Abu Aardvark

AN Media coverage of Mubarak

Issander el-Amrani did it so I don't have to:

Al Jazeera did not seem to have a correspondent on the scene but ran footage on a split screen, with commentators reacting. The studio anchor interviewed three people (at least that I saw) in succession. Magdi Hussein, the editor of the banned Islamist newspaper Al Shaab, ranted and wailed until he had to be cut off. He was followed by George Ishaq, a Kifaya leader, who made some very matter-of-fact commentary on the election being a farce, and finally Abdallah Senawi, the editor of the Nasserist weekly Al Arabi. All of these are well-known anti-Mubarak activists. I don’t remember seeing anyone giving the party line, but perhaps I missed it. In other words, the coverage was extremely hostile to Mubarak and makes me doubt these rumors of a deal between Al Jazeera and the government that have been floating around.

Next I tuned in to Al Arabiya. They had a correspondent on site covering the speech, and after interviewed NDP bigwig Mustafa Al Fiqi, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in parliament. Although he was never going to be critical, the questions seemed pretty balanced. Still, no Mubarak critics and what you would expect from a generally pro-Egypt channel.

And finally I turned to Al Hurra. Whereas the other channels had switched to live coverage of the event — which I think was important enough to warrant it, whether coverage is positive or critical — Al Hurra was showing a documentary about Irish cooking and Guiness.

Lots of other good stuff in his post about the speech itself. 

Al-Hurra in the US?

Interesting piece touching on the politics and law of al-Hurra's not being available to view in the United States (something about which I've written fairly often):

In the Arab world, [Alvin] Snyder says, ”Alhurra's target audience ought to be those who seek information through TV satellite news channels, whoever they are, and we ought to see for ourselves how well Alhurra is doing this.”

However, Snyder says, ”It's impossible to review a television channel's programmes that you haven't seen. That's the situation with Alhurra. According to a 50-year old law, U.S. government broadcasts targeted for oversees audiences may not be broadcast domestically.... That means if you live in Peoria or Pittsburgh or anywhere else in America, the only way you can see Alhurra's news broadcasts is to come to its studios in Springfield, Virginia, near Washington, DC.”   

The law is the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which forbids domestic distribution of U.S. government media content meant for overseas audiences. .... Snyder told IPS, ”That's yet another reason Congress ought to lift the ban on domestic dissemination of U.S. broadcasts abroad -- to better inform themselves.”   ”That law was designed in and for another era, when memories were still fresh of Hitler's propaganda pounded into audiences in Nazi Germany,” he said.   As a consequence, he adds, ”Even informed Americans are kept in the dark about how our tax dollars are used to promote U.S. interests through international broadcasting.”   The result is that ”America may soon see the English-language service of the controversial Arabic channel al-Jazeera, but not Alhurra.”   Snyder called on Congress to repeal the law.

I can certainly understand the reasons for trying to prevent "blowback" - the domestic dissemination of foreign propaganda - especially given the hyper-politicized national security environment today.  But I think that this law is an anachronism.  Our propaganda abroad routinely blows back into our domestic discourse, sometimes accidentally, often intentionally as government officials attempt to control the "spin" and the domestic political impact of international events.  For that matter, think about the enormous amount of propaganda in favor of invading Iraq produced and disseminated in the American media by the American-funded Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi.   

Smith-Mundt does nothing to prevent such blowback.  In a globalized world, it's not even clear that it could. If the US puts out some propaganda about Iraq, it's immediately picked up by al-Jazeera (say), and then reported back by the global media... and everyone knows this.  That makes the law something of a farce. 

I've also been told that Smith-Mundt is one of the reasons that al-Hurra doesn't maintain a website comparable to al-Jazeera's or al-Arabiya's - which is a major weakness of al-Hurra.  Somehow this doesn't seem to stop Radio Sawa from having a content-rich web site... go figure.  I (like Snyder, and Ambassador Rugh quoted in the article) have a hard time believing that there isn't a conscious effort on the part of al-Hurra to make it as difficult as possible for Arabic speaking American experts to monitor or critique its product.    

