The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

current domestic news and information. In 2001, RFE/RL increased its daily broadcasting to Central Asia and the Caucasus (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan) by 50 percent to more than 160 hours weekly. The week- ly audience in Kyrgyzstan is now up to 11 percent of adults. Listenership has also increased in the Muslim North Caucasus region of Russia, where programs in Avar, Chechen and Circassian were launched in 2002 at the request of Congress. Putting together in-depth reporting under battlefield conditions is hazardous. Radio Free Iraq reporter Sami Shoresh narrowly escaped death twice in Iraq, once when traveling in a Kurdish convoy mistakenly attacked by a U.S. Navy warplane, and again when his car was hit by 22 bullets in an attack by pro-Saddam militia forces. In 2000, RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Andrei Babitsky vanished while on assignment in war-torn Chechnya. Babitsky, who was abducted and held by Russian authorities, was released only after nearly six weeks of uncertainty and intense international pressure on the Kremlin. Last year, Radio Free Afghanistan cor- respondent Ahmad Behzad was assaulted, detained, and expelled from Herat after he put tough questions to war- lord Ismail Khan at a news conference about the human rights situation in Herat Province. Also, in June 2003, two Radio Farda correspondents fled Iran to avoid detention by the authorities. Threats to RFE/RL’s Prague broadcast headquarters have been ongoing since 1998. RFE/RL’s recent successes extend well beyond its high-priority broadcasts to Muslim populations. In May 2003, RFE/RL’s Belarus Service broke an exclu- sive story that was picked up by media outlets world- wide about secret Iraqi government documents found by an embedded RFE/RL correspondent in Baghdad that implicated the Belarusian government in illegal arms trade with the Iraqi regime. “Blitz,” a morning television news program launched by RFE/RL’s Bulgarian Service in 2003, quickly became the top show in its time slot with a 43-percent market share. In Serbia, RFE/RL’s South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service was the first electronic media outlet to report the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djinjdic. Such vivid, timely reports are an RFE/RL trade- mark. In October 1999, RFE/RL’s Armenian Service aired electrifying coverage from inside the country’s parliament as it was attacked by masked gunmen who killed the country’s prime minister, parliament speaker and six other officials. Shots could be heard as an RFE/RL correspondent, huddled under a desk in par- liament hall, reported from her cell phone. New Initiatives A major change since the end of the Cold War is the availability of RFE/RL programs on local, rather than shortwave, frequencies. As of September 2003, RFE/ RL coverage was available on 632 local AM and FM fre- quencies broadcast by 272 affiliated radio organizations — an increase of more than one-third in a year. The Internet has also become an important means of delivery of RFE/RL products. The average number of visitors to RFE/RL’s 23 Internet Web sites doubled in 2003 from the previous year, to over 1.8 million monthly. In addition, each month RFE/RL electronically distrib- utes nearly 838,000 copies of news and analysis reporting in English about the countries to which it broadcasts. In April 2003, RFE/RL launched an external training program in Afghanistan. The program, undertaken at the request of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and unique to U.S. international broadcasting, utilizes the expertise of RFE/RL trainers in Kabul, thus fulfilling one important aspect of its mission to foster the development of independent media. Courses stress the importance of newsgathering, forming contacts, developing news judg- ment, and keeping to tight deadlines and schedules in an environment as close as possible to that of a live, working- news setting. A clear measure of the success of the pro- gram is the fact that three of the 24 trainees who attend- ed courses from April through July recently secured jobs in Kabul’s first commercial music station, Arman FM. Other trainees have become trainers themselves in media NGOs or have increased their responsibilities in their current workplaces. Perhaps most impressive, a female student from the third course is now heading up the first women’s community radio station in northern Afghanistan. In the past decade, RFE/RL has made many changes to remain relevant to U.S. foreign policy needs. But its vital mission hasn’t changed from that celebrated by President Dwight Eisenhower in a tribute to RFE/RL: “The simplest and clearest charter in the world is what you have, which is to tell the truth.” F O C U S 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4