Mid-East Media War
Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post has written a revealing two-part series on the Mid-East media campaigns of the U.S. government and al-Qaeda. It's fascinating to compare the campaigns' structures and their results.
The centerpiece of Washington's campaign is the Arabic-language TV network al-Hurra, which Whitlock describes in "U.S. Network Falters in Mideast Mission." Al-Hurra is a bureaucratic system plagued by inefficiencies and mistakes.
Since its inception, al-Hurra has been plagued by mediocre programming, congressional interference and a succession of executives who either had little experience in television or could not speak Arabic, according to interviews with former staffers, other Arab journalists and viewers in the Middle East.
It has also been embarrassed by journalistic blunders. One news anchor greeted the station's predominantly Muslim audience on Easter by declaring, "Jesus is risen today!" After al-Hurra covered a December 2006 Holocaust-denial conference in Iran and aired, unedited, an hour-long speech by the leader of Hezbollah, Congress convened hearings and threatened to cut the station's budget.
In part two of Whitlock's series, "Al-Qaeda's Growing Online Offensive," he outlines al-Qaeda's propaganda distribution network, which is decentralized and alarmingly effective.
Every three or four days, on average, a new video or audio from one of al-Qaeda's commanders is released online by as-Sahab, the terrorist network's in-house propaganda studio. Even as its masters dodge a global manhunt, as-Sahab produces documentary-quality films, iPod files and cellphone videos. Last year it released 97 original videos, a sixfold increase from 2005.
For more on al-Hurra, see ProPublica's first big story, "Lost in Translation: Alhurra—America’s Troubled Effort to Win Middle East Hearts and Minds," written by Dafna Linzer and jointly produced with CBS and 60 Minutes.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/22/AR2008062201228.html
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062302135.html
http://www.propublica.org/feature/alhurra-middle-east-hearts-and-minds-622