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July/August 1999 | Contents
Policy By Mark Hopkins
A NATO C-130 plane loaded with transmitters started flying along the Hungarian/Serbian border to beam news programs in Serbo-Croatian to Serbian listeners below. Worldnet, the congressionally-funded, satellite-delivered international television system, also distributed statements by President Clinton and other U.S officials explaining and justifying the NATO campaign to viewers in Yugoslavia. A State Department task force, meanwhile, began organizing a "ring around Serbia": radio transmitters in Rumania, Bosnia, and Croatia to broadcast into Yugoslavia, supplanting Yugoslav stations that once carried American and West European programs that were silenced by the Milosevic government. The swift response of American international radio and television services to the Kosovo crisis shows just how closely they are tied to U.S. foreign policy. Nearly sixty years ago, VOA first went on the air with a 1942 wartime pledge in German: "The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth." The news is still good and bad. The difference now is that VOA’s onetime purpose to report objective news is being replaced by congressionally-favored political programming with clear ideological agendas. Given the growth of "freedom" radios sponsored by Congress, U.S. taxpayers are supporting not just one Voice of America, but seven additional special interest radio and television services that broadcast information and opinion to tens of millions of people around the world (see chart). This elaborate, unique, jerry-built structure has become an architectural monstrosity. White House and congressional tinkerers have attached a wing here, a porch there, a shaky cupola on top, and some dormers jutting from the roof. None of it hangs together. Congressionally-sponsored international broadcasting stands as an example of ignorance, lack of purpose and vision, and egregious wastefulness on the part of its managers. Salient facts:
American global broadcasting employs about 3,500 people, including journalists, translators, engineers, and administrators working around the world. No other system, including the admired, British government-funded BBC World Service, encompasses such a conglomeration of overseas services in so many languages, with so many directors, paid in so many ways and administered for such a stew of political goals and missions. And with so few proven results. Some recent history: As the cold war faded, some senior foreign policy officials like Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger said U.S international broadcasts had served their purpose and should be silenced. President Clinton on taking office in 1993 agreed that at least RFE/RL should be shut down. But Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty successfully fought back, drawing on longtime support in Congress and parading favorable testimony from such impeccable cold war dissident figures as Czech President Vaclav Havel. RFE/RL, taking huge budget and staff cuts, shifted headquarters from Munich to Prague (at Havel’s invitation). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty rewrote its job description to justify congressional grants, offering itself as a model of western journalism, an alternative news source, and insurance against resurgent government censorship abroad. Nothing symbolizes the shift so much as the fact that RFE/RL, once the "free voice in exile" in Germany, now operates openly behind onetime communist enemy lines, and has bureaus and stringers in all former Eastern European countries and the former Soviet republics. New enemies and causes also emerged as targets of U.S. foreign radio and television: Saddam Hussein and the Kuwait war, Slobodan Milosevic and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, North Korea and nuclear weapons, China and dissidents, Russia and democracy-building, not to mention world-wide terrorism, tribal genocide, mass starvation, and, of course, save the children. As a result, U.S. international broadcasting stock abruptly soared in the mid-1990s. In a significant decision last fall, Congress reorganized an existing board of governors. Beginning October 1, the board’s nine members, including the secretary of state, will oversee all U.S. global radio and television programming. The board will report to the president and Congress as a semi-autonomous federal entity–a sort of Amtrak for international broadcasting. This (yet another) reorganization does not resolve a basic problem. Previous managers of U.S. broadcasting never have had a clear idea of its role or purpose since the cold war waned. The new board is no exception. Only one member has journalism experience. None has worked in global broadcasting. The board is split among those who favor one or another of the broadcast services, and who espouse different roles for broadcasting. The disparate opinion is mirrored in Congress. John Lennon, acting director of Worldnet, says, "One theme of Congress and others is that resources should support the oppressed in the world through radio and maybe television. So you have Radio Free Iraq, Radio Marti, Radio Democracy for Africa, Radio Free This or That." The board ostensibly acts as a firewall, protecting editors and reporters from government or congressional censorship. But, in a glaring contradiction, Congress says the board must assure that U.S. broadcasters serve clear foreign policy purposes. Says the board’s latest annual report: "Our broadcasts promote democracy, encourage trade and investment, educate about health, expose human rights abuses and set an example of the power of a free press for the world." A resulting bias in programming is obvious. Brookings Institution Asian scholar Catharin Dalpino says, "I do think Radio Free Asia is