Al Jazeera Accused of Creating Fake Ceasefire Doc, Fooling Journalist Laura Rozen
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by Joshua Levitt
Natalie Younis, a Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera reporter, created the Word Document shared with reporter Laura Rozen as an official draft copy of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement. Photo: Screenshot.
An Al Jazeera reporter and producer reportedly created a Microsoft Word document they said was a draft of the U.S.-proposed Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement, which they shared with Middle East reporter Laura Rozen, who used it to lambaste Israeli leaders. But, on Sunday, the document was taken offline, as bloggers lambasted Rozen for incredulity of accepting the word of Al Jazeera.
Blogger Jeff Dunetz, from ‘The Lid,’ saw the document and uploaded screenshots of its creators from the file’s metadata.
Rozen, who Dunetz noted for her “anti-Israel slant,” writes for Al-Monitor.
She spent “much of her Sunday defending the State Department against Israeli claims the proposed 7-day Kerry cease-fire was so bad it could have been written by Hamas,” Dunetz said.
“Rozen has been arguing on Twitter that the Israelis are lying about Kerry’s proposal,” he wrote. “She specifically bases her accusations on a copy of a cease-fire plan that she was given. The document she is referring to was typed and edited by employees of al-Jazeera.”
“The initial document/transcription was done by Natalie Younis, a Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera reporter, and the last person to edit it was by Katie Turner, a Doha-based AJ producer,” he wrote.
Katie Turner, a Doha-based Al Jazeera producer, was the last person to edit the document created by an Al Jazeera journalist and shared as an official draft of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement. Photo: Snapshot.
“Putting it another way, employees of a propaganda organ run by the country who is a major sugar-daddy of Hamas, fed a pro-Qatari document to Laura Rozen, who then uncritically picked it up and ran with it on the assumption that Israelis are liars. That is what is considered Journalism in today’s media world.”
Dunetz attributed the discovery to Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, which follows the world’s largest charities to verify that they are operating within the scope of their mission.
