The Future of Public Diplomacy Still Uncertain

The approach of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy James K. Glassman may need to be maintained under the Obama administration, reckons Adam Kuchner for Newsweek. Unlike his predecessor Karen Hugues, Mr. Glassman"scored small successes in the US effort to win over 'hearts and minds' in the Muslim world."

Kuchner claims that Under Secretary Glassman has successfully challenged terrorism and violent extremism, and has creatively used the internet as a means of winning the battle of ideas. Popular among Washington's insiders, and with a good grasp of the changes in public diplomacy today,"Glassman's key realization is that the United States can't always find perfect friends."

Glassman wants to"bring people in contact with America," not to"tell them what to think," reiterates Kuchner. Kuchner concludes that Glassman's public diplomacy philosophy, his flexible"light touch" approach, should continue under the Obama administration.

James Glassman's December speech on"Public Diplomacy 2.0" articulated"an obvious re-imagining of public diplomacy strategy," according to Craig Hayden at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Hayden argues that this new strategy features two principal developments. First, Glassman has created new goals for public diplomacy by emphasizing the"offering [of] alternatives to terrorism," in order to reduce violent extremism. Second, there has been a renewed focus on the methods of public diplomacy, specifically harnessing the"global communication infrastructure" that"connects people to people."

However, Hayden remains skeptical of the potential gains of PD 2.0 network building. Hayden is"less convinced" that PD 2.0"translates readily into improved public opinion - there are simply too many leaps of faith to make in this formulation."

Further, Hayden sees the social and political impacts of PD 2.0 as unquantifiable, or"indeterminate." This conflicts, Hayden believes, with"an enduring US desire for predictable, measurable, and effective investment in public diplomacy."

Hayden's skepticism is challenged by Alan Eisenberg, writing for Inspire Action. Eisenberg contends that"the Government can't afford to stay behind." Eisenberg uses the Apple/PC commercials as a metaphor to suggest that Government should seek to move away from Mr. PC to look more like"the younger, hipper, and more knowledgeable Mr. Apple."

Mark Drapeau, quoted by Eisenberg, sees two main advantages of PD 2.0. First, it will aid in the sharing of information between agencies, with outside partners such as humanitarian NGOs, and with the public. Further, PD 2.0 will allow US public diplomats to"engage people in meaningful ways, understand public sentiment, recruit and retain employees, and harness...collective intelligence."

Meanwhile, Kim Andrew Elliott focuses on the future of public diplomacy broadcasting in an article for the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Elliott discusses the failure of Worldnet, created in 1985, which"tried to be both a news service and a public diplomacy vehicle." Elliott see nothing wrong with a 24-hour channel devoted to public diplomacy, but"it must not attempt to disguise its content as news."

As such, Elliott views US international broadcasting and US public diplomacy as"separate, indeed adversarial, activities," in which public diplomats engage in"spin," while broadcasters focus on"unspinning the spin."

Thus, Elliott advocates for the consolidation of US international broadcasting, but not for the integration of public diplomacy and international broadcasting. In Elliott's view, a combined single broadcasting agency"will not have the independence necessary to achieve the credibility that is required to attract an audience."

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The Israeli court ruled that the country should permit foreign press into Gaza, although only under strict regulations. The ruling specified that journalists should be allowed in groups of eight at a time and only on days when the Erez crossing is open. The journalists should also have to go through a security inspection before entering. As of press time, Israel has maintained its ban on foreign reporters entering Gaza despite the ruling.

The court's decision follows intense pressure from foreign correspondents that have been forced to rely on local and Arab press inside Gaza rather than on direct reporting. According to an Associated Press article, the ruling was a result of a petition from several international media sources, along with Reporters Without Borders, in opposition to Israel's claim that entrance into Gaza was too high of a security measure for the journalists.

The signatories of the petition included Germany's Der Spiegel, El Mundo and El Pais in Spain, US networks ABC, CBS and CNN, France's Le Figaro newspaper and RTL radio, Britain's Sky News and Guardian newspaper, and pan-Arab channel Al-Jazeera.

The Jerusalem Post also reported on the result of the Israeli court decision. The article quoted ABC News Middle East Correspondent Simon McGregor-Wood expressing his discontent with the court's verdict saying pools of eight were insufficient. He, along with others, will have to rely solely on Palestinian media sources, which according to McGregor-Wood, gives them a"monopoly" over the news in Gaza.

The article also noted that the Israeli Press Office preferred Arab and Gazan reporters. The head of the Government Press Office said Wednesday that he actually preferred Palestinian stringers and reporters covering the news from Gaza instead of foreign journalists, since international journalists were routinely used and exploited by the Islamic regime.

"Based on our experience from the war in Lebanon and the way the foreign press has conducted itself in Gaza, we know that Hamas is in complete control of the news, and that reports from Gaza are carried out under duress," GPO director Danny Seaman said.

