Jose Martinez in the NY Daily News - Anchors riding Iraq airwaves:
Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather hit the Iraqi airwaves this week as part of a U.S.-led effort to use television to educate Iraqis about democracy."Might be?" Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and PBS are propaganda. Just not American.
Freed for the first time in decades from state-controlled television, Iraq can now receive a nightly dose of "Iraq and the World."
"It's not the kind of media they're used to seeing," said Norman Pattiz, chairman of the federal Broadcasting Board of Governors.
The initial two-hour broadcast included news clips from ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS translated into Arabic. Fans of Fox news can get their fix with clips from Brit Hume's "Special Report" - but sorry, no Geraldo.
...
"Iraq and the World" is financed by the U.S. government, which is using military cargo planes to beam the commercial-free broadcast into Saddam Hussein's former stomping grounds.
The show isn't likely to be a ratings hit - only 10% of Iraq's 24 million people own a TV. And critics are questioning how Iraqis will take to American programming that might be viewed as propaganda.
