The Alhurra television channel is an American foreign policy tool, and Joaquin Blaya, one of four members of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors who oversee the channel, makes no bones about it.
"Yes, it is part of our public diplomacy. Alhurra today has a budget of $126m a year. We don't carry any advertising. We are subsidised by the American taxpayer. The American taxpayer is not paying for entertainment for people living in the Middle East. They are paying for the promotion of freedom and democracy, through news and information," he says.
Alhurra, for non-Arab readers unfamiliar with it, is a television channel that broadcasts mainly from America across 22 countries in the Middle East region. According to Blaya, it has a weekly audience of 27 million people, and is watched in, for example, 55 percent of Iraq homes, 55 percent of Syrian homes, 30 percent of Oman homes, and 27 percent of Moroccan homes.
...In May, 2007, Blaya was summoned to testify to a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The hearing was prompted by revelations that, on several occasions, Alhurra had broadcast messages against American interests, including "a 68-minute call to arms against Israelis by a senior figure of Hezbollah; deferential coverage of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference; and a factually flawed piece on a splinter group of Orthodox Jews who oppose the state of Israel."
According to ABC News, Blaya told the hearing that important decisions regarding Alhurra's output were being left in the hands of "reporters and producers who are hastily hired Arabic-speaking journalists with insufficient understanding of Western journalistic practices or the network's pro-Western mission." [meaning, obviously, pro-ISRAELI mission - ed.]
Read more @ arabianbusiness.com
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