The BBC will be providing 45 hours of "news, current affairs, and historical" content to al-Hurra Iraq, the American government owned and operated Arabic language television station. Only noted because it will be fun to see if there's any reaction from those who have ranted on about the "BBC's anti-American crusade" and the BBC's "frothing at the mouth anti-American bias". What will they make of the American-financed station using BBC "news, current affairs, and historical" content: will their heads spin around and explode? Is al-Hurra also anti-American? What will Ken Tomlinson do about this outrage?
And there's probably _marxists_ in there too!
Posted by: Nur al-Cubicle | August 16, 2005 at 09:33 PM
Part of this deal seems to involve flogging old current affairs programmes. The report mentions Correspondent and This World, but This World is essentially Correspondent under a new name, and anything made under the name Correspondent will be (IIRC) at least a year old.
I wonder if the Beeb is still planning to launch its own Arabic television channel. And, just to make this even more incestuous, we mustn't forget that some of Al-Jazeera's founders came from the original BBC Arabic channel that was closed because its Saudi partners didn't take kindly to criticism of the Saudi government...
Posted by: David | August 17, 2005 at 06:21 AM