Al Jazeera alt-facts on Q&A as ABC hosts former Qatar news boss
Aunty’s show turns an old promoter of extremists into a global journalism guru.
This week’s Q&A had former Al Jazeera boss Wadah Khanfar on to give a sermon on the media. Q&A, Monday:
The trust in mainstream media is declining because I think we came very close to centres of powers, we are not putting the human being at the centre, we are not any more the voice for the voiceless, we have lost courage.
Close to power? Like being owned by Qatar’s royal family? The Economist, January 12, 2013:
Al Jazeera’s breathless boosting of Qatari-backed rebel fighters in Libya and Syria, and of the Qatar-aligned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, have made many Arab viewers question its veracity … and its failure to record the uprising by the Shia majority in Qatar’s neighbour, Bahrain …
Khanfar left Al Jazeera when he was replaced by a Qatari royal. The New York Times, September 20, 2011:
Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news network financed by Qatar, named a member of the Qatari royal family on Tuesday to replace its top news director after disclosures from the group WikiLeaks indicating that the news director (Khanfar) had modified the network’s coverage of the Iraq war …
But it was Khanfar who built today’s Al Jazeera. He let Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi on the air. Germany’s Der Spiegel, February 15, 2011:
The Al Jazeera television network has been broadcasting Qaradawi’s program Shariah and Life every Sunday for the past 15 years. Some 60 million Muslims watch him as he talks imploringly about the genocide in Gaza or the unique dangers of female masturbation (”the hymen is very sensitive and could tear”).
Qaradawi, during Khanfar’s tenure, talking about the Holocaust, Al Jazeera, January 28, 2009:
Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption … The last punishment was carried out by Hitler … he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them …
Khanfar had to apologise when his Beirut bureau gave convicted terrorist Samir Al-Quntar a surprise birthday party on live television. Israel’s Haaretz, August 6, 2008:
Al Jazeera’s general director, Khanfar Wadah, wrote that “elements of the program” broadcast in Al-Quntar’s honour on the night of Saturday, July 19, “violated (the station’s) Code of Ethics.”
Some violation. They had fireworks and a cake. Haaretz continues:
During the program, produced and hosted by Al Jazeera, Al-Quntar uses a scimitar to slice a cake with his picture on it, while fireworks are set off around him and a band plays Arabic music.
The Australian’s opinion editor Alan Howe on Al-Quntar’s serious crimes. Herald Sun, April 12, 2015:
Among his many crimes was the kidnap and murder of Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter, Einet. Entering Israel from Lebanon … Al-Quntar shot Danny and, in front of his child, drowned him. What he then did to the whimpering child … cannot be published in a responsible newspaper. She died.
Khanfar’s network celebrated anti-Semites and child murderers. And Q&A wants to parade him around as a serious journalist? Oh please. Q&A, Monday:
We need to reclaim it (journalism). Let the people live in their echo chambers but when they extend their ears outside the echo chamber, they can actually listen to something a little bit more clear.