Competing with al-Hurra and Sawa

Two interesting notes from al-Sharq al-Awsat today with regard to American Arabic-language broadcasting.

First, Sulayman al-'Aydi, director of Saudi TV channel one, complains that al-Hurra's budget is five times his budget.  Seeing as how nobody watches either one of them, this might be rephrased as "Saudi Arabia wastes one-fifth the money on official state television broadcasting as does America."  Of course, since al-'Aydi claims that al-Hurra's budget is $500 million a year (it isn't, at least not on any books that I've seen), take the whole thing with several large grains of salt. 

The first question al-Sharq al-Awsat asks al-Aydi is this:  "how do you respond to those who say that Saudi Channel One is backward compared to other satellite stations?"  How come nobody ever starts an interview with Muwafic Harb (director of al-Hurra) like that?  Instead of "is it true that you have state of the art, highly expensive studios in Northern Virginia?  How cool is that?" 

Second, al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Rotana (the leading purveyor of Arab video clips and pop music) is launching an FM radio station in Jordan.   One of the main reasons for Radio Sawa's relative success in attracting market share was that it faced no real competitors - it was just really hard to find good radio in places like Amman.  Rotana presumably will change that, giving Jordanians the option of an Arab purveyor of pop music.  It will be very interesting to see how Sawa's market numbers look a year from now - especially since those market numbers are its only claim to success. 

Maluf Rebranding America

Ramez Maluf has a "policy memo" in the new Foreign Policy (subscribers only) directed to Karen Hughes, who might someday end her vacation and start actually working at her alleged new job as America's public diplomacy czar.  I've seen better.

For example, he recommends abandoning the policy argument as unwinnable: 

"There exists in some minds the notion that the United States can improve its image by somehow 'winning the argument' over U.S. policy.  Don't buy it.  Defending American policy will always be an important element of your work, but if your office confines its activities to justifying US policies, its success will be limited and you'll burn out in no time.  This head-on approach actually restricts dialogue and cements the existing counterproductive imagery....

Don't waste your time disputing the stereotype.  Move the argument elsewhere and introduce other images.  The United States needs to change its 'brand' in the Arab world, and the focus should be on images relevant to Arabs in their own context.

It's hard to imagine worse advice.  As I've argued at length, American refusal to engage in dialogue about its unpopular policies makes its problems in the Arab world incalculably worse.  It makes many Arab elites feel that they are being treated with contempt, that their views are not taken seriously, and that American policies are formulated without regard to their concerns or interests.  "Moving the argument elsewhere" is a recipe for continuing exactly that mistaken approach, and a formula for failure.  Anyway, you'd  think that the "rebranding" argument would be a bit ashamed to show its face in public after the resounding failure of the Charlotte Beers-led "Shared Values" campaign. 

Second, Maluf recommends avoiding a pan-Arab strategy and focusing instead on local media and local concerns.  The second half is good advice:  getting people on to local television and local radio and out into the field - old style public diplomacy - is absolutely essential.  It's also expensive, labor intensive, and difficult to implement given the realities of today's State Department.   The first half is bad advice:  satellite television (whether al-Jazeera or al-Hurra) is where a lot of the action is, and that's where you have to engage the argument.   So this second broad piece of advice is a wash:  by all means work with local media, if you're willing to devote the resources to that - and you really, really should - but not at the expense of engaging with the satellite television stations that people actually watch (al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya.. not so much al-Hurra, which already has the largely ignored negative effect of sucking up a lot of the time and energy of the people who might otherwise be appearing on stations that people actually watch). 

Third, and most interestingly, Maluf recommends devoting more of al-Hurra's programming to Oprah-style talk shows:

Don't expect Alhurra to compete with Al Jazeera for evening news. Instead, Alhurra should focus on other programming, including Free Hour, the talk show hosted by television personality Ziad Noujeim and others that address controversial issues, both within the United States and the Arab world.  Recent discussions have included the role of Islam in politics, the Syrian regime, and religious education.  This talk-show format exists on other stations, but Alhurra is particularly bold in inviting people from all sides to join the debate.

