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Their web site is a .net domain, www.aljazeera.net and should not be confused with the unrelated sites aljazeera.com and aljazeerah.info.
Al Jazeera claims to be the only politically independent television station in the Middle East. The station remains partly dependent on the emir of Qatar for funding. Now rivalling the BBC in worldwide audiences Al Jazeera was started with a $150 million grant from the emir of Qatar; it aimed to become self-sufficient through advertising by 2001, but when this failed to occur the emir agreed to continue subsidizing it on a year-by-year basis ($30 million in 2004[1], according to Arnaud de Borchgrave). Other major sources of income include advertising, cable subscription fees, broadcasting deals with other companies, and sale of footage (according to Pravda[2], "Al-Jazeera received $20,000 per minute for Bin Laden's speech".) In 2000, advertising accounted for 40% of the station's revenue[3].
The channel began broadcasting in late 1996. In April of that year, the BBC World ServiceThe BBC World Service is one of the most widely recognised international broadcasters of radio programming, transmitting in 43 languages to around 150 million people throughout the world. The English service broadcasts 24 hours a day. Unlike the BBC's mai's Arabic language TV station, faced with censorshipIn ancient Rome, censorship was the office or function of a censor. This article is about controls over publication and discussion. Censorship is the use of state or group power to control freedom of expression. Censorship 'criminalizes' certain actions o demands by the Saudi ArabiaThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a country on the Arabian Peninsula. It borders Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, with the Persian Gulf to its north-east and the Red Sea to its west. Al-Mamlakah al-'Arabiyah as-Sa'udiyahn government, had shut down after two years of operation. Many of the former BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation BBC is primarily a national publicly-funded broadcaster based in the United Kingdom, which also has some international services. Some of the international services (such as BBC cable TV in America, Canada and elsewhere staff members joined Al Jazeera.
It is widely believed internationally that inhabitants of the Arab world are given limited information by their governments and media, and that what is conveyed is biasedBias has several different meanings, most relating to an offset or prejudice of some sort. Viewpoint A bias is a prejudice in a general or specific sense, usually in the sense for having a predilection to one particular point of view or ideology. One is s. Many people see Al Jazeera as a more trustworthy source of information than government and foreign channels. As a result, it is probably the most watched news channel in the Middle East.
Increasingly, Al Jazeera's exclusive interviews and other footage are being rebroadcast in AmericanThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in, British, and other western media outlets such as CNN and the BBC. In January 2003, the BBC announced that it had signed an agreement with Al Jazeera for sharing facilities and information, including news footage. Al Jazeera is now considered a fairly mainstream media network, though more controversial than most.