A bipartisan group of U.S. congressmen has asked the Justice Department to rule on whether Qatari media network Al Jazeera operates as a foreign agent for Qatar in the United States.
Al Jazeera, based in Doha, reaches 310 million people in more than 160 countries.
The letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions was signed by 18 members of the House of Representatives – 15 Republicans and three Democrats – and by Republican Senator Ted Cruz (Texas). Among the House members who signed were Democrat Josh Gottheimer (New Jersey) and Republican Lee Zeldin (New York).
Al Jazeera "directly undermines American interests," the letter says.
It says the State Department has indicated that Al Jazeera "is state-controlled" and often features "favorable coverage of U.S. State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida's branch in Syria.
"Al Jazeera's record of radical anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel broadcasts warrant scrutiny. American citizens deserve to know whether the information and news media they consume is impartial, or if it is deceptive propaganda pushed by foreign nations," the letter says.
According to the Bloomberg news agency, the network would be the third news organization to be subjected to such scrutiny.
In 2017, the Justice Department ordered U.S. companies that provide content, production services or airtime to Russia's RT and Sputnik news outlets to disclose information under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as both were seen as "the backbone of the Russian government's propaganda apparatus."
In their letter, the lawmakers cite an assessment in 2009 by a U.S. ambassador to Qatar saying that Al Jazeera was "one of Qatar's most valuable political and diplomatic tools."
The letter urges regulators to scrutinize the network to determine whether it violates U.S. law.