Again, Maluf is right about the importance of the talk shows, but bafflingly wrong about the wider context.  I'm sure that Free Hour is a lovely show (I haven't seen it, nor read transcripts of it, since al-Hurra refuses to provide a website with such transcripts nor make its live feed available to American viewers).  But to say that it is bolder than other stations - either in its choice of topics or its choice of guests - is just laughable.  Al-Jazeera, for example, has broadcast discussions of all three the topics mentioned above in recent months.  And it isn't just al-Jazeera.  Al-Arabiya, Abu Dhabi, and many other Arabsats have outstanding talk shows.   

And you want bold? Listen to Fatima Mernissi's description of some of al-Jazeera's 'Oprah-style talk shows":

This summer, I became terribly jealous of Muntaha al-Rimhy, one of Al Jazeera's most intellectually sharp anchor women: men were talking non-stop about her all along the sandy Atlantic beaches around Casablanca I visit regularly. The reason was the talk show she devoted to probing "the reasons for the lack of sexual desire among spouses." And since the talk show's name is "For Women Only," what scared the male viewers was that only she and her three female guests were voicing opinions on this troubling phenomenon which they described as widespread and statistically alarming.

The point here is that Maluf is not wrong to recommend diversifying content, but that his description of the Arab media environment - which uncritically parrots al-Hurra talking points - is so misleading as to be actively unhelpful.  Do the talk shows, but don't think that this alone will be anything new or pathbreaking. 

Similarly, he offers an idea for a "reality TV" show that al-Hurra could do.   Again, a good idea in principle... but don't think that this will break any ground.  Arabsats are full of such reality TV shows, and they are indeed very popular:  from Star Academy and Superstar to a "Big Brother" spinoff to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to the Iraqi version of Extreme House Makeover (or whatever).  Even Haifa Wehbi, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat, is slated to do an LBC reality show set on a farm (she's going to join a bunch of others for 75 days, milking cows and living the rough life.. almost enough to make me get a subscription to LBC!).  In other words, doing reality TV on al-Hurra might attract viewers if it's a good product - but not simply by virtue of being some kind of innovation. 

Finally, he recommends offering hard hitting coverage of American politics.  This is an excellent suggestion, one I've made previously.  The only problem, of course, is that this is a government-owned and operated station, answerable to Congress.  Remember all the fuss a few weeks ago about Norman Pattiz and Ken Tomlinson?  Now imagine if al-Hurra had aired Farenheit 9/11 (as Maluf suggests) shortly before the presidential election. It would have been good for the station's credibility, but heads would no doubt have rolled. 

Bottom line:  this isn't the policy memo that Karen Hughes should be reading about how to reform public diplomacy, if she only gets to read one. 

Egypt media market survey

The BBC World Service has released a survey of the Egyptian media market, conducted in December 2004.  No real surprises, but here's the main findings:

*"The gap between TV watching and radio listening has widened - 89 per cent of respondents said they watched television daily, compared with 79 per cent in 2003. For radio, only 50 per cent listen to it on a daily basis, down from 62 per cent in 2003."   

* The survey also found that Radio Sawa's "weekly reach" had increased from 7% to 11%.  For perspective, "Listeners said they were most interested in religious programming: 58 per cent of respondents said that they listened to Holy Koran Radio."

*"The cable/satellite TV market continues to grow, with 28 per cent having access in their own homes, compared with 16 per cent in 2003. This growth is seen as eating into the radio market. Al-Jazeera's weekly reach has grown from 15 per cent in 2003 to 28 per cent. This far exceeds that of any other international TV broadcaster.  CNN, for example, has a weekly reach of 3 per cent.  The domestic state broadcaster, ERTU, scores highly for trust, objectivity and relevance with its nearest competitor being Al-Jazeera. However, ERTU registered a slight decline in trustworthiness while Al-Jazeera's ratings improved in all three categories."

