67. Name: Hatem El Zein Title: Why does Al Jazeera Carry Reports of Terrorist Organizations? And does it therefore Support Terrorism? Institution: University of New South Wales Country: Australia Date: 2010 Language: English Abstract: This research aims to identify and discuss the reasons why the Qatari based channel Al Jazeera channel invites terrorists and opens its platform to terrorist organizations, particularly Al-Qaida and its leader Osama ben Laden, and transmits their messages. Based on critical media and cultural study approach, which allows the researcher to narrate and analyze the data in a comprehensive way, this research has been contextualized by providing a literature about the nature of relationship between media and terrorism. The research also draws on Social responsibility theory, which has been developed in the democratic countries and its main assumption is the audience “has the right to know”. However, this right to inform is not extreme, because the responsibility has limitations. The data of this research of this research is gathered mainly from books, academic journals and conference proceedings. It could be observed clearly that Al Jazeera is not a terrorist media outlet. Terrorist outlets are formed and controlled by terrorists themselves or support a terrorist agenda. Remarkably, Al Jazeera’s transmitting of terrorists’ messages has launched an academic debate whether this media outlet supports terrorism.
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