Sky ends controversial news joint venture in United Arab Emirates | Sky
Sky is exiting Sky News Arabia, a joint TV news venture with the United Arab Emirates that has been criticized for genocide denial over its coverage of the war in Sudan.
Sky, the investment vehicle controlled by UAE vice-president and Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and its partner IMI have announced a new commercial agreement under which the UK-based broadcaster will relinquish all strategic and operational ownership of its 24-hour Arabic news and current affairs service.
However, Sky UK has agreed a multi-year brand licensing deal that will allow Sky News Arabia to retain its name.
The Abu Dhabi-based free-to-air channel was founded in 2010 as a rival to Arabic-language TV news channels such as Al Jazeera and BBC World Service’s News Arabic.
The joint venture began broadcasting in the Middle East and North Africa in 2012.
“We are proud of what has been built through the partnership we have built with IMI over the years and the significant presence built across the region,” said David Rhodes, executive chairman of Sky News Group. “The time is right for this change and we look forward to continuing our relationship into the next phase of Sky News Arabia.”
Sky executives became increasingly concerned internally about the editorial position Sky News Arabia was assuming regarding news from the region. Reporting of atrocities committed in Sudan by the UAE-backed paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been accused of whitewashing genocide.
In November, the Sudanese government banned Sky News Arabia from operating on its territory after the satellite channel published a report claiming that the security and humanitarian situation had stabilized after it sent a team to El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.
The reporter sent by Sky News Arabia is married to a senior official from RSF’s parallel government.
The channel then featured satellite imagery and news reports and online articles suggesting there was no evidence to support the accounts of survivors of the persecution.
In February, a UN-commissioned fact-finding mission concluded that the siege, capture and 18-month occupation of the city by the RSF and allied militias was deliberately aimed at the destruction of ethnic minority communities bearing “marks of genocide.”
The UAE denied any responsibility for the atrocities committed by the RSF.
Nakhle Elhage, chief transformation officer at IMI, said: “As we enter this next phase, IMI will take full ownership of the future of the platform with the agility, focus and investment capacity to continue building the leading multimedia newsroom for the Arab world.
“Sky News Arabia stands today as one of the leading media success stories in the Arab world. Over the past decade, it has built scale, trust and relevance across television, digital, audio and social platforms, reaching audiences at a pace that few media outlets in the legion have achieved.”
The original joint venture deal was struck by News Corporation, which then controlled Sky.
The exit from news reporting in the Middle East follows a similar decision in Australia.
US-based Comcast, which acquired Sky in 2018, chose not to renew News Corporation’s licensing agreement to use the Sky News brand in Australia. Sky News Australia We will rebrand as News24 later this year.
In 2020, a plan to launch a global rolling news channel to challenge CNN by bringing together Sky News and Comcast’s US-based NBC – called NBC Sky World News – was scrapped.