The CNN bureau chief in Jerusalem remarked in a CNN Inside the Middle East Blogspot article that"this [the ban on entering Gaza] rings hollow to the ears of many journalists. We've reported out of Gaza during times of great conflict in the past. Also, how can it be safe for humanitarian aid workers to go in and not journalists?"

Meanwhile, local and Arab journalists have been arrested this week by Israeli Defense Forces. The Peninsula, a Qatar based news source, reported the arrest of eight Al-Jazeera journalists this week. The journalists were held for six hours, interrogated, and finally released only to have two discs of footage confiscated.

Another arrest was made this week when the IDF captured Khezir Shahin, an Arab-speaking journalist from Al-Alam News Network. According to a Press TV article, officials accused Shahin of violating censorship rules when he reported the launch of the Israeli ground attacks on the Gaza Strip.

While the Israeli court has made its decision and the names of the first group of foreign journalists to be allowed into Gaza have been chosen, their entrance has yet to take place.

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American public diplomacy has seen limited successes, reports Julia Bodeeb for Associated Content. Despite Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Foreign Affairs James K. Glassman's input and investment into modern technology to broaden US outreach to foreign citizens, US flags have been set ablaze all over the Middle East, with protesters denouncing America as an accomplice to Israel's Gaza airstrikes.

Bodeeb notes,"While many Americans remain oblivious to the attacks on Gaza...when conflict roils the Middle East it directly impacts America and the safety of our citizens."

In a recent press release from the American University in Cairo posted on the blog Eureka Déjà vu, the head of US public diplomacy blames Bush administration policies for the negative attitudes toward the US in the Muslim world during a dialogue with Egyptian bloggers in the American University in Cairo's new Virtual Newsroom in Second Life, an online interactive environment.

"There is no doubt the views of the US were influenced by the policies the US adopted...but I do think we can do a better job of explaining our policies," said Glassman to the blogger. He further reiterated that America should improve listening to what foreign citizens have to say.

As the conflict raged in Gaza, America's position and image were further challenged. Asked whether apparent support for Israel's actions in Gaza hurt America's relations with the Muslim world, Glassman rejected the idea that the Bush administration"has been lenient" toward the Jewish state, but acknowledged that American interests"tend to align with those of Israel."

Rebooting America's image in the world may require more than internet diplomacy, as reaching out to foreign audiences has been limited so far, reports Sherry Mueller for the Christian Science Monitor. While reports have been written on how to fix US public diplomacy, some myths prevail regarding improving America's image in the world. Mueller argues that the primary aim of public diplomacy is to combat anti-Americanism and engage with citizens of the target regions.

One of the main problems, asserts Mueller, remains the underfunding of numerous successful programs. Mueller believes this leads some to mistakenly think that public diplomacy is yielding insufficient results. She comments,"By increasing funding for these programs and supporting the public-private partnerships that have engaged so many Americans as volunteer citizen diplomats, we will reap tremendous benefits for generations to come."

Martha Bayles, for Newsweek, believes that there is a need to export more serious cultural content, rather than TV series, in order to improve America's image. However, while the US image abroad remains negative, US popular culture remains, in certain contexts, in high demand.

A 2007 report from the 47-nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey found that popular culture may no longer be America's best ambassador."Majorities in several predominantly Muslim countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, say they dislike American music, movies and television," according to the report.

Bayles claims that the way to reconcile democracy and civilization is to exercise good taste in ways that are open and communicable to all."While it is an American characteristic to present cultural and academic material in an entertaining and respectful way, it often invites outsiders to view it as a leveling down."

American cultural ideals have always been to make the finest fruits of civilization available to all, comments Bayles. She concludes that although this ideal is not always a reality, it should still be pursued,"especially now when the country's ideals in general are in need of refurbishing."

Several US public diplomacy chiefs since 9/11 have sought to"rebrand America" through television commercials and slick packaging, according to the Eureka Déjà vu's posting. James K. Glassman posits the opposite,"I don't think that my job as undersecretary of state is to improve America's image. I don't see this as a PR job. I think there has been too much focus on this idea of image burnishing or image building," he said.

He reiterated the pivotal role of communication to disseminate America's message respectfully and of opening dialogue to combat anti-Americanism.

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As the conflict in Gaza continues into its third week, the issue of media coverage has come to the fore as both sides criticize regional and international media outlets.

Reporting on the war in Gaza has been severely complicated by Israel's ban on foreign correspondents, reports Paul Reynolds for the BBC. Despite a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court, Israel has not allowed foreign bureaus into the strip."The most difficult reality confronting the foreign news media is that we have been prevented from entering Gaza to cover the conflict," notes Tony Connelly for RTE News.

Israel's decision has drawn criticism from a wide variety of media professionals in the international community. While Israel has received significant coverage of the threats and damage to its own towns and communities, stories from within Gaza have not been as widely told as if reporters from major organizations had been present, argues Reynolds. "The conflict is being reported on almost entirely by journalists working in Israel and under Israeli influence," posits Ray Hanania on Arabisto.

A Menassat report suggests that the banning of the international media is part of an Israeli effort"to convince the world that it is acting 'humanely' in Gaza." Israel justifies the ban"under the cynical pretext of concern for the safety of foreign journalists," adds the news site.

