When Hosni Mubarak’s thugs were roaming the streets around Tahrir Square looking for foreigners to beat up or arrest, there were a few nationalities singled out for particular attention. Israelis, of course, and Americans. Brits, Germans, and the French; nothing unusual there. But there was another country on the list: Qatar. This tiny nation of just 1.5 million people did something to really piss off Mubarak’s people, and it was obvious: Al Jazeera.

Of all the crazy things into which Qatar has sunk its monstrous wealth – Harrods, FC Barcelona, African land – its most influential investment has undoubtedly been the satellite news channel which has proved itself to be the most reliable, informed and generally impartial news source in the Middle East. In a region where censorship is rife, press freedoms generally ignored and stories often dictated by the central government, Al Jazeera has made a reputation for being honest and unafraid to tackle any story which comes its way.

In South Africa, we are used to a plethora of media alternatives, of which Al Jazeera, the English version, is only one of the options. An excellent option – so excellent that my grandmother in Port Elizabeth has even converted – but not wildly, inconceivably different to the other available ones. This was not true in North Africa in 1996, when Al Jazeera Arabic launched in Doha with a generous handout from the Emir of Qatar, who just the year before had deposed his father in a bloodless palace coup. The media environments in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt were characterised by heavy state control, huge barriers to independent media ownership and harassment and intimidation of journalists. The media was, therefore, entirely one-dimensional. This was also in the days before widespread Internet, respectable bloggers and Twitter.

Then came Al Jazeera. Employing well-trained, experienced staff from across the region, paying them well and using the latest production methods, Al Jazeera was slick, punchy, controversial and entertaining. Initially, it struggled for market share as Arab audiences tried to figure it out, this style of journalism being so different from everything that had come before. But as soon as the audiences did, they stuck, and the channel gained audiences in the tens of millions over the next few years (although estimates vary significantly).

Central to Al Jazeera’s ethos is a belief that the best news and the best news coverage, comes from people on the ground who know the territory. Eschewing parachute journalism, the broadcaster has an excellent network of local correspondents, stringers and freelancers, who the channel is prepared to make the face of the story. It was no surprise that the Egyptian revolution was covered, for the most part, by Egyptians. One of the most poignant moments of this coverage came minutes after Mubarak’s resignation was announced, and the anchor in Doha asked Ayman Mohyeldin – who had fronted most of the coverage from Tahrir Square, and is surely destined to be a media superstar in his own right – to drop his impartial guise and just give the audience his reaction, as an Egyptian in Tahrir Square (he struggled; a testament to his professionalism).

But Al Jazeera’s rise has not been easy. Its hard-hitting reporting was bound to infuriate leaders who were used to a rather more pliant media. Mubarak, on a tour of the channel’s studios in Qatar, was said to have commented: “All that trouble from this little matchbox?” The governments of the North Africa have tried their best to silence the channel, but to little effect. In Algeria, power was cut in several of the country’s major cities to prevent the airing of a programme about the Algerian civil war. Tunisia, Morocco and Libya have all, at one point or another, recalled their diplomats from Qatar in response to unfavourable coverage. Morocco banned the station in late 2010 and withdrew accreditation from its journalists, citing “numerous failures in following the rules of serious and responsible journalism”. No small irony there from a country ranked below Egypt and Zimbabwe in Reporters Without Border’s latest Press Freedom Index.

So it was no surprise that when things began to heat up in Tunisia, Al Jazeera’s correspondents and offices were targeted by police. Or that the same thing happened in Egypt, where some correspondents were repeatedly detained and the channel was banned from Egyptian airwaves. This achieved little, with the channel running new satellite coordinates on its live-feed to help viewers continue to tune in. With the Libyan protests gathering momentum, Muammar Gaddafi has also banned the station, as well as jamming its signals through electronic interference, which has caused havoc with its transmission throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

This is, perhaps, the ultimate compliment for a serious news organisation; that a bunch of repressive despots with a history of abuse of the press see fit to single you out for attention is proof, if any was needed, that you’re doing the right thing. And Al Jazeera certainly is.

But as the station gains international acceptance, and its profile rises even higher, so the issues it does have will become more important. These issues centre on the intricacies of the channel’s relationship with the Qatari state. To what extent does Qatar – and specifically, its emir, Sheikh Hamad Al Thani – dictate the tone and extent of Al Jazeera’s coverage? After all, that’s where the money comes from. A WikiLeaks cable from the US embassy in Doha suggested Al Jazeera was being used as a “bargaining tool” in negotiations with other states, with Qatar offering to tone down coverage. This has been vigorously denied by both Qatar and Al Jazeera, but suspicions remain. There have also been long-standing criticisms that Al Jazeera does not run stories critical of the Qatari government and particularly the country’s royal family.

Nonetheless, Al Jazeera is on the verge of a massive expansion, with a South American Spanish channel in the pipeline, as well as talks of a Turkish station. And its reputation has never been stronger, having beaten all the competition hands-down in its coverage of the uprisings across the Arab world.

If nothing else, Al Jazeera is proof that a free and independent media can operate in the harshest of conditions, and that dictators like Mubarak and Ben Ali really did have reason to fear a free and independent media. For the revolution will be televised – live on Al Jazeera. FAM

Simon Allison is a specialist on African and Middle Eastern politics, with degrees from Rhodes University and the School of Oriental and African Studies. He lived in Egypt for four years. He also co-authors the politics blog Third World Goes Forth.