Al Jazeera is much different than say the state sponsered Iraq TV. As far as I'm aware they could be considered a free press- though they are pretty inexperienced.
I don't think they are very well informed, but their viewpoint is not much different than radical Left in the US, and the Left in Europe.
What I find quite interesting is that all news- Right or Left, good and bad, still screws up in a fundemental ways. And that is in the way they present "facts".
First, the reporters commonly state rumors as facts- I guess that is mostly due to incompetence and simply being stupid. Then you have reporters who "get a story" then either repeat it or paraphrase "the story". This makes the reporter into merely a machine that talks- they are given words and they say these words into a TV camera. Pretty useless and quite replacable AND if replaced by a machine then at least one wouldn't "mistakenly" confuse "the reporter" with a sentient creature.
Another error is the amount of skeptism they apply to their information. A good example of this is the "report" by Fox network on "the Moon hoax". The problem with this report is they give equal balance to "both sides" of the "debate". They give a equal amount of skeptism of the fact that we did land people on the Moon with the assertion that it was all a hoax by US govt. This is simply an OBVIOUS example of... what, insanity.
Now, you could say that they did this because they "love controversy" or they are "just trying to make a good story", BUT if you allow yourself to think this, you missing something very important.
And that is, they apply this SAME STANDARD TO ALL NEWS STORIES, and what this *means* is that in their silly attempt at being "objective" they are actually deliberately lying. You see, those guys who did the Moon hoax, knew that it was bullshit. But as "a reporter" they think they must be skeptical of "both sides of the argument". This is simply wrong. Oh I know it's considered as a sacred principle of reporting, but it's still wrong. It's due to a basic misunderstanding of what being objective is.
Anyways, this gets really strange when you watch Fox News- these guys "believe" that they have a "Right bias"- that they are raving hawks and fully supporting the President. So they gleely spew what they consider to be "govt propaganda" in order to "support the troops", yet at the same time they "try" to be good reporters by "being objective".
[I don't have anything in particular against Fox news- in fact I usually watch it over the more Leftish news channels- rather, I find Fox slightly less annoying and if nothing else, more amusing.]