New York Times
March 15, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation
By FRANK H. STEWART
Jerusalem
LAST summer, the Archbishop of Algeria remarked to this newspaper that when satellite dishes first appeared in Algeria, they were typically positioned to receive French broadcasts. Now the majority receive programming from the Persian Gulf.
“If you watch Western television, you live in one universe,” said the archbishop, “and if you watch Middle Eastern television, you live in another altogether.” The Middle Eastern broadcasts, he added, tended to depict the West in a negative light.
Washington is well aware of this problem and has tried to address it. In 2004, the United States established its own Arabic-language satellite television station, Al Hurra. But Al Hurra has not been a success, and stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya, based in the Gulf states, continue to dominate the region.
Those stations will soon face a formidable rival. The BBC World Service plans to start an Arabic television service this fall, and the BBC knows what it is doing. It has been broadcasting in Arabic on the radio for more than 60 years and has a huge audience.
This new television station might sound like good news for America. Many of us pick up BBC broadcasts in English, and we respect their quality. But the World Service in English is one thing, and the World Service in Arabic is another entirely. If the BBC’s Arabic TV programs resemble its radio programs, then they will be just as anti-Western as anything that comes out of the Gulf, if not more so. They will serve to increase, rather than to diminish, tensions, hostilities and misunderstandings among nations.
For example, a 50-minute BBC Arabic Service discussion program about torture discussed only one specific allegation, which came from the head of an organization representing some 90 Saudis imprisoned at Guantánamo. This speaker stated that the prisoners were subject to disgusting and horrible forms of torture and suggested that three inmates reported by the United States to have committed suicide were actually killed. Another participant insisted that the two countries guilty of torturing political prisoners on the largest scale were Israel and the United States.
At the same time, the authoritarian regimes and armed militants of the Arab world get sympathetic treatment on BBC Arabic. When Saddam Hussein was in power, he was a great favorite of the service, which reported as straight news his re-election to a seven-year term in 2002, when he got 100 percent of the vote. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria enjoys similar favor. When a State Department representative referred to Syria as a dictatorship, his BBC interviewer immediately interrupted and reprimanded him. [Ed. Bashar owns an iPod!]
The Arabic Service not only shields Arab leaders from criticism but also tends to avoid topics they might find embarrassing: human rights, the role of military and security forces, corruption, discrimination against minorities, censorship, poverty and unemployment. When, from time to time, such topics do arise, they are usually dealt with in the most general terms: there may, for instance, be guarded references to “certain Arab countries.”
By contrast, the words and deeds of Western leaders, particularly the American president and the British prime minister, are subject to minute analysis, generally on the assumption that behind them lies a hidden and disreputable agenda. Last summer, when the British arrested two dozen people alleged to have been plotting to blow up airplanes crossing the Atlantic, a BBC presenter centered a discussion on the theory that these arrests had taken place because Tony Blair, embarrassed by opposition to Britain’s role in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, wanted to distract the public while at the same time associating Muslims with terrorism.
The British are among our closest and most reliable allies, and it is strange that their government pays for these broadcasts, many of which are produced in Cairo rather than in London. If the BBC models its Arabic television service on its Arabic radio service, yet another anti-Western, antidemocratic channel will find its place on the Arab screen.
Frank H. Stewart is a professor in the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting scholar
at New York University.
UPDATE: Micks Drub Pakis (at something called “cricket”; h/t furriskey)
It’s hard to imagine the BBC making things any worse over there, media-wise. I say let’s let British taxpayers subsidize an audience culled in part from stations like al-Jazeera that will in turn have fewer eyeballs to sell their advertisers. In turn, the adventures of BBC Arabic will only serve to empower more general anti-BBC sentiment back home.
In truth I guess, though – if BBC Arabic is successful in building an audience culled from commercial media, the remaining viewers will then become more valuable, and Al-Jazeera might expect to find it easier to command higher ad rates.
Maybe we could hire the bright lights behind the 1/2 Hour News Hour to punch up America’s Arabic news channel?
