According to the New York Times, David Marash, a leading American anchor on Al Jazeera English, has left the international news network citing concerns about the level of editorial control exerted from the Doha, Qatar, headquarters.
“To put it bluntly, the channel that’s on now—while excellent, and I plan to be a lifetime viewer—is not the channel that I signed up to do,’ Marash told the Times.
Marash’s two-year Al Jazeera contract involved anchoring newscasts from Washington, DC. The English network reaches more than 100 million homes worldwide. Al Jazeera has bureaux in Kuala Lumpur, London and Doha, where its parent, the Middle Eastern news network is based.
Marash, a former correspondent for ABC’s Nightline, told the Times that editorial control for the international bureaux has been diminished since he started at the network. “They started covering the whole world very well, but from the point of view and the interests of Doha and the surrounding region,’ he said. He also noted concerns about anti-American sensibilities in the coverage.
A report in The Guardian last week said that “amid complaints of a lack of clarity over its direction, contractual disputes and speculation over a relaunch later this year’, 15 staffers had left the Al Jazeera network over the past few months
