Al Mayadeen is an Iran-aligned Lebanese pan-Arabist satellite news television channel based in the city of Beirut. Launched on 11 June 2012, it has news reporters in most of the Arab countries. In the pan-Arabist television news market, it competes against Qatar-owned Al Jazeera and Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, and also against Sky News Arabia and BBC News Arabic. At the time it was founded, most of the channel's senior staff were former correspondents and editors of Al Jazeera. Al Mayadeen has widely been categorized as pro-Hezbollah and pro-Bashar al-Assad.