Al Jazeera - Competitors

Competitors

• In response to Al Jazeera, a group of Saudi investors created Al Arabiya in the first quarter of 2003. Despite (especially initial) skepticism over the station's Saudi funding (cf. History) and a perception of censorship of anti-Saudi content, Al Arabiya has successfully emulated Al Jazeera, garnered a significant audience share, and has also become involved in controversy – Al Arabiya has been severely criticised by the Iraqi and US authorities and has had journalists killed on the job.
• In order to counter a perceived bias of Al Jazeera, the U.S. government in 2004 founded Al Hurra ("the free one"). Al Hurra is forbidden to broadcast to the US under the provisions of the Smith–Mundt Act. A Zogby poll found that 1% of Arab viewers watch Al Hurra as their first choice. while an Ipsos-MENA poll from March–May 2008 showed that Alhurra was drawing more viewers in Iraq than Al Jazeera. Citing these figures, Alvin Snyder referred to Alhurra as a "go to" network in Iraq.
• Since the launch of Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera directly competes with BBC World and CNN International, as do a growing number of other international broadcasters such as France 24, NHK World, and Russia Today.
• Another competitor is Al-Alam, Established in 2003 by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, it broadcasts continuously. It seeks to address the most challenging issues of the Muslim and Arab world and the Middle East.
• A further competitor is the Rusiya Al-Yaum channel – the first Russian TV news channel broadcasting in Arabic and headquartered in Moscow, Russia. Rusiya Al-Yaum started broadcasting on 4 May 2007 at 7:00 (Moscow time). The Channel is established and operated by RIA Novosti, the same news agency that launched Russia Today TV in December 2005 to deliver a Russian perspective on news to English-speaking audiences, and "Rusiya Al-Yaum" is indeed a translation of "Russia Today" into Arabic.
• The BBC launched BBC Arabic Television on 11 March 2008, an Arabic-language news channel in North Africa and the Middle East. This is the second time that the BBC has launched an Arabic language TV channel; as mentioned above, the demise of the original BBC World Service Arabic TV channel had at least contributed to the founding of the original Al Jazeera Arabic TV channel.
• When Euronews started broadcasting its programs in Arabic on 12 July 2008, it entered into competition with Al Jazeera. Arabic is the eighth language in which Euronews is broadcast, after English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.