Via Taranto:
On Valentine’s Day a new U.S.-funded TV station, Al Hurra, began broadcasting in the Arab world. Critics jeered. “The Middle East hates its new TV station,” declared Slate. The Middle East Times reported “a tidal wave of criticism from Arab audiences.” NBC News reported that “many didn’t bother to watch the fledgling TV station or couldn’t find it” but had “a negative opinion” of it anyway. And the Associated Press reported Feb. 12 that “even before its first broadcast, a satellite television station financed by the U.S. government and directed at Arab viewers is drawing fire in the Middle East as an American attempt to destroy Islamic values and brainwash the young.”
So how’s it working out, less than three months later? “The controversial U.S. Arabic-language TV channel Alhurra is winning viewers as a news source in the Arab world,” Reuters reports. A U.S.-financed poll conducted by a French firm finds that the station “is being watched by an average 29 percent of the satellite-equipped households in seven countries, including a high of 44 percent in Kuwait and a low of 18 percent in Egypt.”
Oh well, never mind.
