David Marash, the leading American anchor on Al Jazeera’s English-language news channel, has resigned, citing increased editorial control from the channel’s headquarters in Qatar.
Marash, a former correspondent on ABC’s “Nightline,” said he also sensed anti-American sentiments creeping into the channel’s coverage.
“To put it bluntly, the channel that’s on now — while excellent, and I plan to be a lifetime viewer — is not the channel I signed up to do,” Marash said.
Al Jazeera English, the companion to the Arabic-language Al Jazeera, went on the air 16 months ago and now reaches 100 million households around the world, although it has not gotten widespread cable distribution in the U.S., the New York Times reported.
Marash, whose contract ended this month, co-anchored newscasts from Washington, D.C., and presented half-hour specials about the U.S.
But as time went on, the headquarters in Doha, Qatar, exercised an increasing level of direction about the assignment of stories, and the three regional news bureaus — in Washington, London, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — saw their autonomy decrease, according to Marash.
“They started covering the whole world very well, but from the point of view and the interests of Doha and the surrounding region,” he said.
On Wednesday, The Guardian in Britain reported that more than 15 staffers of Al Jazeera English had quit or resigned in recent months “amid complaints of a lack of clarity over its direction, contractual disputes and speculation over a relaunch later this year.”
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