I'm looking at the Google Translate version of their Arabic site right now:
https://www-aljazeera-net.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_t...
It's all looking like pretty standard news stuff to me.
And I don't know about you, but I see "controversial, disputed, or downright false claims that were reported uncritically as facts" all the time even in mainstream US publications.
So I'd need to see some evidence here that Al Jazeera is particularly worse.
Here's Al-Jazeera echoing completely made up rape accusations. Why were the accusations retracted? https://honestreporting.com/damage-done-how-al-jazeeras-fake...
Here's the (English) report on the Israeli strike (that wasn't) that (didn't) kill 500 in Al-Ahli hospital - a widely quoted and echoed further lie https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/10/17/photos-an-israe...
I can go on but I think it's better you continue the search.
[EDIT: fixed typo in hospital name]
Edit: your first source is a pro-Israeli advocacy group run by a former AIPAC employee, which has marked its coverage of the war with things like baselessly claiming reporters were in on the October 7th attacks:
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-photographers-attack...
Given that in this case they ran a report by a witness, and then publicly updated that to say that a Hamas investigation had called her credibility into question, it’s interesting to note how carefully the “Honest Reporting” writer relies on uncited insinuation or tries to distract your attention to statements by people who are not part of al Jazeera. Again, it’s not great that they ran a story by someone who lied but that’s a hazard of breaking news coverage and it’s hardly unique in the field.
I don't think there's much of a question, the claims were just fabricated, according to Hamas themselves.
By "publicly updated", do you just mean quietly deleting the articles with false information? As far as I know, they never acknowledged the error and published a retraction, which calls into question their legitimacy as a news organization.
https://twitter.com/abuhilalah/status/1771996521312973088
Now, I do think they should have put out an official statement pointing out the unreliability of the interviewee rather than simply yanking the video but a single unreliable witness interviewed in a tumultuous event which is promptly dropped seems to fall well short of establishing a lie. All news organizations interview people who turn out to be wrong or misleading, so we’d want to see more than a single interview to establish whether there’s a pattern of poor vetting or running a story after evidence has come forth that the witness is unreliable. The public has rather strongly expressed a desire for immediate news coverage rather than waiting for lengthy review and corroboration.
As a good example of how messy this can be, consider this story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-at...
They fairly quickly ran into some problems with reliability of one of the key witnesses which reached the point where a number of journalism professors wrote an open letter: https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/us/2024/04/29/journalis...
There’s a rundown with many links here: https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-yor...
None of that is mentioned on that story and the only correction is a minor detail.
Now, to be clear, I am not saying that it’s okay for Al Jazeera to be sloppy if the NYT is sloppy but rather that we should be consistent in our standards and they should probably be higher for everyone. The public and especially people covered in these stories deserve better.
> We remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team’s investigation which was rigorously reported, sourced and edited.
A lot of the "debunking" seems fairly weak in my opinion. E.g. Gal Abdush's brother in law made a rather baseless statement that "the media invented" Gal's rape. Really the article was reporting what Israeli police believed, mainly based on (non-public) video evidence which the Times reporters also reviewed.
I think it would be comparable if Israeli police retracted their claims and stated that Gal was not raped. Then surely the NYT would make some kind of clear correction/retraction, rather than quietly deleting (part of) the report.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...
Specifically, that is the position of the intelligence agencies of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and also the conclusion of investigations by the Associated Press, CNN, The Economist, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. That's really the best we know about it.
In this case, they have a good argument.
Now remote forensics on the site makes it implausible that the initial reports of an Israeli airstrike were true, however we still haven’t ruled out other types of munitions by the Israeli military.
Note that the initial reports of those supportive of Israel were also false. They claimed that they captured the rockets which they claimed hit the hospital on camera. It turned out this footage was of an unrelated rocket which got completely destroyed in air. Al Jazeera was actually one of few media outlets which correctly hypothesized that this rocket was unrelated to the incident.
The fact is, we still don’t know what happened, all we know is that many of the initial reports were false. There was a lot of lying involved to win the narrative (especially by Israeli officials), and there are at least two very credible hypotheses on what happened.
The "Summary" is clearly biased and absolutely not "The best we know" depending on who is "we"
I have no idea about the reasons of the explosion, but contesting the palestinian dead toll without [credible] sources is politics.
