confirms he is the one who proposed that Al Jazeera be housed next to Qatar Radio and Television to save on costs and take advantage of the existing infrastructure. After deliberations and official agreement to this proposal, work started on the building. A number of challenges presented themselves to the construction workers, along with a number of mistakes narrated by engineer Niyaz Ahmad Siddiqui, the right-hand man of Hussein Jafar. After completing the construction of the only programme studio, they discovered it was an entire metre short of the required height of four and a half metres. To fix this error, the engineer appointed by the Emir told them to dig one metre deep into the studio, and add four or five steps for access (1) . The selection of Al Jazeera’s journalism staff was yet another path that led to fulfilling Al Jazeera’s dream. The launch of the Al Jazeera initiative coincided with BBC Arabic ’s London office being shut down, leaving 100 well-trained journalists and technicians out of work and ready for immediate employment. From another angle, BBC Arabic ’s closure cleared the stage of all Arabic-speaking news channels. This closure coincided with the Al Jazeera project committee’s presence in London for interviews with job applicants. This is how the new recruits ended up in Doha even before the pillars of the channel’s building were erected. Salah Negm, who was among the first to arrive, says, “I arrived to Doha in June 1996, and nothing was there from Al Jazeera but a villa close to its current headquarters with a sign that said ‘Qatar Public Sat- ellite Channel Corporation’” (2) . Soon, other colleagues from the Arab world joined them, and the wheels of preparation began to turn even more quickly in anticipation for the “day of reckoning”. Name, Motto and Logo The project management team was concerned about choosing a name for its new-born initiative. They were completely conflicted about this, according to Adnan al-Sharif and Hussein Jafar, debating back and forth between “The Falcon” or the “Golden Falcon” or the “Gulf Fal-
(1) Interview with Niyaz Siddiqui by Ahmad Barakat, Al Jazeera’s Pakistan Bureau Chief, Lahore, 20 December 2020.
(2) Salah Negm, personal interview, Doha, 30 August 2020.
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