Monday, August 20, 2007

Sheikh-up? Al-Jazeera accountants jailed



Pity the Al Jazeera English language field correspondents. Those on-air smiles look a little tight lately in Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington, DC;
It's not only because the splendid archive footage has all been run through and it's time to get more features in the can for the 24/7 feed. Apparently, foreign correspondents have griped that, in the scramble of obtaining all that new shooting, stacks of their monthly expenses were left unreimbursed. So it's not all non-stop glamour in tv news. Complaints fell on deaf ears at the Qatar-based television station for months. Finally it was revealed that most of the no-account accountants had been tossed in jail. Since broadcasts are not aired inside Qatar, at the insistence of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the money freeze had stayed a mystery. An inside source now tells Feral Beast that the Al-J's "liquidity problems" are getting sorted.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The owner of Al Jazeera, addressing a group of visiting American Jewish leaders, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani once stated bluntly that he is interested in expanding his country’s ties with Israel. "We are thinking about opening an interest section" in the Zionist entity, the Qatari Emir, told members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations during a private meeting at the royal palace. "We have ended the secondary and tertiary boycott and are considering an agreement between [our respective] airlines."
Interesting...