Some Arab governments are wary that they will be a new mouthpiece for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood (MB) movement, which they view as a destabilising threat. The Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera network has been accused of pro-Brotherhood bias, something the station has denied, but it lost a lot of its audience last year, especially after the crackdown on the movement in Egypt, and Islamists political setback in Tunisia and Libya. Qatar lost the political and media prestige which was created by Al-Jazeera over almost 20 years, said a well-known journalist close to the Qatari decision-makers. According to the Alexa index, which measures website traffic, Al-Arabys global rank was 6,967 last week. Despite the fact that it is not allowed to operate in Egypt officially yet, 44% of the visitors are from there. It is not just in Egypt, the political stance of the newspaper is obvious wherever the MB exists, Mr Salahuddin said. Observers say it is a stance closely linked to Qatars policies in the Middle East. The journalist close to Qatari decision-makers, who did not want to be identified, said there was no future for this [new media] project without supporting the political Islam movements. Qatar cannot abandon this policy, or else they will be without any political weight. bbc/news/world-middle-east-30141659
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 19:12:23 +0000
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