Sudan's dossier "ends" Sky's partnership with Sky News Arabia
The British Sky Corporation has terminated its operational and strategic partnership with Sky News Arabia in the UAE, retaining the trade name license agreement without any role in managing the channel or directing its content.
The decision, revealed by the Guardian, wrapped up more than a decade of media cooperation that began since the channel's launch in 2010 and its actual broadcast in 2012, confirming that the new agreement with investment partner IMI, which is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, effectively means that Sky News Arabia will move to a wholly Emirati management, while retaining only the brand.
Sky News Group chief executive David Rhodes said the organisation was "proud of what has been achieved" but said it was "time for change", stressing that the relationship would continue in its new framework.
Disagreements over coverage of Sudan
Although the announcement came in a professional format, the Guardian pointed out that editorial disagreements, especially over coverage of the war in Sudan, were one of the most prominent factors that precipitated the termination of the partnership, as Sky News Arabia has faced sharp criticism over the past months for what observers saw as mitigated coverage of abuses attributed to the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is accused of committing large-scale crimes amounting to genocide.
The criticism has sparked concern within Britain's Sky Foundation, whose editorial standards are tightly censored in London.
Channel ban in Sudan
The crisis came to a head last November when the Sudanese government banned Sky News Arabia's work inside its territory, after broadcasting a report from the city of El Fasher that was considered "misleading" because it presented a narrative indicating an improvement in security and humanitarian conditions, at a time when the city was under a suffocating siege.
Subsequent reports sparked further controversy after it was revealed that one of the journalists sent by the channel to cover the war was married to a senior official in a political structure linked to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), raising doubts about the independence of the coverage.
The channel defends itself
Sky News Arabia defended its content, stressing that there was no evidence on the ground to support some of the allegations circulated by other reports or satellite images and survivors' testimonies.
In February , a UN-mandated international investigative mission concluded that the siege of El Fasher and the subsequent takeover of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) included a systematic targeting of ethnic minority communities, describing it as having "genocide-tinged".
For its part, the UAE denied any connection to the violations attributed to the Rapid Support Forces, stressing that it was not involved in these events.
IMI takes full stage
Nakhla Al-Haj, Head of Transformation at IMI, said that the company will take over the full management of the platform, describing Sky News Arabia as "one of the most prominent media success stories in the Arab world", stressing that the next phase will see the promotion of investment and the development of the platform.
The decision comes in the context of a broader series of changes to Sky's global strategy, with the company already finalizing a similar deal in Australia, and Comcast, which owns Sky, abandoned previous plans to launch a joint global news channel with NBC called NBC Sky World News, a project that was scrapped in 2020.