Members of the US Congress ask that Al Jazeera be treated as a foreign agent and not as a media outlet

Al Jazeera as a foreign agent and not as a media outlet. This is the demand that representatives of the U.S. Congress have made on the Justice Department. In a letter to the department, legislators from the Senate and the House of Representatives cited several examples of activities in which the Qatari news agency was closely linked to the priorities of the Qatari government.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2019 requires foreign media based in the United States to register with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent U.S. government agency. The FCC is overseen by the U.S. Congress and is responsible for implementing and enforcing the country's communications laws and regulations. The NDDA requires the foreign media to provide a semi-annual report on their relations with their foreign editors. Among the signatories to this petition are Congressman Leen Zelden and Senators Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, all Republicans.
 

Since 2017, Congressman Zelden, Senator Rubio and other members of Congress have been asking the highest body of the U.S. justice system to commit to the implementation of the law of registration of foreign agents with Al Jazeera, as it was done with the Turkish channel 'TRT', after it was found that it had been involved in political activities in support of the Turkish regime. Qatar-owned Al Jazeera has been accused of working as a propaganda agent for the country's emir, Tamim bin Hamad, and the rest of the ruling family in Doha.

According to the MPs, the Qatari news media, which is now overseen by Sheikh Hamd bin Thamer, met all the conditions for registration as a media outlet financed by a foreign government agency, but failed to meet three consecutive deadlines for submitting reports to the Federal Communications Commission.