Hugh Hewitt Grills Soledad O'Brien on Al Jazeera Funding

Talk radio host Hugh Hewitt grilled former CNN anchor and current Al Jazeera America special correspondent Soledad O’Brien about Al Jazeera America’s funding on Monday.  

Hewitt asked, “Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera … funds and arms Islamists fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad and bankrolling Hamas in the Gaza Strip. So here’s an honest question. How can you take money from them?” 

O’Brien responded that the focus should be on Al Jazeera America’s journalism, saying, “I think that there is a couple of different issues there, and I think you could look at similar issues of what is funded in the United States. To me, at the end of the day, we take a look at the journalism that is done.”

Later, when asked whether she thought Qatar is funding Islamic extremists, O’Brien said it was “unclear,” and stated she didn’t deal with hypotheticals when queried about whether she would leave Al Jazeera America if she discovered Qatar was funding groups like Hamas.

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