When President Obama announced Osama bin Laden’s death, Al Jazeera English had its biggest day of traffic ever. And 40 percent of it was from the US. Just a few years ago, the Qatar-based network was seen as a mouthpiece for Arab governments and anti-US propaganda. But that perception is changing. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton recently praised Al Jazeera’s coverage of world events. And commentators across the political spectrum cited their reporting on the recent upheavals in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. Wired spoke to Mohamed Nanabhay, the network’s 31-year-old head of online, to find out how Al Jazeera English is changing American minds.—

Wired: What was Al Jazeera English’s strategy for covering bin Laden’s death?

Mohamed Nanabhay: We take an integral approach. The challenge is to be able to provide near-instantaneous coverage, all over the world, while providing context. So when news of bin Laden’s death broke, we aired briefings out of Washington but followed that quickly with reaction from Pakistan and Afghanistan and coverage of how the news played out in the Arab and Muslim worlds. A few minutes later we cut to Africa and the locations where the US embassies were bombed. Finally we looped back to the streets of New York.

Wired: And how did you provide context for this quickly developing story?

Nanabhay: Very soon after the story broke we ran a report by our intelligence columnist, Robert Grenier, who was the CIA station chief in Pakistan before and after 9/11, then became the director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Throughout the day we offered opinion from Arab intellectuals, a Cambridge lecturer, a University of California historian, and voices from Pakistan and Afghanistan. We don’t try to reduce the world to a sound bite.

Wired: You’ve helped improve Al Jazeera’s brand in the US. What’s worked?

Nanabhay: Offering our video online for free and allowing people to download and share it has been really successful. Our viewers catch a live stream on our website, use our iPhone app, watch clips on YouTube, or subscribe to our podcast. Our audience takes our content and puts it on the screens of people who may not have heard of us before or who may have had a negative perception of the brand, so they can see what we’re really about.

Wired: Why won’t American cable networks carry Al Jazeera English?

Nanabhay: That’s a question they need to answer. One of the responses I’ve heard is that there’s not demand in America for another 24-hour news channel. I think over the last few months we’ve seen that argument blown out of the water—nearly 10 million people in the US are regularly watching our content online. That’s more than a lot of cable news shows.