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By
Alvin Snyder
It was a
brief ceremony for the deceased. The eulogy was given by US
Secretary of State Madeline Albright, on a brilliant Washington,
DC morning, October 1, 1999. The assembled were reminded by
Secretary Albright that this was a time to rejoice, and not
to mourn, because the accomplishments of the departed “will
always be honored and forever revered.”
The deceased,
aged 46, was the United States Information Agency (USIA), laid
to rest at the site of its former building, renamed Department
of State annex #44. The USIA’s ashes were to be scattered
throughout the Department’s 5,000-person workforce and
a nine-person Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) across town,
a few blocks away from the US Capitol Building.
It was nearing
the end of President Bill Clinton’s second term in office.
The Cold War with the Soviet Union, in which the USIA had played
a key role by bringing news of the world to those behind the
Soviet-imposed Iron Curtain, was now toast. America was preparing
to move into the 21st century, but many felt the old USIA was
stuck in the century about to end. Although the number of TV
sets in the world had more than tripled in the 1990s, the USIA
was still spending $18 on shortwave radio for every $1 on TV.
Yet information now was passing freely across formerly closed
borders via an increasing number of satellite TV channels, with
a growing variety of programming.
Critics
felt that if the USIA were a private corporation, it would be
considered a distressed company in need of an overhaul, and
new management would be brought in to resuscitate it. Vice President
Al Gore, who managed what was called the “reinvention”
of US public diplomacy, said a “more agile” foreign
policy would be its result. But later it would become clear,
following 9/11, that reinvented public diplomacy had become
“a mess,” in dire need of another overhaul.
From
the Cold War to 9/11
It was a
very different world in 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower
established the independent US Information Agency (USIA), to
remind Europe that it was the US that helped to rebuild the
devastated continent following World War II. He felt that while
the US was working to restore Europe to prosperity through the
Marshall Plan, “European governments did little to inform
their own people about the steps we were taking to help them.”
The USIA became the parent organization of the Voice of America,
and would take over from the State Department the administration
of international educational and cultural exchanges.
The early
1950s also saw the founding of two US-sponsored broadcast services,
Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL), which brought
local news to information-deprived listeners behind the Iron
Curtain. Funded initially by the Central Intelligence Agency,
FRE and RL were known as “surrogate” or substitute
services, with domestically targeted RFE programs beamed to
Communist Eastern and Central Europe, and RL home broadcasts
aimed at the Soviet Union, to provide news that was not covered
by state-run systems. The locally oriented surrogate services
were organized under a Board for International Broadcasting
(BIB), which granted the radios money provided by the US Congress.
As the grantor, the BIB provided a “firewall” between
those radios and pressures within the US federal government
to influence content. The task of the VOA, meanwhile, was to
tell America’s story in Central and Eastern Europe,
as well as elsewhere around the world.
During the
Cold War, the US Congress in April 1964 issued a White Paper
stating its clear-eyed vision for America’s public diplomacy:
Certain
foreign policy objectives can be pursued by dealing directly
with the people of foreign countries, rather than with their
governments. Through the use of modern instruments and techniques
of communication it is possible today to reach large or influential
segments of national populations—to inform them, to influence
their attitudes, and at times perhaps even to motivate them
to a particular course of action. These groups, in turn, are
capable of exerting noticeable, even decisive, pressures on
their governments.
But in the
world of the 1990s, when the Soviet “evil empire”
no longer posed a threat, Americans turned inward. Issues that
affected them personally were on their minds—unemployment,
the cost of living, health care, keeping Social Security solvent,
education—all became national obsessions. The White House
and the US Congress lost interest in USIA, and its shortwave
radio broadcasts. It was time for America’s public diplomacy
effort to tighten its belt, to help pay for politically important
domestic programs.
Public diplomacy’s
downsizing also was called “consolidation,” in addition
to being referred to as its “reinvention.” Parts
of the USIA, including its overseas educational and cultural
exchange programs, were sent packing back to the Department
of State, from whence they came in 1953. A new position of undersecretary
of State for public diplomacy and public affairs was established
that absorbed USIA activities with the exception of its broadcast
services.
Those non-military
broadcast services were placed under another bureaucracy, the
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), where radio services,
considered to be outmoded or duplicative, would soon be abolished.
Under the BBG were the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and
Radio Liberty, Cuba Broadcasting, and Radio Free Asia. More
services would be added following 9/11, including the Middle
East broadcast networks, Radio Sawa and TV Alhurra, among others.
