Robert Satloff

Robert Satloff is the director for policy and planning of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel and American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) associated think tank.

Commentator on Al-Hurra TV

Satloff is also a commentator on Al Hurra TV, the US funded "public diplomacy" satellite TV beaming Washington's stance on the Middle East.

Al-Hurra TV, a network the U.S. government funds in hopes of improving public diplomacy in the Arab world, has retained an erstwhile critic, Robert Satloff, a director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, to host a talk show. The title: "Inside Washington." Two years ago, Satloff wrote an op-ed piece criticizing the U.S. government for underwriting al-Hurra. Privately owned media are much better forums, he argued.
But after funding for the network passed through Congress, he said, he was talking to an al-Hurra official and remarked that it ought to have a program focused on the complexities of Washington decision-making. "The notion that the president just snaps his fingers and things happen" is false, he said. "When I suggested this," he recalled, "I was told: 'You do it.' " He said that now that he's unable to block al-Hurra as a publicly funded entity, he wants to make it better.

Affiliations

• Fikra Forum – Contributor
• Steering Committee, Strategic Public Diplomacy Project
• Expert, Middle East Forum

External links

• Nora Boustany, "If You Can't Beat It . . .", Washington Post, October 26, 2005.