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The consensus of much of the Arab press is that the Bush Administration has tried lying to the media, buying favorable media coverage and, failing all else, attacking the media, particularly Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya.

Arab journalists envy their American counterparts. They know that the train of events that led to President Nixon’s resignation started with painstaking and careful gathering of facts by investigative journalists, who in turn were backed up by an editor and a publisher prepared to take the political heat that resulted.

Speaking truth to power is an American tradition so well established that most US political leaders have learned to live with the consequences and moderate their behavior accordingly

So why has the Bush Administration been so sensitive about media criticism in the Arab world? To a significant extent, the US government was taken by surprise at the rapidly increasing degree of media independence from governments. In the past, there was some truth to the charge that there is no such thing as a free Arab press, given the sad record of media suppression by Arab governments and non-official media being suborned by government subsidies

The revolution of communications and the proliferation of satellite television news programming changed this reality. As a senior State Department official in the early 1990s, I only had to worry about how CNN, BBC, the Voice of America and a few European-based Arab newspapers covered the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. By 1998, Arab media had joined other major players covering the Palestinian intifada. In addition to the major satellite networks, the quality of government television news coverage has improved and an increasing number of serious and relatively independent Arab newspapers have emerged. Most challenging of all to the US self image, our media now often rely on the Arab media for news coverage of their countries – from reporting in the field to editorial commentaries.

But the administration’s reactions for the most part have tended to fall into a pattern at odds with American domestic tradition. Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes may be taking important steps to reverse this trend, but so far there is little evidence of that.

The first response has been to ignore the Arab media. In some Arab countries, where local news outlets are boring and lack credibility with their own audience, benign neglect probably makes sense. But a growing number of credible Arab media outlets complain they cannot reach American officials for comment. Ignoring the media can backfire. There are many non-official US sources who are happy to describe the views of the US government often distorted by their own ideological agendas.

There also have been incidents of deception, even if the US government seldom engages in the outright lies that carry too high a penalty if discovered. The Bush Administration has lost its credibility as a teller of the truth even faster in the Middle East than in the US. Constant repetition of “9/11” and ominous, but misleading, references to “a new Islamic caliphate” as justifications for American policies are having an adverse impact in the Arab world.

Then there is the old policy of trying to buy favorable media coverage. Maybe that is why our tax money is being wasted on the US government-financed and ill-considered Al Hurra satellite TV broadcasts. It also explains the bizarre notion that we can support a free press in Iraq by paying Iraqi journalists to write feel good stories or bribing Iraqi newspapers to publish “news stories” written by our own personnel. This is unacceptable at home and it should be unacceptable abroad too.

Finally, there are attacks on the Arab media. I don’t mean physical attacks but something far more insidious, involving requests by US officials of Arab governments to “rein in” media based in their countries. We don’t really know how often this is happening, but even a few such cases compromise the US commitment to the core value of media freedom.

We need to change our approach now or suffer continued damages. The Bush Administration and future US administrations must accept reality and stop trying to ignore, deceive, buy or threaten the Arab media. That does not mean we should be any less discriminating. Much of the Arab media remains either restricted or irrelevant and some influential media outlets have extremist political agendas that make it futile for US officials to deal with them.

US public diplomacy should avoid abstract debates on issues like freedom versus stability or the definition of terrorism and find ways to explain US policies and actions in specific circumstances. To do that intelligently, we need to decentralize the rapid response that is required. Cabinet level officials and top communications managers should recognize that professional US public affairs personnel, including US diplomats and US military officers in the field, are capable of dealing with the Arab media. For the administration, it would require decentralizing public diplomacy and learning to accept nuance and shades of grey, which will earn us more respect where it matters.