title: You (TV series)

text: On February 1, 2019, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that Ambyr Childers had been promoted to a series regular role, ahead of the premiere of the second season. On February 6, 2019, Adwin Brown was cast in the recurring role of Calvin on the second season. On February 15, 2019, Robin Lord Taylor was cast in the recurring role of Will on the second season. On February 21, 2019, Carmela Zumbado was cast in the series regular role of Delilah Alves on the second season. On March 4, 2019, it was reported that Marielle Scott has been cast in the recurring role of Lucy on the second season. On March 5, 2019, Chris D'Elia was cast in the recurring role of Henderson on the second season. On March 26, 2019, Charlie Barnett was cast in the recurring role of Gabe on the second season. On April 4, 2019, Melanie Field and Magda Apanowicz were cast in recurring roles as Sunrise and Sandy, respectively. On June 4, 2019, Danny Vasquez had been cast in a recurring role. On June 24, 2019, it was confirmed that John Stamos would reprise his role as Dr. Nicky in the second season. On October 17, 2019, Elizabeth Lail confirmed in a Build Series interview that she would reprise her role as Guinevere Beck in a guest appearance on the second season.


title: You (TV series)

text: In October 2020, Travis Van Winkle and Shalita Grant were cast as series regulars while Scott Speedman was cast in a recurring role for the third season. In November 2020, it was announced that Saffron Burrows was upped to regular status after recurring in the second season. Additionally, Tati Gabrielle and Dylan Arnold were also cast as series regulars for the third season, with Michaela McManus, Shannon Chan-Kent, Ben Mehl, Christopher O'Shea, Christopher Sean, Bryan Safi, Mackenzie Astin, Ayelet Zurer, Jack Fisher, and Mauricio Lara added as recurring cast members. On January 25, 2021, Scott Michael Foster joined the cast in a recurring role for the third season. On April 15, 2021, it was confirmed that John Stamos would not be returning in the third season.


title: You (TV series)

text: In February 2022, Lukas Gage was cast as a series regular for the fourth season. In March 2022, Charlotte Ritchie was cast as a series regular for the fourth season. In April 2022, Tilly Keeper, Amy Leigh Hickman, and Ed Speleers were cast as new series regulars while Niccy Lin, Aidan Cheng, Stephen Hagan, Ben Wiggins, Eve Austin, Ozioma Whenu, Dario Coates, Sean Pertwee, Brad Alexander, Alison Pargeter, and Adam James joined the cast in recurring roles for the fourth season.


title: You (TV series)

text: The first season of "You" was filmed in New York City and filming concluded on December 19, 2017. For the second season, the series relocated its production to California to take advantage of tax incentives provided by the California Film Commission under its "Program 2.0" initiative.


title: You (TV series)

text: Filming for the second season took place on location in Los Angeles, California, from February 2019 to June 2019.


title: You (TV series)

text: For the third season, the series was awarded $7.2million in tax credits by the state of California. Filming for the third season began on November 2, 2020, and was originally scheduled to conclude in April 2021. On December 31, 2020, production of the third season was paused for two weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming resumed in February 2021 and ended in April 2021.


title: You (TV series)

text: Filming on the fourth season officially began on March 21, 2022, in London, and ended on August 27, 2022.


title: You (TV series)

text: Lee Toland Krieger and David Lanzenberg were both credited as the director and cinematographer for the first two episodes, respectively. Since then, the series has had a number of cinematographers and directors. Krieger and Lanzenberg were inspired by the works of cinematographer Darius Khondji in films such as David Fincher's "Seven" (1995) and Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" (2011).


title: You (TV series)

text: As part of creating the striking look for the series, they executed various dolly shots and used anamorphic lenses to evoke a level of surrealistic voyeurism, demanding from the viewer their participation in the romantic manifestations of Joe's worldview. Krieger asserted that in order to sell Joe's character to the audience, he needed to craft "You" with a certain visual look and mood, slightly different, unconventional and accented than the standard color palette and tone for contemporary thrillers. He stated that "I wanted something that felt like a great New York love story, just with a very disturbed protagonist", adding that "The show opens with these luscious slow-motion shots. There's that amber glow. It doesn't feel like a thriller."


title: You (TV series)

text: For the second season, the setting change from New York to Los Angeles, entailed a distinctive use of saturated hues and colorful warm lighting, in part to contrast and depict an alteration of Joe's perspective of a new city which he had never visited previously. It would also signal a period in which Joe could find an avenue for encountering newer opportunities for a fresh start. In a "Variety" interview with the lead showrunner, Gamble noted the change, stating that "If you went straight from Season 1 to Season 2, you'll notice the sun-drenched color palette. There's something creamier about the light in L.A. than Season 1."


title: You (TV series)

text: The official trailer for "You" was released on April 10, 2018, by Lifetime. "You" premiered on Lifetime in the United States on September 9, 2018. In May 2018, it was announced that Netflix acquired the exclusive international broadcast rights to "You", making it available as an original series on the platform. On December 3, 2018, it was announced that Lifetime had passed on the second season, and that the series would move to Netflix as a global Netflix Original series. The first season became available to stream instantly on Netflix worldwide on December 26, 2018. The first season was released on DVD as a manufacture-on-demand title by Warner Archive Collection on January 14, 2020. On December 5, 2019, a teaser trailer for the second season was released by Netflix. On December 16, 2019, the official trailer for the second season was released. The second season was released on December 26, 2019. The second season was released on DVD on January 26, 2021. As part of a video and letter to its shareholders in April 2021, Netflix's co-chief executive officer and chief content officer, Ted Sarandos confirmed that the third season of "You" is expected to premiere sometime in the fourth quarter of 2021. On August 30, 2021, Netflix announced that the third season will premiere on October 15, 2021. On September 17, 2021, the official trailer for the third season was released. The fourth season is slated to be split into two parts. The first part of the fourth season is scheduled to premiere on February 9, 2023, with the second part set to be released on March 9.


title: You (TV series)

text: Teasing the original premiere on Lifetime on September 9, 2018, the main cast, Penn Badgley, Elizabeth Lail and Shay Mitchell, as well as the show creator, Sera Gamble, and author of the original book, Caroline Kepnes, sat down with Build Series, a YouTube talk show meant to promote new buzzworthy shows and movies.


title: You (TV series)

text: Before the show's premiere, Badgley mentioned his disinterest in playing the character of Joe Goldberg in an interview with "Entertainment Weekly", saying that "I didn't want to do it — it was too much. I was conflicted with the nature of the role. If this is a love story, what is it saying? It's not an average show; it's a social experiment." However, he was strongly convinced by the script and the social commentary around the series, adding that "what was key in me wanting to jump on board were my conversations with Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble, the creators, and understanding Joe's humanity. I knew that I would be conflicted about the role from day one till the last day, and that is why they thought I would be good for it, is that I'm not psyched to play somebody of this nature." Relaying similar thoughts in an interview with "GQ", Badgley again raised his concerns of portraying Joe, noting that he was first apprehensive at the role but later, changed his mind, expressing that "no one in any position of authority could ever try to act as though we don't know that sex and murder sells, but how can it work in a different way we've not seen? That's where I think this show does something that none of us could have said for certain that we would nail. It could have been really irresponsible. It could have fallen flat and been like, whoa." In another interview at "The Contenders Emmys" 2019 panel, Badgley mentioned that his character was "the hero of his own story...every serial killer is" but added that Joe is "ultimately, the word that's coming to mind is un-saveable". The actor highlighted that though, there is an apparent affinity to Joe's character, it is somewhat of a "Rorschach test of a kind for us," adding that "we're failing. . ." In an interview with TheWrap, Badgley was asked about whether his approach to portraying Joe over the course of the second season had shifted from the previous season. Badgley stated in response that playing Joe was still an "isolating" experience, but admitted that he was surprised by "how deep of a metaphor we're working with this guy". Nonetheless, he stressed that the incredible range of responses from audiences that followed from portraying "such a damaged, traumatized person", who is "awful and blind and abusive", allowed for "more meaningful conversations about the themes that the show is working" to be discussed in the public sphere.


title: You (TV series)

text: Various critics gave praise to the series, by complimenting its eerie tone and terrifying approach to the themes of violence and stalking, reminiscent of contemporary thriller films and series like "Dexter", "Gone Girl" and "American Psycho". Certain reviewers highlight that "You" provides an alluring but, disturbing insight into the mind and profile of a psychopath, who charmingly manipulates his way through his anti-hero charisma, motives and warped sense of morality, in order to convince the audience "to sympathize with a stalker" and "serial killer".


title: You (TV series)

text: The marketing for the series used the buzz around the #MeToo Movement to gain attention to the start of the show. "You" has been said to have been "tailor-made for the #MeToo Era." One of the show creators, Sera Gamble, commented on this era by highlighting that in contemporary culture, attention is almost unanimously given to the perspective of the male and his story, so naturally he is positioned through the lens of a hero. She states "We're focused on their story, their triumph, their downfall, their redemption arc... So I doubt the show will single-handedly change the way we think about dudes and our culture, but I'm happy to be part of the conversation."


