States are working on exploiting soft power as one of the diplomatic and political tools to influence public opinion, Salman Al Dossary wrote to Asharq Al-Awsat.
As this concept grows, the exploiting appeared in a manner that contradicts with the concept immorally and illegally.
Iran used the soft power to destabilize the Arab nations’ confidence in their current regimes, Qatar did the same through its TV channels network Al Jazeera which aimed to promote concepts linked to extremism and terrorism.
However, the worst exploiting was made by Qatar when it established its sports channels, belonging to its mother channel, in 2003, and allocated a budget of more than $25 billion to achieve this purpose – this included rights to broadcast world cups of 2018 and 2022, UEFA European Championship, AFC Asian Cup, Africa Cup of Nations, UEFA Champions League, AFC Champions League, CAF Champions League, national, regional, continental and international championships and Olympics until 2022 with a financial amount that exceeded $10 billion.
This was before the Qatari network started to commit unprecedented practices of any sports channel in the world through manipulating broadcasting the global competitions to promote its political agenda, in a violation to the Olympics' concepts.
While the Qatari violations through its media tools are not new, what Doha did through its sports channels through inserting politics has turned into a snowball that the Arab viewer can no longer tolerate.
Just like it did following Russia-Saudi Arabia game when beIN did huge violations against the kingdom and citizens. This is only one example, as many Arab states were subject to such violations. BeIN Sports changed its previous name Al Jazeera Sports due to the sports federations rejection to deal with it for it is links to terrorism.
Qatar has a fierce legal battle to face against a long list of countries that refuse the concept of manipulation. The aim is to enact legalizations that protect rights of the Arab viewer just like what happened with the European citizen. Who believes that only seven percent of Arab viewers can watch their favorite game due to the 'ugly' Qatari power concept?
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