US halts magazine for Muslim young people

WASHINGTON -- The State Department has suspended publication of a government-funded magazine for young people in the Arab world, Africa, and elsewhere to see whether the outreach effort is cost-effective.

The slick Arabic-English magazine, hi, focused on American culture and life. About 55,000 copies of hi were distributed per month in 18 countries; most copies were given away.

The two-year-old effort was intended to present a friendly face of the United States in parts of the world where the US image is poor.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Karen Hughes, the former Bush White House adviser who is now in charge of public diplomacy in the Middle East and elsewhere, wanted to evaluate whether the $4.5 million annual publication cost was well spent.

Like US-funded radio and television broadcasts intended for the Muslim world, hi was criticized as propaganda. Features this month included one on Texas, the state of the month, and one on multigenerational American households.

''Part of what she wants to do is see if we are actually being effective in getting our message across to the intended audience," McCormack said.

Rami G. Khouri, executive editor of Lebanon's The Daily Star, last year called hi and other US-funded media outlets in the Arab world ''entertaining, expensive, and irrelevant."

''Where do they get this stuff from? Why do they keep insulting us like this?" he wrote.

There are no plans either to scrap the project entirely or to resume publication, McCormack said. hi first appeared in July 2003.

The magazine's website, which had a wider audience than the printed version, will remain active, McCormack said.