Old Habits Die Hard at “Al-Hurra”

By Patrick Lang (bio below)

“The Broadcasting Board of Governors, a federal agency, has asked the state department’s inspector general to investigate, a spokesman for Karen Hughes, under-secretary for public diplomacy, told the Financial Times. Mrs Hughes, a board member, was aware of allegations and awaited the findings, he said.

The House of Representatives subcommittee on oversight and investigations is also looking into al-Hurra, which started broadcasting in February 2004. A hearing has been set for November 10 with Kenneth Tomlinson, BBG chairman, and Mouafac Harb, the news director of al-Hurra, called as witnesses.” FT

“Al-Hurra” TV is an expensive exercise in propaganda aimed at the Arab World. It was created as a reflexive response to the Bush Administration’s unhappy realization that most people in the Arab World don’t like the United States anymore and especially don’t like the policies of the Bush Administration with regard to the Arab World. It has a “sister” radio propaganda outlet (“Sawa Radio”) Both are the property of the US Government, are fully funded with taxpayer money (either tax receipts or just plain old deficit “fiat” money).

Both of these outlets are largely the work of Mouafac Harb, a Lebanese American journalist of neocon inclination and loyalty who built these TV and Radio outlets from nothing. Kenneth Tomlinson is a long time ally of his. Tomlinson has been a leader in the work of “disciplining” the publicly financed media into positions of support for the administration’s policies and exclusion of dissenting opinion.

Now they have problems with the State Department’s Inspector General and a Republican-controlled committee of the House of Representatives over the same kind of issues of cronyism and corruption that have be-deviled other parts of the Bush Administration.

Many knowledgeable Arabs have told me that they think that “Al-Hurra” has hired so many right wing Lebanese Christians that its editorial “slant” is one that is largely isolated from mainstream thinking in the Arab and Islamic Worlds, just as these employees are isolated in their thinking from the majority of Arabs. What will the result of these inquiries be?

Who knows what may happen in this environment, but if the Bush Administration wants effective information operations, they had better “clean house” at “Al-Hurrah” and “Sawa.”

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Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”.

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“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
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