al-Qaeda just can't catch a break these days. In Mosul, al-Qaeda's forces are getting thumped. In Sadr City, they have to endure the embarrassment of Iraqi , not American, troops patrolling. They can hardly pull off successful attacks anymore. And to show how far al-Qaeda's stock has fallen, even the Arab media has stopped giving them respect. At Abu Aardvark, Marc Lynch looks at what al-Qaeda is saying about the Arab media. To really see this, take a look at what al-Qaeda and its supporters say about the Arab media these days. Far from praising it, they regularly complain about the "crusader media" tarnishing their image and failing to spread their message. The jihadist-oriented forums have been full of grumbling about the Arab media in general and al-Jazeera specifically. Al-Qaeda finds itself deeply frustrated with the current state of the Arab media, unable to get its message out through the din of competing stations and unable to dominate the news agenda or the political discourse. In Iraq, for instance, al-Arabiya promotes the Awakenings and tries to undermine al-Qaeda (especially on its show Death Makers), while al-Jazeera often features representatives of the anti-AQ insurgency factions (especially the Islamic Army of Iraq). Al-Jazeera and other stations long ago stopped broadcasting al-Qaeda tapes in their entirety. The howls of outrage from jihadist forums over al Jazeera's treatment of bin Laden's Iraq tape a few months ago - distorting its meaning by airing clips making it appear that bin Laden was criticizing the Islamic State of Iraq when quite the opposite was the case - are still echoing (as in the ongoing "al-Jazeera watch" cataloguing the station's alleged sins). Back to the days of Zarqawi, the fact that al-Qaeda manifestly couldn't rely on the televised media is clearly one of the reasons it turned to the internet to disseminate its tapes and messages.
Hat tip: LT Nixon
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