Al Jazeera
America, the cable network that started 20 months ago to great fanfare
and with big budgets, came under fire on Tuesday after the network was
sued by a former employee and lost two executives.
Matthew
Luke, formerly the network’s director of media and archive management,
filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court claiming wrongful termination.
Among other allegations, Mr. Luke said he was fired after he complained
to the company’s human resources department about his boss, Osman
Mahmud, who, Mr. Luke said, told him to exclude female employees from
meetings and not involve them in projects that they had previously
worked on.
In
the suit, Mr. Luke asserted that Mr. Mahmud mistreated female employees
and exhibited anti-Semitic behavior, including expressing a desire to
replace an Israeli cameraman with a Palestinian.
A female senior vice president who resisted fulfilling that request was
later transferred to another position, the lawsuit says. The suit
further claims that Mr. Mahmud said that “whoever supports Israel should
die a fiery death in hell.”
Mr. Mahmud did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an interview with The Washington Post,
he denied making the comment about Israel, saying, “I have never even
thought of that at all.” He called the accusations that he had
mistreated women “a pack of lies.”
The
network said that it did not comment on pending litigation. “The
company takes these matters seriously and will respond in the
appropriate forum,” an emailed statement said. “Al Jazeera America’s
commitment to diversity and inclusion is fundamental to its mission.”
Jeffrey
A. Kimmel, the lawyer representing Mr. Luke, said in a statement that
after his client reported Mr. Mahmud to human resources, “the response
was to circle the wagons and fire the messenger. This is a clear
violation of the law. One would expect more from an organization whose
mission statement is ‘to be recognized as the world’s leading and most
trusted media network.’ ”
Also
on Tuesday, Al Jazeera America announced that two top officials — Diana
Lee, who was the executive vice president for human resources, and Dawn
Bridges, the executive vice president for communications — were
leaving. It was not immediately clear if the departures were related to
the lawsuit.
Ehab
Al Shihabi, the chief executive of Al Jazeera America, said to his
staff in a memo on Tuesday that working for a cable station can be
“extremely time consuming” and “after having spent time reflecting on
their work/life mix, they had independently made the difficult decision”
to leave.
He said both executives would depart in early May.
When Al Jazeera bought the cable channel Current TV
for $500 million to start an American cable network, it was said to be
the most ambitious television project since the introduction of Fox
News. Al Jazeera America opened bureaus, spent lavishly and recruited
veteran TV journalists like John Seigenthaler and Ali Velshi.
But
in the nearly 20 months since Al Jazeera America went on the air, it
has struggled to match the ratings of its frail predecessor, Current TV.
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