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| Al-Jazeera hires ex-Tribune editor |
| 2005-05-11 |
| Arabic satellite television news channel al-Jazeera has hired the former Tribune editor Mark Seddon to be New York correspondent for its new 24-hour English-language station. Mr Seddon, who resigned as the editor of the leftwing weekly newspaper last year, is likely to take up his posting with al-Jazeera International in September with a broad remit, including covering US politics. "He will have a special brief to cover UN stories," an al-Jazeera International spokeswoman said today. He said today it would be crossing a "journalistic boundary" to work for the network in the US, which has been hostile to its coverage of the war in Iraq. "It is going to be interesting to see what the reaction of people will be. "It is one of those things that happens quite rarely, a new channel setting up. Because it has got a big following in the developed world it is probably going to be a major player. "In terms of what happens in US television I suspect that there's going to be a lot of people attracted to something a bit different to Fox News and CNN." Earlier this month John Pullman, a former editor of ITV News At Ten and the 10.30pm bulletin, joined the network to be its head of output, based in Doha. Other journalists to have signed up include Susan Phillips, previously the London bureau chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who is now al-Jazeera's London chief; Paul Gibbs, a former editor of BBC Breakfast, and Steve Clarke, who used to produce Sun columnist Richard Littlejohn's show for Sky. Al-Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, which is considering privatising the network following pressure from the US and a de facto advertising boycott by Arab countries offended by its sometimes critical stance. Al-Jazeera International will begin broadcasting globally early next year. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |