A well-respected international perspective comes from Al Jazeera Media Network, a network owned by the government of Qatar. More commonly referred to as simply Al Jazeera, this news source mostly focuses on Middle Eastern perspectives but has been praised for its contribution of free information to an underserved population and its ability to openly discuss controversial topics. Al Jazeera considers itself a globally oriented media service that follows an honorable code of ethics that places great emphasis on accurate and balanced news. The network has also received an incredible amount of prestigious awards ranging from Peabody Awards to an Emmy for their investigative coverage. Given their background, one could expect fairly unbiased news with a slight tendency to focus on liberal issues not commonly covered by the conservative media of that region.
Like BBC, Al Jazeera has received criticism regarding their reporting practices. These critiques mostly come from conservative, pro-Israel networks such as Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, and The National Review, a conservative political news source. Back in 2008, Israel threatened to boycott Al Jazeera due to their coverage of the release of prisoner Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese member of the Palestinian Liberation Front, or PLF (Gross, 2008). Convicted of killing three people during a PLF raid, Kuntar returned home to be celebrated as a hero on camera both by the Lebanese people and an official from Al Jazeera’s Beirut office. Al Jazeera recognized that the behavior in which that official acted was not in line with the purported code of ethics and declared that the station was taking steps to make sure incidents like that would not happen again.
Upon inspection of how Al Jazeera covered the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on its website and online media, one can plainly see a pro-Palestinian slant simply through reading the titles of the articles after a search on their website. Some articles that seem particularly sympathetic to Palestine address police brutality and casualty reports using highly emotive language (Lewis, 2014). One of the most jarring articles titled “Israeli forces kill suspects in teen death” is among the first headlines when you search the website (Al Jazeera Wire Services, 2014). However, the content of the article itself includes a summary from an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel detailing why the suspects were targets and why the situation condoned such aggressive action. The language used places emphasis on rightful action rather than augmenting a potential murder. In order to keep with their motto of presenting both sides of a story, Al Jazeera has given extensive airtime to both Israeli military spokesmen, such as in the article mentioned previously, and members of the Palestinian resistance. Instead of inciting greater animosity between Palestinians and Israelis, Al Jazeera reports factually sound information that presents a professional account of events.
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