Al-Jazeera offering media refuge for terrorism, terrorists

Nahla Abdelmonem

Qatar is at the center of accusations of cooperating with terrorist groups and financing them.

This might explain why the Qatari news channel al-Jazeera always makes one-sided reporting, especially when it comes to the attacks launched by these terrorist groups in different parts of the world.

A media coverage biased towards the terrorists has destructive political and economic ramifications. This is why viewers are rethinking the coverage of al-Jazeera which played an important role in covering most important events in the Arab region in the past three decades.

The channel’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks and other events contributed to changing international strategies towards the Middle East region.

Media terms

The use of special terms when it comes to Islamist groups is probably the most salient feature of the channel’s coverage.

This is dangerous, especially with the international community still divided on the right way to call things.

This brings up the issue of how some terms can be a reflection of the political and ideological attitudes of the media platforms using them.

Terrorism as a term came at the center of the dispute between French politicians, for example, and al-Azhar sheikhs in the past few days.

Some French politicians equated Islam and terrorism. This, however, angered al-Azhar.

French President Emmanuel Macron talked, meanwhile, about misunderstanding in this regard. Some regional governments used this misunderstanding to create tensions between Muslims, on one hand, and the French, on the other.

While most Arab news platforms and channels call the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “Daesh”, a word that contains the initials of its Arabic name, al-Jazeera calls the same group the “Islamic State Organization”.

In this, al-Jazeera stresses links between Islam and terrorism.