Although Al Jazeera has only been in America for 18 months, Al Jazeera has grown into a massive global brand since its introduction in 1996.
Today, Al Jazeera has 70 bureaus around the world, with its major facets including Al Jazeera America, Arabic, English, Turk, Balkans, and Mubasher.
Al Jazeera America president Kate O’Brian spoke about the organization’s growth and vision as part of the Must See Mondays series at the Walter Cronkite School.
Even though the organization is large now, O’Brian said it began with just six hours of news programming a day.
Today, Al Jazeera places third among the world’s biggest global brands behind Apple and Google, according to O’Brian. Although this news company has had large success worldwide, O’Brian said that success at Al Jazeera is defined on a scale of impact.
“I think I (previously) saw it more as a small production,” Keerthi Vedantam, freshman at the Cronkite School commented. “I didn’t know how big it was.”
According to O’Brian, the focal point for the 18-month-old network is to tell the news through a global, unbiased perspective and a focus on investigative pieces. It also tells the news through other mediums, such as its documentary series Fault Lines, science and technology series Techknow, and economic series Real Money with Ali Velshi.
“We are absolutely secure in what our content is,” O’Brian said. “We are new, and we are different.”
The differences between Al Jazeera America and other mainstream news outlets were a focal point of O’Brian’s speech to students.
“We want our Must See Monday speakers to impact (our students) by getting them to think about different ways to approach journalism,” Megan Calcote, Cronkite events coordinator, said. “We want to bring in people that make our students excited about the careers they want to pursue.”
The organization is less about news coverage, and more about telling a particular story through the use of context and analysis.
“At Al Jazeera America, the news is the star,” O’Brian said. “Our content is deep-dive, and speaking the voice of our people.”
O’Brian said she believes Al Jazeera offers an alternative to mainstream media by striving to present all sides of a given story, while letting the audience form their own opinions.
“We don’t want to enflame passion,” she said.
One journalism graduate student who attended the event, Antonio Venegas, said he saw the uniqueness in the network that O’Brian spoke about.
“To me it just seems different,” Venegas said. “I’d really be open to giving it a closer look than I did before.”
Contact the reporter at jillian.carapella@asu.edu.
