Dave Marash leaves "Al-Jazeera English"

[Eric J in MN]

From
http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2008-03-28

Former ABC Nightline correspondent Dave Marash, who raised eyebrows two years ago when he agreed to become the U.S. anchor for Al-Jazeera English, has told the New York Times that he has quit the news channel because it "is not the channel that I signed up to do." He said that the channel had reduced the editorial independence of its satellite operations in Washington, London and Kuala Lumpur so that it had begun to resemble more and more the Arabic-language channel.

His own operations in Washington remained a two-correspondent affair, he said, and his editorial input "small at the start, has gotten smaller and smaller." In a separate interview with the Associated Press, Marash said that he discovered that there was a "reflexive adversarial editorial stance against Americans at Al-Jazeera English."

AP reported that Will Stebbins, Washington bureau chief for Al-Jazeera English, had told it that the network had decided to replace Marash as an anchor and use him instead as a reporter but that Marash had instead decided to resign. "We were sorry to see Dave go," he remarked.

[JCMach1]

1. BS Marash had NO presence as an anchor... Al Jazeera is just fine

and it is by far the most left and progressive of main-stream news outlets...

Marash is just airing his sour grapes at this point...

[shireen]

2. maybe a bad choice as an anchor but he's a good reporter.

I remember him from Nightline. I think the lack of editorial control at Al Jazeera is real and worrisome.

[JCMach1]

3. Agreed on the reporting... Al Jazeera, English will be fine without him