Despite the absence of foreign press organizations in Gaza, Arab networks with local bureaus, including Al-Jazeera, have been able to relay their images of the conflict to the region and the world at large. Al-Jazeera has presented"a rather distinct view of the conflict," suggests Raed Rafei of the LA Times."The channel broadcasts constant images of children covered with blood being rushed into hospitals with interviews with parents who had lost their children," he explains.

In defense of the network's reference to the dead of the conflict as"martyrs" and its uncensored broadcast of footage from Gaza, Al-Jazeera editor-in-chief Ahmed Al-Sheikh explained that the network does broadcast images of bombing and victims, but also gives Israeli officials ample space to express their views, reports Middle East Online."We are not covering (the war) because we are Arabs or Muslims, but because we are journalists," added Al-Sheikh.

In contrast, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya has employed"a markedly different tone in its continuous 'Gaza Invasion' coverage," suggests Middle East Online. The station refrains from using the term"martyr" and"does not air footage that may badly disturb viewers," explained Al-Arabiya Director Nakhle El-Hage.

Other Arab media organizations have been scrutinized since the outbreak of war in addition to these major networks. In an editorial on Israeli Ynetnews, Roee Nahmias argues that"a dual and often contradictory narrative" had been created by various Arab media outlets."On the one hand, Israel is portrayed as a Nazi state and a mass exterminator of defenseless civilians...yet on the other hand 'Palestinian resistance fighters' are said to pulverize Israel mercilessly," observes Nahmias

The London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi is"one of the most blatant," according to Nahmias."In addition to harsh editorials slamming Israel and Arab states that do nothing to assist Hamas, the newspaper constantly brands Israel as Nazi," he continues.

In addition to criticism of Arab news media, many pro-Israel news blogs and editorials have attempted to expose a Palestinian propaganda conspiracy that has been dubbed"Pallywood" (as in Palestinian Hollywood) by Richard Landes of the Center for Millennial Studies. "Whether by Israeli accident or Hamas engineering, expect a spectacular civilian massacre...followed by an orgy of Pallywood photography," says Landes on the Bob McCarty Writes blog.

Perhaps the main focus of Pallywood conspiracy theorists has been a video of Gaza cameraman Ashraf Mashharawi who rushed to the hospital to find doctors trying to save his 12-year-old brother's life. In an article entitled,"CNN Tricked into Running Anti-Israeli Propaganda?", the Weekly Standard compiled a series of"red flags" relating to the video's authenticity and suggested that the CNN audience"deserves a prominent retraction, explanation, and apology."

Following the Weekly Standard allegations, CNN ran a report defending the video's authenticity, reports the Washington Times. Paul Martin, co-owner of World News and Features, the syndicating service that provided the video, called the charges"absolute nonsense." Mr. Mashharawi is"a man of enormous integrity and would never get involved with any sort of manipulation of images, let alone when the person dying is his own brother," argued Martin.

"No-one in their right mind would suggest that any person would allow doctors to play games with a dying or dead younger brother. The idea is bizarre and deeply insulting," commented Martin in response to allegations on the Little Green Footballs blog.

In another editorial that aims to highlight a Palestinian media conspiracy, Mitchell Bard of News Blaze suggests,"Palestinians will routinely call attacks 'massacres' and invent large numbers of fatalities." Bard goes on to claim that when victims are presented as evidence"sometimes they are not even dead," before suggesting that casualty figures are unreliable as they come from"Palestinian sources."

Contrary to Bard's criticisms, a myriad of international organizations have been monitoring and reporting on civilian deaths and casualty figures."On the nineteenth day of Israeli attacks, the total dead up to 1040 with around 4850 injured," reported the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the world's largest humanitarian network. Likewise, Doctors Without Borders has been periodically evaluating the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.

As mentioned, the broadcast of gruesome footage of civilian casualties in Gaza has been the subject of much criticism. Nevertheless,"the reality for the Israeli government is that world opinion is probably more influenced by images rather than by spokesmen," suggests London School of Oriental and African Studies Professor Charles Tripp.

Weighing in on the issue, Matt Armstrong of the Mountain Runner blog notes he has"seen a good number of articles praising Israel's handling of the war of perceptions in the media," but that"in the offline critiques of Israel's strategy and tactics by information experts there is much less congratulatory language."

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During the ongoing conflict in Gaza, Western news media have been"largely prevented from reporting from Gaza because of restrictions imposed by the Israeli military," writes Noam Cohen for the International Herald Tribune. In contrast, Al-Jazeera, the Qatar based news network, is using its sizeable presence within Gaza to issue daily reports from the frontlines, and is in a unique position to influence coverage of the war. This is an important issue for both its supporters and detractors.

There is limited access to live reports since Israel"isn't allowing journalists to enter Gaza" because"opening border crossings would put [Israeli] soldiers in danger," writes Shane Bauer for New American Media. Al-Jazeera has six reporters working in Gaza for both the English and Arabic language broadcasts.

