On Monday, Gulf News reported that 22 staff members at Al Jazeera’s Egyptian news operation resigned to protest what anchor Karem Mahmoud described as the network’s “biased coverage” that skews their reporting of recent events in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mahmoud, now the former anchor at Egypt’s Al Jazeera news operation, said that “the management of [Al Jazeera] in Doha [Qatar] provokes sedition among the Egyptian people and has an agenda against Egypt and other Arab countries.” At every broadcast, Mahmoud said “there are instructions to us to telecast certain news” that casts the Muslim Brotherhood in a favorable light.
Mahmoud’s allegations were supported by Haggag Salama, a correspondent for Al Jazeera based in Luxor, Egypt. According to Salama, Al Jazeera’s Egyptian network is “airing lies and misleading viewers.”
Other Egyptian journalists apparently share the anti-Al Jazeera sentiments of its former employees. The Associated Press reported that during a news conference held by the Egyptian military on Monday, “one journalist stood up and demanded Al-Jazeera reporters be excluded from the proceedings… The Al-Jazeera reporters eventually walked out accompanied by chants of ‘Out! Out!’ from others in the crowd.”
In December 2012, the Al Jazeera network, which is owned by the government of Qatar, purchased the American cable network Current TV from Al Gore and his investor group. The former vice president pocketed an estimated $100 million from that transaction.
Recently, Al Jazeera America hired former CNN reporters Soledad O’Brien and Ali Velshi.
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