Eric Rouleau and Alan Gresh

Wow. I yesterday watched an interview conducted in Arabic with Eric Rouleau and Alan Gresh. How interesting it was. Both spoke in Arabic, mind you. It was an analysis of French policy toward the Middle East: and it reminded me yet again with the question that nags me constantly. Why can't US media produce the likes of Eric Rouleau and Alain Gresh. Both of them made great points even when they disagreed. Rouleau was making the point that French policy toward the Middle East has not changed much, while Gresh was arguing that French policy has changed much since 2005. But Rouleau added another point: he reminded Gresh that there is another variable. That Arab governments in the past used to apply pressures on France and that this factor has disappeared; that Arab governments don't complain about French closeness to Israel anymore. I envy those who lived at the time when Rouleau was a correspondent of Le Monde in the Middle East. And what did the US media produce in terms of a Middle East correspondent? Thomas Friedman. Thomas Friedman, for potato's sake.