Lawsuit
Alleges Sexism, Anti-Semitism by Al Jazeera America Official
by IPT News • Apr 29, 2015 at
5:17 pm
|
|
|
|
|
Share:  
|
  Be the
first of your friends to like this.
A senior Al Jazeera America manager is facing serious allegations of
sexist and anti-Semitic discrimination after an employee filed suit Tuesday for wrongful termination.
Matthew Luke is seeking $15 million in damages from the Qatar-owned
network. The complaint filed in New York state court accuses Osman Mahmud
of sexist discrimination, such as removing female employees from projects
and excluding women from emails and meetings related to their assignments.
Mahmud also allegedly made anti-American and anti-Semitic comments, such as
"whoever supports Israel should die a fiery death in hell."
According to the lawsuit, Luke was fired 10 days after filing a report
regarding Mahmud's behavior to Al Jazeera's HR department.
Mahmud denied the allegations in an interview with the Washington Post.
Among the other claims, Mahmud ordered a senior news official to replace
a photographer, an Israeli national, with a Palestinian who was less
qualified.
When the official complained, she was reassigned to a less prestigious
position and replaced by a male colleague. The lawsuit describes Al Jazeera
America's chief executive as believing a correspondent's reporting was too
pro-Israel, even though Al Jazeera is notorious for its highly critical
stance against the Jewish state.
The network's Arabic and English outlets have been plagued by reports
that its biases trump its stated objective of providing objective
journalism. Nearly two dozen staffers resigned in protest of the network's sympathetic
coverage toward the Muslim Brotherhood after the 2013 ouster of Mohamed
Morsi as Egypt's president.
In January, in the immediate aftermath of the massacre of cartoonists,
other staffers and police at the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo,
internal Al Jazeerah emails obtained by the National
Review show executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr urging staff members
to emphasize the magazine's "racist caricatures" in their
coverage.
He suggested they question if this was "really an attack on 'free
speech,'" and whether the spontaneous "I Am Charlie" signs
held posted and displayed by outraged French citizens was an
"alienating slogan."
"Was this really an attack on 'Free speech'?" one Khadr email
said. "Who is attacking free speech here exactly? Does an attack by
2-3 guys on a controversial magazine equate to a civilizational attack on
European values..? Really?"
The "Je Suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) signs were
counter-productive, he claimed. "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."
That sentiment was echoed by Qatar-based reporter Mohamed Vall Salem,
who wrote, "what Charlie Hebdo did was not free speech it was an abuse
of free speech in my opinion, go back to the cartoons and have a look at
them!
"It' snot [sic] about what the drawing said, it was about how they
said it. I condemn those heinous killings, but I'M NOT CHARLIE."
Related Topics: Civil
suits, Media
| IPT
News, Al
Jazeera America, bias,
anti-Semitism,
sexism,
Matthew
Luke, Osman
Mahmud, Charlie
Hebdo massacre, Salah-Aldeen
Khadr, Mohamed
Vall Salem, Civil
suits, Media
|
Print
Send
Comment
RSS
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment