Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING (see also Public Diplomacy)
VOA is DOA in Bush budget by M Schram MARTIN SCHRAM: VOA is DOA in Bush budget Scripps Howard News Service Published: Tuesday, February 7, 2006 Updated: Tuesday, February 7, 2006 (SH) - We interrupt the nonstop news about the War on Terror for a bulletin from the battlefront of public diplomacy, otherwise known as the global Battle for Hearts and Minds. This just in: According to a little-noticed line in its 2007 budget, the Bush administration has proposed pulling the plug on just about all of the Voice of America's English-language broadcasting and telecasting. Unless smarter heads in Congress intervene, this means the United States will be taking a giant step in the wrong direction - at the worst possible time. A world of listeners will be losing a group of English-language programs that provide them with a chance to hear for themselves perhaps the best example of what American-style democracy is all about. By way of explaining this, readers first need to know that for once we are discussing a topic in which a number of Washington journalists, myself included, are not disinterested bystanding observers. For almost two decades, we have comprised a rotating panel of journalists - liberals, conservatives and somewhere-in-betweeners - who appear in groups of three on "Issues in the News," a radio show discussing Washington and world events. We pick the topics and critique official actions as we see fit. VOA beams the show globally via shortwave and other frequencies. (We are paid nominally for our time, $100 for a panel member and $150 for the panel's host - figures that remained unchanged for at least a quarter-century.) At a time when al Jazeera and China Radio International are adding English programming, the United States is going the other way. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees all U.S. international broadcasting agencies, announced increases of 13 percent for funds for Middle East broadcasting networks and 5.3 percent for the overall VOA. Then, "faced with the increased costs of expanding critically needed television and radio programming to the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world, the Board has had to make some painful choices," the broadcasting board's announcement went on to say. As a result, it said, the English-language radio programs on VOA News Now will be eliminated. (Funding will continue only for VOA English radio beamed to Africa, and a special program for beginning English-language users that features a very limited 1,500-word vocabulary, spoken very slowly. The VOA's English Web site will also continue.) The board went on to unintentionally prove its own misjudgment, saying: "The budget reflects the board's commitment to English-language programming in the medium of the future, the Internet, and for excellence in Special English programming. Research shows that millions more are benefiting from Internet programming than from shortwave transmission, which VOA News Now relies on." It is correct: Shortwave broadcasting is old-tech (yet still widely used, especially in rural impoverished areas). And the Internet is not just the medium of the future, in many places that future is now. Moreover, there is also a medium of the future within the Internet - streaming audio and video. Millions will soon be listening to or viewing programs not just on home computers or laptops, but on their cell phones - which are becoming the communications instrument of choice in poor countries. So, if millions of English-speaking people in Muslim countries and other places in the emerging world are watching the Internet, what English-language programming will there be for them to watch? Precious little - if it is all being scrapped in a shortsighted (see also: short-listened) effort to save a few bucks ($9 million) in the interim. They will not be able to see the living demonstration of what democracy in action is all about - brought to them by a government that is in power, but not above listening to the views of its critics on all matters of war and peace. "That's a good point," said Mark Helmke, a senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind. "We'll have to take a look at that if we're going to salvage that sort of program." Helmke, an expert on public-diplomacy issues, has advocated an end to the patchwork reforms and a complete review of U.S. global communications strategy. He has also suggested that perhaps the VOA should become a sort of international C-SPAN, airing unfiltered views that support and oppose government policy. A government showcase for democracy - that's one of the most intriguing and purely positive ideas to be heard in a capital city where negative and partisan intrigues too often prevail. Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram@gmail.com. |