The eyes of some media observers have pivoted to the Charlie Hebdo terrorist massacre coverage by Al Jazeera English,
Mediaite reports.
Some are questioning the media outlet's credibility after emails from a producer, obtained by the National Review, show him questioning whether, in fact, the satirical publication set itself up for the deadly attack — which killed 12 people in Paris, including several of the magazine's top staff — by publishing biting cartoons against Islam, Mediaite reports.
An exchange purportedly from Al Jazeera's London-based executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr to his staff — and their divergent responses — went like this: "Was this really an attack on 'Free speech'? Who is attacking free speech here exactly? Or whether 'I Am Charlie' is an 'alienating slogan,'" Khadr reportedly emailed.
Khadr, according to the
National Review, prefaced his query on Thursday by writing "Please accept this note in the spirit it is intended — to make our coverage the best it can be. We are Al Jazeera!"
But he went on to follow in his thread: "You don’t actually stick it to the terrorists by insulting the majority of Muslims by reproducing more cartoons — you actually entrench the very animosity and divisions these guys seek to sow. Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile."
The emails prompted a spirited back and forth between Al Jazeera reporters from Doha, Qatar, to Washington, D.C., to Paris.
Noted Al Jazeera America's Washington bureau chief Tom Ackerman, according to Mediaite: "If a large enough group of someone is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization.”
Responded his colleague in Doha, Mohamed Vall Salem: "I guess if you encourage people to go on insulting 1.5 billion people about their most sacred icons, then you just want more killings because as I said, in 1.5 billion there will remain some fools who don't abide by the laws or know about free speech."
Salem added, according to Mediaite, that "what Charlie Hebdo did was not free speech, it was an abuse of free speech."
Khadr, according to
Business Insider, was attempting to offer guidance in coverage to his staff, but that guidance offered his own interpretation of the situation.
"This was a targeted attack, not a broad attack on the french population a la Twin towers or 7/7 style. So who was this attack against? The whole of France/EU society? Or specifically this magazine," Khadr wrote to his staff.
"The difference lies in how this is reported not in how terrible the act is obviously – murder is murder either way… but poses a narrower question of the 'why'? attack on French society and values? Only if you consider CH’s racist caricatures to be the best of European intellectual production (total whitewash on that at the moment)."
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