Is this commenter anything other what a waste of bandwidth, Ric’s arguement about keeping everyone focused on their A-game notwithstanding?
Seriously.
I try to be nice and that’s the thanks I get, cranky?
But Al Hurra has not been a success…
Al Hurra costs American taxpayers over $100 million a year to run.
Maybe the next time we set up a TV channel to appeal to Arabs, we could actually hire some Arabs to run it instead of neocon think tank members?
Just a thought.
I’m guessing you mean Clinton appointee and successful broadcasting executive Norman Pattiz. The same Norman Patiz who founded one of the most successful radio networks in America? Am I right?
Nice Jew-baiting there, alphie.
Jew-baiting, Sean?
That wasn’t my intention.
Are you saying Norm Pattiz, the guy Bush hired to set up a TV network that appeals to the Arab world is Jewish?
Talk about Arab street cred.
Sounds like a great idea for an episode of Larry David’s Curb.
Are you under the delusion Bush was making appointments back in 2000?
Personally, my dream as a boy was to play third base and to bat cleanup for a major league cricket team. I could never clear the fence using one of them flat bats, though.
And they don’t make a Cal Ripken autograph model cricket glove.
I gasp in horror when I reflect that Churchill didn’t open the microphones of the Beeb to Lord Haw-Haw. How much more enlightened is today’s UK.
Right, because what we really need in Arabic programming is more of this:
Since November, Larry Register, whose last gig was as a producer at the neocon think tank CNN where he has worked for almost 20 years, has been the news director at Al-Hurra.
Norm Pattiz was appointed to the 9 member Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversees all government nonmilitary international broadcasting services by President Clinton in 2000. He served in that capacity until last year and was a member during the inception and launching of Al-Hurra in 2004. Mr Pattiz, another neocon like Mr Register, masks his neocon agenda by posing as a well respected democrat, active in the party, and was an advisor to former neocon President Clinton. Mr Pattiz resigned from the Broadcasting Board of Governors last year and before the hiring of Mr Register.
Mr Register of CNN, who does not speak arabic, replaced Mouafac Harb, a Lebanese-born American citizen who does speak arabic, who was news director of Al-Hurra during the tenure of Mr Pattiz.
Mr Register is currently embroiled in a controversy over signing off on live broadcasting speeches by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya that called for violence against both Israel and the United States.
JPT–
If you don’t have a blog, you ought to consider getting one.
I’ve tended bar in the past, Dan. I found I can’t suffer fools in good humor, which is a prerequisite.
Maybe if you want, like, traffic. But torturing the odd stray fool is quite fun. Just ask Andrea Harris.
McGehee,
Was there something at that link that I missed, or am I merely dense?
Exactly. So I would rapidly go under either being an owner/bartender or an owner/ blogger.
Continuing the analogy, with no disrespect intended to the proprietor, blogs of the type in question are virtual versions of the sports bar, with political issues rather than the favored team’s prospects the usual topics under discussion. As the proprietor, I would be inclined to immediately eject the real world avatar of the virtual alphie marching around mindlessly banging on a pot in order to drown out conversation. As I’d very likely do so precipitously, though they would undoubtedly approve of the ends the other patrons might be put off by the means.
Well, Andrea used to be legendary for not suffering fools, but liking to make fools suffer for the entertainment of her readers.
She may have already long since devoured any unlucky enough to intrude upon her turf.
Oh, Andrea’s still eviscerating numbskulls as Tim Blair’s website administrator. And yes, she still plays with trolls the way a cat plays with a mouse…
BBC “servicing” arabs…Hmmm, Arab man love…hmmm
Jew-baiting, Sean?
That wasn’t my intention.
Are you saying Norm Pattiz, the guy Bush hired to set up a TV network that appeals to the Arab world is Jewish?
Talk about Arab street cred.
Sounds like a great idea for an episode of Larry David’s Curb.
Congratualtions then Alphie, if you were telling the truth; you made the bonus.
As for Arab street cred, are you suggesting that the US government should conduct racial/religious profiling when hiring? Fascist.