those days, as I left my office and returned to it, Al Jazeera became the holy grounds for foreign outlets such as the British BBC , the Japanese NHK and the American CNN, ABC , and Fox News . All of them came to request exclusive images for their channels. And because Al Jazeera was seeking to expand at the time, we used to give them these images for free; and they would collectively disseminate them” (1) . After Operation Desert Fox, Al Jazeera was transformed to a sought-after hub for journalists from many countries. They would visit it to conduct interviews with its journalists and officials. Many research- ers and academics from various universities and research centres also began to choose it as a topic of their research (2) . This new, free voice of the global south attracted their attention, brought Al Jazeera into a glob- al phase, and put it on the same level of big names in the global media sector. Its name became known near and far, and its popularity spread from “Bedouin tents being hit by the sun’s hot rays in the Libyan des- ert, to the homes of wealthy Americans who had access to technology. The emerging Qatar-based television station became a household name, including among the world’s energy giants in Houston, who relied on Middle Eastern oil for their very existence” (3) . Why did Al Jazeera Succeed? The journalists and academics who have written about Al Jazeera have gone down several paths to investigate the reasons for the chan- nel’s extraordinary success. However, they have not necessarily ad- dressed the fundamental reasons for its success that only its initial con- tributors really comprehend. The main reason for its resounding success is freedom of press, according to all its founders. Jafar Abbas confirmed this when he said, “They gave us the understanding that we specify the
(1) Mohammed Jasim Al-Ali, personal interview, Ibid.
(2) For more details, see chapter 9 of this volume by Ezzeddine Abdelmoula, “Al Jazeera in Academic Studies”.
(3) Vesely Milan, “Al Jazeera Kicks up a Sandstorm”, The Middle East , Issue 325, (Jul/Aug 2002), p.10. https://cutt.ly/BkqkGiQ, (accessed on 21 December 2020).
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