The Free One

Recently the US government’s Arabic language broadcasting network “Al Hurra” (The Free One) has come under fire for wasting the $600 mm spent since 2004 and for some of its content. Al Hurra was established by the US government in 2004 to provide an alternative to Arabic language satellite channels that were perceived to be providing a distorted picture of America to their viewers. Actually the problem wasn’t that Al Arabyia, Al Jazeera etc. were providing a distorted view, but that they were showing reality. Rather than showing a sanitized view of war from the perspective of the military, they provided the perspective of the civilian populations impacted by war.
They showed the blood flowing in the streets of Baghdad during the early phase of the Iraq invasion. They showed the body parts of Lebanese children blown apart by Israeli bombs during the 2006 war. They not only showed Israeli houses in Sderot blown up by Hamas launched missiles, but also starving children in Gaza after the Israeli blockade.
Some people have concluded that the US Pentagon was so enraged by the coverage of the Iraq invasion that they bombed the Al Jazeera headquarters in Baghdad killing several correspondents. (The documentary film “Control Room” provides a compelling narrative of Al Jazeera in Iraq.)
Under Secretary of State James Glassman said the goal of Al Hurra was to show the people of 22 Middle Eastern countries “what a free press is like”. Actually Al Hurra is not “free press”, but state controlled press. As in Iran, there are “red lines” that they cannot cross without risking being shut down.
A news director was forced to resign after airing a speech by Hasan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah. Congress has threatened to cut off funding because the Al Hurra has allowed a talk show guest to express a negative view of Israel’s behavior and has covered a conference in Tehran of Holocaust deniers.
I asked a friend of mine who spent his diplomatic career with the US Information Agency specializing in public diplomacy what he thought of Al Hurra. His comments were that projects like this are “Keystone cops, they don’t work and are a waste of money”.
A young Middle Easterner who I talked to would agree with him. This young man said to me “I love the American music, but when the politics comes on, I turn it off.”