The Foreign Service Journal, October 2010

18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 0 of dollars trying to jam surrogate radio/TV and Internet broadcasts. The Voice of America, by contrast, was tasked by Congress in Public Law 94- 350 to “represent America, not any sin- gle segment of American society. … [VOA] will therefore present a bal- anced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and in- stitutions (and) will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively.” VOA’s headquarters are in Washington, D.C., with transmission facilities around the world. RFE/RL, based in Prague, currently broadcasts to 21 countries in 28 lan- guages. It now ranges far afield from its Iron Curtain roots, with broadcasts to Iraq and Iran (since 1998), Afghanistan (2002) and the Pakistan border area (2010). Public Law 98-111, The Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act, created “Radio Martí” in 1983 as a surrogate station, distinct from any VOA transmissions to Cuba. RadioMartí went on the air in 1985, and TVMartí began operations in 1990. Both services are currently located in Miami. Radio Free Asia, located in Washington, D.C., was cre- ated in 1994 by P.L.103-236 and began broadcasting in 1997. It currently broadcasts to Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, North Korea, Tibet and Vietnam. The Middle East Broadcast Networks, Inc., located in Springfield, Va., in- cludes Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa. (Radio Sawa began broadcasting 24 hours a day onMarch 23, 2002 and Alhurra began transmission on Feb. 14, 2004.) Firewall or Football? Congress established the Broadcasting Board of Gov- ernors in 1994, while USIA still existed, to oversee the op- erations of the Voice of America and the surrogate stations. The first board was sworn in on Aug. 11, 1995. The aim was to create an independent agency as a bipartisan buffer against potential political interference and to ensure its products were objective and balanced. As then-BBG Chairman Marc Nathanson said in 2001: “It is our responsibility to serve as a firewall between the international broadcasters and the policymaking institu- tions in the foreign affairs community, both here in Wash- ington and overseas. This is a responsibility we take very seriously. Because at the end of the day, it is precisely by providing accurate news and information — sought and trusted by people around the world — that we earn and keep our credibility” (http://ibb7-2.ibb. gov/bbg/board.html#nathanson). However, keeping the BBG at full strength and fully functional has proved difficult, at best. The board was fully staffed for only six of its 15 years of op- eration, and consistently had vacancies from 2004 until June 2010. Prior to this summer’s approval of a new panel, the board had only four members (two Republicans and two Democrats), each of whom had been serving since 2002. While this was well beyond the official three-year term of office, BBG members are, by law, able to serve until re- placed. For several years, partisan politics on both sides turned the political “firewall” into a “football.” The committee’s analysis showed that, as of May 2010, the average vacancy for a board position was over 460 days, with one position remaining vacant for more than four years. The board had not had a chairman since June 2008, when James Glassman left to fill the post vacated by Karen Hughes as under secretary of State for public diplomacy. He was not replaced, and the Obama administration did not formally submit candidates for a new board until No- vember 2009. Senate action took another seven months. The long gap between the presidential election and the swearing-in of the new members effectively left the board in limbo and kept it from taking any action on the myriad technical and geopolitical issues that confronted it. The holdovers were understandably reluctant to address such matters given the nominations waiting in the wings. A similar lack of direction and uncertainty over leader- ship has greatly eroded the morale of BBG employees. A 2008 survey of federal workers in 37 agencies found the BBG ranked last in indexes for leadership and knowledge management, results-oriented performance culture and talent management, and second-to-last in job satisfaction. Perhaps even more telling, these results were exactly the same in the 2006 version of the survey. With a full board finally in place, I am hopeful that Mr. Isaacson and his colleagues will be vigorous in pursuing the many matters that have accumulated on the BBG’s agenda. But continual dysfunction at the top is no way to run a multimedia network with global reach. Congress should remain vigilant, and if this pattern of multiple board vacancies and long-delayed confirmations resumes, we may well have to consider a new structure to oversee our F O C U S Keeping the BBG at full strength and fully functional has proved difficult, at best.