Fox News just reported that Al-Hurra news chief Larry Register has turned in his letter of resignation. Power Line called this last Wednesday, passing on reports that Congress was fed up with Al-Hurra's inability to tell "news" from "Islamist propaganda". At the time, Joel Mowbray predicted that "Register could be gone within a week." Done and done.

Al-Hurra's less than critical coverage of Iran's anti-Holocaust Conference came in for a lot ofa attention and criticism. But their almost fawning deference to Hezbollah probably didn't help.

There's a degree to which Register is in an impossible situation. In order to be credible, any US public diplomacy effort has to - in a crude sense - speak the same language as the Muslim world. This doesn't mean that they have to always tell Muslims what they want to hear - not even Al Jazeera does that. Still, Al-Hurra still has to more or less play in the same reality as the Muslim world, reporting and explaining events within the same basic worldview. But that worldview is pathologically anti-Semitic, wallowing in a morass of conspiracy theories. You're talking about societies in which huge - huge - swaths of people believe that either Israel or Bush or both were responsible for 9/11. How you even begin talking to such societies without embracing some pretty odious neuroses is a difficult - we would argue structurally impossible - challenge. Which isn't to say that the US should defer to those neuroses, which would gain it nothing. What it does mean is that the US should examine again whether military and diplomatic sacrifices should be made in the hopes of "finding common ground" on such terms.

Update:
The original version of this post referred to Larry Register as the "Al-Hurra chief". He's actually head of the news division, and we've changed the post to more accurately reflect that.

References:
* Joel Mowbray reports: Congress hits Al Hurra where it hurts [Powerline]
* This Is Why Public Diplomacy Will Fail - Islamists Take It Over And Use It For Propaganda [MR]
* This Is Why Public Diplomacy Will Fail - 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Edition [MR]

Previously:
* US State Department: Lebanon Is Not Responsible for Hezbollah
* US Public Diplomacy, Tact Don't Extend To Israel
* Public Diplomacy Means Always Having to Say You're Sorry

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers