US President George W. Bush is clearly unhappy with what he sees on Arab TV. “Arabic television does not do our country justice,” Bush said during a speech at the State Department in January. Bush was introducing the “language initiative,” which he said would encourage Americans to learn foreign languages in a bid to help defend their country on non-US media networks. “It (Arab media) doesn’t give people the impression of what we’re about,” said Bush.
The US president’s remarks came weeks after a supposed secret memo surfaced in the British newspaper Daily Mirror, alleging that Prime Minister Tony Blair had advised him against bombing Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha. The British government has turned down a public information request by the Qatari broadcaster to release the memo, denying that it made any reference to the reported plot.
“It is not the practice to release conversations between the prime minister and other world leaders,” said a Blair spokesman.
Al Jazeera has been bombed twice as a result of US air strikes; first in 2001 at its Kabul bureau, and then in Iraq in 2003, when the network’s reporter Tareq Ayub was killed at its Baghdad bureau. The US has criticized the network what it considers to be inflammatory reporting but denies targeting the channel.