Congratulations to al Hurra on a rare positive development - not the surveys they are hyping claiming big, exciting new market shares, which don't impress me much for reasons I've gone into at length elsewhere, but something more tangible: actually pissing an Arab government off. Syria, to be precise. This story has been developing for a while, but it's worth taking note of it since this Index on Censorship press release came across my desk:
Al-Hurra...had planned broadcast a series of live editions of its Free Hour debate programme from Damascus, covering a range of highly controversial issues in Syria, from the Ba’ath Party, political and economic reform in Syria and democracy in the Middle East. But according to the station, after the first debate on freedom of the press on 18 April, the Syrian government pressured al-Hurra to drop certain guests from later programmes. Syria’s chief official for foreign media, Nezar Mayhoob, said the information ministry had offered all possible facilities to al-Hurra , and said its allegations of censorship were a “pretext”. He told the state news agency SANA that the station had not made the necessary preparations for their participation.
Note that the Index is playing it safe, without taking a position on the truth of al Hurra's claims, simply flagging it as a possible concern. That seems about right to me: I certainly wouldn't put it past the Syrians to try and impose heavy-handed censorship, nor would I put it past al Hurra to engage in some undeserved self-promotion. Last month, al Jazeera reported that
Syria has banned the correspondent for US-funded Arabic-language television Al-Hurra and Radio Sawa for lacking accreditation. Ammar Musara reportedly had an accreditation, but it was withdrawn "because of his coverage of an opposition sit-in in Damascus," a Syrian human rights lawyer said.
This is worth mentioning because it represents a rare exception to a criticism I have leveled against al Hurra: that regardless of how many people watch it, it has been irrelevant to Arab political debate. Al Hurra virtually never comes up in public debates, its programs are almost never referenced by others, it rarely is itself the subject of news. Regardless of what's really going on between Syria and the al Hurra office there - a question I plan to look in to - the sheer fact that the station is making news of any kind is an improvement. It isn't much, but it's something.
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