Media Coverage of The Iraq War - Attack On Al Jazeera

Attack On Al Jazeera

On April 8, 2003, U.S. aircraft bombed the Baghdad bureau of Qatar satellite TV station Al Jazeera killing a journalist and wounding another despite the U.S. being informed of the office's precise coordinates prior to the incident. An Al Jazeera correspondent said that very clear, yellow signs reading "Press" covered the building from all sides and on the roof. A U.S. Central Command spokesman said that the station "was not and never had been a target." The U.S. government had repeatedly criticized Al Jazeera as "endangering the lives of American troops."

The attack had drawn particular criticism because the Kabul office of Al Jazeera had been bombed in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

On 2 April 2003, in a speech given in New York City, British Home Secretary David Blunkett commented on what he believed to be sympathetic and corrupt reporting of Iraq by Arab news sources. He told the audience that "It's hard to get the true facts if the reporters of Al Jazeera are actually linked into, and are only there because they are provided with facilities and support from, the régime." His speech came only hours before Al Jazeera was ejected from Baghdad by the US occupation.

A top secret memo leaked by a British civil servant and a parliamentary researcher detailed a lengthy conversation on April 16, 2004 between Prime Minister Blair and President Bush, in which Bush according to British media allegedly proposed bombing the Qatar central office of Al Jazeera. House press secretary, Scott McClellan, describing it as "outlandish" said, "Any such notion that we would engage in that kind of activity is just absurd." A UK government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious." Another source said Bush was "deadly serious." The UK government refuses to publish the memo and two civil servants have been charged with violating Britain's Official Secrets Act for allegedly disclosing the document. For a fuller discussion, see Al Jazeera bombing memo.