Al Arabiya seeks media niche

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — No matter what scoop is run these days on the Arab world’s newest and brashest satellite channel, someone seems to get angry.

Al Arabiya’s staff in Iraq has been threatened with death from pro-Saddam renegades and is being criticized by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council as well as the State Department.

The news channel’s “Inside Iraq,” with its in-your-face host Elie Nakouzi, ran two long programs showing footage of Saddam Hussein’s two sons cavorting with imported prostitutes at a private club, and in another program showed Saddam’s half-brother, Watban, then Iraq’s interior minister, supervising the routine beating and torture of petty criminals.

Not content with such footage, the program also locates eyewitnesses. It took a torture victim back to the scene, and in the program about Saddam’s sons and their women, it invited Uday Hussein’s teenage maid and a bodyguard to regale viewers with saucy and shocking details.

No wonder the owners of the hotel where the studios are based has asked Al Arabiya to move out, fearing attacks with bombs or rocket-propelled grenades by Saddam loyalists or Islamic fanatics.

But the station has also angered Washington and the Iraqi Governing Council.

When masked gunmen appeared on Al Arabiya a few weeks ago and threatened to kill Americans and members of the recently formed governing council, the State Department criticized the broadcaster as “highly irresponsible” and said it would send envoys to complain to the owners and investors.

In response, Al Arabiya’s board of advisers decided to stop such screenings, saying that threats of violence would not be carried and that only men prepared to identify themselves could criticize the United States on its broadcasts.

That decision was apparently not known to the Iraqi Governing Council last week when it banned Al Arabiya and rival Al Jazeera from entering any Iraqi government building or observing any of its meetings for two weeks.

Hours earlier, reports had circulated that the council planned to expel both broadcasters from Iraq, a move that was avoided by the threat of a veto by L. Paul Bremer, U.S. administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

“Had we been expelled, we were already prepared with Plan B,” said Al Arabiya’s chief editor, Salah Najm. “Coverage would have continued.”

Al Arabiya’s real battle, though, is a war of the Arab airwaves, in which the newcomer has fared remarkably well against its longer-established rival.

Al Arabiya has outmaneuvered Al Jazeera by airing exclusive interviews with Saddam’s daughters and with his ousted information minister, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf — though in the latter case Al Arabiya was upstaged by another rival, Abu Dhabi Television. The latter secured the same “exclusive” on the same day, but aired it first and gave the pictures to TV and newspapers worldwide.

Al Arabiya has become the favored drop zone for audiotapes purported to be from Saddam. They are left under a tree near the Arabiya Hotel more often than sent to Al Jazeera, Saddam’s favored prewar outlet.

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