Nick Allen of the Daily Telegraph contrasts Al-Jazeera coverage with Western networks. Allen states that the Qatari network can"show footage considered too graphic for broadcast in the UK," including"grizzly images [of] mangled corpses." Allen notes that Al-Jazeera defends its objectivity and often interviews Israeli spokespeople to balance its coverage.

The Jerusalem Post concurs that Al-Jazeera has published graphic, uncensored images throughout the conflict and referred to Palestinian combatants as martyrs. "Analysts say that these and similar images broadcast around the world have played an important role in mobilizing the Arab street to protest by the tens of thousands, burn effigies and Israeli flags and demand action from their governments."

Ofir Gendelmen, director of the Arab press and public affairs at Israel's foreign ministry, told the Jerusalem Post that Al-Jazeera"gives a lot of air time for [Hamas] officials to speak...and they don't differentiate between citizens and militants" while disregarding Hamas's continued rocket attacks over the years.

Al-Jazeera is vehemently defending its objectivity, with executives telling the International Herald Tribune that it is"being blamed for accurately reporting what is going on in the world from an Arab perspective - in other words, for committing journalism on behalf of its audience."

Gabriel Rosenbaum, director of the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo, disagreed. "It's 100 percent one-sided. There is not any attempt to understand the motivation of Israel for the operation in Gaza," he claimed in the Jerusalem Post.

Bauer disagrees and believes that Al-Jazeera's coverage is successfully delegitimizing Israeli claims that there is no humanitarian crisis by exposing the trying conditions in hospitals and within cities.

As the conflict wears on, opinions on both sides are becoming more extreme.

According to the Yemen Observer, some Islamists are heavily praising Al-Jazeera and criticizing media with restricted access. Yemeni MP Mohammed Al-Hazmi declared competing network Al-Arabiya as a"Zionist trumpet" that was"trying to find out excuses for the Jews" as they carry out"the industry of death."

Meanwhile, Mordechai Kedar called for the immediate shut down of Al-Jazeera's Israeli operation in Ynetnews, declaring it"a jihadist terrorist channel that aims to eliminate the State of Israel." He believes Al-Jazeera is entirely biased and rejects"Western media rules" which"aim to ensure that news consumers view reality and understand it in the way it really is."

Al-Jazeera's greatest challenge in America is overcoming such accusations of bias and increasing its market share. Its presence in Gaza is emboldening its efforts to build a presence with the English speaking public in the United States, where only a few markets in Vermont, Ohio and Washington DC provide the channel on regular cable service.

Al-Jazeera's efforts include a comprehensive emphasis on new media. "The Gaza crisis is helping to convince [Al-Jazeera executives] of the power of the internet to tell a sprawling story that unfolds over weeks or perhaps months," writes Cohen.

Its online material includes an interactive map with updates from Gaza; Livestation, which facilitates discussion on the war; Twitter feeds; a dedicated YouTube channel with over 6,800 videos; and its English-language website. In addition, the network is providing its video material to other news organizations under a lenient Creative Commons license, allowing almost anyone to use it.

"Part of our mission, our mandate, is to get our news out," said Mohammed Nanabhay, the executive who established the company's new-media group, to the International Herald Tribune. For him and others at the network, commercial pressures are ultimately subordinate to providing information to viewers.

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The Al-Jazeera Network and Sony Ericsson have announced a new partnership bringing English and Arabic news headlines straight to new cell phones, reports Broadband TV News. Several Sony Ericsson handheld devices in the MENA region will now have an Al-Jazeera RSS feed preinstalled, allowing up to the minute news updates on demand.

"Al-Jazeera's partnership with Sony Ericsson is an important step as our audience becomes increasingly 'on-the-go,'" said Saeed Othman Bawazir, Al-Jazeera's director of technology."Today's news consumer wants to be informed of the latest developments anytime, anywhere."

The Al-Jazeera/Sony Ericsson partnership will build on Al-Jazeera's existing New Media initiative, which includes a host of interactive platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and an iPhone application.

In other news, on January 1st Al-Jazeera launched a documentary channel website, www.aljazeera.net/doc, reports The Peninsula. Aiming to serve as a forum for communication between the Qatari channel and its viewers across the world, the new website is an Arabic-language portal"dedicated to promoting documentary films and culture."

In addition, the website will provide viewers with the latest information on recently-produced documentaries and provide an inside look at the making of them. The Al-Jazeera Documentary Channel, whose motto is"Behind Every Picture there is a Story," is the first channel based in the Arab world committed to broadcasting quality documentaries.

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Ahmad al-Shugairi, a rising star among the new televangelists in the Middle East, takes a peaceful approach, preaching a tolerant Islam and denouncing sectarianism, describes Robert F. Worth for the New York Times. Over the past decade, the number of satellite channels devoted exclusively to religion has risen from one to more than thirty, and religious programming on general interest stations, including the channel that features Mr. Shugairi's show, has soared.

