Coming Soon to Arab TV's: U.S.

[durutti]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/international/middleeast/17NETW.html?pagewanted=print&position=

SPRINGFIELD, Va. — The United States' next great hope for winning Arab hearts and minds hides in a squat two-story building in a generic industrial park here, just off I-95. The only hint of what may lie within is the black-tape lettering on the front door that reads "News."

Inside, construction crews are working seven days a week to complete studios for the most ambitious United States government-sponsored international media project since the Voice of America began broadcasting in 1942.

It is to be called Al Hurra, a slickly produced Arab-language news and entertainment network that will be beamed by satellite from this Washington suburb to the Middle East. The name translates to English as "The Free One."

Al Hurra is meant to be America's "fair and balanced" pan-Arab answer to outlets like Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite network that White House officials accuse of fanning anti-Americanism in the Persian Gulf region.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. HAH! The free market forces are good enuf for OUR media!

[tom_paine]

2. This article is ironic in the extreme

Considering in Imperial Amerika, differentiating between news and opinion is exceedingly difficult in that personal opinion now permeates "news"

So many of the criticisms of this Arab Imperial Pravda could be directly applied to the Imperial Amerikan Party-Loyal Right-Wing Sub-Media and the Corproate TV Pravda that weakly dances to it's siren's song.

Very funny. So the Arabs are going to get "Jounralism 101" taugh to them by the Busheviks? Very ironic, almost Orwellian.

[RPG-7]

3. That translates quite neatly into russian!

Pravda!

[Ernesto]

4. "Thanks for the insult" is what I'd say if I were an Arab.

Just how stupid do they think the Iraqi people are? After what these folks have lived through, it is very hard to imagine them to be as gullible as 'Merican freepers who seem to believe any screwy thing their pResident says......... I like that "slickly produced" line. It reminds me of the term "crack ARVN troops" used in a previous quagmire... What bullshit!