DUBAI,— The UK’s Sky News Group is pulling out of its joint venture with the United Arab Emirates that runs the Arabic-language Sky News Arabia channel, which has faced sharp criticism over its coverage of the war in Sudan, The Guardian reported last Sunday.

Sky and its UAE partner, IMI, the investment vehicle controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, vice president of the UAE and owner of Manchester City Football Club, announced a new commercial arrangement.

Under the deal, the British broadcaster will give up all strategic and operational control of the 24-hour Arabic news service.

Under the deal, Sky UK has signed a multi-year brand licensing agreement that allows Sky News Arabia to keep its name and identity going forward.

The Abu Dhabi-based free-to-air channel was established in 2010 as a competitor to other Arabic-language television news services, including Qatar’s Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic.

Audiences across Arab-speaking countries from the Gulf to the Atlantic coast received the channel’s signal for the first time 12 years before the current dispute.

Sky executives had grown increasingly uneasy about the editorial direction taken by the channel on regional news coverage.

Reports about atrocities carried out in Sudan by the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group known as the RSF, drew accusations of whitewashing genocide.

In November, the Sudanese government banned Sky News Arabia from operating within its borders.

The ban followed a broadcast in which the channel sent a crew to El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. The report from that crew claimed the security and humanitarian situation in the city had stabilized.

It was later disclosed that the reporter dispatched by Sky News Arabia is married to a senior RSF parallel government official.

The channel went on to publish news reports and online articles casting doubt on satellite imagery and survivor testimony documenting the atrocities.

In February, a United Nations-mandated fact-finding mission concluded that the RSF siege, capture, and 18-month occupation of El Fasher had deliberately targeted ethnic minority communities and bore what the mission called the hallmarks of genocide.

The UAE has denied any responsibility for atrocities attributed to the RSF.

Sky News moved earlier this year to sever the partnership after sustained pressure over the channel’s reporting practices, which critics said served to protect the RSF from accountability.

David Rhodes, executive chair of Sky News Group, said the broadcaster valued what both sides had achieved together over the course of the partnership.

He added that the transition opened a new chapter that Sky News looked forward to being part of, though in a reduced capacity.

IMI’s Nakhle Elhage, who holds the title of chief transformation officer, said the group was ready to guide the channel independently.

He described IMI as having the resources, focus, and drive needed to build the channel into the Arab world’s top multimedia news platform.

(With files from theguardian.com, Agencies)

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