If Doha makes a somewhat sleepy home for a network that broadcasts to 250 million homes in 120 countries—and one that now aggressively competes against the big global news-gathering operations—the broadcast center outwardly betrays nothing of the frisson that goes into making news, either. The Al Jazeera compound floats squat and pale behind high fences near what’s called the Television Roundabout, in a part of town as featureless as Doha’s pale desert hold. The only giveaway is the tight security—for forty-five minutes, I was by turns regarded with suspicion, ignored, then offered tea—but once past the security gate and bomb-checking station, once through the metal detector, you reach a courtyard of sorts. The entrances to two equally nondescript, white buildings sit fifty yards apart, in detached conversation with each other: Al Jazeera Arabic on the right (broadcasting since 1996), and its younger sibling, Al Jazeera English, or AJE, on the left (broadcasting since 2006). When the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak visited here back in the salad days, he famously said, “All this noise from such a small matchbox?”