All were placed behind an invisible “firewall” of
the BBG to keep would-be manipulators from the White House,
State Department, Congress, and elsewhere at a safe distance.
Eight non-government
members of the BBG are nominated by the president for six-year
terms, based on their political party registration, evenly distributed
between Republicans and Democrats. The ninth member is represented
by the State Department, which has the “swing” vote.
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Chairman (R). former editor-in-chief for
Reader’s Digest magazine, and former director, Voice of
America
Joaquin
F. Blaya, (D) Former chairman of Radio Unica, a Spanish-language
radio network, and CEO of the Telemundo Group, Inc., America’s
second-largest Spanish-language television network.
Blanquita
Walsh Cullum (R) President of the National Association of Radio
Talk Show Hosts.
D.
Jeffrey Hirshberg (D) Partner in Kalorama Partners, a consulting
firm that deals with corporate governance and risk management.
Edward
D. Kaufman (D) President of Public Strategies, a political and
management consulting firm
Norman
J. Pattiz (D), founder of Westwood One, America’s largest
radio network organization, and creator of Radio Sawa and TV
Alhurra. (Pattiz announced his resignation Jan. 1, 2006, shortly
after this piece was written.)
Stephen
J Simmons (R) Chairman and CEO of Patriot Media and Communications
Karen
Hughes, US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy
The BBG Comes Under Fire: Partisanship Battles and Investigations
The “big
three” BBG members are unquestionably its chairman, Kenneth
Y. Tomlinson; Norman Pattiz, chairman of the BBG’s Middle
East committee, who recently announced his resignation, effective
March 2006, and Karen Hughes, the new undersecretary of state
for public diplomacy.
Tomlinson,
a former director of the Voice of America in the Reagan administration
and a former editor of Reader’s Digest magazine,
is a conservative Republican, the party of President George
W. Bush. Until this past November, he had worn two hats, one
as the BBG chairman, the other as the chairman of the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the funding arm of US public
TV stations, the US Public Broadcasting System, and National
Public Radio. The CPB has a board structure similar to that
of the BBG, with its members nominated by the president and
evenly representing the Democrat and Republican political parties.
As CPB chairman,
Tomlinson provoked the ire of political opponents by commissioning
a programming study, without first consulting with his board,
to gauge the political objectivity of a particular program series.
Tomlinson also spearheaded the production of a follow-up program
series that he envisioned would help to restore political balance
to public TV offerings, an action which some felt exceeded his
authority. During an investigation by the CPB inspector general
of these and other alleged abuses—an investigation requested
by two senior Democrats in Congress, Representative David Obey
of Wisconsin, and Representative John Dingle of Michigan—Tomlinson’s
term as CPB chairman expired in Sept. 2005. He resigned from
the board before the IG’s report formally was issued on
November 15, 2005.
That report
cited several additional alleged violations, such as political
employment tests and threats that taxpayer-supported programming
funds would be illegally withheld if political objectivity was
not achieved. In a statement distributed with the IG’s
findings, Tomlinson replied that charges that he violated US
federal law by attempting to restore political balance to public
broadcasts were “malicious and irresponsible.” Tomlinson
continued: “Unfortunately, the inspector general’s
preconceived and unjustified findings will only help to maintain
the status quo, and other reformers will be discouraged from
seeking change.”
Tomlinson
also has come under attack in his capacity as Chairman of the
Broadcasting Board of Governors. The State Department’s
office of inspector general last summer launched an investigation
of Tomlinson’s BBG stewardship after allegations of mismanagement
were raised by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and Congressman
Howard Berman of California, both Democrats. The US Government
Accountability Office (GAO) also began investigating charges
of mismanagement at the US government’s Arabic broadcast
services, Radio Sawa and TV Alhurra, which are overseen by Tomlinson
and the BBG.
On November
10, 2005, both Tomlinson and the director of America’s
Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Mouafac Harb, who directs
both Sawa and Alhurra, testified before the International Relations
Committee of the US House of Representatives. One alleged abuse
involves accusations that Harb awarded lucrative sole-source
agreements to contractors from his native Lebanon, as well as
to others who did not go through a competitive bidding process
to gain contracts. Some of these contracts exceeded several
millions of dollars. Other committee concerns covered a variety
of accusations, from lavish travel and excessive entertainment
expenses, to costly language translation services and a newsroom
computer network at Alhurra’s headquarters that its critics
claim continually crashes.
