US's Arabic Language News Station Misses Big Regional Story

[BurtWorm]

From Abu Aardvark:

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/11/meanwhile_on_al.html

MEANWHILE: I've often heard that America's expensive Arabic language TV station al-Hurra would cover democratic elections and reform issues, which the rest of the existing Arab media was supposedly ignoring (the first part of that seems like a good enough use of the station if it's going to exist, even if the second part has just always been wrong). Well, most of the Arab media including al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya has the Bahraini elections at or near the top of its news agenda. What about al-Hurra? I don't know how al-Hurra is covering the Bahraini elections on the air, since it still offers no feed available here in the US, so I only have this selection of "top stories" on its website to go by (if anybody is actually watching it today and sees some in-depth election coverage, drop me a line). According to its website, these are al-Hurra's top five stories right now (1:45 Saturday afternoon - it probably will change throughout the day, I'd hope):



* Khalid Mishal threatens a renewed intifada
* Harith al-Dhari calls for Arab states to withdraw recognition from the Iraqi government
* George Bush's Thanksgiving radio address thanked American troops for their sacrifices
* Veiled Egyptian students protest in Alexandria
* American troops kill 22 armed insurgents north of Baghdad

Too bad there was no room for Bahrain's elections in the top five stories of the day. What, oh what, could have possibly been cut to make room for it? Hey, maybe we could play "one of these things is not like the others, one of these things does not belong" and figure it out?

[leveymg]

1. PBS always carries Bush's speeches. No guarantee of real news

It's become quite blatant.