DUBAI - Al Arabiya television, hit by the biggest attack on the media in Iraq, was targeted because of its refusal to side with either insurgents or the U.S.-backed government, the channel's head said on Monday.
"We are the victim of our neutrality. If you are a one-sided TV station you are more likely to survive because one side protects you," Managing Director Abdul Rahman al-Rashed told Reuters in an interview. Speaking two days after a car-bombing of its offices in Baghdad that killed seven, Saudi-born Rashed denied accusations by militant groups that Al Arabiya has a pro-U.S. editorial line.
"We are in-between: we are both in Falluja and in the Green Zone. We show both (Shi'ite rebel cleric) Moqtada Sadr and (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi," the U.S.-educated chief said.
"On Al Arabiya you see all sides -- militants, al Qaeda people, Americans, Iraqi government officials, and hostage takers," said Rashed, a former editor-in-chief of the London-based Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat.
Unlike its rival Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya is seen by radicals as sympathetic to the U.S.-allied Iraqi government and critical of al Qaeda-style militancy.
Militants linked to al Qaeda, led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, last year launched a campaign against Saudi Arabia.
But Rashed said: "We have the maximum pressure coming from the Iraqi government not from the other side. It accused us of playing into the hands of terrorists and stopped us twice from working in Baghdad and Americans killed two of our journalists."
Iraq has closed the offices of Al Jazeera, accusing it of backing insurgents.
COMMERCIAL INDEPENDENCE
Critics say majority Saudi-owned Al Arabiya's ties with the U.S.-allied conservative kingdom compromises its credibility. But Rashed said his network and its mother-company Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) enjoyed much more commercial independence than its competitors.
"Are others not tied to their government? We are at least commercially independent. We have been on the ground for 15 years since MBC was launched," he said. We have more commercials on our stations ... than any another station. That makes us commercially independent."
Al Jazeera is partly funded by the Gulf Arab state of Qatar. Among other Arabic satellite channels fighting for the large Arabic audience in the region, Al Hurra is U.S.-funded, while several others are owned by Arab governments.
Al Arabiya has also drawn the ire of militants by avoiding the term "martyr" -- common in Arab media when referring to Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.
"Our reporters on the ground are free to use the terminology they think is appropriate -- so they do use 'martyr' in Palestine. But in desk-writing we don't use it," Rashed said.
"It is not for us as a news organization to say who is a martyr and who is not. In Saudi Arabia they call victims of bombings martyr, but we don't, even though we are Saudi."