title: You (TV series)

text: "You" explores the psychodynamic view of erotomania and obsessive love between Joe and his romantic interests. In addition, the series further raises questions on the ethics and potential implications of manipulating circumstances and how the psychology of stalking, murder and violence is best exemplified by Joe's intrusive and insidious actions, to manufacture the constructs of an idealized love relationship. The theme of obsession and violence is significantly expanded upon in the second season with the introduction of the character of Love Quinn. The examination and deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Cool Girl tropes enabled the writers to express the idea that certain women such as Love harbor internalized misogyny through actions that either minimize or question the lived experiences of female victims in favor of men that they are romantically inclined to. The balance of such an approach in emotional conflict poses an interesting dilemma for the viewer, where sympathy is later garnered for Love's perspective due to her complicated history, underlying motives in manifesting the goal of attaining her idealized soulmate, and the tension between her perceived image against Joe's mental projection of a conceptualized fantasy girl.


title: You (TV series)

text: As the first season of "You" is situated in modern-day New York City, it explores the dangers of stalking and social media culture with an emphasis on a lack of digital privacy. The author of the novel, Caroline Kepnes, explained the darkness of "You", which deconstructs the romantic-comedy tropes highlighted in many films and shows, by making the protagonist, a violent stalker and serial killer, saying it was written in a dark period of her life, the year her father died of cancer, and in which she experienced several other personal challenges. She further stated that her inspiration for the novel grew out of her moving back to LA. She expressed that when she moved, she noticed that "suddenly everyone was following each other and being followed, and I always thought of that as such a negative thing," soon creating Joe in her mind as a very real possibility of what can happen with that type of access into people's lives. After the series premiered, Kepnes mentioned in an interview with Emily Baker from "iNews", that she was initially hesitant on labeling Joe, as a few readers argued that his actions, classified him as a serial killer. The author then, clarified her position on the matter, citing that "I remember when I wrote "You" and someone first referred to Joe as a serial killer. I argued 'he's not a serial killer, he meets these terrible people and has these awful thoughts, but he's very sensitive. It's very strange to realize you have written a serial killer."


title: You (TV series)

text: Sera Gamble, the showrunner and co-creator of the series, stated in an interview with "Collider", that when envisioning Joe, the main protagonist of the series, she wanted to delve deeply into the root cause of the pathology of his behavior that shaped his amoral position to justify and rationalize stalking, kidnapping and killing his victims. When she was writing the character, she stated that "I want to understand what coaxes behavior of this nature out of that very tiny percentage of men. I like to think it's a very tiny percentage of men who would cross a line like the line that Joe Goldberg crosses".


title: You (TV series)

text: In an interview at The Contenders Emmys 2019 panel, Gamble highlighted the importance of casting the right person to play the role of Joe Goldberg. She stated that "it had to be a love story and a horror movie in every single scene", further adding that if they "cast someone who was sort of creepy, then the story wouldn't work; the idea is that it's a lead in a romantic comedy who works in a bookstore and a woman walks in, they have a cute meet and fall in love and live happily ever after. That's the show." Expanding on her commentary on the show's themes and origin, Gamble stated at "The Hollywood Reporter" roundtable interview, that she was not surprised to hear an overwhelming reception to Joe's character amongst online fans and viewers, citing that "There's a very vocal contingent of fans of Caroline Kepnes' book [on which You is based] who were like, "I heart Joe." Essentially what she's done is taken the classic romantic hero and just peeled back the gloss and sheen and John Cusack with the boombox and she followed it to its logical conclusion. I mean, if you turn off the sappy music and turn on a David Fincher score, romantic comedies are stalker movies. The plot of pretty much every one I can think of — and we have watched all of them many times in the writers room — is contingent on the guy ... well, first of all, he has to do a certain amount of fucking up so she can forgive him. And he has to get over some of her shortcomings. I mean, that's love, right? But also, he's chasing her through a fucking airport, chasing her on a freeway, watching her sleep because he feels protective. Romantic comedy behavior in real life is criminal! And that was basically the starting place for the show."


title: You (TV series)

text: After the series was acquired by Netflix, Gamble noted in several interviews on the changes that would occur in the following season. In an interview with "New Musical Express", Gamble highlighted that an exploration of Joe's descent in future storylines will further necessitate a focus on underlying issues that inform his skewed worldview. She later added that "We're interested in exploring the character and we're well aware that what the character is doing is not ok – it's deeply, deeply problematic. So what's interesting to us is: what does he think he's done wrong, what does he think he has to do differently, and to really explore that while still keeping that clinical cold eye on the whole show. And that eye is on a show that's about a guy who kills people." Given the hands off approach that Netflix is known for, Gamble added in an interview with "The New York Times" that the second season will be different, explaining that "Certain things are changing in the way we are thinking about Season 2 of "You." We have a little more flexibility around timing, since we don't have commercial ads, and also we can say the word [expletive] a lot more. As someone who swears a lot, that's a great thing. Netflix lets you give as many [expletive] as you want." In an interview with LadBible, Gamble declared that the team's approach to writing the second season would necessitate a change in the formula, noting that "We knew that it wouldn't be possible to repeat it as the audience is very much onto Joe now and will see through him". Furthermore, she highlighted that the second season will be "gorier and scarier than anything we had in season one."


title: You (TV series)

text: Due to narrative changes, the second season would necessitate a shift in setting to Los Angeles from the prior season. As a result, Gamble noted in an interview with "Entertainment Weekly" that the season will have a different feeling, citing that "Los Angeles is full of people who are really trying to live their best life and self-actualize," and that "When you put somebody who needs a lot of healing into a city that advertises itself basically as this Mecca full of cutting-edge healers, the alchemy is a little unexpected for him." She further added, that there will be more deviations in the ongoing story compared to Kepnes' sequel novel "Hidden Bodies" but stressed that some plot elements will still be adapted in the second season. Speaking in an interview with "Vogue", the showrunner explained that the second season, offered an opportunity for the writers to satirize and dig beneath the Hollywood scene, influencer lifestyle and wellness culture that permeates the surface of Los Angeles. Though, Gamble mentioned that it was imperative to balance the pokes at L.A. culture by representing a different side to the city, citing that "I think when you squint at it from far away, it seems like a city that's sprung up around the entertainment business which is technically true to a certain extent, but a lot of the portrayal of LA that people have seen in stuff like "Entourage"... and what you see in tabloids, where you think it's all famous people running around to their plastic surgeon and in BMWs, and that's actually a very small slice of a city that's this vast patchwork of neighbourhoods. We're all very lucky that Hollywood is here because it's paying our bills... the reach of Hollywood is vast... but people have much fuller, deeper more expansive lives than that, once you're here." In an interview with "Boston Herald", Gamble stated that "Joe will always have biting thoughts about other people," further highlighting that "so it's fun to drop him into an environment that gives him a lot of fodder. He had judgments about the crowd in New York, and he also does about the crowd around him in L.A. And since we [the show's creative team] all live in Los Angeles, that's a lot of fun for us. We're really excited to do the other side of the coin."


title: You (TV series)

text: On January 17, 2019, Netflix announced that the series was on track to be streamed by over 40million viewers within its first month of release on the streaming platform. On December 13, 2019, Netflix announced over 43million viewers had completed watching the whole season since its release on the service. On December 30, 2019, Netflix issued a number of official lists, including the Most Popular TV Shows of 2019. The series was among the most viewed in the U.S. market, where "You" was ranked fifth among series. On January 21, 2020, Netflix announced that the second season had been viewed by over 54million viewers on its service within its first month of release, referring to viewers who had watched at least 2 minutes of one episode. According to the year-end summary from Nielsen, "You" was in the group of top ten most-watched original series in the U.S. market between December 30, 2019, through December 27, 2020, where it ranked tenth based on minutes watched, with a 10.96billion total minutes of streaming.


title: You (TV series)

text: On the review aggregator website, Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has a 93% approval rating with 60 reviews, with an average rating of 7.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""You" pairs thrilling drama with trashy fun to create an addictive social media horror story that works its way under the skin – and stays there." Review aggregator Metacritic gave the first season a normalized score of 74 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: You (TV series)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the second season has an 87% approval rating with an average rating of 8.01/10, based on 45 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Penn Badgley's perversely endearing serial stalker keeps looking for love in all the wrong places during a second season that maintains the subversive tension while adding some welcome variations on the series' formula." On Metacritic, the second season has a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: You (TV series)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the third season holds a 96% approval rating with an average rating of 8.00/10 based on 53 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, ""You" takes its thrilling saga to the suburbs with superb results, made all the more delicious by Penn Badgley and Victoria Pedretti's committed performances." On Metacritic, the third season has a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: You (TV series)

text: "You" gained a dedicated following soon after its release on Netflix. Once the first season became available to stream worldwide on Netflix, the series' popularity increased dramatically with an estimated 40million people having viewed it, in its first month on the streaming platform, dwarfing its viewership from Lifetime. The series later became the subject of numerous online discussions and debates surrounding the romanticization of the serial killer and stalker protagonist in question. According to many reporters and critics, concerns were expressed regarding the viewers who have positively identified and connected with Penn Badgley's character on multiple social media platforms, despite the transgressive acts that the protagonist displayed and committed over the course of the season. Among the viewers who took an affinity to Joe was "Stranger Things" actress Millie Bobby Brown. Brown took to social media, sharing her initial thoughts in a video by downplaying Joe's questionable acts but subsequently, changed her position on the matter after watching the entirety of the first season.


