Al Jazeera Media Network is a media company headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Its flagship news channels are Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English. According to Al Jazeera, its Arabic and English channels are editorially independent from one another. Al Jazeera has been involved in a number of controversies. Some of its reporting has drawn criticism or objections from governments. In addition, Al Jazeera journalists have faced unlawful detention in certain countries, and the network or its reporters have been restricted or banned from operating in some countries.

By country Algeria Several Algerian cities lost power on 27 January 1999, reportedly to keep residents from watching a program in which Algerian dissidents implicated the Algerian military in a series of massacres.Books of our Time: Al-Jazeera at Google Video; TV programme feat. Lawrence Velvel, Dean of the Mass. School of Law, interviewing author Hugh Miles who reveals a lot about the channel (a, c: 48:30, b: 55:00) cf.Further reading The Communications Ministry of Algeria asked foreign media networks not to cover the release of banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) second-in-command Ali Benhadj, who had participated in crimes against humanity, which Al Jazeera journalists covered anyway and were subsequently requested to leave the country or face imprisonment.

On 4 July 2004, the Algerian government temporarily suspended Al Jazeera's Algerian correspondent, with the given explanation being that the work of foreign correspondents was being reorganized. According to Reporters Without Borders, however, the suspension was for broadcasting an episode of Al-Etjah Al-Mo'akis the week before that included a debate on the political situation in Algeria.RSF strongly condemns ban on al-Jazeera

In May 2023, senior Al Jazeera newscaster Abdel Samad Nasser was dismissed for comments he made about a broadcast on Algerian state television featuring a Saudi hashtag calling for Moroccan women to be expelled from Saudi Arabia.

Australia In 2019, Al Jazeera Investigates shot a documentary film, which was aired in Australia by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), titled How to Sell a Massacre. The documentary investigated Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a right-wing populist, national conservative political party in Australia, and the National Rifle Association of America (NRA), a US gun lobby that is opposed to gun control, such as the strict gun laws of Australia, which were put in place after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. One Nation tried to secure millions from the NRA, prompting Al Jazeera to investigate by hiring Australian reporter Rodger Muller to pose as the founder and president of a fake Australian gun lobby appealing to the NRA and One Nation. Muller contacted One Nation and informed the party of its connections to the NRA, which convinced One Nation staffer Steve Ashby to meet Muller in the United States. Muller organised a meeting with Ashby and Steve Dickson (who was, at the time, a One Nation staffer and the leader of the party's Queensland branch) in Washington D.C., where he met with them whilst secretly recording them with a hidden camera.

Pauline Hanson—One Nation leader and Queensland senator—heavily criticised the documentary and lashed out at Muller, Al Jazeera, the Qatari government, the ABC, and then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison. She claimed that Al Jazeera was "Islamist" and a "foreign agent", and referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

Bangladesh In 2012, Al Jazeera faced criticism from Bangladeshi human rights activists and relatives of those killed in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

In response to the Al Jazeera Investigates documentary All the Prime Minister's Men, the government of Bangladesh described it as "a misleading series of innuendos and insinuations in what is apparently a politically motivated 'smear campaign' by notorious individuals associated with the Jamaat-i-Islami extremist group, which has been opposing the progressive and secular principles of the People's Republic of Bangladesh since its very birth as an independent nation in 1971". The foreign ministry stated that the Bangladeshi government "regrets that Al Jazeera has allowed itself to become an instrument for their malicious political designs aimed at destabilizing the secular democratic Government of Bangladesh with a proven track record of extraordinary socio-economic development and progress". The ministry also stated that "the fact that the report's historical account fails to even mention the horrific genocide in 1971 in which Jamaat perpetrators killed millions of Bengali civilians" was "one reflection of the political bias in Al Jazeera's coverage". The Bangladesh Army called the documentary a "concocted and ill-intended report by a vested group in the news channel Al-Jazeera", according to a statement by ISPR.

Responding to allegations by Al Jazeera that Israeli surveillance equipment is used by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force, United Nations (UN) spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said that UN agreements with Bangladesh on peacekeeping deployments did not include the "operation of electronic equipment in the nature described by Al Jazeera in its documentary, and such equipment has not been deployed with Bangladeshi contingents in UN peacekeeping operations". The UN called for an investigation into allegations of corruption among senior Bangladeshi officials.

The Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists demanded a ban on Al Jazeera transmission within Bangladesh citing similar bans in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE.

