‘It’sa treasure… you have to guard those interviews with your life.’This spontaneous reaction from one Arab media scholar after he learned I had been granted access to conduct interviews within Al Jazeera, illustrates the lack of openness that has characterized the channel. Since its launch in 1996, the Arabic satellite news channel has become one of the world’s best-known brand names (Brandchannel. com, 2004), and has expanded into a multichannel global network. 1 The Al Jazeera Network has been surrounded by controversy, and the image problem that has dogged the channel has in many ways become a defining aspect of the network (King and Zayani, 2008). Al Jazeera is a fascinatingly unpredictable and unconventional media organization, with several in-built paradoxes that have direct implications for researchers visiting the channel. On the one hand, Al Jazeera has been a catalyst for freedom of speech, breaking taboos and promoting openness in the Arab world (Lynch, 2006; Zayani, 2005), but on the other hand the channel itself has remained closed to the outside world. Although Al Jazeera welcomes an impressive number of visiting journalists, political leaders, diplomats and academics, their access is generally limited to guided PR tours and meetings with a few selected members of staff. Conducting research on Arab media organizations, in general, and Al Jazeera in particular, has been challenging (Zayani, 2008). Al Jazeera is expanding worldwide with new channels, broadcasting centres and bureaux. Still, visiting Qatar is imperative to understand the Al Jazeera Network: Doha remains the headquarters of the top management; the main newsrooms are located there and it is the home of the network’s founder, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.