Al-Arabia, Saudi Arabia, October 10
The so-called sadness and grief expressed by Al-Jazeera news anchors and other media officials over the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi does not stem from a genuine fear for his fate or a concern about the state of democracy around the world. Rather, it is motivated by one thing, and one thing only: Khashoggi’s Saudi passport. If the journalist was an Emirati, a Bahraini, or even an Egyptian, he would have not received such widespread attention on these channels. Yet in Al-Jazeera’s playbook, any opportunity to lock horns with the Saudi government is an opportunity worth pursuing. This speaks out to the broader journalistic standards that guide the Qatari station. Al-Jazeera and its sister stations have become platforms for extremist ideologues. While the station’s managers speak about moderation and concern for human rights, its reporters have been promoting everything but those values. Let us all remember that this is the same news channel that gave prime-time broadcast to Osama Bin Laden. This is the news station that brought Muslim Brotherhood-backed radical clerks to galvanize the masses against their leaders during the Arab revolutions. This is the same news outlet that gave rise to the terrorists who ordered their followers to blow themselves up in Riyadh, Baghdad, and Sana’a. Indeed, we have seen the fatwas propagated on Al-Jazeera turned into real-life events. Al-Jazeera is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the government in Doha, used to shake the stability of the Middle East at large, and the Arab Gulf more specifically. The coverage of Khashoggi’s disappearance was an orchestrated campaign based on fabricated stories and false reports, designed to vilify and undermine the Saudi government. Instead of honoring the legacy of this great journalist, Al-Jazeera and its sister channels are exploiting his name to promote the radical political goals of the government in Doha and its extremist patrons in Iran. –Mamdouh al-Miheni