Who is the founder of Al Jazeera? – The news channel of the Arab world

Al Jazeera, which managed to make its name known worldwide and achieved a rapid rise since the beginning of the 2000s, especially with its news regarding the Twin Towers attack, Al-Qaeda, and many Islamic terrorist organizations, is a Qatar-based news channel.

Press freedom in the Middle East gains a new dimension

While all Middle Eastern and Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, were under restricted conditions in terms of freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and the opportunity for discussion and exchange of ideas before Al Jazeera; Al Jazeera has filled this gap very successfully since the moment it began its broadcasting life. Although statesmen in Arab governments, in particular, started an intense campaign of accusation and censorship against Al Jazeera because they were afraid of people thinking and realizing their freedom of thought; over time, they had to keep up with the course of events. Today, the Arabian Peninsula is still in a pitiful state regarding rights and freedoms. However, this innovation made in the field of media has moved the situation in that geography a bit further forward.

Who founded Al Jazeera?

Parallel to the adaptation of the profession of television and journalism to the private sector all over the world, an innovation to keep up with this was considered in the Arabian Peninsula as well, and the first application of this idea was carried out in Qatar. The Emir of Qatar at that time, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, provided exactly 137 million dollars of financing for the establishment of a TV channel that would be the voice of the entire Arab world; thus, he undertook the task of capital ownership, leading the establishment of Al Jazeera. Hamad Tamer Al-Thani was appointed as the editor-in-chief.

In other words; Al Jazeera was founded in Qatar in 1996 by Emir Hamad bin Khalifa and editor-in-chief Hamad Tamer.

The deficiency in broadcasting allows Al Jazeera to grow rapidly

Before Al Jazeera, there was no channel in the Arabian Peninsula that tried to conduct broadcasting and journalism in a real sense. Although some foreign channels had representative offices in various Arab countries, these could not be active enough due to issues such as lack of rating potential and meaningless censorship by governments. Already, the BBC, which was the last European news agency in the Arabian Peninsula, closed its branch broadcasting in Arabic in Saudi Arabia and withdrew from that region. This situation became an additional opportunity for Al Jazeera. Because many experienced employees working at the BBC started working at Al Jazeera in order to continue their professions.

Censorship applied to Al Jazeera

Because the public, who were not used to listening to proper news about the internal and external problems of their neighbors before, met with opportunities such as following relations with neighboring countries from the news and watching discussions on country problems in panel programs; Al Jazeera was met with displeasure by some Arab statesmen, sheikhs, and tycoons. In fact, this opposition group did not even hesitate to openly apply censorship to Al Jazeera. The most beautiful and desperately made example of this is the cutting of electricity in the country by the Algerian government during a broadcast of the discussion program called The Opposite Direction in 1999, which dealt with Algeria. 🙂

Similarly, Al Jazeera, encountering an opposition group that wanted to hold power in many Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Kuwait, continued its broadcasting regardless of all this. It managed to attract the attention of the whole world thanks to moves such as a documentary describing the Lebanese Civil War closely in 2000-2001, broadcasting the footage of the Twin Tower attacks, and broadcasting the video speech of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. In other words; it undertook the task of presenting everything happening in the Arabian Peninsula to the world firsthand.

Following these successes, Al Jazeera has been adopted as an exemplary channel in many fields regarding press freedom. The fact that the Fund for Freedom of Thought, established in Berlin in 1999, deemed Al Jazeera worthy of the Ibn Rushd Prize for Media and Journalism, and its winning of the Resistance Against Censorship award in 2005 are products of this struggle.