SPRINGFIELD, Virginia, 3 July 2004 — America’s most public effort to win over popular opinion in the Middle East lies inside a surprisingly non-descript, unmarked building in Washington’s suburbs.
The headquarters of Alhurra, the new Arabic-language satellite news network aimed at 22 countries in the Middle East, keeps a decidedly low profile here.
“It is because we are so new,” said Deirdre Kline, the communications director for Alhurra, launched in mid-February through the same government agency that runs such programs as Voice of America.
Its offices boast the latest technology. Each journalist has a television alongside a computer, and though about 90 percent of them come from the Middle East, only one woman wears a headscarf.
About 100 people work at the headquarters here, but Alhurra also has offices in Dubai, Amman, Baghdad, Beruit and Cairo. In late April, the network began a special broadcast called Alhurra-Iraq.
On the set, clear panels fill the backdrop with a stylized map of the Middle East that marks each country with its name in Arabic. The design is clean and modern, blue-tinted glass in a back-lit orange frame.
The news broadcast under way lasts one hour. The anchors, Joe Tabet and Bertha Sandroussi, read from a teleprompter, with Arabic streaming across the screen.
Between reports, the anchorman adjusts his tie. “Twenty-seven seconds,” an American technician tells him in English indicating the time before they return to air.
At its launch in mid-February, Alhurra — which in Arabic means “The Free One” — had received a cold reception from the Arab media, who viewed it as US propaganda.
US authorities have not tried to hide the fact that Alhurra is attempting to reduce the influence of competing television networks like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.
But the first ratings survey by the French group Ipsos in April showed that 29 percent of people who could receive the satellite channel watched it. “People are starting to realize that we are part of the media scene today in the Arab world. That is reality. We can become soon a primary source of information to the people in the Middle East,” Alhurra’s news director Mouafac Harb said.
Alhurra has already forced changes at its rival stations, Harb said. Some of their journalists applied for jobs at Alhurra after the station began broadcasting, he said. “Now Al-Jazeera and other channels want to keep their own people so they have to start to treat them well,” he said. “They have raised their salaries.”
“Our mission is not to promote US policy. Our mission is to present US policy fairly and accurately,” said Norman Pattiz, president of The Middle East Committee for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency overseeing the channel. “We covered the story of the prisoners abuse, in great detail and continue to do so,” he said.
