Considering the Middle East’s appalling treatment of women and Jews, this might go down as the least shocking news ever.
Al Jazeera America–the news service owned by the Royal Family of Qatar–is facing a $15 million lawsuit for discriminating against (you guessed it) women and Jews.
A former employee, Matthew Luke, who started working for the network back in 2013, filed the lawsuit in New York on Tuesday.
He alleges that his supervisor, Osman Mahmud, the senior vice president of broadcast operations, engaged in systematic discrimination.
Mahmud allegedly removed female employees from projects, cut them out of emails and meetings, and made heinous anti-Semitic remarks, like, “Whoever supports Israel should die a fiery death in hell.”
What, your boss never condemned you to the pits of hell for your political beliefs?
Luke went to HR, where he says he was told he wasn’t a good cultural fit and fired. Presumably because he supported Israel but did not want to die a fiery death.
Al Jazeera America launched in late 2013, after buying Al Gore’s seldom-watched Current TV.
But while Current TV was infamous for its inability to attract more than a handful of viewers, Al Jazeera America has done even worse. Shortly after their launch, they were attracting just 13,000 viewers a day–ratings so low that the Nielsen Ratings just declared them a “scratch” and eventually stopped reporting altogether.
Since then, they’ve been laying off workers left and right, and apparently condemning other ones to death.
Al Jazeera America had no comment on the pending lawsuit, except to underline how much it loves women and Jews. Like the rest of the Middle East.
