Al Jazeera is an international 24-hour English-language news channel owned by the Al Jazeera Media Network, which is owned by the monarchy government of Qatar. It is the first English-language news channel to be headquartered in the Middle East.Instead of being run centrally, news management rotates between broadcasting centres in Doha and London.

The channel was launched on 15 November 2006, at 12:00 PM GMT. It had aimed to begin broadcasting in June 2006 but had to postpone its launch because its HDTV technology was not yet ready.The channel was due to be called Al Jazeera International, but the name was changed nine months before the launch because one of the channel's backers argued that the original Arabic-language channel already had an international scope