Lounsbury: al-Hurra

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October 15, 2004

al-Hurra

The Washington Post had an interesting article on al-Hurra (which I have commented on in the past) that merits reading.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33564-2004Oct14?language=printer

I shall not be redundant in observing the same things I observed a few months back (http://www.livejournal.com/users/collounsbury/186721.html) (I'm getting positively user friendly providing links now), but I will add a few notes:

First in re the gunship execution of the al-Arabiyah journo

When a U.S. military helicopter swooped into Baghdad and began spraying bullets into a crowd of civilians believed to be looting an Army armored vehicle, most Arab news channels aired a video of the scene that captured the last words of a journalist killed in the attack.

"Please help me. I am dying," pleaded the reporter, Mazin Tumaisi. His network, al-Arabiya, showed the footage again and again, as did al-Jazeera.

Alhurra TV, however, deemed the video too disturbing to air. The story could be told without such graphic images, news directors for the new U.S. government-funded network concluded.

This is just loony. What is one proving? Everyone else is going to show the images. It's not as if it would be out of bounds in re local standards - so why not show? Not doing so simply and needlessly raises the idea you're pulling punches.

The 24-hour channel, which started operating in February, airs two daily hour-long newscasts, and sports, cooking, fashion, technology and entertainment programs, including a version of "Inside the Actors Studio" dubbed in Arabic. It also carries political talk shows and magazine-type news programs, including one about the U.S. presidential election.

And broadcasts purely American interest events live.

Reagan funeral.

Its programs are produced in a two-story building that once housed local NewsChannel 8. It is staffed by a handful of journalists recruited from Arabic stations and newspapers and dozens of employees scurrying around in jeans and running shoes or kitten heels. A mixture of Arabic and English fills the newsroom as journalists answer phones and click away on their computers.

Congress last year approved $62 million to pay for Alhurra's first year. In November 2003, Congress committed $40 million more to launch a sister station in April aimed solely at Iraq. The operation is overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent federal agency that is also in charge of Voice of America. The U.S. government launched Alhurra after deciding that existing Arab news channels displayed anti-American bias. The aim is to promote a more positive U.S. image to Arabs.

Whatever. This of course entirely misses the point and mistakes the problem for something like the Soviet problem.

Now most importantly is this item:
Alhurra may have a problem standing out in a crowded field. Middle East viewers generally get about 120 satellite-television channels, including al-Jazeera, Dubai-based al-Arabiya, London-based Arabic News Network and state-run operations.

Of which based on what I see people watching, the game is really al-Jazeerah versus al-Arabiyah.

William A. Rugh, a former ambassador to United Arab Emirates and Yemen who wrote a book on Arabic media, said Alhurra has "been a big waste of money" so far, in part because it must compete in a saturated field of Arabic networks.

I agree. It's starting off wrong, it's ... well dopey, and the money should have been used in other areas such as either creating content or putting well-trained people on Arabic media as frequently as possible to push the message in a way that engages Arabs.

The moving force behind the birth of Alhurra, which means "the Free One" in Arabic, was Norman Pattiz, the California radio executive who created Westwood One Inc., the nation's largest radio network. Pattiz was appointed in November 2000 by President Bill Clinton to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees federally funded international media efforts such as the Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti, which is aimed at Cuba. Pattiz quickly focused his attention on the Middle East, and, he said, he soon concluded that newscasts on Middle East stations often offered "incitements of violence, hate-speak and disinformation."

I note the guy is a Clinton appointee. No one can blame Bush for that.

Hate speak and disinformation.... Well, probably, but al-Hurra ain't the answer.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants to expand the effort. He has introduced a bill calling for similar broadcasts in Farsi, Kurdish and Uzbek, among other languages. The expansion would require $222 million in start-up funding, plus a $345 million annual budget on top of Voice of America's budget of $570 million for 2005.

Waste of money.

Item like this of course are what make al-Hurra a joke:
In March, when Israeli missiles killed Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin as he emerged from a prayer session, most Arab news channels switched immediately to the story. Alhurra stuck with its regular program, a cooking show.

A cooking show.

Harb agreed that it was a mistake. "This happened very early in the life of Alhurra. . . . When they assassinated the next leader of Hamas, we were more ready to give more comprehensive coverage by then," he said.

The Reagan funeral coverage inanity was mere months ago.

Now in re the image:
In U.S. media, "the idea of publishing graphic images is shied away from, frowned upon universally," said Keith Woods, who teaches journalism at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "Everybody has a sense of a line that you don't cross without good reason."

And this is relevant to international sattelite journalism in what way? The US media doesn't show a lot of stuff that Euro and other medias show routinely.

Now this paragraph is just moronic:
The Alhurra program's two anchors were positioned in front of a blue map of the Middle East in the Springfield studio. During that day's broadcast, one of al-Jazeera's female anchors wore a head scarf. Alhurra's anchors were dressed in modern business attire. Both stations used a classical form of Arabic in presenting the news. But unlike al-Jazeera, Alhurra didn't sign off with the traditional Islamic greeting assalamu alaikum, or "peace be upon you."

So one al-Jazeerah woman wears a headscarf? I can first note that most of them don't. And if she does: so the fuck what? Fucking moronic, dumb ass comment. The comment on Arabic also is just droolingly stupid. Nobody does the news in dialect, you'll be laughed at. As for the sign off, again, what the fuck is that about. Just about everyone, including Arab Xians use the greeting, it's not a huge thing.

I have to say, I see mindless bias in this paragraph.

Alhurra is transmitted to the Middle East on two satellites, Nilesat and Arabsat. Viewers in Iraq can also get the network over broadcast television. The network is available to 70 million satellite television viewers in 22 countries. There are few reliable statistics on how many people watch it regularly. One survey conducted for the network by ACNielsen found that 29 percent of Jordanians and 24 percent of Saudi Arabians with satellite-TV receivers tuned in during a seven-day period in July and August. But a Zogby poll of six Middle East countries done in May for the University of Maryland found that Alhurra barely registered as a primary source of news.

Let me put it this way, I have never seen anyone watching al-Hurra. Period. I highly doubt the ACNielsen numbers.

Some Middle East experts assert that the very assumption under which Alhurra was created -- that existing Arab news stations contribute to disdain for the United States -- is flawed. "The managers of Alhurra have stigmatized the competition and stereotyped it as being totally anti-American, and that's simply not true," said Rugh, the former ambassador.

I agree.

Rather than compete in an already crowded field, Rugh said U.S. policymakers should appear more on al-Jazeera and other widely watched channels. More than 400 Voice of America staff members signed a petition sent to Congress in July charging that Alhurra and Sawa were draining VOA's budgets and not being held to the same editorial standards.

I agree.

A draft of a report by the State Department's inspector general, obtained by The Washington Post, said Radio Sawa is failing to meet its mandate to promote pro-American attitudes because it is preoccupied with building an audience through music -- an assertion disputed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The State Department said it is revising the report.

See prior posting.

Some legislators have said that if Alhurra is not promoting U.S. views, the government should not be funding it. "Do not tell us it's not propaganda, because if it's not propaganda, then I think . . . we will have to look at what it is we are doing," Rep. Jos� E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) said at a hearing in April.

Nota bene: Serrano, in favor of wasting your tax dollars on idiotic waste of money.

Harb countered that fair news is what will promote democracy. "Our track record will speak for itself," he said

October 15, 2004

al-Hurra

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