12 March 2012 — www.boilingfrogspost.com

Time to ‘Out’ Others as Well

In the last few days I have been watching events unfold on the Al Jazeera front, and I must say, despite the exposé coming out way too late, I am delighted to see this propaganda machine exposed. The headlines read:

Key staffs from Al Jazeera’s Beirut Bureau have resigned citing “bias” in the channel’s stance on the conflict in Syria.

Here are a few excerpts from decent coverage at RT:

Bureau Managing Director Hassan Shaaban reportedly quit last week, after his correspondent and producer had walked out in protest. A source told the Lebanese paper Al Akhbar that Al Jazeera’s Beirut correspondent Ali Hashem had quit over the channel’s stance on covering events in Syria. “… his position [which] changed after the station refused to show photos he had taken of armed fighters clashing with the Syrian Army in Wadi Khaled. Instead [Al Jazeera] lambasted him as a shabeeh [implying a regime loyalist],” a source told Lebanese press.

Ali Hashem was also infuriated by Al Jazeera’s refusal to cover a crackdown by the King of Bahrain while twisting its Syria angle. “[In Bahrain], we were seeing pictures of a people being butchered by the ‘Gulf’s oppression machine’, and for Al Jazeera, silence was the name of the game,” he said.

The Beirut bureau’s producer also quit claiming Al Jazeera had totally ignored Syria’s constitutional reform referendum, which saw a 57% turnout with 90% voting for change.

Journalist and author Afshin Rattansi, who worked for Al Jazeera, told RT that, “sadly”, the channel had become one-sided voice for the Qatari government’s stance against Bashar al-Assad, having begun as the region’s revolutionary broadcaster.

Read the commentary here @ Boiling Frogs Post:http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/03/12/insiders-out-al-jazeera-propaganda-machine-on-syria-2/