The former head of Al Jazeera America’s documentary team is suing the network for millions of dollars, alleging that the Doha-based organization has extreme anti-women, pro-Arab, anti-Semitic biases, and promotes 9/11 truther conspiracy theories.
Shannon High-Bassalik claims her former boss, Ehab Al Shihabi, who served as Al Jazeera America’s (AJAM) chief executive, would shout down women if they dared to complain about the organization. Shihabi, who allegedly would often leave meetings in the midst of when women were speaking, would dismiss his female colleagues of “simply being emotional,” the lawsuit alleges.
In her lawsuit against Al Jazeera America, Ms. High-Bassalik alleges that the network is advancing “a pro-Arabic/Middle Eastern agenda, often at the expense of the Jewish people.”
As Al Jazeera’s rankings continued to tank in the United States, the suit alleges that Al Jazeera threw away any sense of “journalistic objectivity” and proceeded to cast America, Israel, and Egypt “as the villain.”
“The former documentary head said she was told that many Arabs believe that 9/11 was orchestrated by the CIA to justify waging war on the Arab world, and that the network should be guided by this belief,” The Independent UK reports.
Her former boss Mr. Al Shihabi left the network in May after many other lawsuits against AJAM alleged he was engaging in similar acts and that the the Doha-headquartered organization is currently engaging in heavily-biased reporting.
In addition to the pending lawsuit against Al Shihabi and AJAM, another former employee of AJAM Mohamed Fahmy is suing the network for $100 million dollars in damages. Fahmy alleges in his lawsuit that the network acted as an “arm of Qatar’s foreign policy” and showed obvious bias “towards the Muslim Brotherhood” terror group.
In April, Matthew Luke, AJAM’s former director of media and archive management, was fired because he complained about his boss’s “anti-American and anti-Semitic rants,” according to his testimony as part of a $15-million dollar discrimination lawsuit.
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