Change in Leadership at Al Jazeera

On Tuesday, Al Jazeera’s director general Wadah Khanfar stepped down from his post after 8 years as the network’s top executive. Khanfar, who started as a correspondent for Al Jazeera, stated that ”he had been discussing his decision to step down with Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, the chairman of the board, for some time.” Yet, in a recent piece for Foreign Policy, Blake Hounshell speculates on the real reason behind Khanfar’s sudden resignation. Hounshell posits that one clue regarding the direction of the news network lies in Khanfar’s replacement Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani a member of the Qatari royal family. As Hounshell states, “There were already strong reasons to question just how much editorial independence the network really has” and the appointment of a member of the royal family will not help this perception. Some critics point to the network’s coverage and “what they see as a double standard in the coverage of the unrest in Syria on the one hand, and its relatively negligible coverage of the strife in Bahrain.”

The New York Times reported that the replacement of Khanfar came after Wikileaks disclosed information “indicating that the news director had modified the network’s coverage of the Iraq war in response to pressure from the United States.” Al Jazeera and the Qatari government have both pushed back against these assertions and “fiercely insist that it is editorially independent and free from interference.”