After three months of investigations into who was responsible for distorting the picture of Al-Jazeera Sports Channel’s exclusive coverage of the last World Cup football tournament, UK daily The Guardian said the problem had originated in Jordan.
A Jordanian government official, however, denied the allegations.
Although the channel had at the time held Egypt responsible for the act, its Cairo bureau chief, Gamal Helayel, said the channel had not specifically pointed to Egypt and therefore “no apology was required.”
“But why was the distortion only on the Egyptian NileSat channel and not on the Arabsat feed?” he asked.
Helayel added that the channel planned to install equipment to protect its feed from outside interference in the future.
While the NileSat management declined to comment on the issue, Osama al-Sheikh, head of the Egyptian state-run Radio and Television Union, said that even if the interference had come from Jordan, that did not mean the Jordanian government was behind it.
“It could well have been Israel or any other country,” he said.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
