Update: Paper Responds to Alhurra Payment Story

A number of weeks ago, we published a story about payments made by Alhurra, the U.S. government-funded Arabic news channel, to guest commentators on the network...the paper responded today with a comment from executive editor Stephen Smith: "we expect members of our staff to not accept remuneration for activities that would in any way compromise their work or even create an appearance of a conflict of interest.