November 1st, 2010 by Anna

The Moroccan government reportedly suspended Al Jazeera’s service in the country on Friday, a move the satellite television network condemned. The government charged the network with deviating from accepted standards of journalism, adding that its “refusal to be objective and impartial systematically tarnishes Morocco’s image.” One unnamed official stated that the government objected to “the way Al Jazeera handles the issues of Islamists and Western Sahara,” where over 2,000 Islamists have been detained since 2003.

Magda Abu Fadil, director of the Journalism Training Program at the American University of Beirut, writes at Huffington Post that “[r]un-ins with Arab governments have been a trademark of the channel, whose motto ‘the opinion, and opposite opinion,’ has often landed it in hot water in a region where personality cults and state-run media are standard fare.” Al Jazeera got in a spat with the Jordanian government last month over the jamming of World Cup broadcasting, and officials in Cairo have criticized the network’s editorial policies and “anti-Egyptian reports,” according to Abu Fadil.

Posted in Journalism, Middle Eastern Media, Morocco |