I dare say United Nations might have a more balanced approach, and they cite the enclave health authorities when they say that as of April 22th there are 34,000 deaths. No other source is cited for some reason. I have no idea how all those newspapers could manage >>independent<< investigations, as the Israeli army banned journalists. The first time [that I saw] CNN reported on something they actually filmed was The Israeli army pointing at tunnels.
BTW, CNN is now much less biased towards the israeli narrative. During 2023 [Latam] CNN seemed a Netanyahu's outlet more that anything. France24 and DW >>seem<< neutral right now. Spain outlets have mediocre coverange, and Latinamerican outlets are only citing random news from other outlets.
The Wikipedia "Summary" is clearly biased and absolutely not "The best we know" depending on who is "we"
I dare say United Nations might have a more balanced approach, and they cite the enclave health authorities when they say that as of April 22th there are 34,000 deaths. No other source is cited for some reason.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148876 https://archive.ph/B4MuA
> It seems almost certain to me there has to be some conspiracy amongst US publications to conceal certain information around Israeli-Palestinian conflict and history
No evidence was provided, just another unfounded conspiracy theory. What can we take away from this?
For examples of stories or topics that appear to be dramatically underreported in the US:
- extremist positions of Israeli cabinet members. Including associations with Zionist terrorists, obviously very anti-Muslim/Arab but also including anti-Christian positions
- Israeli settlers expansions and history of aggressive actions
- famine conditions in Gaza
- and most simply the very high levels of casualties in Gaza, including children and women in huge numbers.
I really don’t ever hear any of those items mentioned even in left leaning US media. Now you might say well France and Qatar are biased due to more Arab listeners. Maybe a bit yeah because I think I hear less on Hamas atrocities perhaps than in US media.
Every media is biased.
Now per my other comment, once you criticize either side then you get automatically labeled as on the other side, our instinct is to use Hero-Villain frameworks, not Villain-Villain. Once you break out of that both leadership and politics on both side look really bad and weighing evil is not a good approach.
Anecdotally I've noticed the biggest delta between their English and Arabic reporting in the immediate aftermath of major events. For example after the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion, the English version of their reporting was along the lines of "According to a Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson, 500+ people were killed. A Hamas spokesperson said that the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike, launched via an F-16 or F-35." They made sure to hedge and make clear that their sources might be biased.
This[1] seems like the sort of Arabic coverage I remember seeing in the past, a much more definitive statement just saying that the occupiers massacred 500+ martyrs.
Unfortunately Google Translate doesn't play nicely with the wayback machine so it's tedious to build up a library of concrete examples.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20231017203426mp_/http://www.alj...
Can you provide citations?
If not, I'd suggest you are just making this up.
Probably no one who needs convincing is willing to read the ADL on him, but you can basically pick your source.
https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/Sheik-Yusuf-al-Qarad...
Here's a video of him asserting that "Hitler was a god given punishment upon the Jews, (not that the holocaust was as bad as they say)" on Al Jazeera TV.
https://www.memri.org/tv/sheik-yousuf-al-qaradhawi-allah-imp...
I guess you have to trust Memri's translation?
Now, how much editorial input AJ has over this channel, that I don’t know.
Anytime I ever bring up say Kissinger and the crazy realpolitik actions he took, or now this lunatic Ben-Gvir in Israel I’ve recently learned about, other people are trained to see me as a communist or anti-semite immediately, because if I object to a US figure, I must be with the other side, same with Israel.
I don’t really know how to navigate this problem to be honest.
You are 1000% correct al-Qaradhawi is total evil.
Realistically, you can't, other than finding people who can accept that reality is shades of grey, not "my team good, other team bad."
I don't know Arabic, but I am Muslim, and Yusuf al Qaradawi is probably most known as a preeminent Islamic scholar. Any mosque you go to will likely have a work by him because his scholarship on the Quran and Hadith (not necessarily his views on current events) are very renowned. I'm not sure what makes him so radical and evil to be honest. He has written tons of scholarly works about Islam, interpretation of Islamic rules and laws, etc. And from looking online I see he was on Al Jazeera hosting a program called "Sharia and Life". These kinds of call-a-sheikh / Islamic info shows are pretty common in the Muslim world and probably have more viewership than news channels. Something Americans probably might not understand...
But it makes total sense for Al Jazeera Arabic (a channel with possibly a 90% Muslim viewership) to have a Muslim ask-a-sheikh show.
To me it just sounds that he's an expert in convincing people that it is god's will to implement his agenda. Taking the Quran as a source of absolute truth and then taking the further step of handing the reins of interpretation to some "preeminent scholar" is a recipe for exactly the kind of extremism that you see plaguing the Islamic world.
Your and my claims about what Qaradawi is are not mutually exclusive, and are in fact deeply correlated.
The guy famously studied for like 20 years at Al-Azhar getting a bunch of degrees in Islamic scholarship from the largest mainstream Islamic school in the world. That's what I mean.
>To me it just sounds that he's an expert in convincing people that it is god's will to implement his agenda
Can you cite some controversial or not seen before analysis from any of his works? Most of his publications, that I'm aware of, are pretty standard interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence. It's nothing that would shock or surprise an average Muslim, imo.
>Taking the Quran as a source of absolute truth and then taking the further step of handing the reins of interpretation to some "preeminent scholar" is a recipe for exactly the kind of extremism that you see plaguing the Islamic world.
That's actually the kind of stuff he and other modernist Islamic scholars (Israr Ahmed is a similar scholar but for South Asia, where I'm from) were against. They both championed the idea that the Quran and Hadith are pretty clear and don't need expert opinion for many things. That people should take the time to read Arabic and read Quran and hadiths and they would not have much need for Sheikhs.
In general, this type of "democratic" or "non-hierarchical" view of Islamic scholarship is pretty modern. Older peoples (before the "extremism" you're talking about ostensibly) would have been much more hierarchical and rigid about the need to consult scholars rather than attempt to learn things oneself.
> Your and my claims about what Qaradawi is are not mutually exclusive, and are in fact deeply correlated.
So then you agree it's not a big deal that Al Jazeera has him on their network, since he's a pretty mainstream scholar? Okay, thanks for the chat I guess
I claim that religious scholarship and religious fundamentalism are one and the same. You're arguing that Qaradawi was an Islamic scholar, I'm arguing that he was an Islamic fundamentalist. However, in all religious scholarship, there are further choices to be made once you are a fundamentalist. The book contradicts itself (intentionally, as it's more important that people who believe different Islams both be able to call themselves Muslim), and Qaradawi had further used his position of "celebrated religious scholar" to assert that it is Shari'a to annihilate the Jews, and used his general credibility to deny the severity of the holocaust. That's just this clip.
You can't become a religious leader without being a religious scholar, and you can't lead an extremist sect without leaning on that classification pretty heavily.
> I claim that religious scholarship and religious fundamentalism are one and the same
This is straying quite a bit from the original claim, that Al Jazeera was wrong to have the scholar on the air. But if you believe, as you claim to, that religious scholarship and religious fundamentalism are the same, then you can't really begrudge the network for having him on, for they could not have any religious scholar on who was not a fundamentalist, according to you. And at least they picked a very mainstream one, no?
That logic out of the way, what do you describe as "fundamentalism"? If the idea that the Quran is the literal, unchanging word of God is fundamentalist, then yeah, all Islamic scholarship will be fundamentalist. If non-fundanentalisn is described as beliefs not orthogonal to the fundamental beliefs of the religion, then yes, you'll be right.
It depends on what you mean.
> The book contradicts itself
In what way, relevant to the discussion we are having where you seem to be most concerned with Qaradawi's anti-Semitic remarks? There's a whole litany of irrelevant arguments we could have about contradictions in the source material, but what specific contradiction do you think he can exploit to make questionable claims in your mind about Israel and/or Jews?
> is Shari'a to annihilate the Jews, and used his general credibility to deny the severity of the holocaust.
So the clip you linked does not say that. Sharia is law. What he's echoing is the belief that sometimes calamities in the world are punishments for moral failings of groups of people. Many religions believe this. It was even insinuated by Muslim scholars that loss of dignity and faith by Muslims was what led to the calamity suffered by the Palestinians. [1]
Is it anti-Muslim to believe that the moral failings of billions of Muslims can cause many Muslims to face calamities as we see today? I don't think so. Many Muslims believe that. Likewise, I don't think it's wrong to believe this about any people, and that's what he's saying in this clip.
If you believe people are not collectively punished by God as groups, that's fine, but there are very clear examples of this happening in religious source material (Sodom is the main one). And as such, I think the only questionable element is him saying "they exaggerate" when referring to the Holocaust. And yes I disagree with that. But it's not an Islamic scholarship issue, that.
