[T]he newest programs Hughes has inherited for her public diplomacy, and which she’s pledged to support, mostly promote pop culture — precisely the cultural products most likely to irritate Arab and Muslim traditionalists (just as they do social conservatives at home). New radio shows, a television station, and an Arab-language magazine all focus on disseminating the popular and the lowbrow at the expense of more educational materials.<\/p>\n
The Arab-language monthly Hi<\/i> magazine, produced since 2003 for the State Department, has pitched America as a gee-whiz futuristic society whose consumers are obsessed with the latest gadgets and peculiar dating strategies. No joke: Hi<\/i> magazine recently featured a story on the “Dinner in the Dark” dating service, and another on Flexcars, whose relevance to, say, tribal areas of Pakistan is open to some serious question. TV station Al-Hurra was launched in 2004 as a kind of American alternative to Arabic news network Al-Jazeera, and has been met with decidedly mixed reviews in the Arab world, where suspicion of government-backed television channels is high. <\/p>\n
Other recent efforts are likewise not clear winners. The Voice of America’s Arab radio edition was eliminated in 2002 in favor of a new venture, Radio Sawa, a lifestyle channel broadcasting a mix of American and Arab pop music for a less talk, more schlock approach. Critics dub the approach “pop-aganda”; a report drafted by the State Department’s inspector general in 2004 found that the $22 million a year channel “failed to present America to its audience.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now, I don’t claim to be an expert in Middle Eastern culture, so far be it for me to suggest I know what’s best in executing a public relations campaign to this audience. But if I’m a disillusioned Pakistani, for example, and I’m inclined to believe most of the awful things I hear about the United States, I’m probably not inclined to change my mind because Americans enjoy ipods and quirky dating habits. Call it a hunch.<\/p>\n
I don’t mean to sound picky, but if we’re going to use state-sponsored propaganda to win over hearts and minds in the Middle East, could we at least use effective<\/i> state-sponsored propaganda?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve all heard about concerted attempts by the U.S. government to improve our nation’s image in the Middle East. I never delved too deeply into the details, but I more or less assumed the initiative would include print and broadcast media that emphasizes the best America has to offer in the way of ideals, values, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}