US-Funded Arab TV Supports Terrorism And Denies Holocaust (Updated)

This is a project that taxpayers have so far paid half a billion dollars to support:

U.S.-Funded Arab TV's Credibility Crisis

America has been struggling with its image in the Middle East for decades but, after Iraq, Arab opinion plummeted. The Bush administration felt it had to act fast to explain America to the Arab world. So it began spending about $100 million a year on a U.S. government news channel in Arabic. It's called "Al Hurra," meaning "The Free One."

As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, Al Hurra's symbol is a herd of unbridled horses, and for American taxpayers it's been a wild ride.

60 Minutes has been looking into Al Hurra in a project with ProPublica, a new, non-profit news organization dedicated to investigative journalism. With so much at stake at Al Hurra, we were surprised to find what it's putting on the air. Some of it has supported terrorism and denied the Holocaust; insiders say Al Hurra has been undermined by loose financial and editorial controls, while its executives try to manage 24-hour news in a language most of them don't understand.

But that excuse only goes so far:

Weeks later [channel head Larry] Register, okayed coverage of something more controversial, the so-called Holocaust deniers' conference in Iran. In that moment, the American Al Hurra sounded more like Al Jazeera.

According to the translation, the Al Hurra reporter said, "Despite the assurances of some of the participants that millions of Jews had in fact died during a German Holocaust, the group did not reinforce their statements with scientific evidence, but instead they were content to tell stories passed on to them by their ancestors."

"How does a reporter like that get on the air in an American newsroom?" Pelley asks.

"The quality of reporting when I got there was weak and poor. And that's how it happened," Register admits. "The person would do the story, send a script, send the piece, it would go to air. There weren't checks and balances to stop it from happening."

When it did happen, The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page called for Register's head; members of Congress said they would cut funding for the channel if Register remained.

Turned out "The Free One" had a bridle after all. Register resigned.

In the very last line of the article, we find out in an update:

Remember the reporter at the Holocaust deniers' conference? He was supposed to be fired after that report and the Broadcasting Board of Governors told Congress that he was fired. But we've learned he remained on the government payroll 18 months later. In fact, he was just fired last week when we inquired about him.

Read the whole thing.

Radio Free Europe this ain't.

UPDATE: Joel Mowbray is not impressed:

What aired last night, however, hardly lived up to the advance billing. While this report could have been timely last year -- back when I first broke the story that the network had been turned into a platform for Islamic terrorists and Holocaust deniers -- it is simply not the case today. Worse, the hero in the 60 Minutes segment is the very person responsible for most of the broadcasts cited as problematic.

This appears on Powerline--at the end of the post is this update:

Middle East Quarterly editor Michael Rubin directs us to MEQ's interview with Al-Hurra director Daniel Nassif. Michael adds: "In the forthcoming (Autumn 2008) issue, we have several letters responding to the interview, both critical and positive."

Meanwhile, from The Washington Times:

Report on Alhurra said to skew facts

CBS News and Pro Publica "distorted facts" in a collaborative investigative story that aired Sunday about Alhurra TV, according to officials from an independent federal agency that supervises all U.S. government-supported, non-military international broadcasting.

The incompetence is apparently not limited to the station that was being covered.

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