Al Hurra on the brink
April 15, 2025
By Chris Forrester
The US-funded Arabic language Al Hurra satellite news channel is close to having to cease broadcasting with the Trump administration’s decision to cut its funding.
Al Hurra, which launched in 2004 to counter anti-American sentiment, has a claimed 30 million viewership over the Middle East and North Africa.
Local reports say that in notices to Al Hurra news staff about their dismissals, chief Jeffrey Gedmin said he had given up hope that the US administration might lift its freeze anytime soon for the congressionally approved money for Al Hurra and its US-funded Arabic-language sister organisations.
Gedmin accused Kari Lake, President Trump’s appointee to the US government agency overseeing Al Hurra, Voice of America and other US-funded news programming abroad, of dodging his efforts to speak with her about the funding cutoff according to a Reuters report.
“I’m left to conclude that she is deliberately starving us of the money we need to pay you, our dedicated and hard-working staff,” Gedmin said in severance letters obtained by the Associated Press and shown on the website of Al Hurra’s parent company, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
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