At first blush, there’s nothing especially wrong with the notion of the U.S. government trying to improve the nation’s image in the Middle East. After the attacks of 9\/11, American officials knew we had some work to do in the region. After the fiasco in Iraq, those same officials surely noticed that the nation’s reputation had been tarnished, and was even more in need of rehabilitation.<\/p>\n
It’s how the Bush administration went about making these improvements that’s the problem. State-sponsored news outlets are always problematic, but the administration’s Al-Hurra initiative is one of the more embarrassing propaganda efforts<\/a> in recent memory.<\/p>\n Al-Hurra — “The Free One” in Arabic — is the centerpiece of a U.S. government campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East. Taxpayers have spent $350 million on the project. But more than four years after it began broadcasting, the station is widely regarded as a flop in the Arab world, where it has struggled to attract viewers and overcome skepticism about its mission. […]<\/p>\n Since its inception, al-Hurra has been plagued by mediocre programming, congressional interference and a succession of executives who either had little experience in television or could not speak Arabic, according to interviews with former staffers, other Arab journalists and viewers in the Middle East.<\/p>\n It has also been embarrassed by journalistic blunders. One news anchor greeted the station’s predominantly Muslim audience on Easter by declaring, “Jesus is risen today!” After al-Hurra covered a December 2006 Holocaust-denial conference in Iran and aired, unedited, an hour-long speech by the leader of Hezbollah, Congress convened hearings and threatened to cut the station’s budget.<\/p>\n “Many people just didn’t know how to do their job,” said Yasser Thabet, a former senior editor at al-Hurra. “If some problem happened on the air, people would just joke with each other, saying, ‘Well, nobody watches us anyway.’ It was very self-defeating.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The most common comparison is to Radio Free Europe during the Cold War. But RFE succeeded in part because its audience had limited options. The Arab World has satellite dishes — and little use for mediocre programming brought to them by the Bush administration.<\/p>\n This, apparently, never occurred to the U.S. officials responsible for this very expensive flop. “Arabs sit in their homes in front of the television, and they surf like crazy,” said Hisham Melhem, a Washington-based anchor for al-Arabiya, a Saudi-owned satellite TV network. “You rarely find someone who says they watch al-Hurra. It may be number 10 on their dial. But definitely not first, not second, not third, not fourth.”<\/p>\n “They failed in finding their own niche, and they failed in presenting something different about America to the Arab world,” he added. “It’s a glitzy operation, a costly operation, with very little impact.” […]<\/p>\n Arab journalists and viewers say al-Hurra has a basic problem: It is boring. Investigative pieces are rare, and critics say the channel generally doesn’t make waves.<\/p>\n Salameh Nematt, a Jordanian journalist based in Washington, said that al-Hurra, like many of its competitors, has ignored controversial issues such as financial corruption involving Arab leaders and the use of torture by security forces.<\/p>\n “Al-Hurra would have been the number one station in the Arab world had they done one-quarter of what they should have covered,” Nematt said. “People say if it’s an American station, nobody will watch it. That’s crap. If it’s an American station that does a good job, everybody will watch it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But it’s not doing a good job. Indeed, Pro Publica’s Dafna Linzer reported<\/a> that al-Hurra “has aired anti-American and anti-Israeli viewpoints, has showcased pro-Iranian policies and recently gave air time to a militant who called for the death of American soldiers in Iraq.”<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n