title: You (TV series)

text: After Badgley received tweets from various fans and viewers of the series about how the series seemingly glorified Joe's violent behaviors, the actor responded with tongue-in-cheek replies on Twitter and Instagram and noted the importance of not romanticizing the actions of a psychopathic murderer. In response to the growing concerns of viewers romanticizing Joe's vicious behaviors, Elizabeth Lail conveyed her thoughts surrounding the conversation in an interview with "Image". Lail expressed she initially had concerns about the audience's reactions but explained that "I think we are programmed that way. Myself included. With all the rom-coms and fairytales we've read, we're programmed to root for the hero at any cost, unfortunately. And so, my hope is that these women notice that inside themselves; and ask themselves, 'oh gosh, why do I love this terrible man?' I hope they recognize it as an unconscious bias (that's inside most of us), and actively work against it."


title: You (TV series)

text: Victoria Pedretti, the lead actress of the second season, responded in a commentary to the audience's strong alignment to Joe's perspective. In an interview with "Variety", Pedretti stated that, though she is aware of the phenomenon behind the reactions and concerns after the series gained a remarkable following, it is fueling the conversation, citing that it "talks about the kind of horrors of being a young person on the internet today. [. . .] I think it's a really smart way to discuss this trope that we've romanticized so much — this idea of this man that Penn plays. We know these people, and they're really hard to pluck out because they see themselves, and we see them, as the nice guys."


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera (, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera Media Network. The flagship of the network, its station identification, is "Al Jazeera."


title: Al Jazeera

text: The patent holding is a "private foundation for public benefit" under Qatari law. Under this organizational structure, the parent receives funding from the government of Qatar but maintains its editorial independence. In June 2017, the Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini, and Egyptian governments insisted on the closure of the entire conglomerate as one of thirteen demands made to the Government of Qatar during the Qatar diplomatic crisis. The channel has been criticised by some organisations as well as nations such as Saudi Arabia for being "Qatari propaganda".


title: Al Jazeera

text: In Arabic, "" literally means "the island". However, it refers here to the Arabian Peninsula, which is , abbreviated to . Compare the Arabic name () for Upper Mesopotamia, another area of land almost entirely surrounded by water; also Algeciras, Alzira and Algeria.)


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera Satellite Channel, now known as AJA, was launched on 1 November 1996 following the closure of the BBC's Arabic language television station, a joint venture with Orbit Communications Company. The BBC channel closed after a year and a half when the Saudi government attempted to censor information, including a graphic report on executions and prominent dissident views.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, provided a loan of QAR 500 million (US$137 million) to sustain Al Jazeera through its first five years, as Hugh Miles detailed in his book "Al Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West". Shares were held by private investors as well as the Qatar government.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera's first day on the air was 1 November 1996. It offered 6 hours of programming per day; this increased to 12 hours of programming by the end of 1997. It was broadcast to the immediate neighborhood as a terrestrial signal, and on cable. Al Jazeera is also available through satellites (which was also free to users in the Arab world), although Qatar, and many other Arab countries barred private individuals from having satellite dishes until 2001.


title: Al Jazeera

text: At the time of the Al Jazeera Media Network launch, Arabsat was the only satellite broadcasting to the Middle East, and for the first year could only offer Al Jazeera a weak C-band transponder that needed a large satellite dish for reception. A more powerful K-band transponder became available as a peace-offering after its user, Canal France International, accidentally beamed 30 minutes of pornography into ultraconservative Saudi Arabia.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera was not the first such broadcaster in the Middle East; a number had appeared since the Arabsat satellite, a Saudi Arabia-based venture of 21 Arab governments, took orbit in 1985. The unfolding of Operation Desert Storm on CNN International underscored the power of live television in current events. While other local broadcasters in the region would assiduously avoid material embarrassing to their home governments (Qatar has its own official TV station as well), Al Jazeera was pitched as an impartial news source and platform for discussing issues relating to the Arab world.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In presenting "The opinion and the other opinion" (the station's motto), it did not take long for Al Jazeera to shock local viewers by presenting Israelis speaking Hebrew on Arab television for the first time. Lively and far-ranging talk shows, particularly a popular, confrontational one called "The Opposite Direction", were a constant source of controversy regarding issues of morality and religion. This prompted a torrent of criticism from the conservative voices among the region's press. It also led to official complaints and censures from neighboring governments. Some jammed Al Jazeera's terrestrial broadcast or expelled its correspondents. In 1999, the Algerian government reportedly cut power to several major cities in order to censor one broadcast. There were also commercial repercussions: a number of Arab countries reportedly pressured advertisers to avoid the channel, to great success.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera was the only international news network to have correspondents in Iraq during the Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign in 1998. In a precursor of a pattern to follow, its exclusive video clips were highly prized by Western media.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 1 January 1999, Al Jazeera began to broadcast for 24 hours daily. Employment had more than tripled in one year to 500 employees. The agency had bureaux at a dozen sites as far away as EU and Russia. Its annual budget was estimated at at the time.


title: Al Jazeera

text: However controversial, Al Jazeera was rapidly becoming one of the most influential news agencies in the whole region. Eager for news beyond the official versions of events, Arabs became dedicated viewers. A 2000 estimate pegged nightly viewership at 35 million, ranking Al Jazeera first in the Arab world, over the Saudi Arabia-sponsored Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC) and London's Arab News Network (ANN). There were about 70 satellite or terrestrial channels being broadcast to the Middle East, most of them in Arabic. Al Jazeera launched a free Arabic-language web site in January 2001. In addition, the TV feed was soon available in the United Kingdom for the first time via British Sky Broadcasting.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera came to the attention of many in the West during the search for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. It aired videos it received from Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, deeming new footage of the world's most wanted fugitives to be newsworthy. Some criticized the network for "giving a voice to terrorists". Al Jazeera's Washington, D.C., bureau chief, Hafez al-Mirazi, compared the situation to that of the Unabomber's messages in "The New York Times". The network said it had been given the tapes because it had a large Arab audience.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Many other TV networks were eager to acquire the same footage. CNN International had exclusive rights to it for six hours before other networks could broadcast, a provision that was broken by the others on at least one controversial occasion. Prime Minister Tony Blair soon appeared on an Al Jazeera talk show on 14 November 2001, to state Britain's case for pursuing the Taliban into Afghanistan.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera's prominence rose during the war in Afghanistan because it had opened a bureau in Kabul before the war began. This gave it better access for videotaping events than other networks, which bought Al Jazeera's footage, sometimes for up to $250,000.


title: Al Jazeera

text: A United States missile destroyed the Kabul office in 2001. Looking to stay ahead of possible future conflicts, Al Jazeera then opened bureaux in other troubled spots.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The network remained dependent on government support in 2002, with a budget of and ad revenues of about . It also took in fees for sharing its news feed with other networks. It had an estimated 45 million viewers around the world. Al Jazeera soon had to contend with a new rival, Al Arabiya, a venture of the Middle East Broadcasting Center, which was set up in nearby Dubai with Saudi financial backing.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 21 May 2003, Al Jazeera broadcast a three-minute clip from a tape that was obtained from Al Qaeda. The tape about Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician and the intellectual supporter of Al Qaeda. In the tape, Zawahiri mentioned the 11 September attack and more terrorism against the Western countries saying that "The Crusaders and Jews understand only the language of killing and blood. They can only be persuaded through returning coffins, devastated interests, burning towers and collapsed economies."


title: Al Jazeera

text: In 2005, Tayseer Allouni, an Al Jazeera journalist who was tasked to interview Osama bin Laden several weeks after the 9/11 attacks was arrested in Spain while he was investigating the Madrid train bombings. Allouni was accused of being close to Al Qaeda, eventually was found guilty, and sentenced to seven years of house arrest.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In October 2003, the managing editor of the Saudi newspaper Arab News, John R. Bradley accounted that the Bush administration had told the Qatari government that "If Al Jazeera failed to reconsider its news context, the US would, in turn, have to consider its relation with Qatar."


