Alhurra – the Arab language TV station and America’s most costly public diplomacy boondongle – has been regularly slagged off, but this superb report from Pro Publica patches all the criticism together into a damning indictment.
Here was the promise – in George Bush’s 2004 State of the Union:
As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friend. To cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda, the Voice of America and other broadcast services are expanding their programming in Arabic and Persian — and soon, a new television service will begin providing reliable news and information across the region.
And here’s the reality:
- Half a billion dollars spent for an audience share of around 2% (about the same as Hezbollah’s TV station – which is run on a shoestring).
- Can’t document its expenditure to the satisfaction of its auditors.
- Run by a President who doesn’t speak Arabic, who is “is unable to understand anything broadcast on the radio and television networks he is paid to manage,” and who sits through editorial meetings without being provided with translation.
- Based in Springfield, Virginia, where it employs “an untrained, largely foreign staff with little knowledge of the country whose values and policies they were hired to promote.” (Yes, the Simpsons is set in Springfield. No, it’s not the same one. Yes, it might as well be.)
- Regularly slags off the US and supports the policies of its enemies. Describes Israel as waging a holocaust against the Palestinians.
- Promised to fire a reporter who “told viewers that Jews had provided no scientific evidence of the Holocaust” but didn’t.
- Believed by the US’s (former) top public diplomacy official in the Middle East to be stocked “with radical Shi’a Islamists who favored their political brethren and discriminated against and intimidated members of other parties … especially during the Iraqi electoral season.”
- Found by the State Department’s Inspector General to have had a hiring process that “may have been marred by favoritism toward Lebanese candidates or candidates of Lebanese ancestry.” Put a Lebanese hairdresser on a $100k salary to do the news anchors’ hair.
- Paid guests $150-1500 dollars for a single appearance – even if they were from Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
- Doesn’t even cover the United States as well or in as much depth as Al Jazeera.
Read the whole thing and weep.
