Translated directly, Al-Jazeera means "the peninsula." The station takes its name from Qatar, the small oil-rich country in which it is based, and which juts out into the Persian Gulf. Al-Jazeera receives funding from the emir of Qatar.

A free press is something many Americans take for granted. With our all-news television channels, not to mention thousands of newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets, information options can sometimes seem overwhelming.

That is rarely the case in the Middle East. In most Arab nations, the media is state-controlled and limited. What news coverage citizens do receive is often slanted to promote the political agenda of the government sponsoring the broadcast.

That is what makes Al-Jazeera so unusual and groundbreaking. Because the network is not in any one government's back pocket, it provides comparatively unbiased coverage of the news. Not surprisingly, this has irritated many Arab leaders, who want to maintain control of information flow to their people. Because it covers controversial subjects in a straightforward way, Al-Jazeera has been the subject of criticism from governments in all corners of the Arab world.

In recent days, Al-Jazeera has annoyed U.S. government officials as well. Immediately after U.S.-led military forces began air assaults on Afghanistan, the Arab channel broadcast a videotaped statement from Osama bin Laden and his deputies in which they issued ominous threats against the U.S. The video served to upstage the allies and put bin Laden on equal footing with President Bush in many television broadcasts and newspapers around the globe. U.S. officials declared the tape to be propaganda designed to scare the American people. During an October 4 meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell (see "Who Is Colin Powell?") and the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Powell reportedly asked the emir to rein in Al-Jazeera's coverage of Al Qaeda.

Well before the current conflict in Afghanistan, bin Laden had been using Al-Jazeera as a bullhorn to communicate his message across the Arab world. Three years ago, he granted an exclusive interview to the network, which in recent weeks has been re-airing it as part of its regular news coverage.

Al-Jazeera has long had unprecedented access to Afghanistan and the Taliban. The channel captured stunning pictures that were shown around the world of Taliban officials destroying sacred Buddhist statues. In recent weeks, Al-Jazeera was the only television outlet that continued to broadcast from the Afghan capital of Kabul after the allied bombing began. As a result, on a number of occasions other television networks have broadcast Al-Jazeera pictures in order to provide the most complete coverage. For Arabic speakers living in the U.S. and western Europe, the channel is available via pay satellite.

Al-Jazeera has also taken steps to make sure the American point of view is heard. In recent weeks, the network has broadcast interviews with U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (see "Who Is Donald Rumsfeld?") and Secretary of State Colin Powell. It has also broadcast a number of President Bush's statements about terrorism and the conflict in Afghanistan live, in their entirety.

For their part, broadcasters at Al-Jazeera say that if they're angering both Arabs and Americans, they must be doing something right.

If you're interested in learning more about the Al-Jazeera television network, check out a CBS "60 Minutes" report that was broadcast months before the September 11 attacks. To have a look at Al-Jazeera's Web site (all in Arabic), visit www.aljazeera.net. (MTVi's parent company, Viacom, also owns CBS.)

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An MTV News Staff report

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