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Will this pander to the anti-Israel audience even more than the English service?

I'm serious about this. The overwhelming impression from Arab and Muslim spokespeople quoted right here on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is that your target audience is not even remotely interested in the truth concerning Israel or the hard facts about thier own societies.

Does this mean that normal ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ services will become more accurate with respect of middle eastern affairs?

Hmmmm, that will be interesting. Will the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ follow the same editorial line as well? Such as showing mangled corpses and broadcasting the speech of every other wacko that happens to be preaching indiscriminate death and destruction?

Sorry for a definitely preconceived view of Al-Jazeera but most stuff I know about the Middle-East I learnt with the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.

I suggest the opposite with becoming even more biased to the Arab's side.

I do have one question though - why is the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ launching an Arabic service? I doubt there are that many Arabic speakers in Britain.

When the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is constantly asking for raises to the license fee it is a bit of a cheek that they are wasting money on services which do not benefit the license payer.

Perhaps if they stopped trying to be the WBC we could get a refund instead of being charged more.

Mark E

Perhaps you missed this part of the article - "The operating costs will come from existing grant-in-aid funding from the government, which is £246 million for 2006-7." ?

Not all parts of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ are funded by the license fee.

Here is an article explaining how the World Service is funded: /worldservice/faq/news/story/2005/08/050810_wsfunding.shtml

In any case, is it too much of stretch to see how another point of view to Al-Jezeera's is of benefit?

In reply to Mark E, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is charged with broadcasting honest and truthful reports to the whole world, not just the residents of the UK.

I'm not sure a TV channel will be more effective and more widely available than the World Service however.

Will this new service be any more reliable and unbiased than Al-Jazeera though?

Mark E, do at least *read* what you're commenting on before making your comment. The service is funded by the government in direct grant aid, *not* by the license fee. It's right there in the article.

The expansion of the Arabic ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is an attempt by Blair to follow Bush's hegemonic dream and establish another parallel to the dismal al-Hurrah tv which no one in the Middle East takes seriously. al-Jazeerah, which is criticised vehemently by those who do not know Arabic, has demonstrated very high standards of reporting let alone the monumental feat of translating all these senseless "Bushismos". I have to admit I was disappointed with the reporting of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ on the Israeli debacle in Lebanon. Some of your announcers insisted Hizballah is a terrorist organization. You won't go far with that in your Arabic service. It is really pointless to win hearts and minds at this stage.

How is it going to do anything for the world credibility of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to be trying to undermine an existing station that has such high credibility amongst the target audience presently, largely for pioneering independent reporting of Arab concerns? Will the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ effort, following Britain's dire recent performance on middle-eastern issues, not thus immediately be cast as a propaganda voice, harming the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ "brand"? This is a world where America now routinely launches propaganda television stations wherever it wishes to create trouble. How can the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ avoid being seen as doing the same?