Qatar Airways still working on response over Sky News advertising

Here's the latest from Qatar Airways's PR people in London on the controversy surrounding their advertising on the pro-Israeli Sky News that refuses to show the Disasters Emergency Committee humanitarian appeal for Gaza. See the original story on Gaza Solidarity here:

Hi Gary,

Sorry I missed you call. As discussed, I have forwarded your email to Qatar Airways head office in Doha, and advised that you are still seeking a response to your query.

Regards,

Louise

Hopefully we'll get something next week. The following letter was emailed to the editor of the english-language Gulf Times in Qatar to see if they can speed things up a bit.

For the attention of the editor, Gulf Times:

Dear editor,

I am a journalist based in London writing a story on the relationship between Qatar Airways and Sky News. Last week the airline brought into service a new plane which it named “Gaza” as an act of solidarity with the people of Gaza. At the same time Qatar Airways is sponsoring the weather segment on Sky News here in the UK. Sky News, along with the BBC, were the only major TV channels in the UK that did not broadcast the recent Disasters Emergency Committee Humanitarian Appeal for Gaza.

As you can see from the correspondence below I have still not had a reply from Mr Al Baker the CEO of Qatar Airways on this subject and whether he thinks it is appropriate that Qatar’s national airline should be giving money to a station that refuses to show this basic humanitarian appeal, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the Israeli actions in Gaza.

Is the Gulf Times able to extract any comment from the airline on the matter? I’m sure your readers would be interested in this, and more widely through your local Arabic press. Thanking you in advance for any information you are able to glean on this controversy.

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