Independent Arabic news channel Al Jazeera has in its possession at least half a dozen more video tapes from Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network which it has never broadcast because it deemed them too fanatical or not sufficiently newsworthy, reports The Guardian.
"In a bid to prove Al Jazeera is not a mere mouthpiece for the terrorist network, the channel says it does not show everything it gets. The network even canned an interview with bin Laden conducted in October 2001, the month after the September 11 terror attacks in the US, because it was not considered to be in Al Jazeera's style," the paper said Thursday.
"We don't want to become the fanatic's channel," The Guardian quotes Ibrahim Helal, the editor-in-chief of the Qatar-based satellite broadcaster, as saying.
Defending Al Jazeera's decision to show graphic images of dead and wounded bodies during the Gulf conflict, both of Iraqi people and coalition soldiers, Helal said: "What we've done during the war which was different from the Western networks was these graphic scenes - because it was part of the reality. If you start filtering the reality, you will lose the shape of that reality. It's a historical role we're doing in the Middle East."
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