SPECIAL: Al Jazeera disgraced, with an American twist

The director-general of Al Jazeera has resigned amid scandal, but one would never know it by reading the Al Jazeera website. 

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Al Jazeera pan-Arab network, financed by the Qatari royal family, has announced that their director-general, Wadah Khanfar, is stepping down after exceeding goals of the news organization, which included making the organization, "a global news leader."

The truth is less glamorous. Khanfar is resigning because he has been caught in a scandal exposed by WikiLeaks. Of course, WikiLeaks isn't mentioned in the Al Jazeera report.

According to diplomatic cables exposed by WikiLeaks, Khanfar engaged in discussions with U.S. officials to skew news reports in favor of American bias. Specifically, events in Iraq were presented in a way to promote U.S. interests and Arab Spring uprisings in countries closely aligned with the U.S. have been downplayed while uprisings in anti-U.S. countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and lately Syria, have been glamorized.

The cables refer to specific examples of Khanfar having pictures changed to less inflammatory ones, and to referring to Libyan rebels as  "freedom fighters" while providing minimal coverage of uprisings in countries such as Bahrain, a close U.S. ally.
 
The cables revealed that the U.S. exerted pressure on the news organization, and it complied. Ironically, Al Jazeera has been widely vilified in the U.S. media for allegedly stirring anti-U.S. sentiment across the Arab world. At the same time, the organization has been strategically biased in its reports, to favor the American point of view.

Such facts are revealed in the leaked cables. Cables also reveal that Khanfar wanted to keep the discussions with American officials verbal.

According to one cable he said, "The agreement was that it was a non-paper.  As a news organization, we cannot sign agreements of this nature, and to have it here like this in writing is of concern to us." Despite the reservations, cables show Khanfar did as U.S. officials wanted.

One cable clearly indicated that Khanfar had two images of wounded children in a hospital removed along with another of a woman whose face had been badly disfigured by a wound, all to placate U.S. officials who were concerned at the impression they would create of long-running U.S. activity in the region.

For his part, Khanfar is dismissing the cables as, "rumors." On his Twitter account he said that he found them, "amusing."

Perhaps also amusing is the fact that he is being replaced by Sheik Ahmad bin Jasem bin Muhammad Al-Thani, a  member of the Qatari royal family and a businessman--with absolutely no media experience whatsoever.

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At least with the release of the cables and the royal family now firmly in control, the world knows what kind of reporting it can expect from the "world's global news leader."

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