It has not been a good week for Al Jazeera, the Qatar-backed international TV news organization.
German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that the NSA spied on internal Al Jazeera communications, according to documents obtained by Edward Snowden. Al Jazeera would be the first news organization that the NSA has been confirmed to be spying on.
Meanwhile, a handful of Al Jazeera journalists that were detained last week were freed by Egyptian authorities… but they were promptly deported from the country. The AP reports that correspondent Wayne Hay, camera operator Adil Bradlow and producer Russ Finn were deported for “working in Egypt without a permit or license to use satellite transmitters.”
Hay, a freelance journalist based in Thailand, is traveling back to his native New Zealand to rest.
Also an Egyptian court ordered that Al Jazeera’s Egyptian affiliate, along with three other channels, should be shut down for posing “a threat to national security.”