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Presidential Adviser on Media and Policy Communications, Daniel Bwala, has revealed that Al Jazeera privately apologised to him over his controversial interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan but refused to issue the apology publicly, prompting him to file a defamation suit against the international broadcaster in England.
Bwala made the disclosure during an interview on The Morayo Afolabi-Brown Show, months after his March 2026 appearance on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head programme, where Hasan confronted him with his previous criticisms of President Bola Tinubu made while he was supporting former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
According to Bwala, the network admitted it failed to properly disclose the direction the interview would take but declined his demand to make the apology public.
“They apologised to me privately. I said they should put it on social media. They said they will not put it on social media, it will affect their credibility, because it’s not just them, but their other programmers at the Al Jazeera network too,” he said.
Explaining the basis of the apology, Bwala said Al Jazeera acknowledged that it should have informed him beforehand that part of the interview would focus on questioning his credibility over his past comments about Tinubu.
“The substance of the apology was that they should have told me that part of what they discussed with me was a talking point, that they were also going to interrogate me on my credibility for supporting the person I had attacked before.
“By their own ethics, they ought to have told me that, but they said they were sorry they didn’t,” he said.
Bwala further disclosed that he sought the opinions of media experts, including British broadcaster Piers Morgan, whom he contacted through a third party, and claimed they agreed that Al Jazeera’s handling of the interview fell short of professional standards.
Criticising the broadcaster, he said:
“If you’re bold, if you call yourself a journalist, a fact-checker, you run your programme live and let people judge live.
“If you’re thinking straight, that’s what you’d do. You took creative control of the programme. You made a recorded programme. Ethics demanded you publish it exactly as it was recorded,” he said.
Bwala alleged that although the interview lasted one hour and 30 minutes, Al Jazeera aired only 49 minutes, selectively editing the footage to portray Hasan more favourably.
“The deeper point is that they cut out the parts where I was fact-checking him and the crowd was clapping for me, and instead kept the parts where he was speaking and people were clapping for him,” he said.
He also accused Hasan of repeatedly confronting him with old video clips without giving viewers the full context or allowing him sufficient opportunity to respond.
“He’d ask me a question, I’d deny it, then he’d play the old clip. We call that ‘cut and joined’ in media. After doing that, which amounts to a smear campaign, he didn’t give me the chance to react to it.
“Instead, he let it appear that I was simply asked a question, denied it, was shown the clip, denied it again, was shown another clip, and denied it again,” he said.
According to Bwala, the network also removed his opening remarks, in which he had stated that he would deny questions relating to his previous comments if the interview departed from its agreed focus.
“He removed that part, because if he’d left it in, anyone watching would understand that I had already answered the question upfront, and that my later denials were a response to his repeated bringing it up. That’s where the unethical conduct of a professional issue arose,” he said.
Bwala said he instructed his lawyers in England to commence legal proceedings after Al Jazeera refused to publicly apologise.
“When they apologised, I said no, put it on social media. They refused. So I instructed my lawyers in England to go to court. The case is currently in court,” he stated.
Explaining why he rejected the private apology, he added:
“Because my advisers in England said it’s defamation of character,” he said.
