You may have missed this, but the Washington Post has recently covered the fact that our tax-dollar funded, theoretically American-propaganda-oriented Arabic-language news station, Al Hurra, has been broadcasting all sorts of fundamentalist rantings and ravings.
From Joel Mowbray's opinion piece in the Post:
Al-Hurra was intended to cut through the anti-West and anti-U.S. propaganda that permeates even mainstream Arab media. Stories in that vein no longer see significant airtime, and nowhere is this more apparent than Al-Hurra's new approach to the Holocaust--the treatment of which in Arab society embodies so much that is wrong in that critical region of the Muslim world.
It is precisely because of Arab society's persistent refusal to accept the existence of such a defining--and indisputable--event in modern history that Al-Hurra dared to do things Al-Jazeera would never fathom, such as interviewing Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and airing the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But that was under Mr. Register's predecessor, a Lebanese-born Muslim named Mouafac Harb.
Under Mr. Register, Al-Hurra covered the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran last December. But in a stark break from Mr. Harb's era, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the attendees at his conference were treated with unmistakable deference.
Al-Hurra's Dec. 12 report on the gathering included David Duke's praise for Mr. Ahmadinejad, and it took at face value the organizers' demand for Israel "to provide proof and evidence that certifies the occurrence" of the Holocaust. An official running the event was afforded the opportunity to show the open-mindedness of Holocaust deniers: "If we actually conclude with our experts through this meeting that the Holocaust is a real incident we will at that time admit its presence." (Transcript provided by a fluent Arabic-speaking U.S. government employee.)
Also broadcast unchallenged were the remarks of the infamous French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, who informed Arab viewers: "Gas chambers and mass killings of the Jews, in the way that it is pretended (by the Jews), is completely untrue, and an historical lie."
Al Hurra also broadcast all of an hour-long speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Yes, that's the Hezbollah that we've classed as a terrorist group.
Should it seem peculiar that new Al Hurra programming director Larry Register would do such a thing, consider the fact that he speaks no Arabic. In fact, most of the upper echelon folks currently overseeing the channel speak no Arabic. This may be quirky of me, but I think if I were in any way responsible for a broadcast station meant to foster good public relations with a hugely critical part of the world, I'd bust my ass trying to learn the language.
Mowbray closes his editorial with this message:
But that's not enough. The people who already monitor the network--its employees--need to be empowered to report dubious decisions without fear of reprisal. Transparency will allow concerns to be investigated swiftly. Employees simply won't come forward, though, if they believe no one in power cares. For that reason, a clear signal must be sent by firing Mr. Register.
After all, if you can't get fired for using U.S. taxpayer dollars to provide a platform for Islamic terrorists and help further Holocaust denial, then wouldn't Congress and the Bush administration be communicating that pretty much anything goes?
I agree. Write a letter to the fool we have in the executive now, as well as your Senators and Representative. The trickle-down pattern of rank incompetence costs us money and lives, and now it's promoting radical terrorism on our dime.
The full opinion piece
Another opinion piece, reprinted on Representative Steve Rothman's site