Its’ coverage soon became a thorn in the side of those who run Egypt and who quickly decided they couldn't yank Al-Jazeera Arabic off Egyptian TV fast enough.

But it is Al-Jazeera’s reporting in English that has permitted it to penetrate the most resistant market, the US.

Al-Jazeera English, AJE – its reporting on the unrest in Egypt has been the envy of broadcasters throughout the world, who relied heavily on video feeds from the Doha-based channel.

Much as CNN capitalized on its coverage of the 1990-91 Gulf War, AJE has won praise for its on-the-spot reporting and context about the Tunisian and Egyptian protests.

While American television networks were scrambling to move reporters and producers into Cairo, the Al- Jazeera channels were already there. The other networks have noticed: On the roundtable portion of ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Sam Donaldson looked at an Al-Jazeera reporter and said, “Thank you for what you’re doing.”

It is a well-known fact in Washington that even the White House has been tuning in to AJE.

Their coverage has not come without a price to pay.  For its pains, al-Jazeera has been in the frontline of the Egyptian forces’ increasingly draconian media crackdown.

The Egyptian military detained a correspondent for Al-Jazeera’s English-language news channel in Cairo last Sunday, and its’ English and Arabic languages offices have been targeted repeatedly throughout the Egyptian unrest.

Al-Jazeera began its English channel in 2006, and it is generally accessible to viewers around the world.  But inside the US, it has been given full distribution rights in only a handful of cities: Washington D.C., Burlington, Vt. and Toledo, Ohio.

So it has had to resort to other methods of distribution. Since Jan. 27, AJE had to increase its video streaming capacity to handle the huge spikes in traffic, a spokesperson told reporters Tuesday. More than 7 million US viewers have spent nearly 50 million minutes watching the AJE website since the Egyptian rebellion.

But few people find watching live news coverage on the Web or their mobile as satisfying as watching it on plain old television.

“Ever since it launched in 2006, Al Jazeera English has been the best cable channel I can't get on cable,” wrote journalist Aaron Barnhart in Monday’s Kansas City Star.

“Broadcasting 24 hours a day from 65 bureaus around the world, AJE puts every American-owned TV news organization to shame. Its live coverage of the fighting in Gaza in 2009 drove many people to watch it on the Web, but it was still viewed as a novelty by many Americans until the events in Egypt,” wrote Barnhart.

“There has been a strong outcry from the American public to have access to AJE,” Al-Anstey, managing director of Al-Jazeera's 4-year-old English-language service, told reporters this week.

Anstey said he thought that the channel suffered from “some misconceptions about what Al Jazeera stood for.” During the Iraq war, the Arabic-language channel was criticized by Bush administration officials, and as recently as Friday when the conservative Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly branded Al-Jazeera as “anti-America.”

But that view has been largely drowned out by people like Donaldson who have hoisted up AJE for its protest coverage. Traffic to the English-language website has increased by 2,500 percent since Friday, Anstey said.

The problem here, however, is that the Qatar-based network has been unable to make much headway in forging distribution agreements with major cable and satellite players.

So now AJE is seizing the opportunity to woo American media distributors.  It launched full-page ads in both the New York Times and Washington Post this week, and will be talking to US cable operators about deals “in the coming days and weeks,” said AJE’s Anstey.

Advertising in US’s major newspapers is good, but its best acclaim is coming from its competitors:

Here are a sample of comments on AJE’s coverage in Egypt:

“It Is Al-Jazeera's Moment” – The New York Times; "Thank You for What You're Doing" – Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week; “Most Comprehensive Coverage of Any Network in Any Language Hands Down” – The Nation; “Great Reporting. Al-Jazeera has been an Absolute Lifeline for the Rest of the World in Understanding What is Going On” — Rachel Maddow, talk show host on MSNBC, during a Jan. 28 interview with Al-Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin.

“Mandatory Viewing” — Salon.com.   “Washington Embraces Al-Jazeera” — Pacifica Radio journalist Jeremy Scahill.

But the best praise has come from Business Insider: “Even The President of the United States Is Watching Al-Jazeera.”