For instance, in an exclusive interview from December 1998 that has been broadcast time and again Bin Laden calls for Muslims to "target all Americans" (Emery). Another story that has been run frequently depicts a Palestinian boy and his father evading Israeli troops just before gunfire strikes the boy (Emery). A segment showing Taliban leaders claiming hundreds of dead Arabs and showing a line of body bags in a Kandahar hospital is common occurrence (Emery). .
There are several arguments to refute this claim. Hafiz al Mirazi, Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau correspondent said quite simply that ""When you have a 24-hour broadcast, there a lot of empty hole"" (Timmerman). Al Mirazi goes on to equate a Bin Laden rebroadcast to a rebroadcast of an important speech by President Bush. But, to really understand why these stories are frequently run we must look to our own media. The planes slamming into the World Trade Center and their collapse is the arguably the most graphic video footage in existence and how many times have American news channels run that tape. How many times have we seen images or Americans running through the streets of New York as the two buildings are coming down? Soon after we often see the images of Mohamed Atta and the other Arab hijackers. The American media even showed footage of Arabs dancing in the streets and burning American flags in response to the World Trade Center bombings. If Al-Jazeera is guilty of inciting violence and hatred then the American media is just as guilty. Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi Arabian journalist expressed this, ""They know the taste of the Arab street, and the Arab street is anti-American. They are just like the New York Post"" (Zendick). Two wrongs do not make a right, but it is hippo critic for the American media to chastise Al-Jazeera for the same offences that can be seen on American television.
The evidence shows that Al-Jazeera is not pro Taliban.
