Al Jazeera November 1996. It offered 6 hours of programming per day; increased to 12 hours by the end of 1997. It was broadcast to the immediate neighborhood as a terrestrial signal, and on cable, as well as through satellites (which was also free to users in the Arab world), although Qatar, and many other Arab countries, barred private individuals from having satellite dishes until 2001. At the time of the Al Jazeera Media Network launch Arabsat was the only satellite broadcasting to the Middle East, and for the first year could only offer Al Jazeera a weak C-band transponder that needed
Al Jazeera controversies and criticism the "American Journalism Review" noted that critics of Al Jazeera have "assailed what they see as anti-Semitic, anti-American bias in the channel's news content." An example cited from earlier years was a report in Al Jazeera that Jews had been informed in advance not to go to work on the day of the September 11 attacks, which was criticized by an October 2001 editorial in "The New York Times". An often-repeated example involves an on-air birthday party organized by Al Jazeera's Beirut bureau chief for a Lebanese militant convicted of killing four Israelis, including a four-year-old girl. Al Jazeera greeted