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Friday, June 12, 2015

FORMER AL JAZEERA MANAGER SUES AL JAZEERA NEWS NETWORK FOR VITRIOLIC BIAS AGAINST ISRAEL AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST NON-ARABS AND WOMEN - The news network is based in Qatar, a Muslim country accused of financing terror and slave-like conditions for foreign workers

PERPLEXED OTTER©http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/. Unauthorized duplication of this blog's material is prohibited.   Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full credit and link is given to Otters and Science News Blogspot.  Link to this post:  http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2015/06/former-al-jazeera-manager-sues-al.html - Thank you for visiting my blog.
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The former senior vice president of programming and documentaries of Al Jazeera America announced a lawsuit against her former employer on Thursday, charging the American branch of the Qatar-based news network with a vitriolic bias against Israel, as well as discrimination against non-Arabs and women.
  • She charged the company with showing a blatant pro-Arab bias both in terms of employment and news coverage, with the most intense bias coming out against Israel.
  • The company is being accused of being acutely sexist and anti-Semitic.
  • During last summer's counter-terror Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, she reported being told the mission was to portray Israel as the villain, and give an unfair slant in favor of the Arab and Muslim perspective of the conflict.
  • She alleges that AJAM management invoked the conspiracy theory that the 9/11 terror attack was a CIA plot.
  • She reported a widespread review bias favoring Arab workers, even when less qualified than non-Arab employees.
  • One other employee resigned over anti-Semitic behavior in management.
  • Several other employees have resigned in the recent past due to the company bias.
  • According to High-Bassalik, the news company's tone has turned more biased as its ratings plummet.
Former al-Jazeera reporter Shannon High-Bassalik (screen capture: YouTube)
Shannon High-Bassalik (YouTube)
 
She charged the company with showing a blatant pro-Arab bias both in terms of employment and news coverage, with the most intense bias coming out against Israel.
 
Continue reading

High-Bassalik said the company's investigative unit head tweeted "Israelis are like Hitler," showing the pronounced antagonism of the supposedly professionally neutral news company.
 
And during last summer's counter-terror Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, she reported being told the mission was to portray Israel as the villain, and give an unfair slant in favor of the Arab and Muslim perspective of the conflict.
 
ajam cam
Likewise she was told many Arabs think the US staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America as a pretext to launch a war against Arabs in the Middle East, and that Al Jazeera America should follow this conspiracy theory as a guiding tenet. 
 
She alleges that AJAM management invoked the conspiracy theory that the 9/11 terror attack was a CIA plot.
 
Hiring practices also were allegedly guided by a similar bent, with High-Bassalik saying she was told to hire an Arab woman as a producer despite her lack of qualifications, and the fact that several non-Arab employees were ready for promotion. She reported a widespread review bias favoring Arab workers.
 
ehab
Ehab Al Shihabi
The former unit head revealed how the recently fired chief executive of the company, Ehab Al Shihabi, would walk out on meetings when women were speaking, and admitted to taking a pro-Arab bias in his coverage.
 
Al Shihabi was kicked out in early May, after another employee sued over allegedly being fired for complaining about a co-worker's anti-Semitic and sexist behavior.
 
In the two weeks following, the vice-president of newsgathering, the head of human resources as well as the communications chief - all of whom happened to be non-Arab women - all stepped down.
 
Shannon High-Bassalik, who formerly worked with CNNNBC and MSNBC, sued the company for discrimination after being fired in February only half way through her three-year contract, reports The Guardian.
 
The complaint, which echoes a lawsuit filed by another former employee who was dismissed by the company earlier this year, is the latest blow for a channel that has been in turmoil in recent months.
 
Three female executives abruptly left AJAM earlier this year, and the newsroom has been beset by poor morale.
 
One of those executives, former senior vice president of outreach Marcy McGinnis, said that she resigned to escape the "culture of fear" at AJAM.
 
The other two executives, former executive vice president of corporate communications Dawn Bridges and former executive vice president for human resources Diana Lee, resigned "as a direct result of the discriminatory and hostile work environment in place at Al Jazeera," according to High-Bassalik's complaint.
 
According to High-Bassalik, the news company's tone has turned more biased as its ratings plummet.
 
Al Jazeera head offices in Doha, Qatar
Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar
 
"As ratings failed to live up to the expectations of management, Al Jazeera openly decided to abandon all pretense of neutrality in favor of putting the Arabic viewpoint front and center, openly demanding that programs be aired that criticized countries such as America, Israel and Egypt,” read her lawsuit.
 
She further revealed being told that if abandoning journalistic professionalism caused the channel to be regarded as terrorists, "that was an acceptable risk for the company to take."
 
AJAM was launched in 2013 after the Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network purchased the cable news channel Current TV. According to High-Bassalik, employees at AJAM were informed that the purchase was made for one reason: "to 'bring the Arab/Muslim perspective' to America."
 
Her complaint on Thursday was filed against AJAM and Ehab Al Shihabi, the former CEO who stepped down last month amid widening turmoil inside the channel's newsroom.
 
According to High-Bassalik, Al Shihabi admitted that he pushed for the channel to embrace a pro-Arabic viewpoint because he believed it would "please Doha," a reference to the Qatari capital that serves as the home to Al Jazeera Media Network.
 
