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Following the passing of Qatar’s Father Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, his founding of the Al Jazeera News Channel stands as a defining geopolitical and cultural milestone.
Launched in 1996, the channel ended the states’ monopoly on broadcasting in the Middle East and challenged the hegemony of Western media in shaping the region’s narrative.
Within a few years, Al Jazeera had grown into one of the world’s most influential media organisations and in July 2005, it officially became known as Al Jazeera Media Network.
In a statement on Sunday, the network’s director general mourned its founder, praising his unprecedented boldness in reshaping the region’s media landscape.
“He was the visionary behind the original idea and the one who laid the foundations of this great media institution,” said Sheikh Nasser bin Faisal Al Thani.
“Sheikh Hamad recognised the power of the word and the vital role of free and independent media in shaping societies and enlightening minds,” the statement read.
”We recall his words at the Network’s twenty fifth’s anniversary … speaking with pride of all that Al Jazeera had achieved and describing the Network as the greatest Arab media endeavour.”
‘Not a traditional Gulf official’
The foundation for this media revolution was laid well before Al Jazeera’s first broadcast. Mohamed Krishan, a founding anchor, recalled a meeting with Sheikh Hamad in 1993 when he was still Qatar’s crown prince.
“It was clear the man had a bold, transformative vision for his country and the region,” Krishan said. “We left stunned, saying it was impossible for such words to come from a Gulf official. He was not a traditional Gulf official at all.”
When Sheikh Hamad became Emir in 1995, he turned that vision into reality, issuing a bold directive to launch a news channel within six months.
Krishan recalled that when Al Jazeera gathered a diverse team of journalists in Doha for the project in the summer of 1996, “we came loaded with big promises”.
“We were told: ‘Work professionally, trust in God and no one will stop you. Work as you see the profession and its ethics’,” he said.
Many Arab journalists working for Al Jazeera said they were ”shocked by the scale of freedom”.
“When they told me it was broadcasting from Qatar, I said, ‘No, that’s not true … for it to come from a Gulf state with this style, this openness and this very high ceiling of freedom? I said no, impossible’,” said Taysir Allouni, a prominent Al Jazeera journalist who was working in Spain at the time.
Al Jazeera quickly broke the Arab world’s reliance on Western agencies for news, deploying correspondents to the field to tell stories as witnesses to events.
“The Arab peoples have not yet said their final word, and he who fears climbing mountains will live forever among the pits,” the late emir famously remarked, emphasising his belief in free expression.
Krishan said Sheikh Hamad not only provided journalists with the necessary political cover to follow up highly sensitive topics, including domestic Qatari affairs, but also understood their importance in realising this vision.
“You are the ones who managed to create a new Arab reality regarding media freedom, the opinion and the other opinion,” Sheikh Hamad once told the network’s staff in a short visit to the channel. “The goal we were striving for was the issue of freedom of expression.”
A massive political cost
This editorial independence came with a staggering political cost for Qatar. Al Jazeera’s coverage routinely angered regional governments and Western powers alike.
Ahmed al-Sheikh, the channel’s former director of news, recalled intense pressures during the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He described a conversation he had with an official who was present at a meeting when a CIA director urged Sheikh Hamad to silence the network.
“The emir forcefully rejected the demand,” said al-Sheikh, as he recounted Sheikh Hamad’s response: “You are the ones who always spoke to us about media, freedom of the press, the opinion and the other opinion, and democracy, and now you are asking me to muzzle Al Jazeera? How can this happen?”
Threats against Al Jazeera turned into deadly attacks. During the US war on Afghanistan, Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul was bombed, and the same happened during the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 which led to the killing of a number of Al Jazeera staff and employees.
Then-US President George Bush planned to bomb Al Jazeera’s headquarters, British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported in November 2005, citing a Downing Street memo marked top secret. The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in April 2004 revealed that the latter talked the US president out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily.
The network has lost 24 of its journalists and staff in targeted attacks in places including Iraq, Syria, Libya, the Gaza Strip, occupied West Bank and Yemen.
An enduring institution
Despite all the challenges and threats, the late emir’s vision became a reality and the Al Jazeera Media Network became a global brand.
Sheikh Hamad once stated that Al Jazeera has “deprived killers of covering up their killings, deprived failures of covering up their failures, and sided with the truth and the human being”.
As the network approaches its 30th anniversary, it renewed its commitment to carry on the legacy of the man who was behind its very existence.
