rial after making the necessary corrections and give the affected person the opportunity to express their views. Despite adhering to these stringent editorial rules and regulations, Al Jazeera’s journalists have had to deal with complex challenges they encountered in the course of their commitment to the provisions of the Code of Professional Conduct. In essence, these challenges have to do with the simultaneous interchangeability of two factors: the trust that Al Jazeera’s audience has in its content on the one hand, and the rush of official and non-official bodies to convey their messages on its screen on the other, which makes it even more difficult to identify and isolate misleading news and information. In this context, Abu Hilala maintains that misinformation is always there “with and without malicious inten- tions, from the ruling authorities as well as the opposition. Each party tries to feed you information that serves its cause. This could be with malicious intention, i.e. that the source knows that he or she is lying to you; or it could just be news the source wants to hear” (1) . The experi- ence AJE journalist Hashem Ahelbarra says the sharing of misleading information is not specific to a particular country. In fact, it is present in nearly every country, invariably aiming to achieve specific political goals and agendas” (2) . To filter out fake news, Al Jazeera has devel- oped a verification process starting from the department in charge of newsgathering, to the interviewees, all the way to “filtering the news again through other parallel parties in order to maintain credibility” (3) . Following the protests that brought about the Arab Spring, Al Jazeera predicted the introduction of new actors as sources of misinformation. “They have immense capabilities to provide the media and social me- dia platforms with breaking news. Misleading news is not only meant to have an effect on people, but also aims to influence the media” (4) . To counter misinformation, Al Jazeera relied on the accumulation of “trust
(1) Abu Hilala, personal interview, Ibid.
(2) Hashem Ahelbarra, personal interview, Doha, December 2020.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid.
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