the documentary "Shouting In The Dark" offering a rare and harrowing insight into the oppression of the country's uprising in 2011.
The MEMO article also highlighted that the broadcasting opposition movements have often been overshadowed by the channel's supposed Islamist sympathies, as in 2015 criticism of the channel peaked when Al Jazeera Arabic published a poll in which 80 percent of its viewership voted "Yes" in response to the question on Daesh's influence: "Do you consider the Islamic State's advances in Iraq and Syria in the interest of the region?"
Trendle; however, supported the move saying: "We don't incite, we report, and that's a key difference." He said with regard to channel airing or hosting extremist figures: "Remember Margret Thatcher in the eighties, she banned the BBC from interviewing the ‘terrorists' of the IRA and the BBC got around it."
Concluding the article, MEMO stressed that the fact that Qatar's support of terrorist groups is projected by states who are directly involved in the funding of extremist organisations remains confusing at best, pointing out that the attack therefore should not in itself tarnish Al Jazeera's or other targeted media's reputations but instead serve as an alarm bell to the wider onslaught on media by authoritarian governments and leaders around the world. The website further stated that bias or not, one can't help agreeing with Trendle when he says: "The day that Al Jazeera isn't around would be a dark day for journalism and a dark day for the region."
Arabic Version