Al Arabiya has been the topic of controversy. It has been criticized as an arm of Saudi foreign policy. On 14 February 2005, Al Arabiya was the first news satellite channel to air news of the assassination of
Rafik Hariri. In September 2008,
Iran expelled Al Arabiya's Tehran bureau chief Hassan Fahs, the third Al Arabiya correspondent expelled from Iran since the network opened an Iran office. In October of the same year, the Al Arabiya website was hacked by attackers who claimed to be Shi'ites. In 2009,
Courtney C. Radsch lost her job the day after publishing an article about safety problems on the airline
Emirates, a move Al Arabiya described as restructuring in the English department. In June 2009, the Iranian government ordered the Al Arabiya office in Tehran to be closed for a week for "unfair reporting" of the
Iranian presidential election. Seven days later, amid the
2009 Iranian presidential election, the network's office was "closed indefinitely" by the government. In 2016, Al Arabiya dismissed 50 staff members, including journalists. Citing financial problems stemming from low oil prices, the dismissed individuals were offered salaries and benefits for six months as a severance package. In April 2017, Al Arabiya was found in breach of
UK broadcasting law by the UK media regulator,
Ofcom, for broadcasting an interview with an imprisoned Bahraini torture survivor. Ofcom concluded that it infringed on the privacy of imprisoned
Bahraini opposition leader and torture survivor Hassan Mushaima, when it broadcast footage of him obtained during his arbitrary detention in Bahrain. Ofcom sanctioned the licence holder Al Arabiya News Channel FZ-LLC by fining them and directing them to broadcast an on-air apology. The channel then surrendered its license to broadcast in the following month after an additional complaint was filed by
Qatar News Agency.
Arab criticism In November 2004, the interim Iraqi government banned Al Arabiya from reporting from the country after it broadcast an audio tape reportedly made by the deposed Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein. Due to post-coverage of
assassination of Rafic Hariri, as of 2007, Syrian politicians have criticized Al Arabiya for anti-government and perceived pro-US and pro-Israeli bias. In 2013, Saudi Islamic scholar
Abdulaziz al-Tarefe criticized the channel in a viral tweet. The Algerian Ministry of Communication released a statement on 31 July 2021 saying that it withdrew Al Arabiya's operating accreditation in
Algeria, due to what it termed "the non-respect by this channel of the rules of
deontology and its recourse to disinformation and manipulation". The
Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement's Arabic-language account published a call to boycott Al Arabiya and some other Arabic language channels what they called "the mouthpieces of the Israeli enemy that speak Arabic"
Killed and abducted reporters In September 2003, Al Arabiya reporter
Mazen al-Tumeizi was killed on camera in Iraq when a
U.S. helicopter fired on a crowd in Haifa Street in Baghdad. In February 2006, three Al Arabiya reporters were abducted and murdered while covering the aftermath of
the bombing of a mosque in Samarra, Iraq. Among them was correspondent
Atwar Bahjat, an Iraqi national. In 2012, Al Arabiya's Asia correspondent Baker Atyani was abducted in the
Philippines by an armed militia. He was released after 18 months.
Plagiarism In August 2015, the
Egyptian Streets news website said Al Arabiya had copied "word-for-word" from two of its articles. Al Arabiya later updated one of the articles and added a note citing the error.
Fake reporters In 2020,
The Daily Beast identified a network of false personas used to insert opinion pieces aligned with UAE government policy to media outlets including Al Arabiya. The pieces were critical about Turkey's role in the Middle East, as well as
Qatar and particularly its
state media Al Jazeera. Twitter suspended some of the fake columnists' accounts in early July 2020.
Notable interviews In 2009, Al Arabiya aired an interview between journalist Hisham Melhem and then newly elected president of the United States, Barack Obama. The broadcast was the first-ever formal interview with Obama during his first administration. During the
2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the channel interviewed Armenian President
Armen Sarkissian about the ongoing war happening between
Armenia and
Azerbaijan, during which President Sarkissian blasted Turkey and Azerbaijan for inflaming the conflict. In response, Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of destabilization in the Caucasus and Middle East, resulting in Saudi Arabian Commercial Chamber's Head Ajlan al-Ajlan to call for boycott against Turkish goods. == Distribution ==