The hearing
was soft on both Tomlinson and Harb, but the BBG’s woes
do not end there. Some former Voice of America employees whose
jobs were cut when Radio Sawa replaced the VOA’s Arabic
service have filed suit against Tomlinson and the BBG for unfair
labor practices.
Deirdre
Kline, spokeswoman for the Middle East Broadcasting Network,
insists Alhurra "fully complies with all applicable federal,
state, and local employment laws and regulations. All contract
and procurement agreements … have been in compliance with
[federal] procedures and regulations."
Financial
Woes and the Search for a Public Diplomacy Czar
The reorganization
of US government broadcasting got off to a slow start in 1999.
The new post of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy
lay vacant for almost two years. Charlotte Beers, a successful
New York advertising executive, was first to hold the public
diplomacy post, but she would not be sworn into office until
after 9/ll. Her “Shared Values” paid TV spots, costing
more than $15 million, showed Arabs and Muslims living productively
and happily in the US, but did not go over well in the Middle
East in the few areas where TV stations agreed to air them.
Beers resigned
her office for health reasons during the run-up to the Iraq
war, but admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
that “The gap between who we are and how we wish to be
seen, and how we are in fact seen, is frighteningly wide.”
Her successor, Margaret Tutwiler, a former ambassador to Morocco,
remained only briefly as undersecretary of state for public
diplomacy.
During this
period the Broadcasting Board of Governors continued to cut
shortwave radio services. Chairman Tomlinson says the board
had to make “tough budget decisions” to find the
money for the US government’s Middle East broadcasting
projects, Radio Sawa and TV Alhurra. “We have eliminated
most of the central European (shortwave) radio services and
reduced world-wide English from 24 to 14 hours daily,”
he explained, stressing that “we have accepted the reality
that satellite television, medium wave and FM radio is to the
future what shortwave was to the past.”
Some veteran
observers of US international broadcasting take issue with this
approach, however. They complain that the substantive long-form
Voice of America and Radio Free Europe Arabic services, which
had audiences of opinion-makers, have been abolished, to make
room for America’s Alhurra TV broadcasts, and light, youth-oriented
pop radio music stations with news briefs, such as Radio Sawa,
and the newly-formatted Radio Farda service to Iran.
Tomlinson
acknowledges that budget cuts have taken their toll on America’s
public diplomacy efforts from the outset. “You have to
remember that US international broadcasting in the year 2001
was operating from a depleted base,” he told TBS. “In
the decade following the end of the Cold War, federal spending
on US international broadcasting had been reduced to a very
real 40 percent.”
Pattiz
Versus Tomlinson
The second
of the “big three” at the Broadcasting Board of
Governors is Norman Pattiz, a Democrat. A wealthy broadcaster
who founded the largest radio network in America, Westwood One,
Pattiz spearheaded Radio Sawa, and later TV Alhurra, as head
of the BBG’s Middle East Committee.
In defense
of Radio Sawa’s pop music format, Pattiz boasts of its
large and growing audience of young people, as compared to the
Voice of America’s small audience numbers for its Middle
East Arabic service, before it was taken off the air. Says Patttiz,
“it doesn’t matter what you say if no one is listening.”
Radio Sawa’s detractors argue that its mostly music format
has shown no measurable impact on furthering US foreign policy
objectives. Pattiz’s TV Alhurra has likewise been criticized
for lack of impact.
Pattiz counters
that Alhurra, which debuted almost two years ago, in February
2004, is gaining viewers in the Middle East, and is felt to
be a reliable news source among the majority of its viewers,
according to the AC Nielsen rating service. Pattiz says tens
of millions of viewers are reached daily in 22 countries by
Sawa and Alhurra combined. But independent marketing polls in
Iraq consistently show that in head-to-head competition with
other TV news and information channels, Alhurra’s ranking
as a prime source of news is miniscule. And critics claim that
no poll has demonstrated the ability of US government broadcasts
to gain support for US Middle East policies. Bruce Gregory,
a former USIA research official, says Alhurra will show it is
getting its job done when its coverage creates buzz in Middle
East cafes and marketplaces, as has Al Jazeera.
In addition
to being talked up in the Arab street, Alhurra, the gem in the
BBG’s crown, must demonstrate to US congressional oversight
committees its unquestioned effectiveness. The BBG’s annual
budget estimate is $650 million for 2006, but discontent with
US public diplomacy efforts is growing, especially in Congress,
which holds the purse strings.