The current prime minister and the IDF make controversial, disputed and downright false claims as well.
My understanding is that the degree to which "freedom of speech" is protected in the USA (a country I'm more familiar with) is actually pretty rare globally
I could say that I have read and compared the BBC to Truth Social, and decided that BBC is "fake news"; that doesn't mean it's actually true.
If you decide that 2+2=5 that indeed doesn‘t make it true.
I have merely said that I found that 2+2=4.
More importantly, Al Jazeera is not merely reporting on the conflict, they have been „reporting“ about many other things for a long time. That’s enough data for me that can be compared to the sum of ALL other outlets.
None of that is surprising either - Al Jazeera is a government propaganda tool, run by a dictatorial kingdom that ranks rather low on freedom of the press.
The fact that you drew a comparison to BBC is telling.
That indeed was a specific choice - you could also state that it's a state-run "propaganda tool". It's also going to have a western (specifically UK) based view on the media it's reporting on. The same is true of Al Jazeera, or the Australian Broadcasting Company.
That, in and of itself, does not mean it is "blatantly lying". No news agency is without bias, and believing so is naive.
Does Al Jazeera have areas for improvement that are likely to not materialise due to the context in which the company is based? Sure, but that's also true of Fox News, CNN, the BBC, ABC, or random Reddit commenters.
And you can't give one example?
To be fair, I think that blocking etc. is a dumb move by the government. Even though they are clearly a very biased organization the damage of closing their offices is probably worse than the alternative.
The fear mongering of the top parent comment is unjustified and not exactly accurate. I'm physically in Tel Aviv and can access the Al Jazeera website just fine. News outlets can't be closed and there's no "great firewall" in Israel. There is a censor but its usage is relatively limited in the age of the internet.
Examples of Al Jazeera bias include a famous video of a Gazan interviewed by a reporter blaming Hamas for everything and the reporter immediately cutting it off so it won't break the narrative that everyone in Gaza blames only Israel.
They're the ones that promoted the fake hospital bombing and they are the source of most fake unsubstantiated stories. Their Arabic language channel is far worse than their English coverage.
They made up fake stories about IDF soldiers raping in Gaza and obviously didn't report about the actual rapes by Hamas.
They refuse to interview people who can actually answer questions legitimately in Arabic such as Yosef Hadad since that would let their audience receive unfiltered truth.
The objective fact is that IDF soldiers have a well-documented history of internal and external sexual violence going back to the state's founding (by the soldiers' own confession often times, as these acts are rarely punished, even lionized in some settler communities). International humanitarian orgs have concluded there is reasonable evidence for such acts being committed in the current conflict as well (and with all the atrocities we've witnessed, is that really suprising to anyone?).
That you seem unaware of these facts is exactly why we need freedom of press.
Yes, yes they did:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/4/reasonable-grounds-t...
Replace "Palestinians" with "Jews" in that sentence. It's pretty racist innit? Please be more careful.
I'm no fan of the settlers but they are deeply religious and won't even talk about sex with their own wives, let alone rape. The idea is deeply abhorrent in Jewish communities. There's no such documentation of any rape at scale. Accusations are easy to make with no supporting evidence whatsoever.
OTOH there are many well documented cases of soldiers doing bad things to Palestinians and getting jail time for that. There's a lot of evidence about settlers doing bad stuff. These sort of lies pollute the objective truth to force a narrative of false equivalency where facts don't matter.
"However, at Shura Base, to which most of the bodies were taken for purposes of identification, there were five forensic pathologists at work. In that capacity, they also examined bodies that arrived completely or partially naked in order to examine the possibility of rape. According to a source knowledgeable about the details, there were no signs on any of those bodies attesting to sexual relations having taken place or of mutilation of genitalia."
"200 bodies were documented. These teams did not document a single case of sexual assault or cases of genital mutilation. "
"the intelligence material collected by the police and the intelligence bodies, including footage from terrorists' body cameras, does not contain visual documentation of any acts of rape themselves. "
There are many testimonies. Including from the rapists themselves. According to Hamas's interpretation of the Quran rape is legitimate as part of Jihad.
There is a big difference between banning what can only be described as a fake news outlet controlled by the adversary government of Qatar vs. banning the most important or second most important independent newspaper in the country.
When _that_ happens then the completely unjustified outrage in many comments here will be justified as that would indeed be an unprecedented step.