title: Al Jazeera

text: Before and during the United States-led invasion of Iraq, where Al Jazeera had a presence since 1997, the network's facilities and footage were again highly sought by foreign networks. The channel and its web site also were seeing unprecedented attention from viewers looking for alternatives to embedded reporting and military press conferences.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera moved its sports coverage to a new, separate channel on 1 November 2003, allowing for more news and public affairs programming on the original channel. An English language web site had launched earlier in March 2003. The channel had about 1,300 to 1,400 employees, its newsroom editor told "The New York Times". There were 23 bureaux around the world and 70 foreign correspondents, with 450 journalists in all.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 1 April 2003, a United States plane fired on Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. The attack was called "a mistake" by The Pentagon; however, Al Jazeera had supplied the US with a precise map of the location of the bureau in order to spare it from attack.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera became the first channel to air the 2010 Tunisian protests following the death of Mohamed Bouazizi. In a short period, the protests in Tunisia spread to the other Arab states, becoming known as the Arab Spring, often leading to scrutiny from other Arab governments.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The closing of the Al Jazeera Media Network was one of the terms of diplomatic reestablishment put forward by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt during the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 23 June 2017, the countries that cut ties to Qatar issued a list of demands to end the crisis, insisting that Qatar shut down the Al Jazeera network, close a Turkish military base and scale down ties with Iran. The call, included in a list of 13 points, read: "Shut down Al Jazeera and its affiliate stations." Agencies, media outlets, journalists and media rights organisations decried the demands to close Al Jazeera as attempts to curb press freedom, including Reporters Without Borders; "The Guardian", "The New York Times", and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).


title: Al Jazeera

text: Earlier, Saudi Arabia and the UAE blocked Al Jazeera websites; Saudi Arabia closed Al Jazeera's bureau in Riyadh and halted its operating licence, accusing the network of promoting "terrorist groups" in the region; and Jordan also revoked the licence for Al Jazeera. Saudi Arabia also banned hotels from airing Al Jazeera, threatening fines of up to for those violating the ban.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, has said Doha will not discuss the status of Al Jazeera in any negotiations. "Doha rejects discussing any matter related to Al Jazeera channel as it considers it an internal affair," Qatar News Agency quoted the foreign minister as saying. "Decisions concerning the Qatari internal affairs are Qatari sovereignty - and no one has to interfere with them."


title: Al Jazeera

text: In June 2017, hacked emails from Yousef Al Otaiba (UAE ambassador to US) were reported as "embarrassing" by "HuffPost" because they showed links between the UAE and the US-based pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of Democracies. UAE-based Al Arabiya English claimed that the extensive media coverage of the email hack was a provocation and that the hacking was a move orchestrated by Qatar.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 24 November 2017, Dubai Police deputy chief Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim accused Al Jazeera of provoking the 2017 Sinai attack and called for bombing of Al Jazeera by the Saudi-led coalition, tweeting in Arabic "The alliance must bomb the machine of terrorism ... the channel of ISIL, al-Qaeda and the al-Nusra front, Al Jazeera the terrorists".


title: Al Jazeera

text: In 2018, Al Jazeera reported apparent new details regarding a 1996 Qatari coup d'état attempt in a documentary accusing the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt, of orchestrating it. According to the documentary, a former French army commander, Paul Barril, was contracted and supplied with weapons by the UAE to carry out the coup operation in Qatar. UAE minister of foreign affairs Anwar Gargash responded to the documentary and stated that Paul Barril was "in fact a security agent of the Qatari Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani who visited Abu Dhabi and had no relationship with the UAE" and the documentary was "a falsification" attempt to inculpate the UAE in the coup.


title: Al Jazeera

text: As of June 2019, the United Arab Emirates had paid the lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld $1.9m in the preceding year, principally concerning Qatar government-owned media. Lobbyists met with the FCC nine times and with 30 members of the House and Senate during the same time period. A spokesman for the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Chuck Grassley, said that the committee had been "reviewing Al Jazeera's activities" prior to the UAE's lobbying effort.


title: Al Jazeera

text: During this time the firm lobbied for Al Jazeera to be reclassified as a foreign agent as defined by the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which was simultaneously the focus of a Twitter campaign. On 20 September 2019, Twitter announced it had shut down two groups of accounts with links to UAE spreading disinformation primarily aimed against Qatar. According to Bloomberg, the archive of the incriminated accounts' tweets showed hundreds of messages attacking Al-Jazeera.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The original Al Jazeera channel was launched 1 November 1996 by an emiri decree with a loan of 500 million Qatari riyals (US$137 million) from the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa. By securing its funding through loans or grants rather than direct government subsidies, the channel seeks to maintain independent editorial policy. The channel began broadcasting in late 1996, with many staff joining from the BBC World Service's Saudi-co-owned Arabic-language TV station, which had shut down on 1 April 1996 after two years of operation because of censorship demands by the Saudi Arabian government.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The Al Jazeera logo is a decorative representation of the network's name using Arabic calligraphy. It was selected by the station's founder, Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa, as the winning entry in a design competition.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera restructured its operations to form a network that contains all their different channels. Wadah Khanfar, the then managing director of the Arabic Channel, was appointed as the director general of Al Jazeera Media Network. He also acted as the managing director of the original Arabic Channel. Khanfar resigned on 20 September 2011 proclaiming that he had achieved his original goals, and that 8 years was enough time for any leader of an organization, in an interview aired on Al Jazeera English. Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani replaced Khanfar and served as the director general of the channel from September 2011 to June 2013 when he was appointed minister of economy and trade. The chairman of the channel is Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani. The Director General and editor-in-chief of the Arabic website is Mostefa Souag, who replaced Ahmed Sheikh as editor-in-chief. It has more than 100 editorial staff. The managing director of Al Jazeera English is Al Anstey. Mohamed Nanabhay became editor-in-chief of the English-language site in 2009. Previous editors include Beat Witschi and Russell Merryman.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Prominent on-air personalities include Faisal al-Qassem, host of the talk show "The Opposite Direction", Ahmed Mansour, host of the show "Without Borders (bi-la Hudud)" and Sami Haddad.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Its former Iran and Beirut Bureau Chief was Ghassan bin Jiddo. He became an influential figure on Al Jazeera with his program "Hiwar Maftuh", one of the most frequently watched programs. He also interviewed Nasrallah in 2007 and produced a documentary about Hezbollah. Some suggested that he would even replace Wadah Khanfar. Bin Jiddo resigned after political disagreements with the station.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 11 May 2022, the Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot during an Israeli raid in Jenin. Videos revealed that she was shot in the head while covering Israeli raid in Jenin. She was in a critical condition and was declared dead at the hospital. Al Jazeera alleged that their journalist was a target of the Israeli security forces, which killed her deliberately. The media house called for the international community to hold Israel accountable for Abu Akleh’s death. On the other hand, Israel Defence Forces said their security forces was operating “to arrest suspects in terrorist activities” in the region. They claimed the firing was from both sides, that is, the Israeli forces and the Palestinian gunmen. Abu Akleh's producer was also shot and wounded. Al Jazeera stated that Shireen Abu Akleh was "clearly wearing press jacket that identifies her as a journalist."


title: Al Jazeera

text: Many governments in the Middle East deploy state-run media or government censorship to impact local media coverage and public opinion, leading to international objections regarding press freedom and biased media coverage. Some scholars and commentators use the notion of "contextual objectivity", which highlights the tension between objectivity and audience appeal, to describe the station's controversial yet popular news approach.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Increasingly, Al Jazeera Media Network's exclusive interviews and other footage are being rebroadcast in American, British, and other western media outlets such as CNN and the BBC. In January 2003, the BBC announced that it had signed an agreement with Al Jazeera for sharing facilities and information, including news footage.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera's availability (via satellite) throughout the Middle East changed the television landscape of the region. Al Jazeera presented controversial views regarding the governments of many Arab states on the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar; it also presented controversial views about Syria's relationship with Lebanon, and the Egyptian judiciary. Critics accused Al Jazeera Media Network of sensationalism in order to increase its audience share. Al Jazeera's broadcasts have sometimes resulted in drastic action: for example, when, on 27 January 1999, critics of the Algerian government appeared on the channel's live program "El-Itidjah el-Mouakass" ("The Opposite Direction"), the Algerian government cut the electricity supply to large parts of the capital Algiers (and allegedly also to large parts of the country) to prevent the program from being seen. Al Jazeera's popularity has been attributed to its in-depth coverage of issues considered to be of great importance to the international Arab population, many of which received minimal attention from other outlets, such as: the Palestinian perspective on the second Intifada, the experiences of Iraqis living through the Iraq war, and the exclusive broadcast of tapes produced by Osama Bin-Laden.


