What has it cost to keep Al Jazeera on air for 30 years?

Doha, November 1st, 1996. Qatar's Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani launches a new Arabic-language news channel. It calls itself the first independent news channel in the Arab world. It promises, the opinion and the other opinion. Today, Al Jazeera reaches more than 430 million homes. Over 3,000 staff work out of more than 70 bureaus. Governments have banned it and bombed it. So what has it cost to keep Al Jazeera on air for 30 years? The climb was fast. By 1999, the channel was on air 24 hours a day. In 2001, the U.S. attacked Afghanistan. Al Jazeera was the only foreign broadcaster in Kabul. Its pictures traveled the world. In 2006, it added an English channel. Then, in 2011, millions followed the Arab Spring uprising live on Al Jazeera. Its coverage won a prestigious Peabody. But why did every step up appear to result in a new enemy? Exclusive pictures made Al Jazeera hard to ignore. It also made the network a target. In 2003, a U.S. strike hit its Baghdad office. Correspondent Tariq Ayyub was killed. Across the region, governments closed its bureaus and pulled the channel's licenses. In 2024, Israel banned the network and raided its Ramallah office. Months later, the Palestinian Authority suspended it. At least nine governments have tried to silence Al Jazeera. But what happens when closing the office isn't enough? The people doing the reporting paid. The killing of journalists began in Baghdad in 2003. In 2022, an Israeli soldier shot correspondent Shirin Abu Akleh in Jenin. She was the 12th to die. In 19 years, another 12 were then killed in just 30 months, every one of them in Gaza. Israel had barred foreign journalists, so Al Jazeera's crews inside the territory carried the story. For many viewers, Anas al-Sharif was the face of the war. In August 2025, an Israeli strike hit a press tent outside al-Shifa hospital. It killed him and four colleagues. They were filming until the end. That footage now lives online, beside everything else Al Jazeera has filmed in 30 years. Al Jazeera 360 streams decades of it, back to the first broadcast. Since 2014, AJ Plus has followed audiences onto their phones, producing news for people who never sit through a TV bulletin. Today, Al Jazeera Digital is the most watched news outlet on platforms. The network's shelves are packed with more than 1,000 awards, but it will not rest. It still broadcasts often ignored opinions and serves as the voice of the voiceless.