Al Jazeera controversies and criticism

Al Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, is currently one of the largest news organizations in the world, with 80 bureaus around the globe, which produce extensive news coverage online and via TV channels in a number of languages, including Arabic and English. Al Jazeera also produces in-depth documentaries on current issues around the world. While Al Jazeera has a large audience around the world and especially in the Middle East, the organization and the original Arabic channel in particular have sometimes been criticized and have been involved in several controversies.

An article in the American Journalism Review noted that critics of Al Jazeera have "assailed what they see as anti-Semitic, anti-American bias in the channel's news content." An example cited from earlier years was a report in Al Jazeera that Jews had been informed in advance not to go to work on the day of the September 11 attacks, which was criticized by an October 2001 editorial in The New York Times. An often-repeated example involves an on-air birthday party organized by Al Jazeera's Beirut bureau chief for a Lebanese militant convicted of killing four Israelis, including a four-year-old girl. Al Jazeera greeted Samir Kuntar, released in a July 2008 prisoner swap, as a hero. A more recent example given by the article is the now defunct weekly show "Sharia and Life" by Yusuf Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric who, according to a February 2011 article in The Atlantic, "argues clearly and consistently that hatred of Israel and Jews is Islamically sanctioned." Subsequently, the Al Jazeera television station admitted that its coverage of Israel's release of convicted Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar violated the station's own code of ethics.

Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly has criticized Al Jazeera for being "anti-Semitic" and "anti-American". In response, Dave Marash, a veteran correspondent for ABC's Nightline who resigned from his position as Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English in 2008 due to a perception of anti-American bias, appeared on the O'Reilly Factor and asserted, "They certainly aren't anti-Semitic, but they are anti-Netanyahu and anti-Lieberman and anti-Israeli, right...."

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Wikipedia