President Obama’s recent interview with Al Arabiya made global headlines, but I enjoyed this behind-the-scenes  conversation with Al Arabiya’s Washington bureau chief Hisham Melham, describing what it was like to get a call from an NSC contact that morning, with the message, “I’m either going to make your day or ruin it:  the president wants to see you at 5 o’clock.”

Al Arabiya claims 130 million Arabic speakers in its viewing audience.  Mr. Melham says he always knew the interview would be widely watched, but he was not prepared for the overwhelming nature of the reaction, which he described as “almost universal.”  He believes the dominant impression on his audience was President Obama’s authenticity and “honesty in tone,” and noted that the president “clinched it” with his mention of Muslim family members.

When the interviewer asked if this meant the president’s demeanor was more important than policy, Mr. Melham responded that “policy is framed with language.”  He drew distinctions between the way Presidents Bush and Obama describe the war on terrorism, and commended President Obama for not speaking in generalizations — specifically, not lumping Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah together.  You can hear the interview in full at NPR’s “On the Media.”