A number of major broadcasters are ready to begin offering news programming in Arabic. But will it help, or make matters worse?

(DING! DING! DING! This is this blog's 3,000th post!!)

From the NYT story:

The potential risks were apparent last week when about 500 Iraqi followers of a radical Shiite cleric attacked the Iranian consulate in Basra in anger over talk show commentary on Al Kawthar, an Iranian satellite television channel that broadcasts in Arabic.

For countries like Denmark and Spain, where Arabic news efforts are beginning, the benefits may well outweigh the hazards. Both nations have confronted geopolitical tensions, with the terrorist bombings in Madrid in March 2004 and the furor over the publication last year of cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

In late March, the state-owned Spanish news agency EFE started an Arabic service with financing from the Foreign Affairs Ministry. The service offers information to newspaper and media outlets and an Arabic Web site that eventually will be available in part for free to general readers.

"We want to be a piece of the big puzzle and try to offer a bridge between civilizations," said Javier Martin, head of EFE's Arabic services. With a newly hired staff of 14 Arabic editors and translators in Cairo, the news agency is concentrating on reaching African media outlets in some of the countries closest to Spain: Tunisia, Mauritania and Morocco, the latter being the home country of several terrorists involved in the Madrid bombings.

In Denmark, the anti-immigration Danish People's Party is proposing to set up what it calls an Arab version of Radio Free Europe through the national public broadcaster, Danmarks Radio. They aim to set aside 25 million kroner, or $4.2 million, to transmit radio and television programming to Arabic-speaking countries, using a 100-million kroner fund set up in 2003 by an initiative called the "Danish as an Arab."

"It has not been approved yet, but eventually it looks like it's possible," said Soren Espersen, the Danish People's Party's foreign policy spokesman. "We feel that there is a lack of democracy in Arab countries, and that was the reason for the crisis with the cartoons. It's important that they get discussions about democracy."