Al-Jazeera expands reach, goals with English-language channel. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 12 Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel that began a decade ago as an upstart, has became a thorn in the side of every dictator in the region as well as of the Bush administration. Critics call it radical; its admirers lionize it. And the network continues to battle accusations that it is sympathetic to Al Qaeda and other extremists. Several of its reporters have been jailed — one is in prison in Spain for ties to Al Qaeda — and its offices have been shut in almost every major Arab country at some point, and bombed by American aircraft in two wars. Now, Al Jazeera’s journalists are working to transform the channel into a conglomerate with global reach. By the end of the year, Al Jazeera will have news channels in Arabic and English, a pan-Arab newspaper, Web sites and blogs, sports and children’s outlets, and even a channel modeled after C-Span. The network (it turned 10 on Nov. 1) is also looking to extend its sphere of influence beyond the Arab world. On Wednesday, it will start the English-language Al Jazeera International, its most ambitious initiative yet, which will go on the air from Asia to the United States. The channel will broadcast from network hubs in Qatar, London, Washington and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, offering news, talk and documentaries that its managing director, Nigel Parsons, said would have a decidedly different tone than on established Western channels. In effect, Al Jazeera International intends to become for the developing world what Al Jazeera became to the Arab world: a champion of forgotten causes, a news organization willing to take the contrarian view and to risk being controversial. “We want to be a channel that covers the untold stories,” Mr. Parsons said by telephone from Qatar. “We would be anchored in the Middle East, but we intend to cover the developing world fully.” To do that, he said, Al Jazeera will use Asian reporters to cover Asia, and will have Africans talking about Africa, “rather than having instant experts land there and tell us a story.” The channel has signed prominent journalists, including the host and commentator David Frost; the former BBC correspondent Rageh Omar, and a onetime CNN anchor, Riz Khan, as well as numbers of producers and reporters from Western networks and some unknowns with a decidedly international look. “We will carry on the tradition of showing the ugly side of conflict,” Mr. Parsons said. “War has been too sanitized in the media.” Viewers should not expect to see the Al Jazeera that the Arab world watches daily. Mr. Parsons and others stressed that Al Jazeera International was not merely a translation of Al Jazeera from Arabic. It has separate crews and editors working completely independent of the original network. Insiders note that the cultures of the Arabic- and English- speaking teams have at times clashed, though Mr. Parsons says many of those differences have been ironed out. Still, some analysts doubt that Al Jazeera can take significant market share away from networks like CNN and BBC. But its international offshoot is not under pressure to turn a profit anytime soon, in part because of its endowment from the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who has underscored his long-term commitment to Al Jazeera despite pressure from many governments. The Arab channel, largely locked out of the advertising market by Saudi businesses, who account for most ads in the region, has yet to turn a profit. Mr. Parsons says Al Jazeera International will broadcast with ads from multinational companies. Nor is he necessarily focused on reaching American viewers. The new channel is about the untapped world of English speakers in the East, increasingly frustrated with Western coverage of their world. When it goes live, it is expected to have access to 40 million homes — most of them outside Europe and the United States. The station has struggled to break into American cable television markets, where most operators have decided against adding it to their offerings. Americans, though, can watch a streamed broadcast over the Internet. “People are too concerned about how it will do in the United states, but I don’t think it matters,” said Marc Lynch, a political science professor at Williams College and author of “Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al Jazeera and Middle East Politics Today.” “Al Jazeera,” he said, “has this huge untapped market around the world where people have English as a first or second language.” This is a world increasingly skeptical of American intentions and frustrated with American foreign policy. “We’re very proud of our brand,” Mr. Parsons said, “and as a network, everybody is proud of what Al Jazeera has achieved. There is a lot of cynicism about TV journalism today. We intend to continue the tradition of being fearless and not frightened of rattling the cages.”