Al Jazeera demands correction from Times over bias allegations

by Joe Lepper, Brand Republic 15-Feb-06, 12:35

LONDON - Al Jazeera is demanding a correction from The Times after the newspaper accused the TV network of producing inflammatory and biased coverage of the British troops abuse scandal in Iraq.

The Times leader comment in today's newspaper, headlined "Being Framed", is critical of Al Jazeera's coverage of the story, but bases this largely on comments made on the www.aljazeera.com website.

Aljazeera.com is one of a number of Arab-focused websites that uses the "Al Jazeera" name, which means "the island" or "peninsula" in Arabic, but is unrelated to the television network, which has a website at Aljazeera.net, with an English-language version at english.aljazeera.net.

Referring to comments made on the Aljazeera.com site, including "Let Sharon's painful death be the punishment for his crimes", The Times writes "Sir David Frost, the station's new signing, might want to be aware of the unsavoury company that he is keeping".

The Times article also refers to the Al Jazeera network as being "supposedly prestigious".

Al Jazeera, which is subsidised by the government of the Arab emirate of Qatar, stressed it has nothing to do with Aljazeera.com, which often uses highly inflammatory language and has a strong anti-American stance.

A spokeswoman for Al Jazeera said: "The website being referred to is nothing to do with us and as a result we will be writing to The Times and asking for a correction."

A Times spokesperson said: "We have not received any complaints and so can not make any comment about this at this stage. The Times has not been contacted by Al Jazeera about this issue."

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