House Press Gallery needs to expel propaganda organ Al Jazeera now

Amidst the welter of political news last week, including new House speakership and its implications for the escalating conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, one significant development went almost entirely overlooked. On Friday, I sent a letter to newly-elected Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to request that the Speaker revoke the press credentials of Al Jazeera (the media conglomerate owned and operated by the emirate of Qatar) to the U.S. House of Representatives Press Gallery.

If the Speaker honors that request, it would be a dramatic shot across the bow of more than a dozen media outlets owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party that also openly flout the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) — many of which, like Al Jazeera, still maintain free rein of the U.S. Capitol by virtue of credentials awarded them by the House Press Gallery.

It is a move that is long past due. Just since the recent deplorable Hamas terrorist attack on our Israeli allies, Al Jazeera has been relentless in spewing its anti-Semiticand anti-Israel propaganda. Al Jazeera’s rhetoric has been so incendiary that even Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted to asking the Qatari minister to “tone down” Al Jazeera’s hyperbole in their “reporting” on the Gaza conflict, which has essentially accused Israel of genocide in the region. This, in itself, confirms that Al Jazeera is operating as a propaganda organ for the Qatari government.

The most recent list of press credentials issued by Congress shows that Al Jazeera’s various subsidiaries (Al Jazeera International, Al Jazeera English, and AJ+) have 136 employees who have been credentialed by Congress. For context, the New York Times has 82 employees with credentials.

Al Jazeera — owned, funded and controlled by the government of Qatar — is being used to undermine support for America’s traditional values, our longstanding foreign policy principles, and our key allies, including Israel. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has more of its journalists credentialed in the congressional press galleries than almost any other media outlet. The network is essentially a public relations agent for the government of Qatar operating on U.S. soil.

In addition, Al Jazeera itself has already been used by the state of Qatar to conduct surveillance operations to damage members of the Jewish community who actively support a strong relationship between the U.S. and Israel—a worldview broadly shared by an overwhelming majority of Congress. The conclusion is unavoidable: Al Jazeera is clearly an intelligence operation run by Qatar.

Much of the rest of the world already recognizes this. Israel is set to expel the “journalists” from the propaganda outlet for reasons of national security, calling Al Jazeera a “mouthpiece” of Hamas. Interestingly, America’s non-Islamist Arab allies in the region came to similar conclusion long ago, when they instituted an embargo of Qatar in June of 2017. One of the demands of Western-aligned Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates was that Al Jazeera be shut down as a result of its constant incitement of jihadists and promotion of the pernicious ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. One particular sore point was the platform provided to Yusuf Al Qaradawi — an Egyptian-born leader of the Muslim Brotherhood operating out of Qatar — for his promotion of Holocaust denialism and incitement to terrorist violence against U.S. troops in the region.

But while our Arab allies have no trouble identifying Al Jazeera as a terrorism-promoting propaganda organ of the Qatari government (the primary funders of Hamas), the network still enjoys a strange and unwarranted reputation as an objective and independent Arab voice among many in the West, particularly those on the political left. Leaders in the Democratic Party should be directly confronted with the question of whether they believe Al Jazeera to be a legitimate news source, or the propaganda outfit of the regime in Doha, which it so transparently is.

In February of this year, I joined several other members in sending a letter to then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) outlining Al Jazeera’s violations of U.S. law and requesting immediate suspension of the credentials of Al Jazeera “journalists.” In March, I introduced H.Res 189, which would prevent state-sponsored media outlets from obtaining press credentials from the House Press Gallery, unless they are in full compliance with U.S. law, including FARA. This would apply to Al Jazeera because it has refused to register under FARA, despite the Department of Justice determining back in 2020 that the outlet was acting as an unregistered agent of the state of Qatar — thus triggering its obligation to FARA-register.

Speaker Johnson can score an early political win by taking care of this problem unilaterally, in one fell swoop. There is recent precedent for such action: former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) revoked the press credentials of the Epoch Times unilaterally several years ago.

The case of Al Jazeera is much more clear cut. Kick them out.

Jack Bergman represents Michigan’s 1st District.