Al-Jazeera has been a lightning rod for criticism and a lightning bolt of journalistic enterprise in the Arab world. It's been the subject of favorable films like "Control Room" and fatwa-like denunciations by U.S. officials. MediaChannel's Danny Schechter reports the regional broadcaster is going global with plans for a new international channel.

One thing can be said about Aljazeera's position in brandchannel.com's Top 5 Brand's Survey is that, amongst executives and academics, it is used as an alternative source for news and information. This is an important aspect for two reasons, firstly, these people have influence over the their organisations, brands and the people they speak with and, secondly, the fact that it was voted for independently by these people speaks volumes about AlJazeera as a product. Unlike the Western Media who have PR and Marketing Budgets to promote themselves amongst the public as fair and unbiased, AlJazeera has focused on its core competence: Providing news and information in the most accurate way possible. This means that AlJazeera has made this top brand position amongst the likes of Apple and Google, who themselves have invested millions to get where they are, based solely on the quality of its product. This is an amazing fact and one that can be leveraged further.

The PR however can be said to come from the Western Media 's general attitude of AlJazeera being biased and terrorist. Well, there is no such thing as bad PR, and this is proven here. Another amazing thing about this is that AlJazeera has had its buildings blown up, it's journalists tortured, it's reporters killed and yet it still survives and not only that, manages to get top of mind ‘positive' awareness amongst the US's academic's and marketing executives.