The survey either did not ask about al-Hurra, or else al-Hurra did not show up enough to merit mention.

Oh Joe, Let Him Go!

This is just wrong, on so many levels.  From today's Times (thanks, JG): 

Opening a new battle with the White House, Senate Democrats on Wednesday abruptly blocked the approval of President Bush's nominee for a top public diplomacy job, charging that the administration had injected partisan politics into the drive to improve the United States' image overseas.

The nominee, Dina Powell, the White House personnel director, had been expected to win broad approval to become deputy under secretary of state for public diplomacy, to be the second-in-command to Karen P. Hughes in charge of repairing the United States' reputation, especially in the Muslim world.  But in what was to have been a routine meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the panel's ranking Democrat, objected to the approval of Ms. Powell, and her nomination was set aside....

Democrats said Mr. Biden acted because the White House was trying to remove a major figure from the board that oversees American international broadcasting efforts, particularly the Arabic and Persian language radio and television networks aimed at countering the anti-American programming on Al Jazeera and other networks.

The board member is Norman J. Pattiz, a Los Angeles radio executive and Democratic contributor who was first appointed to the board by President Bill Clinton in 2000. His name was sent for reappointment by the Democratic leadership more than a year ago, but the White House has not forwarded it for approval. Mr. Pattiz has directed the start-up of the American networks in the Middle East, principally the television network Al Hurra and Radio Sawa. 

"Norm Pattiz has been the driving force behind our most successful public diplomacy undertakings since 9/11," Mr. Biden said in a statement. "Radio Sawa and Al Hurra TV are attracting significant audiences in the Middle East." Mr. Biden said the administration, which has taken credit for the two networks, was being "short-sighted and doing the country a disservice" by refusing to reappoint Mr. Pattiz to the board.

....

[Pattiz] has continued to oversee the Middle East broadcasts, but Democrats charge that the White House is uneasy about an active Democrat running such a delicate area. Only last week, he had a fund-raising dinner in his Beverly Hills home featuring Senators Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

"When I called the White House and asked why my name wasn't sent forward, they said that it was under review," Mr. Pattiz said. "It was under review because my name had appeared in a Kerry campaign ad last year. That's the explanation I got."

What can I say?  Joe Biden is correct that Norm Pattiz is the driving force behind Radio Sawa and al-Hurra, but that's the problem with him, not a reason to defend him.   Al-Hurra, in my opinion, has been a terrible failure, a white elephant which has sucked up resources while having no discernible impact on Arab public opinion.  I was quite happy when I heard the rumour a few months ago that Pattiz was on his way out.  But I want him out because people recognize al-Hurra's failings and are ready to change course, not because he's a Democrat. 

Everyone looks terrible here:  Tomlinson for politicizing public broadcasting, the Bush administration for carrying out a political purge, Pattiz for over-zealously pushing a failed venture, Biden for blocking Dina Powell and for defending Pattiz... 

Makes me glad that I don't live in Washington. 

Al-Hurra cartoon

Cartoon in this week's edition of al-Sabeel, the Islamist weekly in Jordan.

The images are self-explanatory - the American soldier is replacing his clip of bullets with a clip labelled "al-Hurra", while an ordinary Arab family is "banned."  Not sure what prompted the cartoon, or if it is trying to say anything more than "al-Hurra is an American weapon" (with which even al-Hurra's producers would probably agree).  I reproduce it here only because it's a striking image, and because it's so rare that al-Hurra is even mentioned in the Arab press that it seemed worth highlighting. 

Brown: Fixing al-Hurra

John Brown, a retired State Department professional, has a good piece up proposing some practical ways to improve al-Hurra.  I agree with most of his recommendations, perhaps unsurprisingly (I've worked informally with a number of people in this public diplomacy network, and contributed a chapter to a volume published by the Public Diplomacy Institute). 

