Falling on Deaf Ears?

by Michael Young March 3, 2004

written by Michael Young March 3, 2004

In mid-February, the United States government began its latest endeavor to change hearts and minds in the Arab world, as its new Arab-language satellite news station, Al-Hurra, began broadcasting to a mostly dubious Middle East audience. Al-Hurra, or the “free one,” is a $62 million project funded by American taxpayers that will fall under the authority of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, a public body. It currently employs some 200 staff and will be headed by Lebanese journalist Muaffaq Harb, formerly a correspondent in Washington. Almost immediately, critics in the Middle East dismissed the station as a propaganda tool of the United States. Some observers pointed out that the station merely repeated a pattern of American public diplomacy efforts that had already been shown to fail. Indeed, the State Department last year launched a radio station, Radio Sawa, and an Arabic-language lifestyle magazine titled Hi, to offer Arabs a

Michael Young

Michael Young is a senior editor at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and editor of Diwan, Carnegie’s Middle East blog. Previously, he served as a contributing editor at Executive magazine in Lebanon. Young also worked as opinion editor and columnist for The Daily Star newspaper . He writes a biweekly commentary for The National (Abu Dhabi) and is the author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon’s Life Struggle. Young holds degrees from the American University of Beirut and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Falling on Deaf Ears?

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