The Al Jazeera news network, which had as its motto “The opinion, and the other opinion,” lost its legitimacy and reliability when it failed to provide fair coverage and began to present just one opinion: that of the emir. The network lost its balance and its vision years ago, due to the whims of Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who has since announced his abdication. It is possible that the station’s managers lost sight of their mandate, given all the power that the network accrued in the Arab world. It is equally possible that the network has served as a tool to promote Al Thani’s interests ever since it was founded, and that before his abdication, he sought a prominent leadership position that extended far beyond the tiny emirate he ruled.

Ever since it began broadcasting in 1996, Al Jazeera stood out as the first network in the Arab world to broadcast professionally without bias. Its journalists covered events from a critical perspective that was atypical of the Arab world. They uncovered corruption, fought for their rights to broadcast from everywhere and avoided any displays of obsequiousness toward Arab leaders. Nevertheless, the important role that it assumed for itself — which then seemed so bold and innovative to hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide — has since been abandoned. Al Jazeera effectively gave up the one thing that distinguished it as a balanced and professional news network. It started encouraging revolutions and taking a clearly discernible stance in support of the emir’s allies and against his rivals.

From my perspective — as both a journalist and an Israeli consumer of news — I was very disappointed when I first noticed this change during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. The network clearly sided with Hezbollah leader and Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Ghassan Bin Jiddu, the network’s former correspondent in Beirut — who resigned over a year ago and established his own network, identified with Hezbollah — appeared on the air not as a journalist but as a propagandist, encouraging Hezbollah’s fighters, flattering Nasrallah endlessly and fawning to him deferentially in the exclusive interviews that the Hezbollah leader granted him. When speaking with Nasrallah, Bin Jiddu never once hinted at how Hezbollah was being critiqued in Lebanon for pushing the country into war with Israel, causing enormous destruction and loss of life.

Recently, that same Bin Jiddu resigned from the network, claiming that it supported and encouraged the Syrian rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime, and against Hezbollah. He went on to found a new network, Al-Mayadeen, which inevitably supports Iran and Hezbollah. His opponents claim that funding for his new network comes from Tehran.