THE AL- Manar TV network isn't what you'd call fair and objective, even by the loosest U.S. standards. It's an Arab-language broadcast outlet based in Lebanon and financed by Hezbollah, a militant anti-Israel (and anti-U.S.) organization. But it's among the 10 most popular broadcasts in the Middle East, and, as such, it's a window into what a significant number of people are thinking and saying in a part of the world that much of the United States (including much of the government) doesn't understand.

That's why Jamal Dajani used to incorporate Al-Manar footage into his San Francisco-based show, Mosaic: World News from the Middle East, which is the only national show that offers uncensored versions of Middle Eastern TV news shows to people in the United States. Among the places where Mosaic is watched regularly: the White House, where staffers rely on it for information about regional politics.

But now, as Camille T. Taiara reports, Mosaic has had to drop Al-Manar because it's unavailable in the United States. The State Department has placed the outlet on the Terrorist Exclusion List – and that means no Western satellite operator wants to handle it.

This is the first time a media outlet has been officially labeled a "terrorist" under the USA PATRIOT Act, and it's a terrible precedent. We don't dispute that Al-Manar broadcasts inflammatory rhetoric and incites violence – but does that mean Americans have no right to watch it? In an era when the Bush administration admits paying journalists to place inaccurate and politically slanted information on their shows, and when federal intelligence agencies acknowledge that they are woefully uninformed about street-level Middle Eastern politics, effectively censoring an Arab broadcast is a bad mistake.