Shugairi offers young people seeking a religious identity outside of the political and conservative framework provided by Egypt and Saudi Arabia a spiritual platform with which they can identify. The key element is that"Mr. Shugairi effortlessly mixes deep religious commitment with hip, playful humor."

In his efforts to promote religious moderation, he allows for bridging the divide between"East and West, pleasure and duty, the rigor of the mosque and the baffling freedoms of the internet."

The field of Muslims televangelists has expanded greatly according to Worth. With each new figure being broadcast, internet sites and Facebook groups are created where tens of thousands of fans trade epiphanies and links to YouTube clips of their favorite preachers.

Mr. Shugairi is unavoidably rebuked by both sides, argues Worth. To the conservatives he is a puppet to the West while to the liberals he is Islamizing the secular elite of the Arab world. Some observers fear that the growing prevalence of Islam on the airwaves and the internet could make moderates like Mr. Shugairi stepping stones toward more extreme figures,"who are never more than a mouse-click or a channel-surf away."

Hussein Amin, a professor at the American University in Cairo, explains that since there is no one to correct or challenge these 'sheikhs,'"so many who were liberals are now conservatives and those who were conservatives are now radicals."

However, many maintain that shows like Mr. Shugairi's help to combat radicalism and have inspired viewers to see that"Islam is not about living in caves and being isolated from the world. Islam is international. It is modern. It is tolerant."

Worth explains that young Muslims have inherited a world painfully divided between what they hear from the clerics and what they see on satellite television and the internet."This is especially true in Saudi Arabia, with its powerful and deeply conservative religious establishment," he comments. But Mr. Shugairi's program brings a new balance as he shows"a middle way in everything, in relationships, in working, in fasting, in prayer."

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Jewish groups condemned a broadcast of a British Muslim academic on the BBC, reports the Daily Telegraph. Dr. Kamal El-Helbawy, the founder of the Muslim Association of Britain, incensed viewers when he declared,"A child born in Israel is raised on the belief that the Arabs are like contemptible sheep."

Born in Egypt, El-Helbawy holds a British passport and declares himself a moderate who has denounced terrorism. He added on the show,"In elementary school they pose the following math problem - 'In your village, there are 100 Arabs. If you killed 40, how many Arabs would be left for you to kill?'. This is taught in the Israeli curriculum."

Barry Rubin, Director of Global Research in International Affairs, an Israeli-based research center, said the BBC risked inciting violence by allowing the remarks to be broadcast. Itamar Marcus, Director of Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli group which monitors the Arab language media, also claimed the decision to broadcast was wrong, and denounced El-Helbawy's claim that Israeli curriculum incites to murder Arabs as outrageous.

"That goes in people's ears and spreads like wildfire and the listeners think it's OK to go and murder Israelis," said Marcus. The BBC denied that it had allowed a contributor to the channel to condone, unchallenged, the killing of civilians. However, it admitted that it had failed to correct an assertion that the Israeli curriculum included a math problem about killing Arabs.

Jeremy Timmins, Head of Africa and the Middle East for the BBC World Service, said,"When we make a mistake we will acknowledge it, but one error does not substantiate a claim that the BBC limits debate and incites violence."

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Hamas TV Shut Down

Hamas-backed Al-Aqsa TV has been"banned" by French broadcasting authorities just hours after transmissions started from Eutelsat-associated operator Noorsat, reports Rapid TV News. Hamas's television channel was taken off the air in Europe less than 24 hours after it was added to the satellite network, industry officials declared.

The decision to ban the channel was praised by the American Jewish Committee."The action will sharply limit the reach into Europe of the terrorist organization's broadcasts," said the organization.

According to BBC Monitoring, the French broadcasting authority CSA said it had sent a warning to Eutelsat in December in the belief that some Al-Aqsa TV programs were likely to breach Article 5 of the law prohibiting incitement to hatred or violence on the grounds of race, religion or nationality.

Eutelsat stressed to AFP that there was no contract between Eutelsat and Al-Aqsa TV."We have a contract with a distributing firm called Noorsat based in Bahrain. We learned that Al-Aqsa TV was being carried on one of our satellites broadcasting to Europe on capacity that had been temporarily allocated to Noorsat for technical documentation at the start of the week," Eutelsat explained.

Meanwhile critics countered that Israeli TV frequently carries anti-Islamic comments of an extreme nature. One report on Middle East Online said pro-Israel groups often exaggerate or even outright lie about the nature of Hamas discourse.

Investigations showed that Al-Aqsa TV added two frequenciesby using the European satellite Eurobird in order to overcome disruptions to its broadcasts during Operation Cast Lead, according to Terrorism Info. Terrorism Info notes that the head offices of Eutelsat's broadcasts reach central and western Europe, where there are large Arab communities, exposing them to Hamas's vicious anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic and anti-Western propaganda.

In April 2008 Al-Aqsa TV's CEO, Fathi Hamad, said that he intended to increase the range of Al-Aqsa TV's broadcasts by using the European communications satellite Hotbird (operated by the same European corporation as Eurobird).

