con”, which was the name held by Gulf Air. They also debated whether a picture of a falcon would be included with the name. But before the team made up its mind, Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer joined them while they were in London and informed them that the Emir had chosen the name “Al Jazeera”. To choose its motto, the channel’s administration organised a con- test for its employees, and the winning submission was “The Opinion, and the Other Opinion”, from Jamil Azar (1) . Jafar Abbas says he trans- lated the motto to “The Opinion and the Counter Opinion”, but Jamil Azar disagreed, saying that it shouldn’t be “the Counter Opinion” but rather “the Other Opinion”. This was in June, four months before Al Jazeera’s launch. Another contest was organised for the selection of Al Jazeera’s logo, which Egyptian calligrapher Hamdi al-Shareef, who worked for Qatar Television, won. Adnan al-Sharif says Hamdi was on his way to present his ideas, but another logo idea came to him and he drew it on the spot with a pencil while in his car. He submitted it at the bottom of the stack of his ideas, doubting that it would be chosen. However, that was the one that caught the interest of the administration, and they unanimously approved it. It later became Al Jazeera’s official logo (2) . The pearl that sinks and turns into gold, then rises to the sky to then reveal the name, “Al Jazeera”, was Adnan al-Sharif’s idea, according to him. Apprehension: Broadcast Preparation Phase Al Jazeera’s crew members arriving from London feared their long-awaited dream would evaporate as it did when BBC Arabic shut down and nothing promised to them by officials would materialise. This was something they used to express to each other at private get-to- gethers, but also to officials, according to Mohammed Jasim Al-Ali, Al Jazeera’s previous director: “Many colleagues weren’t convinced at the time that an Arabic channel in a Gulf state would have this much
(1) Mohammed Jasim Al-Ali, personal interview, Doha, 6 September 2020.
(2) Adnan al-Sharif, personal interview, Ibid.
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