Al Jazeera: Fox News From Qatar

Al Jazeera news director, Wadah Khanfar, resigns after WikiLeaks disclosure

"Al Jazeera's top news director Wadah Khanfar resigned Tuesday after eight years as the network's top executive. The move came after a WikiLeaks cable suggested that Khanfar changed the network's coverage of the Iraq War as a result of U.S. pressure, The New York Times reports.

He will be replaced by a member of the Qatari royal family. Al Jazeera is a network controlled by Qatar.

According to a cable sent by U.S. ambassador Chase Untermeyer in October 2005, an embassy official gave Khanfar reports by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency that showed the agency was critical of Al Jazeera's coverage of the war in Iraq, the Times reports. In the cable, Khanfar comes across eager to convince the U.S. official that Al Jazeera's coverage was fair and refers to an "agreement" made between the network and the U.S. government.

“The agreement was that it was a non-paper,” the cable quoted Khanfar as saying. “As a news organization, we cannot sign agreements of this nature, and to have it here like this in writing is of concern to us.”

Khanfar also said in a cable that he changed coverage at the official's request, removing images showing wounded children in a hospital and a woman with a wounded face, the Times reports."

I started mistrusting Al Jazeera broadcasts this past spring when I found that much of their coverage of Arab revolts was extremely misleading, shallow and repetitive. It has BBC origins after all, and is owned by the Rothschild toady Qatar, home to the american Al Udeid Air Base which is 20 miles from Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha.
I wonder how many more "news" stories were vetted by the american military.