U.S. Takes to Airwaves With TV Service in Iraq

Now that Iraqi television has gone off the air, the information war is on.

Viewers in Iraq saw a new look Thursday on the nation’s Channel 3, produced not by Saddam Hussein’s regime but by the Pentagon. And the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors is planning an even more ambitious program, to air as early as next week, that would put on Iraqi airwaves the news shows of most of America’s major networks.

The Pentagon’s five-hour-a-day program, called “Toward Freedom,” debuted with messages to the Iraqi people from President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, subtitled in Arabic, and with a feature on humanitarian aid.

A more commercial-looking channel is planned by the same team that turned the Voice of America’s sleepy Arabic service, which had a 2% share of the listening audience in Middle East countries a few years ago, into Radio Sawa, which now draws 40% of its target audience.

Plans for the second channel call for 2 1/2 hours of original programming modeled after U.S. news shows. An anchor, speaking in Arabic, will introduce news from around the world produced by the Radio Sawa team.

Radio Sawa is still primarily a music station, featuring singers such as Celine Dion, but offers news on the quarter hour.

The new channel also will feature 3 1/2 hours of news shows provided by ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Fox as a public service, bringing Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Brit Hume and Jim Lehrer to Iraqi television. The programs will be shown in their entirety in English with Arabic subtitles.

CNN was invited to participate with its evening broadcast but declined.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency that supervises all the U.S. government’s nonmilitary international broadcasting, including Voice of America, Radio and TV Marti, Radio Sawa and Radio Farda, the new Persian station broadcast in Iran. Together, the services broadcast in 65 languages.

The new channel, tentatively called ITV, could be on the air within days of final funding approval.

“The mission of the [Broadcasting Board of Governors] is to promote democracy by being an example of a free press,” said Norman J. Pattiz, the radio executive who founded the Westwood One radio network and developed Radio Sawa. “What better way to fulfill that mission than to provide actual examples of America’s free press?”

Both channels will be beamed down from Commando Solo, a fleet of specially equipped C-130 cargo planes filled with electronic gear that flies over Iraq. The U.S. government, which has used Commando Solo planes as part of its information wars since Vietnam, deployed them last year in Afghanistan and this year in Iraq to convey information to civilians, via radio, about how to avoid the fighting and about U.S. intentions. Since late March, Pentagon officials said, they have also used Commando Solo to broadcast messages on Iraqi television frequencies.

“For decades, the Iraqi people have heard nothing but totalitarian propaganda that was designed to prop up the regime of Saddam Hussein,” said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. “That will now change, and that is for the good of the Iraqi people.”

Asked if Iraqis won’t just see “Toward Freedom” as yet more propaganda, but from another source, Fleischer said: “If the scenes that we’re seeing on the streets carried through free media’s cameras are any indication, the Iraqi people welcome a message from President Bush.”

For the moment, the Pentagon has the television field mostly to itself. Britain’s BBC, which monitors incoming broadcasting into Iraq, reported Thursday that the satellite frequencies used by Iraq Satellite Channel have shown color bars since Wednesday. And Republic of Iraq TV has not been observed in the last few days but was reportedly still on the air Thursday in northern Iraq, carrying patriotic songs.

Radio is another matter. Iraq’s official radio programs have largely disappeared from the airwaves, said the BBC monitoring report. But Radio Sawa has been broadcasting 24 hours a day in northern Iraq.

The BBC’s Arabic Service has launched “Lifeline,” a 10-minute daily program through which listeners throughout the West can leave messages for friends and family in Iraq. And Iraqi opposition groups have launched radio stations from northern Iraq, according to the BBC report, with repeated appeals to people in Baghdad not to loot ministries and hospitals because such scenes can be seen on television screens around the world.