High-Bassalik claims that when she and others complained about these orders, arguing that AJAM's cable contracts in the United States required the channel to remain neutral, Al Shihabi raised his voice and said that anyone who objected would no longer be welcome at the company.
 
He responded to such objections by saying that the company "was not Al Jazeera America but 'Al Jazeera in America,'" according to the complaint.
 
High-Bassalik's complaint includes many of the same allegations in the lawsuit filed against AJAM earlier this year by Matthew Luke, the channel's former director of media and archive management who was also fired in February.
 
Like Luke, High-Bassalik claims that sexism and anti-Semitism were pervasive in the newsroom.
 
The complaint by High-Bassalik describes the manner in which Al Shihabi allegedly discriminated against female employees. High-Bassalik says that Al Shihabi "repeatedly diminished the responsibilities" of women at the company.
 
She claims that Al Shihabi frequently excluded female employees from important meetings, and at times would "leave meetings where female employees were giving presentations and [state] that he would only return when such employees had stopped speaking."
 
When female employees complained, Al Shihabi would publicly yell at them, according to the complaint.
 
High-Bassalik says Al Shihabi treated such complaints as if those female employees "were simply being emotional... asking them why they 'didn't love me anymore.'"
 
After raising a series of complaints about this alleged editorial interference and employment discrimination, High-Bassalik says she was suspended in December pending an investigation and that the company refused to tell her what the investigation was about.
 
High-Bassalik says that the company informed her in February that her job had been terminated because she was "purportedly in default" of her contract because "she ostensibly was an ineffective leader and did not get along with other employees."
 
One of High-Bassalik's attorneys, Douglas Wigdor, said his client "should be commended for coming forward and bringing to light yet again the extremist attitudes that permeate a news organization that attempts to take itself seriously."
 
According to High-Bassalik, the news company's tone has turned more biased as its ratings plummet.
 

Sources for this report:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/196652#.VXq1HptFCM8

http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/11/media/al-jazeera-america-lawsuit/


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RELATED 



MEDIA MALPRACTICE IN THE COVERAGE OF ISRAEL
as exposed by former AP correspondent Matti Friedman 

Selected excerpts:

  • The international press in Israel had become less an observer of the conflict than a player in it. It had moved away from careful explanation and toward a kind of political character assassination
  • Israel’s flaws were dissected and magnified, while the flaws of its enemies were purposely erased
  • Something toxic is driving this –  ” Jews are troublemakers, a negative force in world events, and that if these people, as a collective, could somehow be made to vanish, we would all be better off”.
  • When I worked in the AP’s Jerusalem bureau, the Israel story was covered by more AP news staff than China, or India, or all of the fifty-odd countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. This is representative of the industry as a whole.
  • People observing this conflict from afar have been led to believe that Israel faces a simple choice between occupation and peace. That choice is fiction.
  • The Palestinian choice, it is said, is between Israeli occupation and an independent democracy. That choice, too, is fiction
  • (Partition for the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state) will bring the black-masked soldiers of radical Islam within yards of Israeli homes with mortars, rockets, and tunneling implements. Many thousands will die. 
  • No international investment or guarantees, no Western-backed government or Western-trained military will be able to keep that from happening, as we have just seen in Iraq.
  • The only group of people subject to a systematic boycott at present in the Western world is Jews, appearing now under the convenient euphemism “Israelis.”
  • The Jews of the Middle East are outnumbered by the Arabs of the Middle East 60 to 1, and by the world’s Muslims 200 to 1.
  • Neo-Nazi rallies at Palestinian universities or in Palestinian cities are not — I saw images of such rallies suppressed on more than one occasion.
  • Jewish hatred of Arabs is a story. Arab hatred of Jews is not. 
  • The time has come for everyone to admit that the fashionable disgust for Israel among many in the West is not liberal but is selective, disproportionate, and discriminatory.

Read more
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2015/01/media-malpractice-in-coverage-of-israel.html

and here

 
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The Lancet's editor
HUNDREDS OF DOCTORS SIGN PETITION DEMANDING MEDICAL JOURNAL THE LANCET RETRACT DISHONEST ANTI-ISRAEL PROPAGANDA 
 - The signatories include NOBEL PRIZE laureates - MEDIA MALPRACTICE 
 - For many years The Lancet has been notorious for using its influence to campaign against Israel using unprofessionally biased methods.
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2015/04/600-doctors-sign-petition-demanding.html
 
 
 
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CHARACTER ASSASSINATION IN AN ERA OF CORRUPTION AND MASS MANIPULATION 
 - The online 'shaming' of Israeli official who committed suicide after black woman instigates mass media campaign accusing him of racism 
 - The world campaign of character assassination against Israel
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2015/05/character-assassination-in-era-of.html


Media For Hamas
 

MEDIA WATCHDOGS
FOR MIDDLE EAST REPORTING

Honest Reporting
 
MEMRI
Middle East Media Research Institute
 
MEMRI TV
 
Palestinian Media Watch

More articles on media reporting about Israel on this blog
 
 
More articles about Qatar on this blog
Including their use of slave labor
and their financing of Middle East terror
 
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