Congressional appropriators urged support for a controversial Middle East research outfit. “The Committee notes the work of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) in providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish media, as well as original analysis,” the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee said in a report accompanying the foreign operations bill it passed last week. “The Committee urges support for the work of organizations which provide accurate translations and balanced analysis.” Many academics, journalists and lawmakers have commended MEMRI’s work as indispensable, but a number of Arabists in academia have said it distorts data by focusing on anti-Western and anti-Jewish extremists at one end and at the other, Arabs who decry their political culture as fatally flawed, without covering the area in between the extremes.
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