The statement:
“One of his largest clients is Al Jazeera, a mouthpiece for terrorism,” -Sen. David Perdue, Atlanta Press Club’s October debate
What we found:
Jon Ossoff has served as the CEO of Insight TWI, a British documentary company, since 2013. One of the company’s many clients has been Al-Jazeera English, a division of a Qatar-owned satellite television network, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Qatar has faced accusations of supporting terrorism over the years. In 2017, Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates cut diplomatic ties with Qatar for that reason. President Donald Trump also called Qatar a “funder of terrorism.”
A year later, Trump welcomed Qatar’s head of state to the White House and “portrayed him as a partner in the fight against extremists,” the New York Times reported.
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a 2011 article, the American Journalism Review reported that Al Jazeera had earned a “reputation as a mouthpiece for terrorists” from critics because it aired messages from Osama Bin Laden after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But “the story also described praise for the network,” reports USA Today.
That same year, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., lauded Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Middle East uprisings know as Arab Spring. “I’m very proud of the role that Al Jazeera has played,” McCain said. “I congratulate you and I mourn for those who have sacrificed in the service of providing the information, which is knowledge, which is power.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, also praised Al Jazeera before a congressional committee in 2011, NPR reported.
The AJC reported in 2017 that “in its early years, Al Jazeera struck a hard Islamist tone, and raised eyebrows when it aired videos of Osama bin Laden and his followers. “But it has changed.”
The claims attempting to tie Ossoff and Al Jazeera to terrorism were first levied during his 2017 run for the 6th Congressional District. The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, resurfaced the claim in ads this year. It’s still regularly airing on television as Ossoff heads into a January runoff against Republican Sen. David Perdue.
“This Republican attack is a frankly racist attempt to cast Muslims as a dangerous enemy, all because a broadcaster with an Arab name aired content produced by Jon’s company,” Miryam Lipper, communications director for the Ossoff campaign.
During Ossoff’s tenure with Insight TWI, documentaries licensed to Al Jazeera spanned a range of topics, include extrajudicial killings in Kenya, Liberia’s Ebola outbreak and abuses by peacekeepers in Sierra Leone.
“What Republicans don’t mention is that, now as then, most of the work Ossoff’s firm does for Al-Jazeera is broadcast in Africa — and is about doings on that continent,” The AJC reported.
Both Republicans ads have been criticized as misleading by news fact checking sites, such as PolitiFact and FactCheck.org.
Ossoff was listed as an executive producer on many Insight TWI productions that aired on Al Jazeera between 2014 and 2018, according to the company’s website. The productions listed on Insight TWI’s website as having been aired on Al Jazeera during that period focus on Latin America and Africa.
The only two productions that focused on terrorism in the Middle East during that time are about former sex slaves of Islamic State militants, which aired on BBC Three in the U.K., according to Insight TWI’s website.
Feedback: Send your campaign questions to senatewatch@ajc.com
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