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Reshaping the State Department

James Kitfield discusses the need for an enlarged Department of State at Global Security. With Secretary-designate Hillary Clinton in control, several scholars have been evaluating what a new DoS could look like, as well as its concomitant effect on public diplomacy.

Kitfield notes that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has consistently highlighted"the absurdity of a superpower having more people playing in military bands than serving as diplomats." Indeed, the US spends 16 times more on military programs than on diplomacy according to Kitfield.

Gates argues that the Foreign Service has been"systematically starved of resources for a quarter of a century or more." Thus, while the Pentagon is boosting US ground forces by 90,000, the State Department has failed to win congressional support for an additional 1,150 Foreign Service officers. Chester Crocker, professor of strategic studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, claims that the State Department is"woefully underfunded and understaffed," following the post-Cold War"hollowing out" of US diplomatic capacity.

As a result, Kitfield warns of an acute imbalance between 'hard' and 'soft' power in the formulation of US foreign policy. Crocker states,"A lot of people in Washington think foreign policy is a contact sport where you get what you want with military muscle, and diplomacy is about limp-wristed diplomats pushing cookies at embassy socials."

For Crocker, 'hard' and 'soft' powers are misnomers, what really matters is 'smart' power, a combination of"brains, muscles, and dollars."

President of the American Foreign Service Association, John Naland, supports Crocker's conclusions. Naland contends,"So we're really facing a crisis in human capital," in which President-elect Barack Obama and incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,"have their work cut out for them." Kitfield surmises that Clinton should focus on"building development, reconstruction, and stabilization capacity."

On his Mountain Runner blog, Matt Armstrong compares the Departments of State and Defense and highlights the need to align areas of responsibility between the two departments. In addition, Armstrong suggests increasing the power of regional bureaus, with an undersecretary at the head of each - a position Armstrong terms"super ambassador." Armstrong believes this shift would lead to more regionally-focused activities, overcoming the"often too granular country level."

Armstrong's hopes for a regional approach to State Department work appear to be reflected in President-elect Obama's wish for"chief emissaries to world hot spots," writes Marc Ambinder on his Atlantic blog. Though Obama's transition team refuses to comment, Ambinder speculates that Dennis Ross will be put in charge of Iran, Richard Holbrooke will head up Southwest Asia, and Richard Haass will deal with the Middle East.

Finally, Mitchell Polman at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy discusses the Brooking's Institution's recent report on a possible USA-World Trust. Polman is supportive of the Trust's financial element,"[putting] the"public" into public diplomacy," through empowering non-foreign policy professionals to create public diplomacy programs.

Polman concludes that the Trust, operating outside of DoS direction,"would help unleash the creative spirits of Americans and foreigners alike to come up with innovative ways to build ties between the American people and the rest of the world."

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The blogosphere, which provides countless information and bypasses traditional outlets for unsanctioned opinions, has come to be a competitor to traditional journalism, according to the Kipp Report. However, a lack of credible sources and biased points of views, accusations often thrown at bloggers, threaten the field of journalism, warns the news site.

According to Deborah Branscum, a contributing editor to Newsweek, blogging offers creative freedom, instantaneity and interactivity, and does not need many marketing skills. Even though blogging has burgeoned over the past years, especially in heavily censored countries across the Middle East, credibility remains a pivotal factor affecting the readership.

"Just because blogging is not a form of journalism, it does not mean it may not bring out some truth and raise awareness about certain subjects," comments the Kipp Report.

A recent report from Reporters Without Borders says five of the world's top thirteen internet-censoring regimes are in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Syria are considered as the most"hostile" towards the internet. Other countries in the region fall somewhere in between. Governments censor certain websites and draft laws"to curb online dissent," notes the report.

According to Trevor Mostyn of the Journalism Fellowship Program at the Reuters Institute, bloggers have a very difficult time in the Middle East, with many of them facing arrest.

Bloggers have not become substitutes for journalists in more conservative countries, although"blogging serves as an alternative outlet for opinions and points of view," concludes the Kipp Report.

Additionally, the death toll of journalists and government crackdowns on internet journalists and bloggers are increasing, notes STL Today. The censorship of sites such as Twitter (in Syria) or Facebook (blocked in Syria and Tunisia, and filtered in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates) leads to massive amounts of content being blocked," continued the news site.

"The Asia-Pacific and Maghreb-Middle East regions are still the deadliest for the press," noted the Reporters Without Borders annual report.

"The fall in the number of journalists from the traditional media killed or arrested in 2008 does not mean the press freedom situation has improved," the report stressed."As the print and broadcast media evolve and the blogosphere becomes a worldwide phenomenon, predatory activity is increasingly focusing on the internet."


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Barack Obama's lack of response to the Gaza's situation has prompted Ahmed Shihab-Eldin of the Huntington Post to point out that his reticence on the matter will be perceived as his being"apathetic to Arab concerns and steadfast in his support for Israel." In contrast, President-elect Obama was quite vocal about his opinions on the attacks in Mumbai and the current economic crisis, he added.

