[Swprograms] Sanford Unger on the VOA's Status

[John Figliozzi <jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

An excerpt from an excellent and informative article titled "Pitch 
Imperfect" in Foreign Affairs quarterly by former VOA Director Sanford 
Unger (also earlier, of NPR's All Things Considered) on the 
increasingly dire status of the VOA.

John Figliozzi
Halfmoon, NY

-------------------------

	"The Voice of America -- the United States' best tool of public 
diplomacy -- is being subjected to systematic cutbacks, even as the 
country's international image is suffering. Washington must reverse the 
trend or face even greater hostility abroad...."

	"...Unfortunately, the VOA is unlikely to get much support from anyone 
else in Washington. For all the admiration it enjoys overseas, the 
network has virtually no constituency inside the United States. The 
prohibition on its broadcasting at home has guaranteed that few, if 
any, members of Congress have ever heard a VOA program (even though 
they are now available at www.voanews.com). Most are unaware that VOA 
headquarters, complete with giant rooftop satellite dishes, sit a few 
blocks away from the principal office building of the House of 
Representatives. Votes on appropriations for the network are rarely 
noticed, let alone tracked, and they never affect a member of Congress' 
prospects for reelection. A few influential members of both houses 
have, in fact, made a particular effort to cut funding for the VOA, 
which they insist is an expensive relic of the Cold War.

	"Oblivious to irony, some prefer to bolster Radio Liberty (RL), Radio 
Free Europe (RFE), and Radio Free Asia (RFA), stations created to 
report domestic news in countries where, because of communism, no 
independent national broadcasters could. The distinction between these 
networks and the VOA may seem subtle to the casual observer, but it is 
real: whereas the VOA was intended as an international news source, RL 
and RFE were established by the CIA during the Cold War to counter 
communist propaganda in the Soviet Union and its satellite states, 
respectively, and RFA, the brainchild of Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), 
was launched in 1996 to do the same in Asia. (None of these networks 
receives funding from the intelligence budget today, and none is 
officially part of the U.S. government, allowing them greater 
flexibility than the VOA has in hiring and firing staff.) Capitol Hill 
has even greater affection for the anti-Fidel Castro stations Radio 
MartÌ and TV MartÌ, even though Radio MartÌ is believed to have fewer 
listeners in Cuba than the Spanish service of the VOA and TV MartÌ has 
almost no audience, except at the American Interests Section in Havana 
and on a few Latin American cable channels. The Office of Cuba 
Broadcasting, which coordinates programming for the two stations, is 
the rare recipient of "no-year money," federal funds it can hold over 
indefinitely, and it usually gets more such funding than it can spend. 
(The Bush administration's budget for fiscal year 2006 includes a 
request for $10 million to acquire and operate an airborne transmitter 
that could supposedly evade Cuban jamming of TV MartÌ's signal.)

	"Some might argue that as a government-funded network, the VOA should 
be expected always to portray U.S. policies as righteous and 
successful; they might even claim that, in the right hands, such 
propaganda could help defuse anti-Americanism abroad. But experience 
demonstrates that the VOA is most appreciated and effective when it 
functions as a model U.S.-style news organization that presents a 
balanced view of domestic and international events, setting an example 
for how independent journalism can strengthen democracy. After all, 
these are the values that the network's charter sought to enshrine, and 
they are no less important today than before. Many still believe that 
the VOA delivered its finest performances in the midst of severe crises 
such as the Watergate scandal and the impeachment proceedings against 
President Bill Clinton, when it gave full and balanced accounts of the 
news.

	"The network still has a critical role to play in introducing American 
values to the rest of the world. It is no coincidence that in recent 
years some of the VOA's largest audiences have been in Afghanistan, 
Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Tanzania -- countries where the local media 
simply cannot be trusted to offer an accurate representation of what is 
happening domestically or around the world. It also is telling that, 
like the Soviets a few decades ago, the governments of Iran and North 
Korea now spend considerable effort trying to jam VOA broadcasts. 
Ironically, by taking English off some of the clearest shortwave 
frequencies, the BBG has rendered a certain amount of jamming 
unnecessary.

	"Some members of Congress have suggested that the VOA's job might best 
be left to the free market and cable services such as Fox and CNN, 
which have extensive networks of correspondents. But it is impossible 
to imagine these commercial operations mounting the effort and 
shouldering the expense necessary to provide, for both the radio and 
the Internet, in-depth international news in Burmese, Hausa, 
Macedonian, Swahili, or others of the 44 languages in which the VOA 
currently broadcasts. With an annual budget of approximately $150 
million, almost 100 million listeners worldwide every week, and 
increasing penetration in difficult regions thanks to both fm signals 
and shortwave frequencies, the VOA is still an astonishing bargain for 
the U.S. taxpayer. When the U.S. government hopes to open up channels 
of information in countries facing political or social crises, such as 
Indonesia or Zimbabwe, it first turns to the VOA to add broadcast 
hours. If those programs succeed in breaking through domestic barriers 
to the free flow of information, it is because they carry the VOA label 
and greater credibility than political speeches or flat declarations of 
U.S. policy..."

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