Al Jazeera is to open a bureau in Rabat and, according to managing director Waddah Khanfar, it will be the second center of regular news bulletins after Doha.Speaking at a study day on "freedom of expression and defining responsibilities," Khanfar said that the channel will extend the activities of Rabat bureau through building new studios to further focus on issues of Morocco and the Maghreb region.
Waddah Khanfar also recalled the attacks against the Qatari channel, quoting the article published by the British newspaper, "Daily Mirror" which reported that the US was planning to bomb Al Jazeera's Qatar headquarters.
He noted that Al Jazeera is attacked because its staff consists of persons who are armed with know-how and who attached to their objectiveness, and because it offers a free information service, seeks universality, respects professionalism and looks for the truth.
On the channel's relation with the United States, he said that the period from 1996 through 2001 was marked by "announced satisfactions" in favor of Al Jazeera as "a democracy and reform project." These relations have changed since 2001 because of the channel's coverage of conflicts where international powers were involved.
In this perspective, Al Jazeera bureaus in Baghdad and Kabul were bombed and its journalists were arrested for their professional activities, he said.
Underlining that Arab media is going through “a serious transition stage," Khanfar called for expressing solidarity and a spirit of communication in order to create a pan-Arab media school, which would be able to deal out justice to journalists and preserve their dignity.
Tags: Morocco, Fès, aljazeera, news
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