Despite wanting to tear my hair out in desperation, I just simply have to laugh. The peeling of the onion of incompetence continues. . .
ONE BATTLE THAT the occupation authority in Iraq has been steadily losing is that of the media. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein there has been an explosion of information sources in the country; more than 200 newspapers are being published, and Iraqis have rushed by the tens of thousands to acquire satellite equipment allowing them to watch Arab and other international news stations. Meanwhile, the coalition's own attempts to broadcast news and information have been woefully deficient. Although it controls Iraq's main broadcast channel, two domestic radio stations and a major newspaper, the authority and its American contractors have failed to capture the Iraqi audience -- news programs, in particular, smack of sanitation. The problem is made all the more serious by the fact that Arab satellite broadcasters are at once more skilled in production, more credible with many Iraqis and wildly biased against the U.S. mission. Last week, with the approval of the Bush administration, Iraq's Governing Council reacted by shutting down the Baghdad operation of one of the two leading broadcasters, al-Arabiya. In addition to setting a terrible precedent for press freedom in Iraq, this will only make the underlying problem worse.These guys are literally walking around with big red noses, big fuzzy red wigs, huge floppy shoes and a penchant for white pancake makeup.
They couldn't even get the centralized media thing right. What? Was Roger Ailes too busy to consult or something?
The irony.
...access to quality programming and credible information, provided by professional journalists who are independent of the governing authority. This ought to be something that an American administration can get right.
Can you believe that typo in WaPo? Yeah, it should be Right. That they could get.
Professional journalists independent of the governing authority? How do they suppose any such creatures would pass security and background checks?
Snark aside, where would they get these people? Raid the BBC Arabic service? I suppose they could make an effort to find volunteers among what I imagine is a few dozen Arabic language radio stations at most in the US. Raid the competition for talent? al Arabiya's talent is at loose ends.
I mean with prior planning, the year they had, they could have had a core of folks to seed around, State probably had something, but now its just staggering from pillar to post as shit happens.
Why hasn't Rupert Murdock moved in yet? Just guessing but there are enough Middle Easterners living in England he might have some idea of their tastes and supply of talent to tap. He should get his own parade down RPG alley in an open-top hummer, give the Iraqi's a chance to properly thank him properly.
as noted in previous post, it's worse than that... "professional journalists who are independent of the governing authority" wouldn't help, for the same reason that NPR doesn't raise the level of discourse in the US - free-floating anxiety demands simple black/white answers and an us-vs-them sense of belonging.
so Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya can get all the mileage they want with cheap-to-produce, heavily loaded slamming of the occupation. the very same social dynamic that makes Faux News successful in the US virtually guarantees that the most inflammatory Arabic networks will get the most listeners/viewers, and even an Iraqi NPR or BBC isn't going to change that until it's safe to walk the streets. as David Bowie sez in Law (Earthlings on Fire): "I don't want knowledge, I want certainty."
irony? karma? lots of those, but alas, very little slack.
Certainty == no slack
You'd have thought that humans would have figured this out by now.