could be on the ground first” (1) . For his part, Hugh Miles notices that Al Jazeera’s exceptional coverage of Operation Desert Fox, which the United States and United Kingdom launched against Iraq in 1998, lies in the special standing its reporters had. According to him, this unri- valled coverage was achieved because the Network’s reporters “know the place, speak the language, had a well-established working relation- ship with governments and saturated the country with more journalists than any other network” (2) . Accordingly, just as Al Jazeera’s presence was expanding across the region and elsewhere, the channel also had better access to wide- spread news sources, raw information and images. By 2001, the number of its correspondents had reached 25, most of whom were stationed in the Middle East (3) . In March 2004, “the correspondents’ network grew to 70 male and female members, the majority of whom were contracted with Al Jazeera directly, rather than through private production com- panies or news agencies” (4) . By the end of 2020, the network had 156 correspondents worldwide. The number of Al Jazeera correspondents and their geographical distribution
Al Jazeera Arabic /
Al Jazeera English /
Al Jazeera Mubasher
Al Jazeera Balkans
Digital Sector
Region
Total
Asia
5
8
-
-
-
13
Europe
13
6
1
-
-
20
The Middle East
56
15
6
3
-
80
(1) Shawn Powers, “Al Jazeera in Academia”, Mapping the Al Jazeera Phenomenon: Twenty Years On (Beirut: Arab Scientific Publishers, 2016). p. 159. (2) Hugh Miles, “Celebrating a Decade of Free Speech in the Arab World”, in The Al Jazeera Decade: 1996-2006 , Al Jazeera Media Network (Manama: Al Waraqoon, 2006), p. 172.
(3) Hilal, “Managing the newsroom”, Ibid, p. 345.
(4) Ibid, p. 346.
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