title: Al Jazeera

text: At the time of the aforementioned incident in Algeria, Al Jazeera Media Network was not yet generally known in the Western world, but where it was known, opinion was often favorable and Al Jazeera claimed to be the only politically independent television station in the Middle East. However, it was not until late 2001 that Al Jazeera achieved worldwide recognition, when it broadcast video statements by al-Qaeda leaders.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Some observers have argued that Al Jazeera Media Network has formidable authority as an opinion-maker. Noah Bonsey and Jeb Koogler, for example, writing in the "Columbia Journalism Review", argue that the way in which the station covers any future Israeli-Palestinian peace deal could well determine whether or not that deal is actually accepted by the Palestinian public.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The channel's tremendous popularity has also, for better or worse, made it a shaper of public opinion. Its coverage often determines what becomes a story and what does not, as well as how Arab viewers think about issues. Whether in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, or Syria, the stories highlighted and the criticisms aired by guests on Al Jazeera's news programs have often significantly affected the course of events in the region.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In Palestine, the station's influence is particularly strong. Recent polling indicates that in the West Bank and Gaza, Al Jazeera is the primary news source for an astounding 53.4 percent of Palestinian viewers. The second and third most watched channels, Palestine TV and Al Arabiya, poll a distant 12.8 percent and 10 percent, respectively. The result of Al Jazeera's market dominance is that it has itself become a mover and shaker in Palestinian politics, helping to craft public perceptions and influence the debate. This has obvious implications for the peace process: how Al Jazeera covers the deliberations and the outcome of any negotiated agreement with Israel will fundamentally shape how it is viewed—and, more importantly, whether it is accepted—by the Palestinian public.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera's broad availability in the Arab world "operat[ing] with less constraint than almost any other Arab outlet, and remain[ing] the most popular channel in the region", has been perceived as playing a part in the Arab Spring, including the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. "The New York Times" stated in January 2011: "The protests rocking the Arab world this week have one thread uniting them: Al Jazeera, ... whose aggressive coverage has helped propel insurgent emotions from one capital to the next." The newspaper quoted Marc Lynch, a professor of Middle East Studies at George Washington University: "They did not cause these events, but it's almost impossible to imagine all this happening without Al Jazeera."


title: Al Jazeera

text: With Al Jazeera's growing global outreach and influence, some scholars including Adel Iskandar have described the station as a transformation of the very definition of "alternative media." Al Jazeera presents a new direction in the discourse of global news flow and shows voices underrepresented by traditional mainstream media regardless of global imbalances in the flow of information.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In 2011, Al Jazeera Media Network launched Al Jazeera Balkans, which is based in Sarajevo and serves the ex-Yugoslavia region in Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian. The look and feel of the network is similar to Al Jazeera English.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 4 July 2005, Al Jazeera officially announced plans to launch a new English-language satellite service to be called Al Jazeera International. The new channel started at 12:00 GMT on 15 November 2006 under the name Al Jazeera English and has broadcast centers in Doha (next to the original Al Jazeera headquarters and broadcast center), London, Kuala Lumpur, and Washington D.C. The channel is a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week news channel, with 12 hours broadcast from Doha, and four hours each from London, Kuala Lumpur, and Washington D.C.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera launched an English language channel, originally called Al Jazeera International, in 2006. Among its staff were journalists hired from ABC's Nightline and other top news outfits. Josh Rushing, a former media handler for CENTCOM during the Iraq war, agreed to provide commentary; David Frost was also on board. In an interesting technical feat, the broadcast of the new operation was handed off between bases in Doha, London, Washington, D.C., and Kuala Lumpur on a daily cycle.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The new English language venture faced considerable regulatory and commercial hurdles in the North America market for its perceived sympathy with extremist causes. At the same time, others felt Al Jazeera's competitive advantage lay in programming in the Arabic language. There were hundreds of millions of potential viewers among the non-Arabic language speaking Muslims in Europe and Asia, however, and many others who might be interested in seeing news from the Middle East read by local voices. If the venture panned out, it would extend the influence of Al Jazeera, and tiny Qatar, beyond even what had been achieved in the station's first decade. In an interesting twist of fate, the BBC World Service was preparing to launch its own Arabic language station in 2007. Today, evidence of U.S. antipathy at the Arabic network has dissipated significantly, though not entirely, several American analysts said in 2013.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In January 2013, Al Jazeera Media Network purchased Current TV, which was partially owned by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Using part of Current TV's infrastructure, Al Jazeera launched an American news channel on 20 August 2013.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Though Current TV had large distribution throughout the United States on cable and satellite television, it averaged only 28,000 viewers at any time. The acquisition of Current TV by Al Jazeera allowed Time Warner Cable to drop the network due to its low ratings, but they released a statement saying that they would consider carrying the channel after they evaluated whether it made sense for their customers. Time Warner Cable later began carrying Al Jazeera America in December 2013.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In August 2014, Gore and fellow shareholder Joel Hyatt launched a lawsuit against Al Jazeera claiming a residual payment of $65 million of the sale proceeds, due in 2014, remained unpaid. Al Jazeera later announced a countersuit. In 2016, the case was settled outside of court on the basis of a mutual agreement, under which: Gore and Hyatt had their claims waived, Al Jazeera was ordered to pay the $2.35 million in legal fees incurred by the plaintiffs, and the network forfeited its rights to pursue any indemnification claims related to the ordeal.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 13 January 2016, Al Jazeera America CEO Al Anstey announced that the network would cease operations on 12 April 2016, citing the "economic landscape".


title: Al Jazeera

text: beIN SPORTS, formerly Al Jazeera Sport channels, was legally separated from Al Jazeera Media Network on 1 January 2014 and is now controlled by beIN Media Group.


title: Al Jazeera

text: beIN SPORTS currently operates three channels in France – beIN Sport 1, beIN Sport 2 and beIN Sport MAX – and launched two channels in the United States (English and Spanish) in August 2012. The network also has a Canadian Channel and holds Canadian broadcast rights to several sports properties, The network also has an Australian channel.


title: Al Jazeera

text: beIN Sport holds the rights to broadcast major football tournaments on French television, including Ligue 1, Bundesliga, the UEFA Champions League and the European Football Championships. In the United States and Canada, beIN Sport holds the rights to broadcast La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Copa del Rey, South American World Cup Qualifier and English Championship matches, in addition to Barca TV.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In October 2009, Al Jazeera acquired six sports channels of the ART. On 26 November 2009, Al Jazeera English received approval from the CRTC, which enables Al Jazeera English to broadcast via satellite in Canada.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The original Al Jazeera channel is available worldwide through various satellite and cable systems. For availability info of the Al Jazeera network's other TV channels, see their respective articles. Segments of Al Jazeera English are uploaded to YouTube or at https://www.aljazeera.com/.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Al Jazeera can be freely viewed with a DVB-S receiver in Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East as it is broadcast on the Astra 1M, Eutelsat Hot Bird 13A, Eutelsat 10A, Badr 4, Turksat 2A, Thor 6, Nilesat 102, Hispasat 1C and Eutelsat 28A satellites. The Optus C1 satellite in Australia carries the channel for free and from July 2012 is available at no extra charge to all subscribers to Australia's Foxtel pay-TV service.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Canada. Al Jazeera is available in Canada on Bell Channel 516, as part of the package "International News I." Al Jazeera is available on Rogers Cable individually. Al Jazeera is also available on Shaw Cable TV Channel 513, as part of the package "Multicultural"


title: Al Jazeera

text: India. On 7 December 2010, Al Jazeera said its English language service has got a downlink license to broadcast in India. Satellite and cable companies would therefore be allowed to broadcast Al Jazeera in the country. The broadcaster will be launched soon on Dish TV, and is considering a Hindi-language channel.


title: Al Jazeera

text: United Kingdom. Al Jazeera English is available on the Sky and Freesat satellite platforms, as well as the standard terrestrial service (branded Freeview), thus making it available to the vast majority of UK households. On 26 November 2013, it launched a HD simulcast on certain terrestrial transmitters.