propagandistic. It focuses on dissidents who articulate western values and democracy." RFE/RL broadcasting to the Balkans has been heavily skewed toward defense of the NATO bombing campaign. There has been much news of the plight of refugees and President Clinton’s insistence that NATO would prevail. Very little information has been conveyed about disagreements among the NATO members or criticism of the air campaign for causing civilian casualties. VOA’s coverage of the Balkans tends to depend on official U.S. sources. There is no VOA correspondent in Belgrade. One VOA language service chief says, "We all know that you can find facts to make a truth. As a government broadcaster, you can’t be neutral." A VOA staffer involved in coverage of the Kosovo crisis finds it "appalling" because of biased and uncritical reporting. As "freedom" radios multiply, U.S. international broadcast managers have come to expect results. They are no longer content simply to convey factual news, whatever its impact, as they were when Congress approved a Voice of America Charter in 1976 dictating that foreign broadcasts should first of all be objective, but also reflect U.S. foreign policy. Present day U.S. broadcasting directors, with encouragement from Congress, go beyond the charter. They believe they have missions to influence the way foreigners think, live, and are governed. RFE/RL president Thomas Dine says the goal is to "foster democracy, promote free market reforms." A former senior VOA official talks about the need to get information to "societies that, if not despotic, live under repressive regimes." The board of governors and Congress reject the notion of a single, say, Radio America whose aim would be simply to tell the truth, period, with no ideological agenda. When the proposal for a Radio Free Asia surfaced in 1991, in reaction to the Chinese assault on Tiananmen Square two years earlier, Voice of America officials suggested that Congress should simply add $10 million to the VOA budget to expand its existing Mandarin service to China. Backers of Radio Free Asia, including Senator Jesse Helms and author Bette Bao Lord, objected. They insisted on a new, separate, and politically aggressive China radio service because VOA is regarded by them and many in Congress as a bland government mouthpiece. Radio Free Asia programming, while factually accurate, gives special place to Chinese dissident news and internal strife in China. Dan Southerland, a former Washington Post Beijing correspondent who now heads RFA programming, says, "We feel our mandate is to give voice to people who have no voice." Last year, when the Clinton administration resisted a congressionally proposed Radio Free Iran – as the White House tried to woo Iranian moderates – Senators Trent Lott and Jesse Helms and congressmen Bob Livingston and Benjamin Gilman wrote to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright insisting that Radio Free Iran be entirely divorced from VOA. They wanted hard-hitting broadcasts to Iran. The result was the Persian Service, originally called Radio Free Iran. Along with the new Radio Free Iraq, it began broadcasting from Prague last October under the administration of RFE/RL. The new services repeat existing VOA programming in Arabic to Iraq and in Farsi to Iran, programming that costs roughly $135,000 an hour for editorial production alone. Thus, politics pervades American global broadcasting. It was politically expedient, for example, for Congress and the White House to approve $7 million to move Radio/TV Marti from well equipped quarters in Washington to new studios in Miami, heartland of the anti-Castro Cuban émigré community. The money was approved just a few months before the 1996 presidential election in which the Florida Hispanic vote was eagerly sought. The Cuban service has long been mired in émigré politics. Independent journalists, the state department’s inspector general, and individual members of Congress all have criticized the service as biased, with few radio listeners in Cuba and virtually no TV viewers. Nonetheless, Congress continues to give Radio/TV Marti $22 million a year. The handful of senators and representatives who decide budgets for the jumble of American broadcast services knows almost nothing about professional international programming and journalism. They tend to think simplistically that U.S. broadcasts of otherwise unavailable news and information poisons authoritarian regimes and fertilizes the intellectual, if not revolutionary, soil so that western democratic ideals and free markets will blossom. In fact, there is no more than anecdotal evidence to show that American or other foreign broadcasts have ever substantially changed attitudes of radio listeners or television viewers. Congress has ordered a review of programs with an eye to reducing or eliminating duplicated language services to save money. It will be an uphill fight. Once established with congressional financing, no American tax-funded foreign broadcasting service has ever been shut down, largely because each has its advocates in Congress or the White House. The U.S. foreign broadcasters battle each other for congressional funds in continuing internecine warfare. Paul Goble, RFE/RL director of communications, says in a cutting criticism of Voice of America, "We have independence and credibility because we do not broadcast the U.S. government’s positions. VOA does that." This kind of sniping is built into a system that pits services against one another as each contends for territory and money. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, for example, were established in the 1950s to broadcast to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Beginning in 1994, however, RFE/RL’s newly created South Slavic service, set up with congressional approval, expanded its range to the Balkans. The service competes directly with VOA Albanian, Croatian and Serbian broadcasts. As the "surrogates" have gained influence in Congress, VOA’s role as America’s premier overseas broadcaster has declined. RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia, and the others, combined, now get more money for news programming than VOA – $119 million versus $106 million. (The rest of the nearly $400 million annual budget supports layers of sometimes redundant administrations and costly shared engineering and broadcast facilities.) One reason is that Voice of America has never had an effective lobby in Congress. RFE/RL, along with other "freedom" radios, has always skillfully cultivated key congressional staffers, convincing them and their senators and representatives that the "surrogates" are more effective in carrying out U.S. policy objectives than the staid, bureaucratic Voice of America. Another reason for VOA’s diminished stature is that once hungry VOA audiences in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have fallen drastically during the last ten years, as those regions developed western-style journalism. VOA, now unsure of its status and with constantly changing directors (their average tenure in the past decade is less than two years), is struggling to adjust to a post-Soviet world. For years VOA fought being labeled the government’s propaganda machine. But the board of governors now describes VOA as the "official" government voice. Further, Congress requires broadcast of VOA-written and state department-approved editorials. While shutting down bureaus in Europe, VOA has focused increasingly on third world audiences – in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. About 20 percent of VOA’s worldwide listenership is now in Nigeria alone. As VOA becomes submerged in a larger network of U.S. broadcasters, losing its pride of place and becoming associated with openly politically oriented radio and television services, a onetime concept of a single American international broadcaster to compete head on with the BBC World Service has virtually died. For self-serving reasons, all the broadcast services argue against merging the twenty-seven language services that are now duplicated, let alone creating a single Radio/TV America. That could save about $50 million a year. But RFA director Richard Richter contends that "diversity" best serves foreign audiences. Kevin Klose, former director of RFE/RL and now head of National Public Radio, says, "You can’t tailor a radio service to one-size-fits all." Key members of Congress agree. Among the few experts who speak out for a consolidated American service is former VOA director Geoffrey Cowan. He says, "To the extent there is a fight for scarce resources, it is better to spend it all on Voice of America, one radio, one system, with a reputation for reliability and credibility." And in answer to those who argued that the United States already has an international television network in CNN, Cowan used to respond, "Yes, but most people in the world do not speak English and most do not live in five-star hotels." While all the services squabble over money, they are failing to keep up with rapid revolution in international communication. The Internet and digital transmission by satellite will make obsolete the old short-wave broadcast system, with its expensive and cumbersome relay transmitter stations around the world. Board of governors chairman Marc Nathanson, head of Falcon Cable TV, says bluntly, "The technology of short-wave is outmoded. We need to get into modern technology. Congress needs to fund it as we go to satellites, the Internet, and FM broadcasting." Congress, however, is providing only a small fraction of the tens of millions of dollars needed to modernize the U.S. broadcasting/engineering network. VOA and RFE/RL are beginning to put news and opinion programs on Web sites. A listener with access to a computer and the Internet in China or Serbia or Russia can now download radio broadcasts in real time. As technology advances, American and other foreign global broadcasters, such as the BBC and Germany’s Deutsche Welle, will reach select audiences of academics, students, and government officials with television and radio broadcasts chiefly through the Internet and/or satellite digital transmissions to ground receivers. International communications on these channels will be less expensive, faster, and more difficult to jam. They portend a communications nightmare for governments that attempt to censor outside information, and a dream world for people in search of other views and opinions. Few question that a superpower like the United States should have a global radio and television broadcasting system, one that surpasses the BBC World Service as a source of reliable, factual, and dispassionate information. The present jerry-built U.S. system, riven with politics and waste, is too easily used for propaganda purposes. The United States should not be regarded as a propagandist, but rather as an advocate of a free and open press, of a marketplace of ideas. A single Radio/TV America, amalgamating all the existing U.S. services into a U.S. international public broadcasting system, would serve those tested and admirable principles that underlie the best of American journalism. |
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NATO’s
warplanes had hardly dropped their first bombs on Serbia on March 24 than America’s
tax-funded international radio and television services started blanketing the
Balkans with their own news and analyses of the conflict. Within two weeks,
the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty had combined information
programs to broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in five Balkan
languages to give the U.S. view of the rapidly developing NATO war with Yugoslavia.