Mr. Shihab-Eldin believes that Mr. Obama's lack of criticism of Israel's attacks on Gaza's schools and other nonmilitary targets is dangerous."Indignation is running rampant on the Arab street...As anger and resentment builds in the streets and in Arab parliaments, opposition groups, such as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood...are positioned to gain power," remarks Shihab-Eldin.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the Obama team has asserted its one-president-at-a-time policy. However,"deafening silence from the Obama team," as Al-Jazeera has called it, has caused pundits in the Middle East to note that"[the Arab publics] look at his silence as a negative sign. They think he is condoning what happened in Gaza because he's not expressing any opinion."

While most in the Arab-Muslim world have expressed disappointment at Mr. Obama's tepid response, others think that he is in a no-win situation."If he talks against the Palestinians he will lose any chance before he has even started," said Osama Hamdan, a Hamas representative in Lebanon."And if he talks against the Israelis, this will not help him."

Even though many are looking for hints of how Mr. Obama will stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict, reports the Inter Press Service (IPS), no one will really know until after January 20th.

University of Maryland political scientist Shibley Telhami supports the Obama team's ambiguity regarding the Gaza crisis."The president is not going to have a second chance to make a first impression. If you say something about this crisis first thing...then you're tying your hands in a way that's consequential. I think it's a big mistake for him to intervene in this crisis," asserts Telhami.

Raja Kamal, associate dean at the Harris School for Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, opines in Lebanon's Daily Starthat Mr. Obama's policies in the Middle East must be more nuanced and not be"one size fits all." Each country in the area has its own set of challenges and cultural mores.

Mr. Kamal points out that some Arab countries provide"cosmetic and symbolic" reforms to appease the global community, who remain critical of their deficiencies in human rights and education and lack of economic development. However, the US must also improve its moral standing in the world before undertaking any policy changes in the area, he continues.

According to Mr. Kamal, education is a particular weak spot in the Middle East and the Obama administration must stress educational reforms as a priority.

In addition to this slate of pressing issues that Mr. Obama must tackle in the Arab region, the president-elect must confront the challenges of the Iraq war. Eric Stoner, a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus, writes that Mr. Obama has spoken a great deal on how to proceed with the Iraq question, but has expressed little consideration for Iraqi public opinion. A March 2008 Iraqi poll indicates that a vast majority believe that US troops should leave, with"27% [saying that] the US military presence was making overall security better in their country."

Mr. Stoner suggests that as Mr. Obama strategizes policies for Iraq with members of his administration, it would behoove him to consider the desires of the Iraqi people.

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The recent conflict in Gaza has solicited a wide range of negative reactions from the world's major Muslim nations, notes Press TV. Norman Finkelstein, American political scientist and renowned Palestine-Israel scholar, asserted in an interview with the news site,"The [goal] of the Israeli government" in this situation is"to restore the fear of Israel among the Arab states in the region."

Finkelstein also claimed that since Israel is"[rejecting]...the terms" of negotiation proposed by countries supporting a two-state solution,"Israel's war is not with Hamas but with the international community."

The ubiquitous Arab indignation towards Israel's military action has sparked significant internal strife in Egypt. Steven Erlanger of the International Herald Tribune reports,"While few criticize [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak himself, there is unhappiness with the government's relative silence about Israel's bombing campaign and its Palestinian victims, and the apparent lack of diplomatic pressure from Cairo on Israel and the United States to stop the fighting." Hamas and Hezbollah have also"accused Egypt of partial responsibility for Palestinian deaths" because of the Egyptian government's controversial decision to keep its border with Gaza closed during the conflict.

Jon Leyne of BBC News describes the popular reaction to the events in Gaza in other parts of the Muslim world."Iran's official media is full every day with news of protests, demonstrations, and condemnation of the Israeli offensive," although"there's no sign that Tehran has tried to get its allies in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, to restart rocket attacks on Israel."

Lina Sinjab, reporting from Damascus for the BBC, also illuminated the widespread contempt for Israel's ambitions. Recently,"the Syrian government has strongly condemned the assault and called for an immediate ceasefire, a lifting of the blockade and the opening of border crossings, especially Rafah."

In Beirut, Jim Muir described the opposition to Israel as understandably more tempered in order to avoid"another bout of violence between Israel and...Hezbollah, as happened in 2006 with devastating results." Nonetheless, the movement has staged two large rallies to denounce Israel's armed initiatives. Despite mounting casualties on the Palestinian side,"Hezbollah's leaders...appear to be sanguine about the outcome in Gaza," and will likely only involve Hezbollah's forces in armed conflict if it becomes apparent that"Hamas is really losing," reports Robert Worth for the New York Times.

According to another article from Press TV, Jordan, the only Arab state aside from Egypt"to have normalized relations with Israel," is prepared to respond to Israeli military actions that have left over 1,000 Palestinians dead by"[looking] into all options, including reconsidering relations with Israel.""Several Jordanian lawmakers torched the Israeli flag in parliament," and 88 parliament members"signed a petition demanding that ties with Israel be severed."

