Staff worked overtime without compensation, and we used to share our personal problems with each other and help each other solve them so we could avoid worrying and give our best at work” (1) . Al Jazeera’s ad- ministration also succeeded with its hands-off approach when it came to the details. It was “an excellent administration that knew what it wanted and supplied the means necessary for what the work and staff needed” (2) . Ahmed Mansour describes this environment in the following manner, “We only used to go home to sleep; all that was left was for us to sleep at Al Jazeera. We were very excited about the work, even coming in two or three hours early and remaining until after the broad- cast ended. Even when I was studying, I would remain at Al Jazeera for 12 hours. Love and compassion guided the relationships between Al Jazeera employees” (3) . Freedom of expression, an excellent administration and the high professionalism of its employees are the three most important reasons for Al Jazeera’s success. For example, many of its journalists came from BBC and were highly trained in writing news and reports as well as conducting television interviews. Since the start, Al Jazeera’s broadcasts were unique in their style and content compared to the typical “official” Arabic television styles. These professional editing and technical skills greatly benefited from technological development in television broadcast. Al Jazeera had the latest and best equipment, including the Avid montage system, which was fairly new at the time and represented a breakthrough in video editing. Because the admin- istration had a vested interest in keeping up with these developments, the channel’s technicians and engineers were sent to specialised exhi- bitions across the world so they could stay abreast of all new devel- opments in the field and adopt them” (4) . From a satellite standpoint, Al Jazeera used Ku Band through the communications satellite opera- tor Arab Satellite Communications Organisation (Arabsat). However,
(1) Mohammed Jasim Al-Ali, personal interview, Ibid.
(2) Salah Negm, personal interview, Ibid.
(3) Ahmed Mansour, personal interview, Doha, 1 September 2020.
(4) Hussein Jafar, personal interview.
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