Journalists, and for that matter academics, relish a good plot twist. So it’s no surprise that some commentators in the United States have latched onto a new picture of Arab journalists as friends, not foes, of western interests. Rather than being hard-core enemies of America, Arab media are “potential allies whose agenda broadly tracks the stated goals of the United States Middle East policy,” according to a new study published in this summer’s International Journal of Press/Politics and previewed in a New York Times op-ed in May. Arab journalists are “not overtly anti-American,” writes former CBS foreign correspondent Lawrence Pintak, a journalism professor at the American University in Cairo and lead author of the study, who in his Times op-ed argues that they are “a valuable conduit for explaining American policy to their audiences.”

Tell that to President Bush, who in 2006 said that Arab TV is a font of “propaganda” that “isn’t fair” and “does not do our country justice.” To promote the U.S. line in the Middle East, the Bush administration tried an end run around the Arab media, establishing its own Arabic-language television network (Al Hurra—“The Free One”) broadcasting in the Middle East.

If Pintak is right, Bush’s efforts have been worse than a waste: they have “demonized” Arab journalists, would-be foot soldiers in what Pintak calls the “war of ideas against terrorism.” Most Arab journalists see themselves as responsible for driving social and political reform, according to Pintak and co-author Jeremy Ginges, a psychology professor at the New School for Social Research. They base their conclusions on a 2005–2006 survey of 601 journalists in fourteen Arab countries. Most of the respondents want their clergy out of politics, their governments clear of media control, and a change in the political status quo in their countries. Almost...

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