The Foreign Service Journal, October 2010

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 tries were free. If this premise were true, the audience would have to tune to two stations to get a complete news service. This would be an unacceptable inconvenience to impose upon any audience, es- pecially in an increasingly compet- itive global media environment. In fact, the premise is not true. VOA has always put much effort into reporting about its target countries. It must do so to attract an audience. Most audiences for international broadcasting, while also interested in world news, are mainly looking for news about their own countries. As a result, there is consider- able duplication in the news coverage of VOA and the surrogate stations. Within the present structure of U.S. international broadcasting, there is also duplication in management and administrative structures. Moreover, resources for international broadcasting, scarce at the best of times, are split. These include talent, transmitters, transmitting sites and news leads. Even the audience is becoming scarcer due to fragmentation among many new media and information sources. In many parts of the world, even in many developing countries, television is, or is becoming, more popular than radio. USIB must increase its presence in televi- sion, but this will be expensive. With two U.S. stations broadcasting to many target countries, it will be twice as expensive. The Broadcasting Board of Governors should move to consolidate USIB into one multimedia organization. The new entity can adjust the mix of news (target country, world, U.S.) and media (shortwave, Internet, mobile, satellite) to suit each target country at any time during the country’s political development. This will save money, contributing to deficit reduction, while actually improving competitiveness. A merger would also free up funds for television and for promotion, two necessary but expensive components of international broadcasting in the 21st century. Competitive Credibility Most people do not seek news from foreign sources unless their domestic media are government-controlled or otherwise deficient. Credibility is therefore the most important commodity of international broadcasting. The BBC World Service appears to have a small but persistent lead in this area, which may be another factor underlying the BBC’s audi- ence-for-money advantage. One frequent illustration of this problem is the fact that the ele- ments of U.S. international broad- casting are often described in the press as “government-funded” (or worse). The BBC World Service, even though it is funded by the British Foreign Office, is rarely described that way. In the May 9 issue of Die Welt , Dr. Wahied Wahdat- Hagh cited a study by Iran’s parliament (the Majlis): “(O)ne gleans that BBC Persian is thought to be more dangerous than the VOA. The reason is that the BBC has a more gentle approach and gives the impression of being more objective. Rather than trying to promote a single position, the BBC does so indirectly by using analysis to make certain points.” It takes decades to build a journalistic reputation, and the decades have been kinder to the BBC than to USIB. The BBCWorld Service has been part of another broad- casting organization, the BBC domestic service, which has always guarded its independence. VOA spent most of its existence as part of the U.S. Information Agency, a public diplomacy agency officially representing and ad- vocating U.S. policies. USIA directors (or, sometimes, presidents) appointed VOA directors who ran the gamut from dedicated journalists to policy flacks. This pendu- lum took its toll on VOA. RFE/RL, for its part, spent much of the 1950s as a hard-hitting anti-communist broadcaster, covertly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency until 1978. After con- troversy surrounding its role in the 1956 Hungarian up- rising, RFE/RL began to settle down to its present news mission. Radio Free Asia was compelled by Congress to imitate RFE/RL’s name (it initially wanted to call itself the Asia Pacific Network). Because of this name, rather than its content, RFA was not allowed to use relay facili- ties, including vital medium-wave transmitters, in the Philippines and Thailand. Sentiment to give VOA more autonomy than it en- joyed under USIA culminated in the International Broadcasting Act of 1994. This legislation created the bi- partisan Broadcasting Board of Governors, which names the presidents and directors of VOA, RFE/RL, RFA and F O C U S There is considerable duplication in the news coverage of VOA and the surrogate stations.