Lost in Translation: Alhurra—America’s Troubled Effort to Win Middle East Hearts and Minds

After watching the extremely superficial 60 Minutes piece, I came to your site.  If only 60 Minutes could capture the depth and quality of your reporting, how much better they would be.  Next time I am coming here first and skipping the TV part entirely. Excellent job.

I just saw this story on 60 minutes and I made me sick inside. As a journalism student in college the one thing I cherish the most is the first amendment. It specifically protects the right of free press; making it the only profession specifically protected by the government. To see an American Government run Arabic news channel being funded by tax payer dollars is hard to grasp. We are suppose to be bring democracy to the middle east, but yet we go against our own principles to do this. This channel and everything produced by it is exactly what this country or any other country in this world needs. This administration needs to remember the first amendment, at home and abroad.

When i saw the poor journalism and shoddy hit job done on Alhurra by 60 minutes in concert with Pro Publica, i was curious about this new organization i had not heard of before, and i spend almost 4 to 6 hours a day doing research on world and political events. Needless to say, after going to Pro Publica’s web site, and learning more about the makeup and mission of Pro Publica, it immediately reminded me of another so-called non profit public interest organization called MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute). Both MEMRI and Pro Publica are nothing more then special interest groups whose main objective is to suppress any negative information about Israel, and to demonize their adversaries in the Arab world.
There are many Americans like myself who will not allow groups like MEMRI and Pro Publica to hide behind the facade of legitimacy.

From Emad Mahdi

CBS 60 minutes and ProPublica missed a lots of other issues in here. The employees who were working so hard and gain so little comparing to others working carelessly ,fooleshly getting high paid sallary. At the end a journalist who worked hardly, honestly and find no time to waist on building hypocratic relationship with the others specially the supervisors rewarded by the most stupid news director on this planet Larry Register to be terminated just becuase of publishing an unpaid article on a pathatic Saudi website !!! Well, this is the most unseen facts of Al-Hurra where there is no place for justice at all, and the word “The Free one” has nothing to do with it, but just a faking title.

Quite frankly, I don’t have the time of day to read this entire article, but I’ll say this: I’ve read enough to understand that the pervasive idea exists that news SHOULD BE CENSORED.  This is outrageous.  Personally, I just visited Israel for a few weeks, I am a secular Jew, and disagree wholeheartedly with the violent people taking advantage of people with Bible blinds over their eyes.  Don’t get me wrong, East, West, Middle East; Bible, Quran, Torah - what have you, they all make people weak and susceptible to these kinds of irrationalisms.  There are plenty of good qualities from these Great Books and the stories within them, however, until people around the world unanimously decide to be at peace with each other and respect each other, these Books’ negative qualities far outweight their positive ones.

Shalom, Salaam, Peace

To be clear, UNCESORED refers to the numerous proclamations that Allurah’s news broadcasted controversial messages “UNEDITED”.  Hmm.. so people are actually getting the facts as they truly exist and have existed… sounds fishy ey? I don’t think so.  Better a disgusting truth than filtered messages.