The Foreign Service Journal, October 2009

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53 erupted following the June 12 presidential elections. As this article went to press, Congress was considering a budget of between $717 million (Senate) and $745.5 mil- lion (House) for U.S. civilian international broadcasting, nearly double the level of a decade ago. U.S. broadcasting officials claim their 60 language serv- ices reach a weekly audience of 175 million listeners, over- all, second only to the BBC among international broad- casters. But experts disagree about the value of these new services. Some critics consider them window dressing for an incoherent public diplomacy strategy, while others ac- cuse those directing U.S. international broadcasting efforts of failing to learn the lessons of the Cold War stations. Chief among these lessons is the need for a clearly defined mission, which is as applicable today in trying to reach Muslims in authoritarian states as it was in connecting with captive Soviet-bloc audiences. Citing a need to inform as well as transform, some an- alysts also point to a lack of rigor in the way some of the broadcasts are organized and carried out. In particular, concerns about a lack of quality control have arisen in con- nection with stations like Alhurra (“The Free One”). Media reports in 2007 about Alhurra’s airing of speeches and interviews of leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas prompted questions about the journalistic mission of the station. The controversy revealed a lack of knowledge about broadcasting content within the non-Arabic- speaking management. And, among other things, a 2008 report by the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy found that Alhurra failed to meet basic journalistic standards. Soon after taking office, President Barack Obama set out to engage global publics, especially in the Muslim world. The president’s June 4 speech in Cairo called for a “sustained effort to listen to each other and trust each other.” Many experts believe that a well-functioning U.S. international broadcasting system is essential to such dia- logue, and have expressed hopes the Obama administra- tion and Congress will give fresh scrutiny to the com- plicated U.S. broadcasting apparatus. “We still have a rather fragmented collection of inter- national broadcasting entities, and that’s holding back their effectiveness,” says Kim Andrew Elliott, an audience re- search analyst in the U.S. International Broadcasting Bu- reau who writes a blog on PD issues. There also continue to be questions about the impact of the new broadcasting efforts on Muslim audiences in terms of attitudes and opinions toward the United States. “Whether they’re mov- ing the needle is not clear,” said one congressional staffer in late June, speaking on condition of anonymity. Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy U.S. government-funded radio broadcasting has its roots inWorldWar II, when the Voice of America was cre- ated at least partly to counter fascist propaganda. Such broadcasting efforts were to become a key part of the broader U.S. foreign policy initiative known as “public diplomacy.” That initiative’s overarching goal is to advance U.S. policies and values through the use of “soft diplo- macy” — the dissemination of information, educational and cultural exchanges, and so on. During the early years of the Cold War, U.S. policy- makers debated the form of public diplomacy most suit- able to connect with peoples living in closed totalitarian societies in the Soviet bloc. Some believed that an em- phasis on culture, such as the display of American art abroad, would be most preferable. Others argued that tar- geting information to opinion-makers and influential citi- zens should be the priority. In the end, the government adopted both approaches, and radio has played a promi- nent role ever since, currently garnering about half of all U.S. funding for public diplomacy. The Voice of America’s mandate, enshrined in the char- ter signed into law in 1976, centers on three main points, excerpted here: • To “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” • To “present a balanced and comprehensive projec- tion of significant American thought and institutions.” • To “present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively” and “present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies.” During the ColdWar, VOA broadcast to the former So- viet bloc as well as to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. It is worth recalling that its purveyance of culture could be subversive. Willis Conover’s legendary jazz broadcasts over 40 years attracted an avid following in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, helping to bolster the image of American culture at a time when official media portrayed it as debased. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, on the other hand, was set up to serve as a substitute news source for the coun- tries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, where gov- ernments controlled the flow of information. The surrogate F O C U S