Federal radio, TV networks aim to change Arab hearts and minds

Mouafac Harb, a veteran television and print journalist, says the United States' ability to steer policy in the Middle East comes down to one axiom: "You cannot be present anywhere in the world unless you have a media presence."

Harb, a Lebanese-American who worked for ABC News' "Nightline" and was the Washington bureau chief for the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat, is the news director for Radio Sawa, a federally sponsored Arabic news and music program beamed via satellite, Internet and over the airwaves across the Middle East, a region populated by about 170 million Arabic speakers. Now he's undertaking an effort to launch a new 24-hour news and entertainment network-known for now as the Middle East Television Network (MTN)-that will be beamed across the region.

News giants CNN and Fox can be seen in Middle Eastern homes via satellite, but their broadcasts aren't translated into Arabic. Most viewers in the region don't speak English, Harb said in an interview, which has meant that for years, the American news media wasn't really a force in the minds of its audience.

That is especially true given the dominance of 24-hour news channel Al Jazeera, based in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Around the Radio Sawa offices, which are contained in the belly of a federal building a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, officials mockingly refer to Al Jazeera, the most popular newscast in the Arabic-speaking world, as "CNN meets Jerry Springer."

Their disdain is born less of jealousy than of professional revulsion, Harb said. He and his colleagues accuse Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern reporters of "editorializing" the news rather than reporting it.

For example, an Al Jazeera reporter covering a recent raid by Israeli military jets on the Palestinian territories noted that the jets were "American-made," Harb said. While factually accurate, he said the choice of words was "inflammatory" and is part of a larger agenda of "steering [viewers] to make a conclusion."

Harb promised "subjective" reporting would be absent from MTN. The network is designed to serve as the American antidote to the state-run media outlets that have proliferated in the Middle East, and that the Bush administration has targeted as obstacles to improving America's public standing in the Muslim world.

American news behemoths haven't attempted what MTN plans because it's not in their commercial interest, said Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent agency that oversees MTN, Sawa and the Voice of America radio programs. "It's very much in the interest of the U.S." to mount a pro-Western channel, one that relies on commonly accepted journalistic practices and formats to show people a side of political debate they're not getting from local media, he said. "We need to bring enlightenment to the Arab world."

The network's producers aren't starting out with a commercial-size budget. MTN received $30 million in fiscal 2003, and President Bush has asked for additional $32 million for next year.

Harb and his colleagues haven't decided yet what American television shows and movies MTN will carry, but they are brokering deals now with Hollywood executives to air their products. Norman Pattiz, chairman of radio titan Westwood One Communications and a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, is working on the entertainment side of the MTN project from his office in Los Angeles.

Harb acknowledged that Radio Sawa has taken criticism in the Arab world. Writing in the Jordanian paper The Star last August, one journalist said, "Sawa is clearly propaganda . . . part of the U.S. administration's efforts to convince Arabs of its foreign-policy objectives."

Like almost every media outlet in the Middle East, Sawa and MTN are state-owned organizations, Harb admitted. "The difference is, we don't behave like [one]."

"This is the challenge," he said. "How do you establish credibility?" Middle Easterners are politically savvy, having grown accustomed to consuming local media with a dose of skepticism.

MTN producers won't "try to outsmart people," Harb said. But they will endeavor to "play the devil's advocate" and show people a side of the news they're not getting, he said.