Few days ago I was watching Inside Story on Al Jazeera English, and one of the guests on the show was Baria Alamuddin, foreign editor of Al Hayat. This sounds normal, or at least it should, except that Alamuddin was speaking from Riyadh. It is no secret that Al Jazeera and the Saudi government are not friends. They have been banned from working inside the country for a long time, and some of their Arab employees say they are not allowed to enter the Kingdom even when they come on their own. I’m a little bit puzzled over this: are Al Jazeera no longer banned from working here, or is it just for the English channel while its Arabic sister is still banned?
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Were Al Jazeera using another company’s studio? It’s possible that they have ‘friendly arrangements’ to cope with political problems.
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That is a great observation. It seems very unlikey the guy was actually in Saudi. If indeed he was, it marks a historic moment for Al Jazeera.
This is not new, Aljazeera English was covering this year’s Hajj, I was watching Riz Khan, when he went crazy after seeing few rain drops in Jeddah on first day of Eid!! So if they were banned, why they will let them cover the Hajj? Unless they think that Riz is still working for CNN :D
I watched the Riz Khan program as well – it even had interviews with the Haj security officers – it didn’t look one bit like there was any “disharmony” in the arrangement.