"... The major find in the hack was an email exchange between anchorwoman Rula Ibrahim and Hashem. In conversation with her colleague in Beirut, Ibrahim says she had "turned against the revolution" in Syria after realising the protests would "destroy the country and lead to a civil war”. She went on to deride the opposition Free Syrian Army as "a branch of al-Qaeda”.While Al-Jazeera has remained tight lipped on the breach of its server, the state broadcaster in Syria lauded the revelations in the email as proof of the subversive role foreign proxies were playing in sowing chaos in the country. When Hashem spoke to Daily Maverick on Sunday evening, he blamed his departure from the Qatari-owned network on a politicisation of the news. “We are in the era of a politicisation of media, that’s one of the reasons why I left Al-Jazeera,” he said. “Today the owners want their agenda to be clear on the news diary, they are paying money to make use of their media outlet, I can't impose on them to abide by media ethics, the best thing if you don't like it leave it and so I did.”As’ad AbuKhalil, Professor of political science at California State University, writing in his blog The Angry Arab News Service, is certain the slant of Al-Jazeera’s reporting on Syria is an extension of Qatari foreign policy. “I am not surprised of the leak at all: I am in contact from people inside Al-Jazeera who are disgusted by the propaganda work of the network in the last few months,” he says. “ The network has been so bad that the law of diminishing returns apply here: the network has gone too far in its propaganda work that I can't see any effectiveness in what they do. I know how those things work and they know that I know,” he insists. “The footage that are (sic) being shown show staging of events of calling a civilian an ‘officer’ in the Syrian army, of faking injuries and feeding statements to people before airtime, etc. Al-Jazeera seems to be writing its own professional obituary,”..."
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