Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I find it quite curious--call me conspiracy-minded, please--that Ipsos polling firm in the Middle East always manages to produce poll results that are consistent with the Bush Doctrine. Look at this joke here: "Ratings released by Ipsos Stat in the wake of this summer's war between Israel and Lebanon showed Al Arabiya had finally overtaken its better-known competitor, no mean feat considering Al Jazeera had a seven-year head start." In fact, they have managed to claim in 2004 that Al-Hurra TV is number two (they said that it had 40% share--whatever that means) . And notice the hagiographic nature of this article which misses the key point: that Ar-Rashed is a mere propagandist for the House of Saud. A source who knows about the Arab media more than anybody I know told me this: "Event after event, Alarabiya slides in rating. it is a non-event news channel. I think the reason is that audiences make better judgment of the station in light of a major event, therefore Alarabiya seems to fail time after time." (thanks Mohammad)
Ipsos also found in an Arab poll that Bush is the best looking man on earth according to Arab viewers.