Have you heard of Alhurra? It's a televison station that you and I fund. The station aims to tell our truths to the Arab world. It is not doing that well, as not many Arabs watch it; in fact, the number watching it is decreasing. In 2008 it had a 2% audience share, now it's 0.5%, which is below the statistical margin of error. It is the least watched station in the area. Yet, it's budget has increased by 20% in the past two years and it has now spent $500,000,000 of our money since 2004.
The station is run by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which does not seem to be a paragon of excellence. The Office of Personnel Management ranked the board at the bottom of 37 government agencies it evaluated. According to a ProPublica study, the board has staff problems and does not manage our money very well. A report by USC found that Alhurra "fails to meet basic journalistic standards, suffers from poor programming and is plagued by perceived bias".
No comments:
Post a Comment