Times apologizes for Al Jazeera slur

Posted by Martin Stabe on 16 February 2006 at 14:10
Tags: Al Jazeera, Times

Al Jazeera is has received the apology from the Times after one of the papers’ leaders yesterday accused the Arabic television station of biased reporting based on comments from an unrelated news web site, aljazeera.com.

The Times leader, about inflamatory coverage of the News of the Worlds’ British military abuse video in the Arab media, accused “the supposedly prestigious” Al Jazeera describing the video as “savagery”.

At least one blogger, Brand Republic editor Gordon MacMillan, spotted the error straight away. Al Jazeera demanded the apology yesterday in his magazine.

The Times has apparently removed the offending leader, headed “Being Framed” from its web site. On Thurday, existing links to the leader returned error messages, but there is a a version it in the Google cache.

Understanding the web seems to be causing the broadsheets some trouble lately. A fortnight ago, a Daily Telegraph report confused a blog that is frequently critical of the Mayor of London with one written Ken Livingstone.

Tags: Al Jazeera, Times