Culture & Education | Tuesday 3 February, 2015 7:51 am |

Alarab, the 24-hour pan-Arab television news channel that started broadcasting on Sunday, was taken off air on Monday morning.
The new channel, headquartered in Bahrain, is owned by Kingdom Holding Company Chairman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Celebrated Saudi journalist, columnist and editor Jamal Khashoggi is its general manager. He was not immediately available for comment on the circumstances surrounding the suspension of the channel.
The television channel announced through its Twitter handle, @AlArabNewsTV, that broadcasting was stopped for technical and administrative reasons. “We will be back soon, InshaAllah,” said the tweet in Arabic.

In a statement on the official Bahrain News Agency (BNA), Yusuf Mohammed of the Information Affairs Authority, said: “We are cooperating with Alarab channel’s management team to resume broadcasting and complete the necessary measures as soon as possible.”
The suspension led to speculation in the media. Many on social media websites linked the suspension to an interview that the channel aired on Sunday with a highly reviled anti-government activist Khalil Marzouq.

Akhbar Al-Khaleej, a Bahraini newspaper, said: “Alarab was stopped for not adhering to the norms prevalent in Gulf countries.”
Anwar Abdul Rahman, the newspaper’s editor in chief, condemned the channel for hosting Marzouq, describing him as a radical.
“Resorting to muscle-flexing in news coverage, with the hope of proving that you are an independent channel, is not going to work,” he wrote.
Khashoggi is not new to controversies. He is considered bold in the Arab media industry and has had to face many challenges in the past when he tried to push the envelope while he was editor in chief of Al-Watan newspaper.

According to many observers on Twitter, the suspension is a temporary setback for the channel but the controversy will burnish its image as unbiased and independent. Many on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp were discussing the suspension, and within hours Alarab TV had become a household name.
The channel’s elegant website continued to operate as normal, with its Twitter account constantly being updated with news-related tweets.