LONDON: Qatari-owned news channel Al-Jazeera English has been slammed by news watchdog NewsGuard for failing to “maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.”
NewsGuard has urged readers to “proceed with extreme caution” when disseminating any output of the channel, because it intentionally misrepresents the interests of the government of the Qatar, which finances and owns the website.
According to NewsGuard — a firm which assesses the credibility of news sources around the globe and produces a “fake news report” — Al-Jazeera English has failed to comply with a number of press standards.
The NewsGuard report said the fact Al-Jazeera English is a privately-owned subsidiary of the Al-Jazeera network circumvented rules of transparency of disclosure of sources of financing in accordance with international law.
On its website, NewsGuard lists the Al-Jazeera channel as not “gathering or presenting information responsibly” nor “handling the difference between news and opinion responsibly.”
Its website blacklists Al-Jazeera for not revealing “who is in charge including any possible conflict of interest,” or its “content creators, along with either contact or biographical information.”
Jeffrey Semino, a media analyst who edited a Washington-based Free Beacon investigation from a Guardian report, said: “NewsGuard believes that Al-Jazeera English’s claims that it is accurate cannot in any way balance its violations of the most basic principles of credibility due to its deliberate campaigns of defamation and propaganda in the context of news coverage about Qatar and its neighbors.”
The news comes after a Jan. 4 tweet from Al-Jazeera US’ Twitter channel which read: “Dear audience, we regret to inform you that this account will be closed at the end of January. We thank you for your loyalty and invite you to continue following our brave, in-depth and diverse coverage of the world on @AJEnglish & @AJPlus.”
