The Economist, 12 Jan 2013: "Ironically, the Arab revolutions that Al Jazeera gleefully promoted have produced a challenge to its dominance. Audiences in countries such as Egypt, Iraq and Tunisia are now gripped by fast-moving local events more ably covered by independent national channels that have proliferated rapidly in a freer political climate, along with internet-borne social media. Moreover, Al Jazeera Arabic’s vaunted reputation for even-handedness has withered in recent years. ... Al Jazeera’s breathless boosting of Qatari-backed rebel fighters in Libya and Syria, and of the Qatar-aligned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, have made many Arab viewers question its veracity. So has its tendency to ignore human-rights abuses by those same rebels, and its failure to accord the uprising by the Shia majority in Qatar’s neighbour, Bahrain, the same heroic acclaim it bestows on Sunni revolutionaries. ... Even Al Jazeera English, with a solid reputation built since its birth in 2006, is not immune. In September its staff protested after being told to promote a speech by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, at the United Nations in New York as its lead item. Al Jazeera America will not win hearts and minds like that."

Al-Monitor, 13 Jan 2013, Ali Hashem: "Many intellectuals and media professionals ... were questioning the standards [Al jazeera] was abiding to in covering certain revolutions whilst ignoring others, namely Bahrain. When faced with the allegations, seniors at the Qatari channel gave one answer: 'We have no access' in Bahrain. That answer could have had some weight if Al-Jazeera's English Channel hadn’t produced a masterpiece that will always be referred to as one of the best documentaries about Bahrain, Shouting in the Dark. The Al-Jazeera English Channel had undercover reporters in Manama covering the unrest, while the Arabic channel tended to derive its news from agencies. When a reporter was given the permission by the Bahraini authorities to cover, the reports seemed more like messages of reconciliation than field coverage of an ongoing uprising, a rhetoric that differs much from the one the channel adopted in approaching the Arab Spring. Al-Jazeera's main competitor, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, had a different approach to the situation in Bahrain. The channel reflected the official point of view, accusing the activists of being Iranian proxies accusing demonstrators of being armed. The channel's editorial line wasn’t of a surprise to many given the fact Saudi troops entered Bahrain, to help put an end to the ongoing unrest."