Great, now the Bush administration is broadcasting terrorist messages in the Middle East as part of our diplomatic outreach. On the incompetence-o-meter, this one might bury the needle.
Al Hurra television, the U.S. government’s $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.
That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces.
Facing tough questions before a congressional panel last week, Broadcasting Board of Governors member Joaquin Blaya admitted none of the senior news managers at the network spoke Arabic when the terrorist messages made it onto the air courtesy of U.S. taxpayer funds. Nor did Blaya himself or any of the other officials at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the network.
Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, asked, “How does it happen that the terrorists take over? Is there no adult supervision?”
As it turns out, there isn’t. None of the managers/editors at Al Hurra understand Arabic, so they have no idea what’s being broadcast to the Middle East with the imprimatur of the United States government. Indeed, Al Hurra doesn’t even have an assignment desk — stories created by the news division of the network are the work of “hastily-hired Arabic-speaking journalists,” none of whom realize that Al Hurra is supposed to have a pro-Western mission.
It’s not even the first time this has happened.
The station’s gaffes have included broadcasting in December 2006 a 68-minute call to arms against Israelis by a senior figure of the terrorist group Hezbollah; deferential coverage of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial conference; and a factually flawed piece on a splinter group of Orthodox Jews who oppose the state of Israel, according to the Wall Street Journal, which has reported the network’s travails for months.
And who’s responsible for all of this? Al Hurra is a project of the administration’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is led by Ken Tomlinson.
Regular readers know that Tomlinson’s partisan, ideological, and generally ridiculous work is legendary. By August, it became almost comical.
State Department investigators have found that the head of the agency overseeing most government broadcasts to foreign countries has used his office to run a “horse racing operation” and that he improperly put a friend on the payroll, according to a summary of a report made public on Tuesday by a Democratic lawmaker.
The report said that the official, Kenneth Y. [tag]Tomlinson[/tag], had repeatedly used government employees to perform personal errands and that he billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit.
The summary of the report, prepared by the State Department inspector general, said the United States attorney’s office here had been given the report and decided not to conduct a criminal inquiry.
(Hmm, a Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney deciding not to pursue charges against a Republican official. Where have I heard that before?)
It was actually the second instance of Tomlinson getting caught breaking the law. In 2005, we learned that he violated the Federal Broadcasting Act, which prohibits the use of “political tests” in employment.
How’d he even get this job? Karl Rove put him there, in part to help root out “liberal bias.”
And even after all of this, and even after Al Hurra accidentally broadcast terrorist messages more than once, Tomlinson is still listed as the chairman of the BBG.
The mind reels.