title: Al Jazeera

text: United States. Al Jazeera English is not widely available, as it is not carried by Xfinity or the other major cable television systems which package and market most commercial television in the United States. It can be viewed online via its live stream on its website, DVB-S, Galaxy 19, and Galaxy 23 C-band satellites.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Following the launch of Al Jazeera America in 2013 until 2016 when the channel folded, Al Jazeera English was not available in the United States. It had been available through live streaming over the Al Jazeera website, DVB-S, Galaxy 19, free to air and Galaxy 23 satellites, and it had been broadcast over the air in the Washington, DC DMA by WNVC on digital channel 30–5, and on digital channel 48.2 in the New York metro area, but those broadcasts were discontinued on 20 August 2013. Al Jazeera English had also been available to cable TV viewers in Toledo, Ohio, Burlington, Vermont, New York City (WRNN rebroadcast), Washington State, and Washington, D.C (a rebroadcast of WNVC's feed), but those sources were switched to Al Jazeera America on 20 August 2013. Many analysts had considered the limited availability of Al Jazeera English in the United States to be effectively a "blackout". The live stream and programming over the internet that had been geoblocked was made available to viewers in the United States again in September 2016.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Online. Al Jazeera English can be viewed over the Internet from their official website. The low-resolution version is available free of charge to users of computers and video streaming boxes, and the high-resolution version is available under subscription fees through partner sites. Al Jazeera's English division has also partnered with Livestation for Internet-based broadcasting. This enables Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera live to be watched worldwide.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera Media Network's web-based service is accessible subscription-free throughout the world, at a variety of websites. The station launched an English-language edition of its online content in March 2003. This English language website was relaunched on 15 November 2006, along with the launch of Al Jazeera English. The English and Arabic sections are editorially distinct, with their own selection of news and comment. Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English are streamed live on the official site, as well as on YouTube. On 13 April 2009 Al Jazeera launched versions of its English and Arabic sites suitable for mobile devices.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The Arabic version of the site was brought offline for about 10 hours by an FBI raid on its ISP, InfoCom Corporation, on 5 September 2001. InfoCom was later convicted of exporting to Syria and Gaddafi-ruled Libya, of knowingly being invested in by a Hamas member (both of which are illegal in the United States), and of underpaying customs duties.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In 2014, Al Jazeera Media Network launched an online only channel called AJ+. The channel is based out of the former Current TV studios in San Francisco and has outposts in Doha, Kuala Lumpur and other locations. It is independent of all of Al Jazeera's other channels and is mostly in an on demand format. The channel launched on 13 June 2014 on with a preview on YouTube. This was followed in 2017 by the launch of Jetty, a podcast network which is also based out of the former Current TV studios in San Francisco.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In 2018, Al Jazeera launched a Mandarin-language news website. It is the first Arabic news provider to target the Chinese audience. The staff of the project will be in contact with their audience via Chinese social media like Weibo, Meipai and WeChat.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In 2021, Al Jazeera launched a new online platform called "Rightly" aimed at a conservative US audience. "Right Now with Stephen Kent" is Rightly's first show and is an opinion-led, in-studio interview program hosted by Stephen Kent. Right Now is available on YouTube and as a podcast. It was reported that over 100 staff at Al Jazeera signed an open letter to management objecting to the launch, with some of them voicing their unhappiness with Rightly on Twitter. In 2022, Al Jazeera reportedly stopped creating content for the program.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 13 January 2009 Al Jazeera Media Network released some of its broadcast quality footage from Gaza under a Creative Commons license. Contrary to business "All Rights Reserved" standards, the license invites third parties, including rival broadcasters, to reuse and remix the footage, so long as Al Jazeera is credited. The videos are hosted on blip.tv, which allows easy downloading and integration with Miro.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera Media Network also offers over 2,000 Creative Commons-licensed still photos at their Flickr account.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera Media Network accepts user-submitted photos and videos about news events through a Your Media page, and this content may be featured on the website or in broadcasts.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The channel used the Ushahidi platform to collect information and reports about the Gaza War, through Twitter, SMS and the website.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Future projects in other languages include Al Jazeera Urdu, an Urdu language channel to cater mainly to Pakistanis. A Kiswahili service called Al Jazeera Kiswahili was to be based in Nairobi and broadcast in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. However, those plans were cancelled due to budget constraints.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The channel also has plans to launch a Spanish-language news network to cater mainly to Spain and Hispanic America, like the Iranian cable TV network HispanTV. Al Jazeera has also been reported to be planning to launch an international newspaper. Al Jazeera Arabic began using a chroma key studio on 13 September 2009. Similar to Sky News, Al Jazeera broadcast from that studio while the channel's main newsroom was given a new look. The channel relaunched, with new graphics and music along with a new studio, on 1 November 2009, the 13th birthday of the channel.


title: Al Jazeera

text: While Al Jazeera has a large audience in the Middle East, the organization and the original Arabic channel in particular have been criticised and involved in a number of controversies.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The allegations emerged after veteran broadcaster Kamahl Santamaria abruptly quit his job at New Zealand state broadcaster TVNZ amid harassment complaints, shortly after he moved there from Al Jazeera.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Investigations found he had been the subject of multiple complaints at Al Jazeera before moving to New Zealand, and that Al Jazeera staff had also accused other senior employees of harassment or bullying. It was claimed that this behaviour was tolerated at Al Jazeera.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In May 2000, Bahrain banned Al Jazeera's broadcasts due to the channel's comments about Bahrain's municipal elections, labelling it as "serving Zionism".


title: Al Jazeera

text: The United-States-controlled Iraqi interim government closed the offices of Al Jazeera in Baghdad in August 2004 during the United States occupation of Iraq. The interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi then accused the channel of inciting hatred in the country. At the end of April 2013, the Iraqi government led by Nouri Al Maliki once again ordered Al Jazeera to stop broadcasting due to the alleged role of the channel in encouraging the sectarian unrest. In response to the restrictions imposed by Al Maliki, Al Jazeera issued a statement in which the organization expressed its astonishment at the development, and reiterated their assertion, "We cover all sides of the stories in Iraq, and have done for many years." The network further objected to the ban, saying, "The fact that so many channels have been hit all at once though suggests this is an indiscriminate decision. We urge the authorities to uphold freedom for the media to report the important stories taking place in Iraq."


title: Al Jazeera

text: In 2019, congressman Jack Bergman wrote in the "Washington Examiner" that "Al Jazeera's record of radical anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel broadcasts warrants scrutiny from regulators to determine whether this network is in violation of US law".


title: Al Jazeera

text: During the 2011 Egyptian protests, on 30 January the Egyptian government ordered the TV channel to close its offices. The next day Egyptian security forces arrested six Al Jazeera journalists for several hours and seized their camera equipment. There were also reports of disruption in Al Jazeera Mubasher's Broadcast to Egypt. The channel was also criticized for being sympathetic to Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and former IAEA director Mohammed ElBaradei. It was closed for the same reasons in September 2013.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Twenty-two members of staff of Al Jazeera's Egyptian bureau announced their resignation on 8 July 2013, citing biased coverage of the ongoing Egyptian power redistribution in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Jazeera says that the resignations were due to pressure from the Egyptian military.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera has been criticized over unfair coverage of the Syrian Civil War. The channel's reporting has been described as largely supportive of the rebels, while demonizing the Syrian government. The Lebanese newspaper "As-Safir" cited outtakes of interviews showing that the channel's staff coached Syrian eyewitnesses and fabricated reports of oppression by Syria's government. In January 2013, a former Al Jazeera employee from Syria stated their belief that there was ongoing strong pressure to conform to biased coverage of the Syrian Civil War. However, according to Pew Research Center study, in its coverage of the Syrian crisis, Al Jazeera America cable news channel provided viewers with content that often resembles what Americans saw on other U.S. cable news outlets.


title: Al Jazeera

text: The Indian government banned the Al Jazeera TV channel in April 2015 for five telecast days as it repeatedly displayed disputed maps of India. The suspension concerns maps of Pakistan used in 2013 and 2014 that did not demarcate the part of Kashmir under Pakistani control (Pakistan-administered Kashmir) as a separate territory. Once notified by Indian authorities, the channel said it ensured all maps from 22 September 2014, onward used dotted lines and unique shading for the disputed portions.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 19 July 2008, Al Jazeera TV broadcast a program from Lebanon which covered the "welcome-home" festivities for Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese citizen who had been imprisoned in Israel for killing four people in a Palestine Liberation Front raid from Lebanon into Israel. In the program, the head of Al Jazeera's Beirut office, Ghassan bin Jiddo, praised Kuntar as a "pan-Arab hero" and organized a birthday party for him. In response, Israel's Government Press Office (GPO) announced a boycott of the channel, which was to include a general refusal by Israeli officials to be interviewed by the station, and a ban on its correspondents from entering government offices in Jerusalem. A few days later an official letter was issued by Al Jazeera's director general, Wadah Khanfar, in which he admitted that the program violated the station's Code of Ethics and that he had ordered the channel's programming director to take steps to ensure that such an incident does not recur.


title: Al Jazeera

text: On 15 March 2010, Channel Ten (Israel) broadcast a video story about the Coastal Road massacre on 11 March 1978, with two photographs of a victim and an attacker, both women, with Al Jazeera's logo. Photographer Shmuel Rahmani, who took these photos, sued Al Jazeera in the Jerusalem District Court, for copyright infringement of the two photographs. On 19 February 2014, the court ruled that Al Jazeera would pay 73,500 ILS to Rahmani. On 23 November 2017, a second verdict of 30,000 ILS against Al Jazeera was made in the Nazareth District Court. At the end of 2017, a third lawsuit was brought by Michael Ganoe, an American Evangelical Christian activist who has lived in Israel, in the Tel Aviv District Court, after infringing copyrights of his private videos of volunteering for the Israel Defense Forces, in which he was also compared by an independently produced documentary for Al Jazeera network to volunteering for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. On 15 November 2018, Ganoe won in a settlement deal from Al Jazeera.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Immediately after its launch in 2003, the English site was attacked by one or several hackers, who launched denial-of-service attacks, and another hacker who redirected visitors to a site featuring a Flag of the United States. Both events were widely reported as Al Jazeera's website having been attacked by "hackers". In November 2003, John William Racine II, also known as 'John Buffo', was sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service and a $1,500 U.S. fine for the online disruption. Racine posed as an Al Jazeera employee to get a password to the network's site, then redirected visitors to a page he created that showed an American flag shaped like a U.S. map and a patriotic motto, court documents said. In June 2003, Racine pleaded guilty to wire fraud and unlawful interception of an electronic communication. As of 2012, the perpetrators of the denial-of-service attacks remain unknown.


