On Al Hurra

To the arab and arabic-speaking readers of this blog: Most of you must be familiar with Al Hurra, the US backed arabic satalite news station. If you are, then you must also be familiar with how much it sucks, or to be more proefessional here, how little credibility it has amongst its targeted arab viewers. Check out its schedule to understand how irrelevant its programming is. In case you did not know, Al Hurra is going through a series case of re-shuffeling, and the people handeling it really want to make the channel significant in the arab street. And they would like your help on how to how they can do that and they asked me to ask you for your feedback and opinions. If It's possible, you can leave such opinion in the comments section or e-mail it to me. Now, I know how some of you may have porblems with that, since you view it as the channel of the american state department or you may be anti-american in general and wouldn't want this channel to gain any kind of credibility what so ever. That's fine, but hear me out here and maybe you too will see the opprutunity given to us here. Whether we like it or not, there are 3 major arabic speaking news channels: Al Jazeera, Al Aarabiya and Al Hurra. If you watch Al Jazeerah, you know its biased against america and certain arab countries, and very much advances the agenda of the islamists in the region. Not to mention, as we in Egypt know, the fact that the channel is owned by Qatar's government means that whenever one of the other arab governments doesn't want them to focus on something, they speak to the emir of Qatar and he makes it go away. The same applies to Al Aarabiyah. They rarely give air-time to any arab reformer or pro-democracy activist or opposition member unless, for some reason, they are from the MB. Either way, they suck. And the fact that AlAarabiyah was actually running a story on how people who celebrate Halloween are devil worshippers, well, doesn't add much to its credibility. Both channels have a biased ideology, and whether you like it or not, it's not one that favors common sense, let alone reform, change or democracy. And this is where Al Hurra comes in.. Al Hurra could effectively become the news channel for the opposition in all of the arab countries. It could host and give voice to discussion groups amongst the opposition in Egypt, Syria, or whatever opressive arab country is out there. It could give the syrian opposition a voice, since the Baathist regime controls all the media in the country. It could bring to light the abuses of the middle-east regimes and get more people to realize the necessity for change and reform. It could provide an alternative source for news in the middle-east, a forum that allowes those fringe voices of change a medium to broadcast their message. What I am trying to say isthis: It maybe US funded, but we can make it work for us. And that's a good thing, because god knows we need all the help we can get. So please, if you would like to see it become a positive voice for change and democracy instead of a satalite channel that no one watches, send me your suggestions and I will forward them to the people in charge there and they will do their best to follow them. So let's give them something to follow. If you are interested, please send me your suggestions a.s.a.p. and I will just forward them along to them. Hope to hear from you soon. The Sandmonkey