Fox News Misleading Claims About Qatar Financing Hezbollah

Misbar found a lot of misinformation and inaccuracies in the report by Fox News.
Here are some facts: 
Jason G.-Anonymous: The only source for the information mentioned in the report was an anonymous source.
Fox News didn’t mention any other source to support the information they reported.
 
Documents verified by Fox News: Fox News concealed all the documents mentioned in the report and did not publish any evidence to support the claims. Rather than publishing the documents the verified, they cited unknown, old, inaccurate statements.
Statement from Qatar Embassy: On the contrary of what was mentioned in the report, Qatar embassy in the USA, tweeted on the official Twitter account that the article published by Fox News is poorly sourced containing numerous false allegations against Qatar.

Qatar Embassy mentioned in a statement on their official website that the article was written by two individuals with an established anti-Qatar agenda.

Bias in the Report: As mentioned in the statement of the Embassy of the State of Qatar, Benjamin Weinthal, a research fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) had previously made distorted claims against Qatar. Where he aims to undermine Qatar’s hosting of the American military at Al Udeid Air Base and have it relocated elsewhere in the region.
An Associated Press investigation has found that a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump received millions of dollars from a political adviser to the United Arab Emirates last April targeting Qatar. Elliot Broidy donated millions of his own money to efforts to fight Qatar. The investigation revealed that on May 23, 2017, a conference was organized by The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies on Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and announced that he was introducing the sanctions bill that would name Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism. Nathalie Goulet, a member of the Senate of France, is considered biased with Arab countries that have a political dispute against Qatar. She also contributes to websites that are always biased against Qatar such as Arab News, a Saudi Arabian daily newspaper.  
The selective approach in the Report: The report had information that has been copied and pasted from different contexts and periods to support the claims. The information mentioned in the report is out of context, for example:
-The report mentions that Dr. Azmi Bishara, the General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies was aiding Hezbollah in its war against Israel in 2006. Bishara denied all the accusations brought against him in an interview on Al Araby TV. In the interview, Bishara made it clear he has no ties with Hezbollah. He also mentioned he has political differences with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria.
-Using a six-year term by the German Development Minister Gerd Müller accused Qatar of financing Islamic State terrorists. The report didn’t mention that Germany apologized for the accusations against Qatar. According to Deutsche Welle, the German government said that it had no direct evidence of Qatar funding the “IS” group.

-Using contradictory and inconsistent statements by President Donald Trump about Qatar.

-Claiming that Qatari charity systems support Hezbollah and Hamas without providing any explanations or evidence.  It’s worth mentioning that Qatar charities work in 30 countries without witnessing any obstacles.

-Fox News didn’t mention that Qatar was the first country in the region to sign a comprehensive MOU with the United States to combat terror financing. It also neglected the fact that Qatar, has some of the strictest domestic laws to prosecute those associated with terror financing.

Arab channels coverage:
Al-Arabiya and Sky News reported the claim as a fact. However, they claimed that Fox News accused Qatar of being a major financier of Hezbollah calling to freeze its assets. They also mentioned that Qatar has offered bribes to hide its involvement in financing Hezbollah.

Although Fox News quoted the anonymous source’s allegation, they did not fully adopt the report. Thus, news outlets attributed the statements to Fox News. In contrast to what was mentioned on Fox News, Arab newspapers reported that American Human Rights Organization demanded the expulsion of the Qatari ambassador from Belgium.

#قطر_تمول_حزب_الله Hashatag:
Misbar tracked “Qatar finances Hezbollah” hashtag and found that the tweets started in parallel after Fox News published its report. It’s unusual that the hashtag didn’t go viral despite being tweeted by popular Twitter users. We only found hundreds of tweets mainly from Saudi Arabia.

Tracking the hashtag activity, we detected that the users who retweeted the famous Saudi blogger Munther Al Shaikh Mubarak’s tweet are either fake or tend to be fake.