Al Jazeera English

• 1. Introduction

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  Al Jazeera English launched on the 15th of November 2006 with roughly one billion dollars in backing from the Qatari government. That single investment created something that had never existed before: a global English-language news channel headquartered in the Middle East. The questions that defined this channel from its first broadcast were also the ones that would follow it everywhere. Could a news network rooted outside the West earn the trust of Western audiences? And what happened when powerful governments decided the answer was no?

• 2. A Billion-Dollar Bet

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  Nine months before the November 2006 launch, the channel quietly dropped its planned name. It had been set to debut as Al Jazeera International. One of its backers argued that the original Arabic-language channel already carried international reach in its identity, so the English division took on the parent name directly.

  The channel had projected it would reach around 40 million households. It surpassed that figure by the time the broadcast signal settled. By 2009, according to a network spokeswoman in Washington, the service was available in 130 million homes across more than 100 countries through cable and satellite.

  Reaching American living rooms proved far harder. Industry leader Comcast had planned to carry the channel in 2007 but reversed course shortly before launch, citing what it called a saturated television market. DirecTV and Dish Network made similar decisions. Speculation at the time pointed to allegations from the Bush administration of anti-American bias at the network as a possible factor in those reversals.

• 3. On the Ground in Gaza

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  During the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict, foreign press access to Gaza was restricted. Entry had to come through either Egypt or Israel. Al Jazeera English and Iran's state-run Press TV were the only international English-language television broadcasters with journalists reporting from inside both territories at the same time.

  Al Jazeera reporters Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros were already inside Gaza when the conflict began. That positioning gave the channel footage and testimony that networks without ground presence simply could not air. The distinction between having a reporter on the ground and covering a conflict from outside a border became visible in the coverage gap.

  The Arab Spring raised that distinction to a different scale. Al Jazeera's coverage of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 drew close attention across the United States. The New York Times reported on the 1st of February 2011 that 1.6 million American viewers had watched via internet stream in a single day. That figure prompted renewed carriage negotiations with Comcast and Time Warner Cable. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking during the network's coverage of the Libyan Civil War, said publicly that Al Jazeera's viewership was growing in the United States because viewers felt they were getting real news around the clock.

• 4. Three Journalists in Cairo

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  On the 29th of December 2013, Egyptian security forces moved into Cairo's Marriott Hotel and arrested three Al Jazeera English journalists. Peter Greste was Australian. Mohamed Fahmy held Canadian citizenship. Baher Mohamed was Egyptian. The charge against all three was reporting news damaging to national security.

  Trials stretched through months of delays. Evidence presented by prosecutors included misleading videos, inaudible audio recordings, and images unrelated to the alleged offenses. On the 23rd of June 2014, Greste and Fahmy each received seven-year sentences. Mohamed received ten years. Global leaders and press organizations condemned the verdicts as politically motivated attacks on press freedom.

  Pressure built for more than a year. Greste was released and deported to Australia on the 1st of February 2015. On the 29th of August 2015 a new three-year sentence was handed to all three, drawing fresh international condemnation. The Canadian government secured Fahmy's pardon and deportation on the 23rd of September 2015. Egyptian President el-Sisi granted Mohamed a pardon the same day, as part of a broader pardon covering 100 individuals.

  Al Jazeera's legal response ran parallel to the diplomatic campaign. In mid-2014, the network filed a $150 million compensation claim against Egypt, arguing that the arrests, seizure of equipment, and signal jamming had violated its rights as a foreign investor and put the $90 million it had invested in Egypt since 2001 at risk.

• 5. The Investigative Unit

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  A documentary released in 2012 and titled "What Killed Arafat" examined the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004 at the age of 75. The Al Jazeera Investigative Unit's film suggested he may have been poisoned with polonium-210. It earned the CINE Golden Eagle and received nominations for the Royal Television Society award, a BAFTA, and the Monte Carlo Film Festival.

  "How to Sell a Massacre," released in 2019, exposed efforts by the National Rifle Association to influence gun control policy in Australia. "Generation Hate" went undercover inside the far-right group Generation Identity in France, capturing footage of racist attacks, Nazi salutes, and calls for the expulsion of Muslims from Europe.

  "The Labour Files" used a large leak of internal documents, emails, and messages from the British Labour Party to report that some supporters of Jeremy Corbyn had been falsely accused of homophobia and antisemitism in submissions to the party's Governance and Legal Unit. "Broken Dreams - The Boeing 787" examined allegations of on-the-job drug use, quality control failures, and poor workmanship in the production of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.

  As of May 2017, Al Jazeera English had accumulated more than 150 prizes, medals, and awards. The Peabody Award came twice: once in 2011 for Arab Spring coverage and again in 2017 for correspondent Fatma Naib's documentary "The Cut: Exploring FGM."

• 6. The American Question

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  On the 2nd of January 2013, Al Jazeera announced it had acquired the American cable channel Current TV for a reported $500 million. Al Jazeera America launched to an estimated 40 million U.S. households, putting it in direct competition with CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel. Pay-television providers pushed the channel to shift its programming ratio; what began as 60 percent U.S.-produced content eventually moved to nearly 100 percent American programming at their request.

  To protect Al Jazeera America's carriage agreements, the live stream of Al Jazeera English was geo-blocked in the United States on the 18th of August 2013. Most Al Jazeera English content became officially unavailable to American viewers during the years the American channel was on air, with only a handful of specific programs - among them Empire, Indian Hospital, and Head to Head - exempted from the geo-block.

  On the 13th of January 2016, Al Jazeera America announced it would shut down on the 12th of April 2016, citing what it called the economic landscape. The English live stream was restored for U.S. viewers in September 2016. In 2012-40 percent of the 150 million visits Al Jazeera English's website received had come from the United States - a figure that underlined how large an American audience had been following the channel through digital means even as the network fought for a place on American cable systems.