Cable news network Al Jazeera America to shut down
Station cites ‘economic landscape of the media environment’ as reason for closure less than three years after launch
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NEW YORK — Cable news network Al Jazeera America says it is shutting down just two and half years after its launch.
It blamed the “economic landscape of the media environment,” and said it would stop operating by April 30.
The network launched in August 2013 with a plan to offer serious-minded news coverage. While it won some awards, not many people watched the channel.
It was also hit with allegations of anti-Semitic and sexist behavior. The company replaced its CEO in May as key executives left amid complaints about the network’s culture. Two former employees have sued.
In June 20015 the former head of the station’s documentary unit sued the news network, claiming it is biased against non-Arabs and women in stories that it produces and in how it treats employees.
Shannon High-Bassalik, fired in February 2015 after working through half of a three-year contract, claimed that during coverage of the 2014 conflict in Gaza she was told the mission was to cast Israel as the villain and emphasize the Arab and Muslim point of view.
She also said the ousted chief executive Ehab Al Shihabi left meetings when women were speaking and admitted that he tried to favor an Arab point of view on the air to please AJAM’s Qatar-based ownership.
In April 2015, fired employee Matthew Luke sued the network alleging a hostile work environment that included “discriminatory, anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks.”
Luke lost his job two months earlier, 10 days after he complained about the behavior of his supervisor, Osman Mahmud, to human resources.
The lawsuit accused Mahmud, who oversaw Broadcast Operations and Technology at the network, of making remarks deemed anti-Semitic such as “whoever supports Israel should die a fiery death in hell,” and expressing a desire to replace an Israeli cameraman with a Palestinian one, as well as excluding women from emails and meetings, the TVNewser website reported at the time.
Al Jazeera America is an offshoot of the Qatar-based Al Jazeera cable news network.
JTA and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.