DOHA: The siege of Qatar was built on the crime of hacking Qatar News Agency’s (QNA) website and publishing a fake news.
The same strategy of the blockading countries to achieve geopolitical goals continued afterwards and they employed all techniques of propaganda to malign Qatar in the region and globally by hiring firms to make anti-Qatar documentaries, spreading disinformation, using bots, staging funded conferences, airing fabricated stories against Qatar but today a year after siege they have failed to tarnish Qatar’s image in the world.
Much before the imposition of unjust siege against Qatar on June 5, mainstream media outlets of the blockading countries had started spewing venom against Qatar on the basis of a fake news published on the hacked QNA website.
Despite categorical rejection by Qatar of news item attributed to Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and international confirmation of the hacking incident, hawkish media outlets based in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt continued their malicious campaigns against Qatar with the help of concocted news stories, distorted facts and rumours.
Along mainstream media, hidden-hands from the blockading countries also launched poisonous social media campaigns against Qatar using fake accounts and other manipulative tools including online flies.
To counter blockading countries’ propaganda onslaught, Qatar’s government and Qatari media resorted to fact-based communication. Qatari media neither invented stories nor resorted to hurling abuses or allegations against the blockading countries.
The failure of the blockading countries’ media blitz against Qatar was so obvious that even it failed in convincing their own citizens who started expressing sympathy with Qatar. To subside widespread pro-Qatar public sentiment, Saudi Arabia and the UAE criminalized expression of solidarity or sympathy with Qatar.
‘Quartz’ reported in October 2017: “Diplomatic spats in the Middle East are hardly rare. But the conflict that started this summer between Qatar and some of its Arab neighbors may be unique. It’s the first major geopolitical crisis to have been sparked by a computer hack, and was nearly the first “fake news” war to transform into a physical conflict.”
In August 2017, Al Arabiya TV attributed fabricated statement to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange which met swift response from Assange who harshly criticized the channel on Twitter for making “increasingly absurd fabrications”.
Crossing all limits of international law, ethics and principles of journalism, Al Arabiya TV also aired a video showing a Qatar Airways passenger plane being shot down by a fighter jet for entering into airspace of Saudi Arabia which earned a lot of criticism for Al Arabiya TV from around the world.
NBC News reported in January 2018 that the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, SCL Social Limited, filed documents with the US Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Unit disclosing $333,000 in payments by the UAE for a 2017 social media campaign linking Qatar to terrorism.
Separately, a Dubai-based company hired a public relations executive to produce films defaming Qatar, a report by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism said in April this year. Charles Andreae, owner of Andreae and Associates, was paid $500,000 by UAE-based Lapis Communications to produce a six-part film linking Qatar with “global terrorism”, the Bureau said.
The London-based ‘Times’ newspaper reported in October 2017 that a series of anti-Qatar propaganda adverts had flooded the pages of thousands of social media users in the UK.
According to the Times, the adverts accusing Qatar of funding “terrorism” and mistreating foreign workers were paid for by “secretive campaign groups” - Qatar Exposed and Kick Qatar Out, neither of which own websites on the Internet.
Qatar’s Government Communications Office (GCO-Qatar) also filed a lawsuit in the United States against people who had launched a social media campaign to spread false information about the state to harm its interests including QatarExposed.
The Government Communication Office launched the website “Lifttheblockade.com” to show the world real picture of the blockade and nullify slanderous propaganda being run against Qatar with the help of allegations, fake news and distorted facts by the blockading countries.
Financial Times carried an in-depth story, “Gulf media unleashes war of words with Qatar” in August last year which said that Saudi-led alliance weaponised satellite channels after exhausting diplomatic arsenal.
Giving some examples in the report, FT wrote: “Sky News Arabia, a joint venture between an Abu Dhabi company owned by an Emirati royal and the UK’s Sky, ran a documentary last month that claimed to reveal Doha’s links to a terrorist involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. A story in Okaz, a Saudi daily newspaper, claimed Harrods, the London department store owned by Qatar, was collecting credit card information of shoppers from the anti-Qatar bloc.”
It also states: “Some Saudi journalists say they have come under government pressure to criticise Qatar. One Saudi editor described how officials have been using a mobile phone messaging group to instruct journalists on how to shape coverage and what stories to focus on. “These are orders, not suggestions,” he says.”
To support anti-Qatar campaign, the blockading countries did not spare artistes and created a song “Teach Qatar” sung by seven singers of the region.
Al Jazeera citing Buzzfeed reported in February 2018 that a British parliamentarian was paid £15,000 ($20,700) to help organise an anti-Qatar conference in London. The amount according to the report had been paid for “The Qatar, Global Security and Stability Conference” which was held in September 2017. The said Conference had proved a flop show as only a handful of people attended the event.
Speaking at a seminar themed ‘Qatar’s Dignity and Victory After Nine Months of Siege’ in March this year, Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Media Corporation Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani had rightly lauded the balanced approach of Qatari media in dispelling the baseless allegations and rumours spread by siege countries to tarnish the image of Qatar.
Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Media Corporation Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani said: “There is a difference in the way how the Qatari media dealt with the crisis and the media of the blockading countries”.
He said that Qatari media resisted and responded the rumours and proved that their allegations were baseless.Now a year after siege, all malicious media campaigns which were run or still being run against Qatar by the blockading countries have failed. The world community stands by Qatar and its narrative which is based on true facts.