title: Al Jazeera

text: "Shariah and Life" ("al-Sharīʿa wa al-Ḥayāh") is an Al Jazeera Arabic show with an estimated audience of 60 million worldwide and stars Muslim preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is described as "Islam's Spiritual 'Dear Abby'". The format of Sharia and Life is similar to that of al-Qaradawi's earlier programing on Qatar TV as well as Egyptian television shows going as far back as the 1960s. Programs interpreting the Quran or dealing with religious issues were popular from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. The now defunct show has been the repeated subject of controversy. In January 2009, Qaradawi stated: "Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by [Adolf] Hitler." In October 2010, Qaradawi was asked if Muslims should acquire nuclear weapons "to terrorize their enemies." Qaradawi said he was pleased Pakistan had such a weapon, that the goal of nuclear weapons would be permissible, and provided religious justification quoting Qur'anic verses urging Muslims "to terrorize thereby the enemy of God and your enemy."


title: Al Jazeera

text: In August 2018, it was reported that Al Jazeera had censored the documentary series "Rotas da Escravatura" , a joint European series by French channel Arte, portuguese RTP and LX Filmes. The entire first episode, which dealt with ""the process that led the Muslim Empire to enduringly weave an immense network of slave trade across Africa, the Middle East and Asia"" was deleted. In return, the television network claimed that slavery in Africa was a practice founded by the Portuguese.


title: Al Jazeera

text: Widespread Muslim involvement in the slave trade is a fact historically established by historians; among others, Bernard Lewis addressed this theme in his book "Race and Slavery in the Middle Eastː an Historical Inquiry."


title: Al Jazeera

text: Al Jazeera Media Network is a "Private Foundation of Public Benefit" under Qatari law. Under this structure, Al Jazeera Media Network receives funding from the government of Qatar, but maintains its editorial independence. Critics have accused Al Jazeera of supporting the positions of the Qatari government though Al Jazeera platforms and channels have published content that has been critical of Qatar or has run counter to Qatari laws and norms. Al Jazeera's editorial independence has been affirmed by journalism associations and organizations including the National Press Club and Reporters Without Borders.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In 2010, United States Department of State internal communications, released by WikiLeaks as part of the 2010 diplomatic cables leak, said that the Qatar government manipulates Al Jazeera coverage to suit political interests.


title: Al Jazeera

text: In September 2012, "The Guardian" reported that Al Jazeera's editorial independence came into question when the channel's director of news, Salah Negm, stepped in at the last minute to order that a two-minute video covering a UN debate over the Syrian civil war include a speech by the leader of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Although the order came from internal editorial staff, staff members protested that the speech was not the most important aspect of the debate, and that it was a repetition of previous calls for Arab intervention.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken in Spain. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries. It is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the Early Modern Period spurred on the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to the Americas.


title: Spanish language

text: As a Romance language, Spanish is a descendant of Latin, and has one of the smaller degrees of difference from it (about 20%) alongside Sardinian and Italian. Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is derived from Latin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek. Alongside English and French, it is also one of the most taught foreign languages throughout the world. Spanish does not feature prominently as a scientific language; however, it is better represented in areas like humanities and social sciences. Spanish is also the third most used language on internet websites after English and Chinese.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and it is also used as an official language by the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the African Union and many other international organizations.


title: Spanish language

text: In Spain and in some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only but also (Castilian), the language from the Kingdom of Castile, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, Asturian, Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan.


title: Spanish language

text: The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, in contrast to (lit. "the other Spanish languages"). Article III reads as follows:


title: Spanish language

text: The Royal Spanish Academy ("Real Academia Española"), on the other hand, currently uses the term in its publications. However, from 1713 to 1923, it called the language .


title: Spanish language

text: The (a language guide published by the Royal Spanish Academy) states that, although the Royal Spanish Academy prefers to use the term in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms— and —are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.


title: Spanish language

text: The term is related to Castile ( or archaically ), the kingdom where the language was originally spoken. The name of Castile, in turn, is usually assumed to be derived from ('castle').


title: Spanish language

text: In the Middle Ages, the language spoken in Castile was generically referred to as and later also as . Later in the period, it gained geographical specification as ("romanz castellano", "romanz de Castiella"), "lenguaje de Castiella", and ultimately simply as (noun).


title: Spanish language

text: Different etymologies have been suggested for the term (Spanish). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, derives from the Occitan word and that, in turn, derives from the Vulgar Latin ('from Hispania'). Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula.


title: Spanish language

text: There are other hypotheses apart from the one suggested by the Royal Spanish Academy. Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal suggested that the classic or took the suffix from Vulgar Latin, as it happened with other words such as (Breton) or (Saxon). The word evolved into the Old Spanish , eventually becoming .


title: Spanish language

text: Like the other Romance languages, the Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which here was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC. Several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages)—some distantly related to Latin as Indo-European languages, and some that are not related at all—were previously spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Proto-Basque, Iberian, Lusitanian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian.


title: Spanish language

text: The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages—Mozarabic (Andalusi Romance), Navarro-Aragonese, Leonese, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Occitan, and later, French and Italian. Spanish also borrowed a considerable number of words from Arabic, as well as a minor influence from the Germanic Gothic language through the migration of tribes and a period of Visigoth rule in Iberia. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin in use at that time.


title: Spanish language

text: According to the theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos, and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo, where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century. In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese, and, according to some authors, was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the , and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus, much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic-derived words, make up around 8% of the language today). The written standard for this new language was developed in the cities of Toledo, in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid, from the 1570s.


title: Spanish language

text: The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages, including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin > Spanish ). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short and —which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in the following table:


title: Spanish language

text: The consonant written or in Latin and pronounced in Classical Latin had probably "fortified" to a bilabial fricative in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with the consonant written "b" (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic and .


title: Spanish language

text: Typical of Spanish (as also of neighboring Gascon extending as far north as the Gironde estuary, and found in a small area of Calabria), attributed by some scholars to a Basque substratum was the mutation of Latin initial into whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The , still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and from neighboring Romance languages, there are many -/-doublets in modern Spanish: and (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), and (both Spanish for "smith"), and (both Spanish for "iron"), and and (both Spanish for "deep", but means "bottom" while means "deep"); (Spanish for "to make") is cognate to the root word of ("to satisfy"), and ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of ("satisfied").


title: Spanish language

text: Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table:


title: Spanish language

text: In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent a dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants, known in Spanish as the , which resulted in the distinctive velar pronunciation of the letter and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental ("th-sound") for the letter (and for before or ). See History of Spanish (Modern development of the Old Spanish sibilants) for details.


title: Spanish language

text: The , written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I, she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to the grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire."


title: Spanish language

text: From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America. Miguel de Cervantes, author of "Don Quixote", is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called ("the language of Cervantes").


title: Spanish language

text: In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is the primary language in 20 countries worldwide. As of 2020, it is estimated that about 463 million people speak Spanish as a native language, making it the second most spoken language by number of native speakers. An additional 75 million speak Spanish as a second or foreign language, making it the fourth most spoken language in the world overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi with a total number of 538 million speakers. Spanish is also the third most used language on the Internet, after English and Chinese.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is the official language of Spain, the country after which it is named and from which it originated. Other European territories in which it is also widely spoken include Gibraltar and Andorra.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is also spoken by immigrant communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany. Spanish is an official language of the European Union.


title: Spanish language

text: Today, the majority of the Spanish speakers live in Hispanic America. Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either "de facto" or "de jure"—of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official with Quechua, Aymara, Guarani, and 34 other languages), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico (co-official with 63 indigenous languages), Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní), Peru (co-official with Quechua, Aymara, and "the other indigenous languages"), Puerto Rico (co-official with English), Uruguay, and Venezuela.


title: Spanish language

text: According to the 2020 census, over 60 million people of the U.S. population were of Hispanic or Hispanic American by origin. In turn, 41.8 million people in the United States aged five or older speak Spanish at home, or about 13% of the population. The Spanish language has a long history of presence in the United States due to early Spanish and, later, Mexican administration over territories now forming the southwestern states, also Louisiana ruled by Spain from 1762 to 1802, as well as Florida, which was Spanish territory until 1821, and Puerto Rico which was Spanish until 1898.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is by far the most common second language in the country, with over 50 million total speakers if non-native or second-language speakers are included. While English is the de facto national language of the country, Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels. Spanish is also used in administration in the state of New Mexico. The language has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as those of Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Tucson and Phoenix of the Arizona Sun Corridor, as well as more recently, Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, Tampa, Raleigh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. due to 20th- and 21st-century immigration.


