Ipsos denies al-Jazeera\'s global reach claims

Al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar French market research giant Ipsos has declared that it has not carried out any surveys about Qatari satellite news channel al-Jazeera.   The broadcaster issued a statement two weeks in which is claimed that an audience survey recently carried out by Ipsos and Sigma showed daily viewing figures were 34 percent higher than all the other pan-Arab channels combined.
However, Ipsos has categorically denied al-Jazeera\'s claims. In a statement, chairman Edward Monan said that al-Jazeera\'s assertion that Ipsos had gathered statistics from a random sample of residents aged over 15 in 21 Arab countries is incorrect as the organisation has only studied television viewing figures in only 11 countries.
Despite, Ipsos\' clarification, Osama Saeed, Head of Media and International Relations at al-Jazeera, confirmed by telephone that the Qatari channel would stand by what it had said.
Saeed insisted that al-Jazeera was referring to statistics publicly available, and reiterated his view that the channel is indisputably the leading Arabic news provider.
According to a recent study in the US, al-Jazeera\'s poor \"professional and moral conduct\" reduced its worldwide viewing from 43 million viewers per day to around 6 million.
Adel Iskandar, a communications professor at Georgetown University and co-author of a 2002 book on the Qatar-based news organisation said earlier that the network had lost credibility among Arabic-speaking audiences for its coverage of the Syrian crisis.