Tomlinson
and Pattiz speak kindly about each other, but critics say that
serious tensions exist between the two. Columnist Robert Novak
writes that Pattiz and Tomlinson “was no marriage made
in heaven.” Novak quotes a source as saying that “Tomlinson
viewed Pattiz as a Hollywood control freak.”
Pattiz’s
backing of John Kerry, who ran against President George W. Bush
in the past presidential election, has obviously not gone down
well at the White House, which has refused to re-nominate Pattiz
as a BBG governor, a position he continues to fill in a recess
appointment, which can go on indefinitely.
To put pressure
on the White House to re-nominate Pattiz to the BBG, the ranking
democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator
Joseph Biden, recently delayed the confirmation of Dina Powell,
of Egyptian heritage, as assistant to Karen Hughes at the State
Department. “The BBG represents all the partisan bickering
that takes place in Washington,” complains Mark Helmke,
Professional Staff member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. Helmke told TBS that the BBG is “the most partisan
group of individuals in Washington today.”
Congressional
Oversight and ‘Listening Exercises’
“US
public diplomacy is a mess,” and “lacks vision,”
laments Helmke, who believes the BBG must take its share of
the blame. To help clean up the mess that Helmke says exists,
and to instill “vision” into US government broadcast
management, more than 60 major public diplomacy studies, reports,
and official US government hearings have been generated to date
to help reinvent US public diplomacy once again.
The Advisory
Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, concluded
in its report Changing Minds Winning Peace that the
“fault lies not with the dedicated men and women at the
State Department and elsewhere who practice public diplomacy
on America’s behalf around the world, but within a system
that has become outmoded, lacking strategic direction and resources.”
The Pew Research Center reports the reality that “Attitudes
toward the US have gone from bad to worse,” despite the
BBG’s efforts. “If somebody from the Government
Accountability Office comes in there and looks around,”
says Helmke, “they would probably shake their head and
say, ‘What’s going on here?’”
At this
writing, there is one Republican vacancy on the BBG, and the
terms of five of the nine members have expired, including both
Tomlinson and Pattiz. Another BBG member is expected to switch
political party affiliation, to align the group evenly. The
ninth position is filled now, for the first time in two years,
by the third and newest undersecretary of state for public diplomacy,
Karen Hughes.
Hughes is
one of the board’s “big three” operators,
and its most influential member. As the ninth member of the
Broadcasting Board of Governors, who has a swing vote, and most
of all as a confidant of President Bush, she intends to explain
and promote the foreign policies of the Bush administration.
But the large entourage of reporters who covered her “listening
trip” to the Middle East in September, her first visit
ever to the area, critiqued her every move in perfect harmony.
According to former foreign service officer John Brown, who
reports on world media coverage for the University of Southern
California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, there were few
“kind words” for Karen Hughes, “either from
the left or the right.” One of many students she met with
in Egypt lectured her on US swagger and arrogance; a woman in
Saudi Arabia told Hughes it was unimportant for Saudi women
to drive because they have drivers. News reports suggested that
Hughes was unprepared for what she encountered on her trip,
and was rejected at every turn. On a later visit to Indonesia
her reception was much the same.
Karen
Hughes: A New Direction?
Because
Hughes’s visits were billed in advance as listening exercises,
she is only now beginning to show how she is putting to use
what was learned on her trips abroad, to help strengthen America’s
dialogue with the Arab and Muslim world. Karen Hughes has proven
to be a skilled practitioner of public relations in the more
than ten years she has served as a senior advisor to President
Bush. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in journalism,
and worked as a news reporter for KXAS-TV, the NBC affiliate
in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, President Bush’s home state.
During his six years as Governor of Texas, Karen Hughes was
his communications director, where she helped him win two gubernatorial
campaigns and his 2000 presidential campaign. In the White House
Hughes supervised the Office of Communications, the Press Secretary,
media affairs, and speechwriting, and served as a senior consultant
in Bush’s successful 2004 re-election campaign.
At the State
Department Secretary Hughes has authority over its press and
public affairs, international information programs, and cultural
and educational exchanges. Although she is but one member of
the Broadcasting Board of Governors, with the clout of President
Bush behind her, she has the potential to become the most influential
member of the BBG’s “big three.”