Bahrain Bahrain Information Minister Nabeel bin Yaqub Al-Hamar banned Al Jazeera correspondents from reporting from inside the country on 10 May 2002, saying that the station was biased towards Israel and against Bahrain. After improvements in Bahrain–Qatar relations in 2004, Al Jazeera correspondents returned to Bahrain. In 2010, however, the Information Ministry again banned Al Jazeera correspondents from reporting inside the country. The ministry accused the network of "flouting [Bahrain's] laws regulating the press and publishing" after Al Jazeera aired a report on poverty in Bahrain.

During his visit to Egypt in November 2011, Bahrain Centre for Human Rights president Nabeel Rajab criticized Al Jazeera's coverage of the 2011 protests and said that it represents an Arabic double standard. Rajab said, "Al Jazeera's intentional ignoring ... coverage of Bahrain protests makes me strongly believe that we need channels that are sponsored by people rather than by regimes." In the run-up to the Qatar diplomatic crisis, Bahrain blocked Al Jazeera within its borders.

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo banned Al Jazeera on 9 January 2025 after it aired an interview with Bertrand Bisimwa, the rebel leader of the March 23 Movement (M23). The Congolese justice minister Constant Mutamba had previously—on X—threatened journalists and others who reported on the M23 rebels with the death penalty.

Egypt

Al Jazeera has faced considerable criticism and backlash in Egypt and other Arab countries; from ordinary people, media outlets, and governments who accuse it of supporting Qatari agenda and Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood.* On June 23, 2011, three Al Jazeera journalists were sentenced by an Egyptian court to up to 10 years in jail for aiding a "terrorist organization", referring to the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Jazeera has been criticized by an Egyptian newspaper for its allegedly biased coverage of news related to Egypt and its government. According to the Egypt Independent, many Egyptians believe Al Jazeera's attacks to be a concerted effort by the channel to destroy Egypt's image in the region."

In 2010, Al Jazeera filed a lawsuit against the Egyptian Al-Ahram newspaper for "Jazeerat al-Taharoush" ("Al Jazeera: An Island of Harassment"), a 9 June 2010 article that Al Jazeera found "wholly deceptive and journalistically unprofessional" with an aim to "damage the reputation of the Al Jazeera Network."

A Cairo court ordered Al Jazeera to stop broadcasting in Egypt in September 2013, saying that it was "inciting violence that led to the deaths of Egyptians." On 29 December of that year, three journalists working for Al Jazeera English (Australian Peter Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed) were taken into custody by Egyptian security forces at the Cairo Marriott Hotel. On 23 June 2014, after a four-month trial, they were found guilty of spreading false news and collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood and sentenced to seven to 10 years' imprisonment. They were released on bail shortly afterwards, and Mohamed Fahmy sued Al Jazeera on 5 May 2015 for 100 million (83 million; £53m) in punitive and remedial damages for negligence and breach of contract. He accused the network of "negligence" by misinforming him about its legal status and their safety in Egypt. The three were pardoned on 23 September 2015 and released. Egypt blocked 21 websites, including Al-Jazeera and Masr AlArabiya, in May 2017, for allegedly supporting terrorism and spreading fake news by supporting the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2021, Egyptian media criticized Al Jazeera for refusing to cover the protests against a controversial electoral law in Qatar, which limited the voting rights of a Bedouin tribe. According to Ikram Badr al-Din, a professor of political science at Cairo University, this "suggests that it is not independent and works only for the benefit of the ruling family in Qatar."

India Columnist Seema Sirohi has accused Al Jazeera of spreading an ignorant anti-India narrative in its coverage of the country. The Indian government banned the Al Jazeera TV channel in April 2015 for five days for repeatedly broadcasting disputed maps of India. The Surveyor General of India (SGI) had observed that, in some of the maps displayed by Al Jazeera, "a portion of the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir (i.e., PoK and Aksai Chin) has not been shown as a part of Indian territory"; Lakshadweep and the Andaman Islands were also not shown as Indian territories on some of the maps.Al Jazeera Penalised for Showing Wrong Map of India, Off Air for 5 Days , NDTV News, 22 April 2015.Rishi Iyengar, India Bans al-Jazeera for 5 Days for Showing 'Incorrect' Maps of Kashmir , TIME, 23 April 2015 In its reply to an order to show cause, Al Jazeera said that all its maps are generated by internationally known software used by global news providers. In a separate statement, Al Jazeera said that it was penalised for a legacy issue since it had abided by the Indian guidelines since 2014.

In June 2023, India ... Who Lit the Fuse?, a documentary produced by Al Jazeera's Point Blank investigation series, was banned by the Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh. The documentary investigates the activities of Hindu nationalist groups and portrays the challenges faced by India's Muslim minority.

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