i_like_jam

It was Bahrain, which is Qatar's neighbour. When the Saudis entered Bahrain on the 14th of March there was very little coverage from both AJA and AJE. If you went to AJE's website before the 14th, on the side under a banner that said "Revolution in the Middle East" (or something along those lines, the term 'Arab Spring' was still catching on) was Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. After Saudi entered though, they quietly took Bahrain off that list and it became quite a tedious slog to find their Bahrain section.

Their news was both very infrequent and also highly sloppy, for example, when they reported on the Bahraini government clamping down on the single free newspaper and forced the resignation of the editor-in-chief and two other high-profile members, they didn't even bother proofreading to get his name right. That's something I admittedly wouldn't have noticed had I not known his name, and after that I stopped frequenting AJE because for all I know all their articles are that sloppy, and I was just lucky to know enough about that news piece as to pick up on it. I emailed them telling them their mistake and as far as I'm aware it's still unchanged to this day, but I've lost the bookmark of the story. I'm studying journalism at university and one of the first things we were taught was what poor/libellous journalism is, and getting a name wrong is pretty high up there, so AJE's lack of care here really took me by surprise, especially considering their reputation and place in the world of international journalism.

One of their head editors in Beirut also resigned because he was appalled by Al-Jazeera's censorship of Bahrain.

The moral of the story is that just like any other news outlet, Al-Jazeera has its own outlook on the world it's putting out. Their reports on the Middle East at large and outside the Arabian peninsula is decent, but when something happens closer to home, those tight-nit royals will support each other before they'll support the truth.

EDIT: I should also add, from what I've heard from family in Bahrain AJA took an anti-protests slant, and helped to propagate the myth of the shia-sunni division, which has become a reality today

Egypt has a history of being one of the big forces in Middle Eastern cultural and political advancement. My own opinion was that they would again pave the way in the Arab Spring towards greater democracy in the Middle East, but due to their failure up till now to separate the military from politics I've begun to change my mind, and personally I think it might be Libya and its revolutionary council that open the doors to true democracy. What's your own opinion on who will guide the way (if indeed there will be a single trendsetter at all)?