[FireBeyond]

> Al Jazeera isn't free media. It's the propaganda arm of Qatar.

Conflating Qatar's other issues with Al Jazeera is misdirection.

Media watch groups consistently rate Al Jazeera as "neutral/balanced", with their perspective "skewing slightly left", which doesn't seem particularly consistent with Qatar.

> Ad Fontes Media rates Al Jazeera in the Skews Left category of bias and as Reliable, Analysis/Fact Reporting in terms of reliability.

> All Sides rates Al Jazeera as "Leans Left"

> Al Jazeera equal in reliability to CNN

They are certainly not without issue, to be sure. But still.

Sources: https://adfontesmedia.com/al-jazeera-bias-and-reliability/ , https://www.allsides.com/news-source/al-jazeera-media-bias

[YZF]

It is not a misdirection. It is headquartered in Qatar and is funded by the government. There is no conflation there. Qatar is not free, journalists operating in Qatar are not free, end of story. You can't operate free press based and funded by a country that is not free and suppressed/intimidates/controls the press.

[FireBeyond]

Partially funded by the government.

And consistently rated as a neutral and reliable media source.

The two concepts, though they may have some overlap, are not one and the same.

[YZF]

It is definitely not consistently rated (by who?) as neutral or reliable.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/ - Rated "mixed" on "factual" reporting, i.e. some facts, some lies... i.e. rates as propaganda.

EDIT: "and Mixed for factual reporting due to failed fact checks that were not corrected and misleading extreme editorial bias that favors Qatar."

EDIT2: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/al-jazeera-%E2%80%98defe...

[FireBeyond]

"by who"? I included the sources in my comment.

Even your link here says:

> In review, Al Jazeera reports news with minimally loaded wording in their headlines and articles ... properly sourced from credible news agencies. When reporting USA news, there is minimal bias in reporting ... In general, straight news reporting has a minimal bias; however, as a state-funded news agency, Al Jazeera is typically not critical of Qatar.

The failed fact checks were regarding two articles that weren't corrected.

> In 2017, Al Jazeera aired an investigative report of Britain’s Israel lobby. Following the airing, Ofcom (the UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority) received complaints from many pro-Israeli British activists, including one former Israeli embassy employee. They were accused of anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing, and infringement of privacy, which was later cleared by Ofcom, who said the piece was not anti-semitic and was, in fact, investigative journalism.

Huh.

> Further, Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations demanded Qatar to shut down Al-Jazeera. Al Jazeera rebuts the accusations here.

So pro-Arab that SA (and UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt) demanded Qatar shut them down...

I never said Al Jazeera is perfect, and as noted, there is a reluctance to criticize the Qatari government.

I take less issue with "some of their opinion pieces are vocally anti-Israel", unless the contention is that nothing Israel can do can be criticized for ... reasons?

[weatherlite]

> some of their opinion pieces are vocally anti-Israel

All, not some. I've been reading them regularly for a few months and have never seen anything that isn't Anti Zionist, let alone pro Israel, and this was way before the current war - I'm sure its much worse now.

[chgs]

So you are saying you can’t operate a free press in Israel?

[YZF]

Can Qatari media call for the government to be ousted? Can Israeli media call for the government to be ousted?

Answer these two questions and you'll be able to answer your own question.

[aaomidi]

Every press operates within the confines of the government it’s based in.

Major US news agencies regularly ask DoD if certain topics are okay for them to cover. Beyond that, most relevant news in the US is owned by billionaires that regularly repress news that would paint them in a bad light.

Anyway, no news agency is perfect.

[runarberg]

The BBC is also headquartered in the UK, and is funded by the government. Thad doesn’t automatically make the BBC “The propaganda arm” of the UK.

This submission is about Al Jazeeras operations in Israel—which is supposed to have press freedom. Israel raided and closed the Israel operations, and banned Al Jazeera’s journalists from operating in Israel.

All that said, I’m not sure you last point goes without saying. There is nothing which fundamentally prevents receiving funding from a country which suppresses press freedom, which prevents you from doing free journalism. Will receiving funding cause editorial bias? Sure, but if receiving funding automatically made you a propaganda arm for the entity funding you, then you should really question whether western media is a propaganda arm for free market capitalism, or if Hacker News was a propaganda arm for venture capitalist Y Combinator.