Another former Al Jazeera America employee — this time a former executive — is suing the network.
Shannon High-Bassalik, former senior vice president for programming and documentaries, is suing the company and former CEO Ehab Al Shihabi for breach of contract and violating her civil rights.
In her lawsuit, High-Bassalik, who has also worked at CNN, MSNBC and NBC, alleges the network promoted only Middle Eastern and Arabic viewpoints, at one point even invoking conspiracy theories such as that the Sept. 11 attacks were conducted by the CIA. High-Bassalik said the network had abandoned “journalistic objectivity.”
High-Bassalik also alleges that non-Arabic and female employees were treated as “second class citizens.” Arabic employees were routinely given inflated performance reviews and promoted to jobs they were not qualified for, High-Bassalik alleges. Al Shihabi would often exclude female employees from meetings and would “leave meetings where female employees were giving presentations and [state] that he would only return when such employees had stopped speaking.”
The lawsuit also alleges that the company’s management promoted an anti-Israel bias, and when employees tried to counter the messages, they were told they were too biased in favor of the country.
High-Bassalik said she was fired for being in “default” of her contract for being an “ineffective leader” and not getting along with others.
In a statement an Al Jazeera America spokesperson denounced the allegations.
“The allegations made against Al Jazeera America are by a former employee whose conduct and performance went through a full process of investigation led by an external law firm before her employment ended, during which Ms. High-Bassalik made none of the allegations she makes in her complaint. We regret that Ms. High-Bassalik has now decided to make unfounded allegations against Al Jazeera and its employees. Al Jazeera values and respects all of its employees, and has zero tolerance of any form of discrimination,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson repeated what new CEO Al Anstey said in his first message to staff last month about respect, transparency and integrity.
Some of the allegations in the lawsuit are similar to a separate $15 million wrongful termination lawsuit filed in April alleging that top executives had discriminated against women and made disparaging remarks about Jews and Israel.
The past couple of months have been a period of intense turmoil at the network, the American arm of the Qatari-based Al Jazeera networks. Last month, Anstey replaced Al Shihabi, who was abruptly pushed out after a month in which three high-level executives had resigned from the Qatari-backed network.
Read the full lawsuit here, courtesy of the Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone.