Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
This sort of thinking is hardly exclusive to the Third World. Many supposedly well-educated people in the First World have similarly fixed viewpoints, often about the Third World.
Absolutely.

I would also add that al-Jazeera and the other satellite TV stations in the Middle East are not the "enemy." Certainly, they play to their audience, and their audience is deeply suspicious and bitterly critical of US foreign policy. In this sense, they in the Arab context Arabs what Fox New's ultra patriotism is on the US media scene. But al-Jazeera and others are also a free media, and provide voice for reformers and democrats who were long stifled by authoritarian regimes.

Frankly, it is hard for a US-branded media to make many inroads--the brand has been discredited, the policy is unpopular, and propaganda efforts look like, well, propaganda efforts. The dismal performance of (American) al-Hurra TV and Radio al-Sawa is a case in point.

In my own view the US can do far better by engaging the Middle East media as it exists, and articulating different views on and through it, than trying to compete with it.