Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 3 - 2004 (mainly Iraq)
Washington introduces Mideast satellite network by Courtney C. Radsch 
US resorts to television to advance its views Washington introduces Mideast satellite network Courtney C. Radsch Special to The Daily Star, 31 January 2004 WASHINGTON: Burning flags, angry Arabs and Osama bin Laden. No, it's not the latest Al-Jazeera broadcast. The American government is going into show business. And this promotional video for its news and entertainment channel soon will be beamed directly into millions of Arab homes. Officials have decided the US needs to counterbalance anti-Americanism in the Middle East, epitomized by the satellite network Al-Jazeera, by creating its own Arabic media outlet. The new US satellite network has already encountered criticism, however, dismissed as a propaganda vehicle that fails to address the US policies that critics say cause anti-Americanism. The Middle East Television Network (MTN) will cost $62 million in its first year, not including $40 million for MTN broadcasting to Iraq, authorized in the Supplemental Appropriation Bill passed by the US Congress last year. The network, to be called Al-Hurra, or The Free One, will operate out of Springfield, Virginia, and is scheduled to be begin broadcasts on Jan. 31. Joan Mower, communications coordinator for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is responsible for the US government's international broadcasting, including MTN, Radio Sawa, and the Voice of America, said in an interview with The Daily Star that she believes the US needs to create its own channel to counter Al-Jazeera's anti-American slant. "The best way to counter negativism about the US is to put it on an Arabic channel," she said. "Hopefully it will be an antidote to attract viewers; hopefully we'll be watched by people who will get a different viewpoint." But former ambassador and Middle East peace negotiator Richard Fairbanks said he doubted that many people would watch American television when they had other choices. The last thing the Middle East needs, he said, is another state-owned television network. A report released this summer entitled Changing Minds, Winning Peace: A New Strategic Direction for US Public Diplomacy criticized MTN and Radio Sawa for not sufficiently defining their objectives. It recommended the US government focus on programming that could be marketed to existing networks, instead of trying to compete with the plethora of stations already meeting the demands of their Arab audiences. Kenton Keith, former ambassador to Qatar, agreed. He suggested that newsmakers that appear on American networks should also make the rounds on Al-Jazeera. Imad Musa, a producer in Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau, said he'd love to have more administration officials on the air to represent America to Al-Jazeera's 45 million viewers. Whether MTN will have the audience draw Washington hopes for is uncertain since its primary competitor, Al-Jazeera, is already battling for viewers with Al-Arabiya, LBC, Dubai TV, and Nile TV. Thus it remains uncertain whether an American-sponsored station would lure them away. Perhaps the government shouldn't be in the television business, said John Brown, who served as a Foreign Service officer in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Besides being costly to produce, a quality, entertaining competitor to Al-Jazeera's "snazzy" programming is unlikely to be the government's forte. "The US government produces the world's dullest television," said Brown. "(It's) better at words than images." He said part of the problem is that the government has underestimated the intelligence of a Middle Eastern audience. "Propaganda is the verbal and visual equivalent of force, where you push your will on people, where you don't really explain anything to them and just assume they'll swallow it," Brown told The Daily Star. "It doesn't work because people aren't stupid; people look at Al-Jazeera and get what they consider an intelligent presentation of issues." Although Washington has reluctantly acknowledged Al-Jazeera's power to influence public opinion in the Arab world, officials simultaneously have missed an opportunity to influence attitudes through a re-evaluation of policy, focusing instead on initiatives such as MTN. Such propaganda efforts, thinly cloaked as cultural programming are unlikely to change many minds in a region accustomed to seeing through government-sponsored media. Furthermore, knowing about American culture doesn't guarantee pro-Americanism. Few believe the US can capture "hearts and minds" without revising its policies toward Israel, which are at the heart of general discontent with America. Brown criticized the flurry of reports on public diplomacy toward the Arab world for avoiding the basic issue of policy. "To have a dichotomy between public diplomacy and policy is idiotic," he said. "Public diplomacy won't fix (America's problems); there have to be serious policy changes and changes in how diplomacy is viewed." Brown castigated the Bush administration and rejected the idea that propaganda or public diplomacy could counteract negative perceptions of America in the Middle East. "The way the current administration handles diplomacy makes it impossible to carry out public diplomacy because it doesn't believe in the essence of diplomacy, which is negotiation. It believes in unilateralism and the imposition of its own will." Whether the government's foray into the entertainment business will be a blockbuster or a bust will depend more on the policies it adopts in the region than on its ability to capture viewers from Al-Jazeera. |