Meanwhile, attention to the Gaza conflict has been heightened by noteworthy smaller-scale events occurring in the past month. BBC News reported that"a Danish man of Palestinian origin [was] arrested on suspicion of shooting and wounding two Israeli salesmen at a shopping centre in Odense in Denmark." Although authorities are"unsure what the motive was, Danish media have speculated it may have been a protests against Israeli air raids in Gaza."

In Iran, WorldNetDailyreports that a children's show focused on the ongoing conflict. During an emotional account of the current plight of Palestinians,"the TV host asked the Iranian children what they would do if they were in the place of the Palestinian children."'Would we surrender, or would be fight back?' The children replied in unison: 'Fight back,'" notes the news site.


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The Jerusalem Post argues that the independent Western media is running biased coverage of the Israeli government's attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Tal Samuel-Azran, a communications researcher at Ben-Gurion University, says,"'Alternative' media in the West, particularly in the United States, have become a hub for the Arab or Muslim perspective on the region's conflicts, a perspective that is not shared or regularly represented by the mainstream media."

Reporter Haviv Rettig Gur writes that"relatively few civilian casualties" in the attack do not warrant the attention the American independent media has given to images of carnage. As of January 14, the Palestinian death toll is near one thousand, according to NPR.

Samuel-Azran says that the major American networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN) view Al-Jazeera as being"more like Fox, pushing a specific perspective."

Fox's own commentator Mike Gallagher, for instance, says in an editorial on TownHall.com,"[The Daily Show's] Jon Stewart, and others like him, should be ashamed of themselves. No right-minded, clear-thinking American should waiver in supporting Israel in its current battle with Hamas."

Yet outside the mainstream, Samuel-Azran argues,"There is a kind of connection or coalition developing between alternative media in the West and the large Arab networks [that is] born of necessity." He says that Al-Jazeera's more graphic images feed the Western desire for more details beyond what the large networks tend to air,"particularly in countries such as Australia and Britain where Al-Jazeera is seen in a better light than the US."

Israeli officials who speak Arabic have been insistent in promoting the attacks on Israel, according to AntiWar.com. For instance, Tzipi Livni and Israeli Captain Avichai Adarai both asserted that Al-Jazeera's broadcasts have not given equal time to Israeli suffering.

As reported in the Lebanese Daily Star, Arabs face stereotyping and biased coverage more often, and have less of an organized voice to counter this phenomenon.

Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi founded the Arab Media Watch (AMW) in 2000. He notes that all countries in the Middle East face image problems. However, while there are numerous Jewish and Zionist groups designed to counter anti-Jewish stereotypes and slant (such as the Middle East Media Research Institute) there were none in Britain when he formed AMW.

Nashashibi argues that this bias impacts world affairs and has been pervasive, particularly against Arabs. "I don't think any other people in modern history have been stereotyped for so long," he told the Daily Star. "These stereotypes don't just affect Western foreign policy but also Arab communities in the West. If you want to improve the situation, you need to improve the media, which has the power to change people's opinions."

Jeffrey Fleishman writes in the Los Angeles Times that Arab media portrayal of Palestinians is a"cinéma vérité of the underdog, an erratic landscape of martyrs and heroes and boys hurling white rocks at the enemy invader."

Fleishman writes,"Al-Jazeera and other Arab media outlets have grown more objective in reporting in recent years, but when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, balanced coverage is often outweighed by pathos and narratives of funeral corteges proceeding amid the sounds of explosions."

Fleishman comments however that Israeli and American figures are not the only ones mocked in the Arab press. Arab leaders, such as Egypt's President Mubarak, receive criticism for keeping the Egyptian border closed to those fleeing Gaza.

Editor and Publisher (E&P) observes a lack of criticism from American media, particularly the New York Times. In addition to this noted absence of anti-invasion columns, the paper ran a decidedly pro-invasion column by William Kristol. The lack of coverage leading up to the inevitable invasion, E&P argues, would make any condemnation, however muted, too little too late.

Electronic Intifada reporter Shervan Sardar writes that the newspapers merely echoed the official American government line. "In the first three days of the Israeli offensive from 28-30 December, editorials and op-eds from five major US papers overwhelmingly adopted the official US and Israeli government talking points on the conflict - even where this version was clearly contradicted by the legal and historical record, widely available to the public."

Sardar adds that major newspapers' editorial pages printed blatant inaccuracies. She deplores,"Overall, the commentary presented a disturbingly false and misleading picture of the conflict to the American public."

While the standard justification for Israel's actions lies in Hamas rocket attacks, Sardar notes,"None of the media outlets examined Israeli fire on Palestinians in Gaza." A 2007 Human Rights Watch report entitled"Indiscriminate Fire" documented that Israel fired 14,617 artillery shells into Gaza compared to 2,700 fired into Israel.

Sardar adds that,"Writing in The Nation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk explained that much of what was happening in Gaza could not credibly be called self-defense."

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