Al Jazeera slammed for fabricating news

Manama : A Bahraini weekly newspaper has slammed Al Jazeera news agency for “fabricating news and publishing baseless content”.

The Al Jazeera news agency had aired on its satellite channel and published on its website a story misquoting Al Naba newspaper and claiming that the journal is not pleased with the Kingdom’s counterterrorism policies.

The channel linked an introduction published on the first page of the latest version of the newspaper with recent statements made by the Foreign Affairs Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, portraying that the Bahraini press is opposing the foreign policies of Bahrain.

During a press conference held by the foreign ministers of the Anti-terror Quartet in Cairo on Wednesday, Shaikh Khalid considered the Muslim Brotherhood Organisation as a terrorist group.

He said, “Every one belonging to them or showing sympathy with them, will be tried for that.”

Al Naba said in a statement issued on Thursday, “We condemn the fabrication of Qatari Al Jazeera news channel and its intentional misleading reporting by noting to our introduction as if it was a response to the Foreign Minister’s statements. The introduction was published in our 469th issue printed on Wednesday morning, while the minister’s statements only came in the evening.”

The paper commented in its statement saying, “This is a clear fabrication and use of the opening article for dubious and misleading purposes of the channel.”

The statement clarified that “the introduction criticised those who work unknowingly to differentiate between the components of Bahrain’s cohesive and integrated society around its wise leadership against external interference”.

“Al Jazeera intentionally cut paragraphs of the introduction and added words that didn’t appear in the original text, such as marking the coup attempt in 2011 as a popular uprising. This fabrication is a violation of the known and applicable values and ethics of journalism. It is sedition that Al Jazeera continued to practice in order to infuse the components of the Arab and Muslim people through deliberate and distorted media falsification of facts,” the newspaper added in its statement.