The United States has reduced its public diplomacy effort to a shadow of its former self – major reductions in surrogate radio broadcasting into Iran, Iraq and Russia matched with increased broadcasts of Western pop music and a tilt towards programs that trumpet the glories of U.S foreign policy.
While this has been going on the Arab TV network Al Jazeera has been preparing to initiate an English language TV network that would present the news of the Arab world with an Arab point of view. This should not be confused with a blind propaganda effort – given the quality of some of its Western hires it would appear to be designed to be less so than the Fox network which presents the news through the prism of personalities like Bill O’Reilly. What we have then is Arab public diplomacy directed to the West, particularly the United States, at a time when the U.S. continues to reduce its public diplomacy efforts to a defense of policies which are not even an easy sell to its own citizens let alone the rest of the world.