The Ma'an Network was launched in 2002 as a partnership between Bethlehem TV and local Palestinian media organizations. The name Ma'an is the Arabic word for "together". The group is run by Raed Othman, the former manager of Bethlehem TV. Ma'an has produced three soap operas, numerous news and public affairs programs and the television filmKafah. Ma'an's programs are broadcast by ten independent terrestrial television stations in the West Bank and occasionally by the Fatah-run Palestine TV satellite broadcaster. The Ma'an News Agency was launched in 2005 with funding from the Danish and Dutch Representative Offices to the Palestinian National Authority. The news agency is the most visible component of the Ma'an Network. On 15 May, the Ma'an network launched an eCommerce website called .
Independence
Ma'an News Agency says that it "scrupulously maintains its editorial independence and aims to promote access to information, freedom of expression, press freedom, and media pluralism in Palestine." The Ma'an Network was founded with the goal of creating a media source that was free of factional control, unlike the major existing broadcasters such as Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV and Fatah's Palestine TV. In an interview with media scholar Matt Sienkiewicz, former Ma'an Chief financial officer Wisam Kutom stated that he told potential Ma'an funders that: "Palestinian television is factional television right now we cannot tell the stories we want to, only the stories the factions will let us. There is no independent television".
Funding
Funding for Ma'an Network comes from advertising revenue and from foreign donors.
In July 2007, at the time the de facto Gaza Strip government, MNA alleged that MNA's chief editor had received "direct threats" from Hamas to carry out a "defamation campaign" against MNA, and to cease its criticism of "the Hamas movement".
Reach
Ma'an News Agency describes itself as "the main source of independent news from Palestine" and "the premier source of independent Palestinian news on the internet". According to a 2007 survey, 95.6% of Palestinians with internet access "frequently visit" the site. As of December 2013, Ma'an News receives the fourth most site visitors in the Palestinian territories.
Reality TV
In 2013, Ma'an TV broadcast the hit reality show The President in collaboration with Search for Common Ground. Described as "a cross between American Idol and The Apprentice", audience members would vote through SMS to elect the show's young contestants who competed in mock press conferences, political campaigns, and debates.
Reliability
An Israeli NGO, NGO Monitor, criticizes Ma'an for regularly re-publishing "non-verifiable or inaccurate claims" from partisan NGOs and for, "subjective, biased reporting." Palestinian Media Watch criticized Ma'an for "sanitizing" its English-language reporting while publishing in Arabic reports that “include the hate ideology espoused by the terror organizations that deny Israel's right to exist express reverence for suicide terrorists." In further reports, PMW criticized Ma'an for "demonization of Jews," for publishing news stories in materially different Arabic and English versions, and for Holocaust denial. According to The New York Times during the spate of Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis in 2015, Ma'an inaccurately reported that a young knife attacker had been "murdered" by Israeli police,, "In a video report accusing Israel of faking evidence of other knife attacks, a reporter for the Palestinian news agency Maan described the clip as evidence of “murder” and claimed in her narration that the video showed the boy lying on the ground when “an Israeli occupation soldier shoots him in the head,” which it does not."
