Al Jazeera appoints new director general, unveils major leadership changes

The Al Jazeera Media Network announced a raft of senior-level changes on Tuesday, including the appointment of a former foreign ministry official to the influential role of director general. 

The Qatar-based broadcaster announced that Nasser Bin Faisal al-Thani, who began working at the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2013 and later attained the rank of ambassador, was appointed as the company's new director general.

The announcement made no mention of former acting director general Mostefa Souag, who had held the title for 12 years, during which the network saw its popularity boom in both the Arab world and the Western Hemisphere.

The network also said that Ahmad Alyafei, a Qatari journalist who served as the managing director of the Al Jazeera Arabic Channel since 2018, was appointed to the newly created post of director of Al Jazeera channels.

In this new post, Alyafei, who holds degrees from Qatar University and the University of Plymouth, will have complete editorial oversight and control of all Al Jazeera's channels.

In the other changes, the network announced that Issa Ali, who held a career in management spanning more than two decades, was appointed to the role of managing director of Al Jazeera's English Channel, and that Asef Hamidi, the former director of news at the Al Jazeera Arabic channel, was appointed managing director of the Al Jazeera Arabic Channel.

Meanwhile, it said that former BBC journalist Ibrahim Helal was replacing veteran Al Jazeera figurehead Salah Negm as the director of news at the Al Jazeera English channel.

In one of the emails announcing the changes, Alyafei announced that the new appointments had earned "the confidence of the senior management" and that Al Jazeera would continue to uphold the mission upon which it was founded.

The Al Jazeera Media Network is funded and owned by the government of Qatar, but has long maintained that it is editorially independent.

Middle East Eye contacted Al Jazeera for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Gaza genocide

The announcements come at a time when Al Jazeera's Arabic and English TV channels have seen a resurgence in popularity due to their wall-to-wall coverage of the genocide in Gaza.

More than 238,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded or are missing since Israel went to war in Gaza in October 2023, with recent reports, based on Israeli military intelligence data, claiming that more than 80 percent of those killed in the enclave until May of this year were civilians.

The network has seen several of its prominent reporters assassinated by Israel, including Ismail al-Ghoul, Anas al-Sharif and most recently, Mohamed Salama, who also worked with MEE.

Last year, Israel banned Al Jazeera from operating on its soil after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, referred to the outlet as a "Hamas mouthpiece".

The pioneering network, which is credited with aiding the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, has also had a tense relationship with US President Donald Trump, whose administration in 2020 ordered its US-based social media division, AJ+, to register as a foreign agent.