His diagnosis of what's wrong with al-Hurra are familiar:

"Its focus has been to win audience share in perceived Middle East "media wars" by aiming for slick commercial television -- by trying, if you will, to out-Aljazeera Aljazeera, the Qatar-based satellite broadcaster that is by far the most popular in the area and the one that has been compared to Fox News. Privately, Alhurra staff boasts about the attractiveness of its female news presenters as one of its strong points.

I'll just pass over that last sentence without comment, other than to say good luck if that's how you want to compete with al-Jazeera. 

Brown begins with the premise that whatever al-Hurra's problems - which are legion - it makes no sense to just kill it now given that we've already paid to get it up and running (I said much the same thing to Lindsey Wise in the TBS Journal).    Still,

Its purpose needs complete rethinking, including consideration of the extent to which the U.S. government should be involved in television broadcasting in the first place. The value of "winning" audience share -- rather than informing opinion makers -- should be reexamined... . And the question arises: Shouldn't scarce resources go to supporting local independent media (through, for example, grants and training programs), rather than for expensive broadcasting facilities based in the United States?

He then offers these eminently practical solutions:

• Focus on C-Span-type programming relevant to Middle East audiences. To be sure, such "unexciting" programming would not be as audience-grabbing as, for example, the scandal-mongering local show aired on Iraq's U.S.-funded al-Iraqiya channel, "Terrorists in the Hands of Justice." (This program is criticized for violating the Geneva Conventions). With more low-key, unfiltered information programs, however, Alhurra would be seen as a reliable and objective outlet -- especially in times of crisis -- about what the U.S. government really thinks and does. Alhurra's live continuous coverage of the Congressional Hearings regarding the Abu Ghraib photos is a fine example of this.
• Air in-depth documentaries on serious, relevant issues produced by local filmmakers. A priority theme should be the historical links between the United States and Arab countries. Such documentaries are all too few; funds should be made available to produce them.
• Create an effective website. Alhurra's current site at http://www.Alhurra.com/ consists of only one page, an almost offensively simple listing of its programs in English and Arabic. Given the increased importance of the Internet in the Middle East, especially among young people, the site should be far more detailed and user-friendly, providing up-to-the-minute news and links. It should be interactive, with streaming video and audio. It should contain an archive, always a valuable resource for scholars and researchers.
• Establish a legal mechanism that would allow Alhurra to be seen more widely in the United States, making it possible for interested laypersons and specialists to view its programs easily and thus be better able to critique it constructively.

I've made most of those recommendations at one point or another, but it's good to see them laid out so clearly and effectively by an experienced ex-diplomat. 

Al-Hurra in Der Spiegel

Wow!  The United States created an Arabic language satellite television station - who knew?  Did you know that its offices are located in Virginia?  That it has state of the art studios?  Fascinating! 

Der Spiegel, as translated in the New York Times, runs a breathless piece that proceeds as if nothing has ever been written about al-Hurra before.   My first response to it was quite snarky, as in the opening paragraph above.  But I may have been too hasty.  Buried within the fluff there are actually some nicely revealing points.

For example, the article finally offer us some metrics for evaluating the success of the station in its core mission:   "Al-Hurra is doing very well -- the station is clearly being pampered by its financial backers."   Because nothing spells success quite like this:  "waiting rooms are filled with designer furniture, there are new flat-screen monitors on the walls, the computers are all state-of-the-art -- and all of this without advertising."  And, as the 9/11 Commission Report pointed out, there are few things more urgent for America today than designer furniture and new flat-screen monitors.   

Because other than that, the story's got nothing on that minor question of "success":   "How successful is the most expensive PR campaign since the end of the Cold War? "We do our part," claims Harb."  With 20 million viewers, he claims! (By comparison, al-Jazeera generally claims 35 million;  almost all market surveys, including those by the BBG, show al-Jazeera with a massive advantage, with which even Norm Pattiz and Muwafiq Harb now say that they can't hope to compete;  so 20 million hardly adds up.  My guess is that "20 million" was just a nice, big, impressive sounding number that he pulled out of the air.)

