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From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke will be back next week. I'm Bob Garfield.

From Egypt to Palestine, Iraq to Lebanon, symptoms of democracy are breaking out all over the Mideast,

and the political right is falling all over itself to take credit.

Many foreign policy observers are hailing the Bush administration's policies and saying the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy throughout the world.

There's clear evidence that it's working.

The president in talking about freedom and democracy is sparking a wave of very positive democratic senator.

What's the predicate was doing what George Bush and this administration did in Iraq, the example of the brave Iraqis?

But what if the credit belongs not to American foreign policy?

What if the major catalyst is a more elemental democratic institution,

namely a fledgling free media? Masked terrorists, anti-American, screeds and all,

what if pan-Arab satellite TV news, including the widely despised in the West Al Jazeera,

turns out to be the force that ultimately

empowers citizens throughout the historically authoritarian Arab world.

Hisham Melham is the host of the weekly program Across the Ocean on Al-Arabia TV, and he joins

me now.

Hisham, welcome.

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