[Media-watch] Alhurra journalist only Iraqi member of travelling white house press corps - chicago tribune - 2/11/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0411010243nov02,1,715140.story?coll=chi-leisuretempo-hed

The most-watched TV reporter nobody in America has seen

By Rick Pearson
Tribune political reporter
Published November 2, 2004

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. -- President Bush's motorcade had left the high school 
athletic field, the crane that hefted a giant U.S. flag drooped its arm and 
journalist Dalia Al-Aqidi was sitting down to take in the warmth of a low, 
late afternoon sun off the desert mountains.

It was time for a break in the broadcasting schedule for Al-Aqidi, who may 
be the most-watched television correspondent covering President Bush's 
re-election campaign that no one in America has ever seen.

But through her reports for Alhurra, the U.S.-sponsored TV channel for the 
Middle East, as well as her background on television and the stage, Al-Aqidi 
is readily recognized and besieged for autographs when she returns to her 
home region.

Home, by the way, is Baghdad. Al-Aqidi, 36, has the unique perspective of 
being the only Iraqi covering the presidential campaign as a member of the 
traveling White House press corps.

Her views are intensified by her strange life's journey. She grew up in 
several Middle East countries and was part of Iraq's protected status 
because of her family's background in the arts.

In her teenage years, she used to go to the same clubs as Uday and Qusay 
Hussein, the late sons of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Indeed, 
Hussein once granted her a life-changing favor. Years later, she fled 
Hussein and his regime.

Now, Al-Aqidi is reporting and anchoring the news for a relatively new TV 
station broadcasting by satellite to 22 Middle East countries from studios 
in Springfield, Va. More than just serving as a reporter, she also faces a 
battle of perceptions from those within Alhurra's target audience who 
believe its U.S. government background makes it little more than a 
propaganda machine.

`A special status'

Born the daughter of Iraqi actress Ghazwa Al-Alkhalidi and her father, Fakri 
Al Aqidi, a prime mover behind the Iraqi theater, "We had a certain, special 
status that we lived in," Al-Aqidi said.

"For me, I lived a very happy childhood. I had everything, yet I always felt 
that something was missing," Al-Aqidi said. "You always had to be careful. 
You cannot trust your best friend. You cannot even trust your family 
members. . . . You feel that your phone was tapped. You feel that you are 
being watched all the time, regardless of who you are and what you do."

At age 7, she was a star of Middle Eastern television. During a period in 
which her mother was acting in Abu Dhabi, Al-Aqidi was hosting and 
performing songs and dances on an after-school show similar to the "Mickey 
Mouse Club."

By the time she was in 5th grade, in the late 1970s, she and her mother 
returned to Iraq. The stirrings of the soon-to-start Iraq-Iran war were in 
the air. But there also were divisions in her family. It was when her 
parents decided to divorce.

Seeking a favor from Hussein

Al-Aqidi's mother decided to ask Hussein, who was vice president of Iraq, 
for a favor. Could she keep custody of her daughter, rather than follow 
Iraqi law that automatically turned the child over to her father?

"He said, `You'll have your daughter back,'" Al-Aqidi said of Hussein. "He 
saved my life at that time because I couldn't live with my father."

While her and her mother's careers as an actresses flourished, the special 
status Al-Aqidi was accorded allowed her to socialize with a select group, 
including Hussein's sons.

"I used to see them all the time," she said. "We were kids. I never thought 
about the government until I started growing up. By the age of 17 and 18, I 
started realizing this is not the right thing."

The family started to plot a way to get out of Iraq.

Al-Aqidi and her mother frequently traveled throughout the Middle East for 
acting performances -- though they were never both allowed out of Iraq at 
the same time. But in 1988, Al-Aqidi was scheduled to perform at a festival 
in Tunisia while her mother was scheduled to go to Cairo.

"We drove our car to a place, parked it and walked in the street and talked 
about how we planned to leave the country," she said.

"I left with two suitcases. My grandmother didn't know. My aunts didn't, my 
uncles. No one knew that we were leaving," she said. "We had to hide the 
cash between the covers of the suitcase, knowing if they catch us, we'll be 
dead."

Accompanied by her infant half-brother, Al-Aqidi and her mother worked 
throughout the Middle East. Al-Aqidi hosted children shows, did some news 
reporting and dubbed cartoons from English to Arabic. Then Hussein invaded 
Kuwait, the Gulf War started and the family found itself without a homeland.

She and her mother were encouraged by elements of the Iraqi opposition to 
join Radio Free Iraq in Saudi Arabia, where she developed most of her 
reporting skills. She was later able to get a passport and move to the 
United States, and Washington, where she has lived and worked since 1991.

Al-Aqidi joined Alhurra before it went on the air six months ago, serving as 
its White House correspondent and anchor, reporting on its two one-hour 
nightly news programs. She also works on a sister station, Alhurra Iraq, 
which is directed solely at that country. The U.S. government has invested 
more than $100 million in the two stations.

While a recent ACNielsen survey found the station was being watched by 
millions of Arab viewers, its audience pales compared with the more known 
Al-Jazeera, which Al-Aqidi said plays more to the passions of its viewers. 
Al-Aqidi also acknowledged that the new station's credibility is an issue 
with some Arab viewers.

"Before we were launched there was prejudgment that this is U.S. propaganda, 
so, for us, we have to walk the extra mile just to prove we are credible. 
We're not anybody's propaganda. We're not Bush's mouthpiece. We're not the 
government's mouthpiece," she said.

"This is the hardest thing we are facing, and we faced it from Day One. Now, 
people are starting to look at us and say, `You know what? Let me hear what 
you have to say,' even though they may not trust us. It'll take us a long 
time to build that trust."

Questioning Bush rationale

An ardent supporter of regime change in Iraq, she has questioned the Bush 
administration's rationale for going to war. During a piece on detainees at 
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, she raised the issue of a lack of judicial fairness, 
including the use of faulty interpreters.

Afternoon in Alamogordo has quickly turned into sunset as three buses 
carrying the press corps arrive at Holloman Air Force Base, where reporters 
climb onto "Grim Air," the nickname for the dull gray Boeing 757 that will 
ferry them to Texas that night.

Aboard the jet, Al-Aqidi has put away the laptop she uses to write her 
scripts, where Arabic words had flowed on the screen from right to left in a 
Microsoft Word document, and she sipped a Heineken as she pondered the state 
of her world.

"I had nightmares for years and years that I wake up and I'm in the middle 
of Iraq during Saddam's period and people would recognize me and run after 
me to try to capture me and I was running, running, running," Al-Aqidi said.

"I do not think Americans really appreciate freedom because they've never 
seen anything else," she said. "They've never lost it. Now, with the Patriot 
Act, they have started feeling it. But this is nothing compared to what was 
happening in Iraq."