Al Arabiya seeks media niche

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- No matter what scoop is run these days on the Arab world's newest and brashest satellite channel, someone seems to get angry.

Al Arabiya's staff in Iraq has been threatened with death from pro-Saddam renegades and is being criticized by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council as well as the State Department.

The news channel's "Inside Iraq," with its in-your-face host Elie Nakouzi, ran two long programs showing footage of Saddam Hussein's two sons cavorting with imported prostitutes at a private club, and in another program showed Saddam's half-brother, Watban, then Iraq's interior minister, supervising the routine beating and torture of petty criminals.

Not content with such footage, the program also locates eyewitnesses. It took a torture victim back to the scene, and in the program about Saddam's sons and their women, it invited Uday Hussein's teenage maid and a bodyguard to regale viewers with saucy and shocking details.

No wonder the owners of the hotel where the studios are based has asked Al Arabiya to move out, fearing attacks with bombs or rocket-propelled grenades by Saddam loyalists or Islamic fanatics.

But the station has also angered Washington and the Iraqi Governing Council.

When masked gunmen appeared on Al Arabiya a few weeks ago and threatened to kill Americans and members of the recently formed governing council, the State Department criticized the broadcaster as "highly irresponsible" and said it would send envoys to complain to the owners and investors.

In response, Al Arabiya's board of advisers decided to stop such screenings, saying that threats of violence would not be carried and that only men prepared to identify themselves could criticize the United States on its broadcasts.

That decision was apparently not known to the Iraqi Governing Council last week when it banned Al Arabiya and rival Al Jazeera from entering any Iraqi government building or observing any of its meetings for two weeks.