Do you think Barry Goldwater's message could have survived the editors if he had opted to write for Pravda under the same reasoning?
The more important and relevent question would be- would Pravda have maintained its usefulness to the Soviet Regime if it had been forced to compete with the BBC, CNN and other news sources inside the USSR? That's the better analogy. Pravda had no such competition during the era of the Soviets but this is the situation al Jazeera is in. Witness the mullahs in Iran and Afghanistan trying to ban satellite dishes. Think about the Chinese trying in vain to ban or even regulate the internet. Control of information is crucial to regimes that wish to control their people- once you lose your grip on the flow of information you will lose your grip on the people (if your hold on power rests on your ability to deny basic freedoms).
Al Jazeera will not change overnight, I'm not saying this. But given that they are a Pan-Islamic phenomenom they are immune to any single Islamic regime trying to direct their message or the way they handle news. We rightly perceive the network as being anti-western but as they struggle to compete over time with established news sources that also want a slice of the Arab/Islamic News Market their methods and objectivity will be transformed and with this transformation will come also a transformation of Muslim thought in general.