The Foreign Service Journal, February 2013

16 FEBRUARY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The Real Global Hot Spots? A ccording t o a recent Gallup Poll, famously hot-blooded Italians are only moderately emotional. In fact, residents of more than 70 other coun- tries reported more intense feelings, including such firebrands as Finland and Canada. Gallup indexed 150 countries and territories by surveying residents on whether they experienced any of five negative and five positive emotions in the previous day. The more “yes” responses, the more emotional the country. A map created by the Washington Post f or its Nov. 28 article on the poll reveals some unexpected patterns and outliers in the world’s emotional land- scape. Passionate purple shades the Americas, while post-Soviet countries are a stoic light green. The Philippines looms in a sea of less emotive countries, as befits its standing as the world’s most emotional country by far. Singapore, barely visible on the map, is at the other end of the continuum. Also noteworthy is the type of emotion experienced. Respondents in Latin America tend to report smiling and laughing more frequently than most other parts of the globe. But the Middle East is another story: Iraq leads among coun- tries most likely to experience negative emotions, and most of its neighbors are not far behind. —Emily A. Hawley, Editorial Intern Service, called this an “alarming trend,” and warned that the Obama adminis- tration needs to address it. “Even with the external challenges, we’re seeing a failure of management.” John Berry, chief of the Office of Per- sonnel Management, concurred. “The government is likely to be on a pretty strict diet for the foreseeable future in terms of resources,” he said. “We are encouraging every agency to dive into their results and pay attention to them.” —Steven Alan Honley, Editor Information Wants to Be Free W hen President Barack Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2013 defense authorization bill on Jan. 2, he also lifted a 65-year ban on domestic dissemination of government broad- casts by the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Martí, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks. A Jan. 4 posting on the Broadcasting Board of Gover- nors Web site explains the sequence of events. The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, named for its sponsors, contained many beneficial provisions, but is best known for forbid- ding the broadcast or distribution in the United States of any content intended for global audiences. The ban was intended, in part, to prevent overseas propaganda efforts from being directed toward U.S. citizens. After the Cold War ended, growing numbers of U.S.-based ethnic broadcast- ers serving diaspora populations sought access to such content. The BBG had no choice but to deny such requests, but many of the outlets—ranging from Suda- nese broadcasters in Minnesota to Cuban community broadcasters in Miami—used the material anyway. As Internet distribution became avail- able, keeping a lid on BBG content in the United States grew more difficult. VOA Russian, for example, can be seen almost daily in New York City because local cable channel operators import Russian- language channels from overseas. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act was first introduced in 2010 to lift the ban without overturning the rest of the original legislation. Though that measure never passed, the repeal of the domes- tic distribution ban was attached to the defense authorization bill. For U.S. broadcasters, the change means little on a day-to-day basis, other than that they need not worry about their content popping up in the U.S. No money can be used to create content directed at domestic audiences, and the BBG— which strongly supported the measure— has no plans to measure any domestic audiences that may occur. n —Steven Alan Honley, Editor