Al-Jazeera TV faces ban for inciting hatred

Al-Jazeera TV faces ban for inciting hatred

By Sean O'Neill
Last Updated: 11:14am GMT 05/11/2001

AL-JAZEERA television could be banned from broadcasting in Britain if its transmission of Osama bin Laden's latest video statement is judged to incite racial or religious hatred.

The Independent Television Commission is monitoring al-Jazeera's output and will today examine the content of bin Laden's weekend video, in which he urged Muslims to wage religious war on the "infidel". On the ITC's advice, the Government can proscribe any channel that is guilty of incitement to hatred.

The Qatar-based Arabic language network has been available free since August in the six million British homes that subscribe to Sky Digital - providing a potential audience of 10 million people. Al-Jazeera is licensed by the French broadcasting authorities, allowing it to screen its output anywhere in the European Union.

The CIA fears that bin Laden's statements may contain coded messages to terrorists and Downing Street asked news broadcasters last month to exercise caution when reporting al-Qa'eda videos.

Short extracts of bin Laden's latest video were shown with editorial commentary on BBC, ITN and Sky news programmes. The entire video, lasting several minutes, was shown on al-Jazeera. In his broadcast, bin Laden sought to characterise the war on terrorism as a "fundamentally religious" conflict.

Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, has revealed in a parliamentary written answer that al-Jazeera's output is being monitored by the ITC to see if it breaches the EU Television Without Frontiers directive.

That rule requires EU states to "ensure that broadcasts do not contain any incitement to hatred on grounds of race, sex, religion or nationality".

Mrs Jowell said: "It is open to the Government, on the advice of the ITC, to proscribe a television broadcaster which broadcasts from another member state where the broadcasts contain material which manifestly, seriously and gravely infringes this prohibition, on at least two occasions in a 12-month period."

Before this weekend's video broadcast the ITC's "monitoring of al-Jazeera has not led it to conclude that proscription would be justified". Sky said it was legally required to allow al-Jazeera to broadcast and had no power to control its output.