It also has an interesting bit on the question of whether al-Hurra is American propaganda or a real news organization. Early in the article, we get this: "A propaganda station? Nonsense, [Harb] says indignantly. "We are funded by the government, but I have never received any instructions, not from anyone."   But then later in the story, we get this:

"Even the station's confident director [Muwafic Harb] admits that Al-Hurra's underlying tone is consistently friendly to the Bush administration. For example, its 50 staff members in Iraq have been instructed to be on the lookout for signs of improvement. "If the power comes back on in a part of the city, we see this as being more newsworthy than reporting that the power is out someplace else," says one employee."

Nice to hear Harb admit that al-Hurra really is Fox News in Arabic, even if nobody actually "told" him to do that.   

In the last paragraph, conservative al-Hayat columnist and frequent al-Hurra guest Salameh Nematt is quoted saying something I've heard him say in private but not seen him quoted in public on previously:

"People have no confidence in Al-Hurra," says Salameh Nematt, who works for Arab newspaper Al-Hayat and is a regular on a round table talk show at Al-Hurra. Nematt recommends aggressive reporting on the Middle East's dictatorships: "As soon as the first correspondents are thrown out of Egypt and Saudi Arabia," he says, "people will begin to trust Al-Hurra."

I agree with Nematt on this point, and it's one that I've made myself many times.  It will obviously take more than one "throwing out" to win over trust, but it would be a start. 

CFR Anti-Americanism

The Council on Foreign Relations has released the findings of a series of focus groups in a number of Islamic countries about their views of America.   No real surprises - those views are harshly negative:

Anti-American anger in Islamic countries continues to spread across age and economic groups, according to a new survey of Muslim elites.

But the survey of focus groups, carried out for the Council on Foreign Relations, also concluded that hostility could be softened if the U.S. administration adopted a humbler tone, listened more closely to Muslim concerns, drew sharper attention to U.S. aid programs, including assistance to tsunami victims, and agreed to disagree on key issues, such as Iraq and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Many Muslims are so alienated that they claim they would not like to visit the United States, nor would they mind if the United States withdrew - politically, economically and militarily - from the Muslim world," said the report, "A New Beginning," written by Craig Charney and Nicole Yakatan of Charney Research.

"The most striking finding in this study is how widely anger has spread across the different demographic groups and countries," the report said.
...
The group members "do not hate America's freedom and wealth; they envy them," the report said. "They do not project repressed rage at their governments onto ours; their views of America have worsened while their attitudes toward their own rulers have improved.

"It is more accurate to say they hate America for what the country has done, but it is most accurate to say they are hostile to American policies as they perceive them."

  ....  US government-sponsored media like Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra TV have proven singularly ineffective, the survey found, even if viewers also had doubts about Muslim media such as Al Jazeera.  The researchers recommended intensive efforts to work with the Muslim media, both local and international..."We recommend a full-court press on all Muslim media... Crisis management is not enough.  We need a sustained effort.".

I saw the preliminary draft of this report a while ago, but couldn't comment on it then.  Now I'm too busy to say anything much other than to point out its release.  But you can see what I think here, since the report largely endorses most of its argument.

UPDATE:  an industrious reader who actually read the report asks why I'm so impressed with it.  Short answer, excerpted from from my email:   

I'm not, especially - I generally think that focus group approaches stink... way too prone to selection bias, peer pressure, and asking stupid questions like "if America were an animal, what would it be?"  I got an advance copy [for undisclosed reasons] and used up all my scoffing back then...  not at the researchers, who did the best they could, but at the method itself, of which I'm not fond.

Still, it's good to see multiple data points which reinforce each other - when the focus groups get the same results as the public opinion surveys and discourse analysis and etcetera, that increases confidence in the findings.  And it's also nice to see such a project arrive at policy advice which is virtually identical to what I wrote several years ago, without the benefits of asking people what kind of animal America would be, were America an animal...