However, many analysts doubt this.
They point out, for instance, that the organisation's English-language website, english.aljazeera.net, has hardly any of the anti-American rhetoric that is par for the course on its Arabic-language sister site.
"I think a lot of people are going to be very disappointed because the English-language news channel will be a pale imitation of its parent channel," said Ms Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who worked as a senior editor on Al-Jazeera's English-language website.
"The new station will have complete independence - administratively, financially and editorially - from the parent organisation. And it will have a mainly English-speaking news team," she told The Straits Times. Its main aim is to make the news channel commercially viable so that it can eventually be privatised. It will be the acceptable face of the Muslim world for a Western audience."
Professor Asad Abukhalil, who teaches political science at California State University in Stanislaus and who is a regular guest on Al-Jazeera's Arabic-language channel, similarly said he has noticed "that the English version of Al-Jazeera's website is less 'Arab nationalist'."
He added that the staff of the new station "will include many non-Arabs, who are far less shaped by core Arab or Islamic issues"
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