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Propublica, a news portal, first highlighted the station’s corruption in terms of recruitment and financial operations in July.
It questioned the recruitment of Alhurra’s News Director who succeeded Register, Dany Nassif, who never held a job in journalism prior to joining Radio Sawa. It also accused Nassif of being a supporter of anti-American, pro-Syrian MP Michel Aoun.
The news portal highlighted an Op-Ed by Salem Mashkour, Director of the Alhurra Iraq channel, in which he praised Nasrallah in 2000.
Incompetence kept Alhurra out of a bustling Arab satellite market. Anti-American allegiance of its senior staff meant that Alhurra could not serve as counter propaganda vis-à-vis Qatar’s Al-Jazeera.
Alhurra lost its raison d’etre. Yet the Alhurra leadership stood defiant against calls for reform.
James Glassman, who served on the BBG until his appointment as Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy in the summer, repeatedly brushed away criticism by often citing the BBG-commissioned Intermedia surveys.
But the surveys presented the weekly reach only based on the following question: “Over the past week, which station did you watch at least once.” Alhurra was placed on the list of answers, and a few respondents ticked its box.
The BBG-Intermedia numbers were never put in context as the BBG often argued that it was not its job to present numbers of other Arab satellite channels.
However, a quick look at these unpublished surveys would show that while Alhurra’s weekly reach, across 13 Arab countries, stood at 25 million, the same number was 75 million for Al-Jazeera and 50 million for the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya.
The only success story for Alhurra might be Iraq, were it ranks fifth ahead of Al-Jazeera, the sixth, and behind Aliraqiya, Alsharqiya, Alarabiya and MBC. But in Iraq, unlike most other channels, Alhurra has the advantage of terrestrial, in addition to its satellite, broadcast, and maintains one of the biggest bureaus.
In Lebanon, the ranking of the weekly reach is as follows: LBC, New TV, Future TV, Al Jazirah, Al Arabiya, Al Manar, NBN, Tele Liban, MBC and Alhurra.
In Syria: Syria Space Channel, Al Jazirah, MBC, Syria 1, Syria 2, Al Arabiya, Al Manar, LBC, Alhurra, New TV, Future TV and BBC.
With its undisputed failure, the Obama administration might shutdown the channel and think of alternatives. In this case, solutions vary.
Robert Satloff, a think tank expert and now host of Alhurra’s Inside Washington, told a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report in February 2005: “As an alternative to Alhurra, it would be much cheaper to offer tax incentives to US broadcasters to perform the service of dubbing and then duplicating their news in Arabic.”
He added: “The fact that CNN and Fox News are nongovernmental enterprises ensures far greater credibility than what is proposed for [Alhurra].”
Or, Alhurra can simply return to the federal fold, where it might not be as competitive, but it would certainly not be such a waste of American tax money.
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