4 thoughts on “ProPublica’s flabby Al Hurra investigation”

1. People at Pro Pub­lica have made it clear to me that they wanted a soft launch. They knew every­one would diss their first ‘rev­el­a­tion’. So the idea was to drip a few minor scoops out first. Trouble is that they appear to have taken this tac­tic a little bit too far. This is the kind of ‘rev­el­a­tion’ that you get on the aver­age media-watch blog about ten times a day.

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2. I expect more of 60 Minutes, let alone PP.

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3. So ProP­ub­lica high­lights the com­ments of a Palestinian refer­ring to the plight of his com­pat­ri­ots as an Israeli “holo­caust”, appar­ently obli­vi­ous to the widely repor­ted com­ments of an Israeli min­is­ter using the Hebrew word mean­ing holocaust:

   “… An Israeli min­is­ter today warned of increas­ingly bit­ter con­flict in the Gaza Strip, say­ing the Palestini­ans could bring on them­selves what he called a “holocaust”.

   “The more Qas­sam [rocket] fire intens­i­fies and the rock­ets reach a longer range, they will bring upon them­selves a big­ger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Matan Vil­nai, Israel’s deputy defence min­is­ter, told army radio. …”

   [The com­ments were widely repor­ted, but this par­tic­u­lar source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1 ]

   And why the appar­ent sense of out­rage about the news dir­ector stack­ing the news­room with friends?

   “Mou­afac Harb, Alhurra’s first news dir­ector. Harb helped set up Radio Sawa before com­ing to Alhurra. He was largely respons­ible for hir­ing the net­work staff and get­ting it on air within four months. But he has been cri­ti­cized in gov­ern­ment reports for sign­ing luc­rat­ive deals with friends in his nat­ive Lebanon.

   …In addi­tion, a never-released report by the State Department’s Inspector Gen­eral shared with ProP­ub­lica found “irreg­u­lar­it­ies in con­tract­ing,” a hir­ing pro­cess that “may have been marred by favor­it­ism toward Lebanese can­did­ates or can­did­ates of Lebanese ancestry,” …

   … He then filled the news­room largely with inex­per­i­enced Chris­tian Lebanese report­ers hired in his nat­ive Beirut and signed luc­rat­ive sole-source con­tracts with friends who ran advert­ising agen­cies, pro­duc­tion com­pan­ies and ware­houses across the Middle East. Some low-level staff mem­bers were highly paid, includ­ing a hairdresser from Lebanon who coiffed the anchors for $100,000 a year. …

   [source: http://www.propublica.org/site/author/dafna_linzer/ ]

   Isn’t that the Amer­ican way? Hasn’t the Bush admin­is­tra­tion been stacked with incom­pet­ent and inept friends of Bush and friends-of-friends of Bush such as Michael D. Brown who headed up FEMA to dis­astrous effect at the time Hur­ricane Kat­rina? And what about all Bush’s oil industry cronies and Repub­lican party fun­ders who get roles in the administration?

   Surely someone going to the U.S. from another coun­try would think it was their pat­ri­otic duty to stick their nose in the trough as well? Why would they see any­thing wrong with recruit­ing friends on favour­able terms when that’s the way things are done over there?

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4. Why the sense of out­rage because the news­room is stacked with inex­per­i­enced friends from Lebanon? If Al Hurra is sup­posed to rep­res­ent an Amer­ican per­spect­ive of the news, I don’t think hir­ing unpro­fes­sional and/or uneducated friends is the best way to pro­mote such a per­spect­ive. Moreover, the fact that many of those people were from Lebanon (What per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion of the Middle East is Lebanese? What per­cent­age of Al Hurra, espe­cially those is essen­tial jobs, is Lebanese?) cer­tainly does not pro­mote diversity of thought, an import­ant ideal to Amer­ic­ans. It seems that Al Hurra is pro­mot­ing a Lebanese in Amer­ica per­spect­ive.
   Clearly, Bush’s example of favor­it­ism was not an example of the “Amer­ican way,” which is obvi­ous from his cur­rent poor rat­ings and the country’s over­all belief that amer­ican is headed in the wrong direction.

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