title: Spanish language

text: Although Spanish has no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize (known until 1973 as British Honduras) where English is the sole official language, according to the 2010 census it was then spoken natively by 45% of the population and 56.6% of the total population were able to speak the language.


title: Spanish language

text: Due to their proximity to Spanish-speaking countries, Trinidad and Tobago has implemented Spanish language teaching into its education system. The Trinidad government launched the "Spanish as a First Foreign Language" (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005.


title: Spanish language

text: In addition to sharing most of its borders with Spanish-speaking countries, the creation of Mercosur in the early 1990s induced a favorable situation for the promotion of Spanish language teaching in Brazil. In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, making it mandatory for schools to offer Spanish as an alternative foreign language course in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil. In September 2016 this law was revoked by Michel Temer after impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. In many border towns and villages along Paraguay and Uruguay, a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken.


title: Spanish language

text: Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking country located entirely in Africa, with the language introduced during the Spanish colonial period. Enshrined in the constitution as an official language (alongside French and Portuguese), Spanish features prominently in the Equatoguinean education system and is the primary language used in government and business. Whereas it is not the mother tongue of virtually any of its speakers, the vast majority of the population is proficient in Spanish. The Instituto Cervantes estimates that 87.7% of the population is fluent in Spanish. This figure highlights Equatorial Guinea as having a higher proportion of proficient speakers of a colonial language relative to the respective metropolitan languages in other West and Central African nations.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is spoken by very small communities in Angola due to Cuban influence from the Cold War and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned for their country's independence.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is also spoken in the integral territories of Spain in Africa, namely the cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean some off the northwest of the African mainland. The Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands, traces its origins back to the Castilian conquest in the 15th century, and, in addition to a resemblance to Western Andalusian speech patterns, it also features strong influence from the Spanish varieties spoken in the Americas, which in turn have also been influenced historically by Canarian Spanish.


title: Spanish language

text: While far from the heyday of the Spanish protectorate in Morocco, there are some presence of the Spanish language in the north of Morocco, stemming for example from the availability of certain Spanish-language media. Many northern Moroccans have rudimentary knowledge of Spanish. Spanish has also presence in the education system of the country (either by means of selected education centres running the Spain's education system, primarily located in the North, and the availability of Spanish as foreign language subject in secondary education).


title: Spanish language

text: In Western Sahara, formerly Spanish Sahara, a primarily Hassaniya Arabic-speaking territory, Spanish was officially spoken as the language of the colonial administration during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Today, Spanish is present in the partially-recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf (Algeria), where the Spanish-language teaching is largely preserved by Cuban educators. The number of Spanish speakers is unknown.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish was an official language of the Philippines from the beginning of Spanish administration in 1565 to a constitutional change in 1973. During Spanish colonization (1565–1898), it was the language of government, trade, and education, and was spoken as a first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos. In the mid-19th century, the colonial government set up a free public education system with Spanish as the medium of instruction. While this increased the use of Spanish throughout the islands and led to the formation of a class of Spanish-speaking intellectuals called the "Ilustrados", only populations in urban areas or with places with a significant Spanish presence used the language on a daily basis or learned it as a second or third language. By the end of Spanish rule in 1898, only about 10% of the population had knowledge of Spanish, mostly those of Spanish descent or elite standing.


title: Spanish language

text: Despite American administration of the Philippines after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish–American War, Spanish continued to be used in Philippine literature and press during the early years of American administration. Gradually however, the American government began promoting the use of English at the expense of Spanish, characterizing it as a negative influence of the past. Eventually, by the 1920s, English became the primary language of administration and education. Nevertheless, despite a significant decrease in influence and speakers, Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines upon independence in 1946, alongside English and Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish was briefly removed from official status in 1973 under the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, but regained official status two months later under Presidential Decree No. 155, dated 15 March 1973. It remained an official language until 1987, with the ratification of the present constitution, in which it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language. In 2010, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo encouraged the reintroduction of Spanish-language teaching in the Philippine education system. However, the initiative failed to gain any traction, with the number of secondary schools at which the language is either a compulsory subject or offered as an elective remaining very limited. Today, the actual number of proficient Spanish speakers is around 400,000, or under 0.5% of the population. There are some 20,000 students studying the language every year.


title: Spanish language

text: Aside from standard Spanish, a Spanish-based creole language called Chavacano developed in the southern Philippines. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Spanish. The number of Chavacano-speakers was estimated at 1.2 million in 1996. The local languages of the Philippines also retain significant Spanish influence, with many words derived from Mexican Spanish, owing to the administration of the islands by Spain through New Spain until 1821, until direct governance from Madrid afterwards to 1898.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is the official and most spoken language on Easter Island, which is geographically part of Polynesia in Oceania and politically part of Chile. However, Easter Island's traditional language is Rapa Nui, an Eastern Polynesian language.


title: Spanish language

text: As a legacy of comprising the former Spanish East Indies, Spanish loan words are present in the local languages of Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia.


title: Spanish language

text: In addition, in Australia and New Zealand, there are native Spanish communities, resulting from emigration from Spanish-speaking countries. Mainly from the Southern Cone.


title: Spanish language

text: Most of the grammatical and typological features of Spanish are shared with the other Romance languages. Spanish is a fusional language. The noun and adjective systems exhibit two genders and two numbers. In addition, articles and some pronouns and determiners have a neuter gender in their singular form. There are about fifty conjugated forms per verb, with 3 tenses: past, present, future; 2 aspects for past: perfective, imperfective; 4 moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 3 persons: first, second, third; 2 numbers: singular, plural; 3 verboid forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle. The indicative mood is the unmarked one, while the subjunctive mood expresses uncertainty or indetermination, and is commonly paired with the conditional, which is a mood used to express "would" (as in, "I would eat if I had food); the imperative is a mood to express a command, commonly a one word phrase – "¡Di!", "¡Talk!".


title: Spanish language

text: Verbs express T-V distinction by using different persons for formal and informal addresses. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish syntax is considered right-branching, meaning that subordinate or modifying constituents tend to be placed after head words. The language uses prepositions (rather than postpositions or inflection of nouns for case), and usually—though not always—places adjectives after nouns, as do most other Romance languages.


title: Spanish language

text: Spanish is classified as a subject–verb–object language; however, as in most Romance languages, constituent order is highly variable and governed mainly by topicalization and focus rather than by syntax. It is a "pro-drop", or "null-subject" language—that is, it allows the deletion of subject pronouns when they are pragmatically unnecessary. Spanish is described as a "verb-framed" language, meaning that the "direction" of motion is expressed in the verb while the "mode" of locomotion is expressed adverbially (e.g. "subir corriendo" or "salir volando"; the respective English equivalents of these examples—'to run up' and 'to fly out'—show that English is, by contrast, "satellite-framed", with mode of locomotion expressed in the verb and direction in an adverbial modifier).


title: Spanish language

text: The Spanish phonological system evolved from that of Vulgar Latin. Its development exhibits some traits in common with other Western Romance languages, others with the neighboring Hispanic varieties—especially Leonese and Aragonese—as well as other features unique to Spanish. Spanish is alone among its immediate neighbors in having undergone frequent aspiration and eventual loss of the Latin initial sound (e.g. Cast. vs. Leon. and Arag. ). The Latin initial consonant sequences , , and in Spanish typically merge as (originally pronounced ), while in Aragonese they are preserved in most dialects, and in Leonese they present a variety of outcomes, including , , and . Where Latin had before a vowel (e.g. ) or the ending , (e.g. ), Old Spanish produced , that in Modern Spanish became the velar fricative (, ), whereas neighboring languages have the palatal lateral (e.g. Portuguese , ; Catalan , ).


title: Spanish language

text: The Spanish phonemic inventory consists of five vowel phonemes (, , , , ) and 17 to 19 consonant phonemes (the exact number depending on the dialect). The main allophonic variation among vowels is the reduction of the high vowels and to glides— and respectively—when unstressed and adjacent to another vowel. Some instances of the mid vowels and , determined lexically, alternate with the diphthongs and respectively when stressed, in a process that is better described as morphophonemic rather than phonological, as it is not predictable from phonology alone.


title: Spanish language

text: The Spanish consonant system is characterized by (1) three nasal phonemes, and one or two (depending on the dialect) lateral phoneme(s), which in syllable-final position lose their contrast and are subject to assimilation to a following consonant; (2) three voiceless stops and the affricate ; (3) three or four (depending on the dialect) voiceless fricatives; (4) a set of voiced obstruents—, , , and sometimes —which alternate between approximant and plosive allophones depending on the environment; and (5) a phonemic distinction between the "tapped" and "trilled" "r"-sounds (single and double in orthography).


title: Spanish language

text: In the following table of consonant phonemes, is marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate that it is preserved only in some dialects. In most dialects it has been merged with in the merger called . Similarly, is also marked with an asterisk to indicate that most dialects do not distinguish it from (see ), although this is not a true merger but an outcome of different evolution of sibilants in Southern Spain.