Al Jazeera Is Owned by the Emir of Qatar, Chaired by a Sheikh and Funded Almost Entirely by His Government. The US Justice Department Called It 'Controlled' by Qatar

On 14 September 2020, Jay Bratt, chief of the US Justice Department’s counterintelligence and export control section, wrote to AJ+, the social media arm of Al Jazeera in the United States. The letter ordered it to register as a foreign agent and said AJ+ acts “at the direction and control” of the leaders of Qatar. One sentence went beyond AJ+: “Despite assertions of editorial independence and freedom of expression, Al Jazeera Media Network and its affiliates are controlled and funded by the Government of Qatar.”

Al Jazeera objected in public, saying it was “deeply disappointed” and that the decision “runs counter to the extensive factual record we provided demonstrating that FARA registration is not applicable to AJ+.” Its statement continued: “The legal structure, editorial structure, editorial policies, budgeting process and content of AJ+ clearly demonstrate its independence.” Al Jazeera also referred to “relentless lobbying efforts” by the government of the United Arab Emirates to shut the outlet down. Both accounts are on the public record. The rest of this article sets out the parts of that record that can be checked.

A private corporation with one owner

Al Jazeera Media Network operates under Qatari Law No. 10 of 2011 as a “private corporation for public benefit.” According to State Media Monitor, a project of the Media and Journalism Research Center, it remains under the full ownership of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Its board is appointed by the Council of Ministers, Qatar’s cabinet, and ratified by the Emir.

Who pays

State Media Monitor reports that state allocations make up the overwhelming majority of the network’s financing, often exceeding 90 percent of total funding. That figure carries a limit the monitor states itself: Al Jazeera Media Network does not publish detailed financial accounts, so the share cannot be independently verified. No one outside the network can check how much of its money comes from one government.

Who runs it

Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani chairs the network and also chairs Qatar Media Corporation, the state broadcaster. In September 2025, Sheikh Nasser bin Faisal bin Khalifa Al Thani, a member of the ruling family and a former ambassador, became director general, according to State Media Monitor.

Wadah Khanfar left the director general’s job in September 2011 after eight years, NPR reported. Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in 2013 that Khanfar was replaced by Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim al-Thani, a member of the ruling family, who had no background in journalism.

The cables

Khanfar’s exit followed the release by WikiLeaks of US diplomatic cables. The Hollywood Reporter summarised them at the time: a 2010 cable from the US embassy in Doha described Khanfar as in contact with the US Defense Intelligence Agency and willing to tone down items on the network’s website after American complaints. One cable described a piece on US military operations in Iraq. According to the account, Khanfar looked at it and had two images removed, one of injured children in hospital beds and one of a woman with a serious facial injury.

Khanfar denied that outside pressure drove his departure. He said it was a planned decision and that the network was at its peak. Per the cable, an editor took images down after a foreign government complained. No source reviewed for this article says the Qatari government directed that decision.

What the coverage of Qatar looks like

Abrams set a test in his 2013 piece: whether Al Jazeera can report candidly on events in Qatar. His answer was no. He cited a Guardian report that Al Jazeera’s “editorial independence has been called into question after its director of news stepped in to ensure a speech made by Qatar’s emir to the UN led its English channel’s coverage of the debate on Syrian intervention.” Abrams also noted that Al Jazeera’s website described the network as “the first independent news channel in the Arab world” without stating that it is owned by Qatar’s ruling family. France 24 and Deutsche Welle, he wrote, say plainly on their sites that they are state-funded.

State Media Monitor reaches a similar conclusion from the network’s output. The monitor has classified Al Jazeera Media Network as “State-Controlled” in every monitoring cycle from 2022 to 2026, and writes that “domestic Qatari affairs and the ruling elite remain effectively off limits,” while international coverage is more assertive.

The other side of the ledger

The record also contains evidence for Al Jazeera’s account. In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar and issued a list of 13 demands. One was that Qatar shut down Al Jazeera and its affiliates, along with other outlets “funded directly or indirectly by Qatar.” A UN expert called the demand to close Al Jazeera “a major blow to media pluralism.” Qatar did not close the network.

The demand shows that other governments in the region objected to Al Jazeera’s coverage of them. Whether the network’s coverage is independent of the government that owns it is a separate question, and the State Media Monitor classification and the Justice Department letter answer it the other way. Al Jazeera disputes that answer.

State Media Monitor’s latest classification, published in June 2026, is again “State-Controlled.”