Obama Administration Official Urges Cable Providers to Carry Al-Jazeera

In the midst of the Iraq war, in 2004, the Bush administration devised a $500 million station named Alhurra, roughly (and ironically) translated from the word “the free one’’ in Arabic. Created on the false assumption that the Arab world had little access to information from the outside world, the goal was to provide a different worldview than Arab outlets such as Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera offered, or, as President Bush announced in his State of the Union that year, “to cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda, a new television service will begin providing reliable news and information across the region.’’ (Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used to verbally accost Al Jazeera’s war coverage as “vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable.’’)

Nine days after President Obama took office in 2009, he sat down to an interview with Al Arabiya, the Saudi television network, to signal a new relationship with the Arab world while snubbing Alhurra. For the Arab world, what he said was almost secondary to where he chose to say it.

Kayyem goes on to suggest that in failing to carry Al-Jazeera's programming, American cable companies are snubbing the Arab world a la the Bush administration.

In contrast, Kayyem praises Al-Jazeera for "masterfully" covering the events in Tunisia and Egypt.

It may be that, given AJE’s relationship wth the Bush administration, cable providers fear it is merely anti-American propaganda. But the remarkable aspect of AJE is how little its coverage of the Egyptian crisis has been about the United States.

Kayyem admits that "if I watched long enough," Al-Jazeera's clear biases and anti-Semitic rhetoric would be more obvious.  "But that basically describes my relationship with most cable news hosts," she says, "yet there they are, night after night."

James Zogby, in his book “Arab Voices,’’ highlights how American companies such as Cisco, Starbucks, and ExxonMobil have made important contributions to public diplomacy by shaping and promoting engagement in the Arab world. US cable companies ought to do the same by bringing a major player in the Arab world to American audiences.

The events in Egypt, culminating in President Mubarak’s exit, are the beginning of an unpredictable narrative in the Middle East. American news outlets will return home. But, the story continues throughout the region. If only we could tune in live.

(h/t American Thinker)