Karen Hughes
began to display her authority during her appearance before
the House International Relations committee November 10. There,
she disclosed that she has charged US ambassadors and public
affairs officers in the Middle East to appear regularly on Al
Jazeera to explain US policies. She also suggested to her BBG
counterparts that when Muslim clerics tour the United States
on trips arranged by the State Department, the clerics’
visits ought to be covered by Alhurra’s TV news cameras.
Hughes also disclosed to the Senate committee that during her
Middle East trip last fall, she informed embassy diplomats,
including ambassadors and their press staffs, that they would
be evaluated for future advancement based in part on how effectively
they performed their public diplomacy activities, especially
via TV.
It is expected that Hughes will also be very much involved in
selecting US spokespersons who would appear on Al Jazeera’s
new English-language channel that is scheduled to launch this
spring. Oddly, while Al Jazeera English will be available to
viewers in the US and elsewhere via satellite, Alhurra will
remain off-limits to audiences in America. That is because Congress
passed a law shortly after World War II banning the domestic
dissemination of broadcasts produced for international audiences
in the US and its territories. The Smith-Mundt Act was passed
while memories were still fresh of how the Nazis propagandized
their own people during the war, but there many in Congress
feel that the time has come to eliminate this domestic dissemination
ban so that American taxpayers and the US Congress, who fund
the government’s international broadcasts, can see for
themselves what they are getting for their money. Should the
Smith-Mundt act be amended, Al Jazeera can take due credit for
influencing US foreign policy by being the main catalyst for
the repeal of an important 50-year-old piece of legislation.
Karen Hughes’s
boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, also suggests that
changes are in store for the government’s broadcasting
services. Secretary Rice told a congressional budget committee
earlier this year that public diplomacy should be restructured
“in ways to make it more effective,” to better inform
populations abroad. She suggested that more involvement by the
State Department can be expected in the news content of the
US government-sponsored Arabic language broadcast services.
Although Alhurra and Radio Sawa were making progress, Secretary
Rice said, “more would be expected of them.”
So what
are the options for US transnational broadcasting? Mark Helmke
tells TBS that the debate in Congress will continue to become
more critically probing towards US Middle East broadcasting.
It is his view that the kind of in-depth debate over US Middle
East broadcasting that should have been held before Radio Sawa
and TV Alhurra went on the air, should he held now. “They
came in with a pretty hard sell the first time around,”
said Helmke. So what are the options for US transnational broadcasting?
Says Helmke: “It might have made more sense to have trained
five really good Arabic spokespersons to appear regularly on
Al Jazeera and other Arabic channels, than to start our own
satellite channel.” It seems Karen Hughes is moving in
this direction.
According toJonathan Marks, former Radio Netherlands program
director, and an astute observer of international broadcasting:
“Alhurra is very much in a shouting mode, rather than
a sharing mode. … I think Future TV in Lebanon is making
the dream TV channel [format-wise] that should have been Alhurra.
They have cherry-picked comedy and lifestyle shows from the
US like Friends and added live discussion forums taking
place in an open-air studio in Beirut. Their Web site encourages
interactivity. If they are clever, they have the power to become
the Al Jazeerra for the under 30s.”
Former US
ambassador to Yemen, William Rugh, tells TBS that US Middle
East broadcasting should undergo “regular program reviews
by respected native [Arabic] speakers [including] polls that
compare the channels head-to-head with the competition, and
honest evaluation of what they are accomplishing.” He
said defenders in Congress have “no idea what impact”
Radio Sawa and Alhurra are having, but like the idea, so that
US Middle East broadcasting will “become a sacred cow
that nobody will touch.”
The one to watch is Karen Hughes. If she stays the course as
President Bush’s top public diplomacy chief, she may bring
a focus to the US effort that has been missing since the abandonment
of the US Information Agency. She has not only the support of
President Bush, but also is seen as a pragmatic and forceful
executive by many in the US Congress, and quite capable of assuming
the strong leadership that has been lacking in US public diplomacy.
As former
Secretary of State Madeline Albright remarked at the USIA’s
wake in 1999, when the Agency was being re-invented as a “mess,”
this may at last be the time for US government communicators
to rejoice and not to mourn. That is if Karen Hughes, who expects
some help from Al Jazeera, can resurrect the spirit and vision
of the storied former communications agency, which would have
been 52 years old today.
Alvin Snyder is a former director of the
US Information Agency’s global television and film service,
a former White House special assistant to the president, and
the author of Warriors of Disinformation: American Propaganda,
Soviet Lies, and the Winning of the Cold War, Arcade Publishing.
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