WSJ: “Al-Hurra more like al-Jazeera”

With the arrival of a CNN producer to run Al Hurra, the US-funded Arabic-language satellite TV channel has become “more like Al Jazeera,” Joel Mowbray writes in the Wall Street Journal. Founded in 2004 to counter enemy propaganda and provide a good face for the US and its causes, Al Hurra has worked hard to build credibility as an objective and reliable news source.

Word is that, rather than investigate the serious allegations, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes attacked them. If true, that would be consistent with her office’s response to warnings from friends of the administration.

After coming aboard late in 2006, Al Hurra chief Larry Register, long of CNN, “lifted the ban on terrorists” appearing on Al Hurra and quickly allowed the broadcast, nearly in full, of a speech by Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, according to Mowbray.

“The cultural shift inside the newsroom is evident in the on-air product. In the past several months, Al-Hurra has aired live speeches from Mr. Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, and it broadcast an interview with an alleged al Qaeda operative who expressed joy that 9/11 rubbed ‘America’s nose in the dust,'” Mowbray writes.

“While a handful of unfortunate decisions could be isolated, these actions appear to be part of Mr. Register’s news vision,” according to Mowbray, who adds that Register doesn’t speak Arabic, so he has no idea of what is guests are saying. Many on the Al Hurra staff reportedly delighted to allow terrorists to spew their propaganda on US-funded TV into the Arabic-speaking world.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which runs Al Hurra and the rest of US government international boradcasting, is out of control. It has destroyed programming that would mount an ideological attack on Islamist extremism; it terminated broadcasting to much of the rest of the world, including VOA’s Russia service; and recycles Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) propaganda back into Iran on Radio Farda.

Even Norman Pattiz, the former BBG member who dumbed down international broadcasting and replaced it with popular culture, is discontented with Al Hurra’s new direction. He says in the Mowbray piece, “Simply handing a microphone over to a terrorist and letting them spew is not what I would call good journalism.”

Update: We hear that the Mowbray report sent Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes, who is responsible for public diplomacy and international broadcasting, into a bit of a dither. Rather than investigate the problem, our sources say she went on a kill-the-messenger mission, convening aides to refute the report. Another reason why she has been unable to drag public diplomacy out of its hole.