From WNYKRC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Despite the focus here on embeds and video phones, the big media story out of Iraq centers on Al Jazeera, the news channel based in Qatar, that is not only the

most cited news source in the region, but increasingly around the world.

Here's one measure of its popularity.

The search engine Lycos reported that Al Jazeera was the top search term last week,

with three times more searches than sex.

But Al Jazeera is also hugely unpopular with people like Donald Rumsfeld,

who objected to grizzly pictures of American POWs,

broadcast by the channel, and Iraqi officials who don't like Al Jazeera's aggressive reporting tactics.

In fact, this week the Iraqi government booted, one of Al Jazeera's reporters from Baghdad,

prompting the channel to suspend much of its coverage in Iraq.

This setback follows Al Jazeera's recent ejection from the New York Stock Exchange

and hacker attacks on its English language website.

Joanne Tucker is managing editor of the English language website.

She's on the line from Doha Gutter.

Joanne, welcome back to On the Media.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me.

Has Al Jazeera gotten an official explanation about why its reporters were kicked out of the country or asked not to report?

The reasons given for this directive from the Iraqi Information Ministry was that they did not like Thaisira Aluni, who is our reporter

and who was our exclusive report in Afghanistan. They did not like his reports from Najaf in the

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