Al Jazeera in general and its US arm in particular were always more of an instrument of foreign policy for Qatar than a money-making endeavor. I covered the channel as a journalist at a competing news organization, and spoke with dozens of journalists on the inside of AJ.<p>My guess is that Qatar decided they didn&#x27;t want to waste quite as much money and time trying to sway public opinion in the US. The Arabic version of AJ has always been much more important. Pure speculation, but the cuts may be due to the plunging price of oil, which in turn is affected by the slump of the Chinese economy.