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“independent station,” even though it would continue to depend on financial support from
the government for survival. The move to establish Al Jazeera does not emerge from a
simple desire to fit Qatari policies into the classic models of development. It is
fundamentally linked to the preservation of power and reinvention of legitimacy that
characterizes the rule of the Al-Thani family.
The commonly overlooked history in the analysis of Al Jazeera is the origin of the
Ministry of Information during the rule of the Khalifa Al-Thani, Hamad bin Khalifa’s
father who ruled until 1995. Khalifa Al-Thani introduced the Ministry of Information
a1972 as part of a campaign to invent a “civic myth” of Qatari history and guarantee the
symbolic authority of his reign (Cyrstal, 1990, p. 161). Khalifa needed to establish an
identity for a newly independent Qatar that had been transformed through its oil wealth.
In addition, he wanted to guard against the various “rivals” to the nation-state myth—
religious, regional, or otherwise. The Ministry of Information was introduced as a way to
manage the construction of Qatari history in a way that would effectively engender myth
and continuity. Among the projects associated with the founding of the Ministry was the
establishment of a museum, housed in the old palace, which romanticized and blended
the history of Qatar into a coherent narrative. The emergence of the Ministry of
Information, like its dissolution 26 years later, was part of a wider plan of reform of a
new leader to legitimize his authority and define the unique character of his governance.
In the contemporary case, the reforms have focused on democratization and the
encouragement of an open society. Al Jazeera is the globalized jewel in Hamad bin
Khilafa’s reforms.
Convention