Fawning Over Pattiz in the Wall St. Journal

The front page of today's Wall Street Journal features Norm Pattiz, bleached teeth smiling out at the reader in one of the Journal's trademark illustrations. And why shouldn't the possibly lame duck member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors be smiling? His picture accompanies a fawning piece by Neil King, Jr., which portrays him as a public spirited gazillionaire who wants to "give something back" after his lucrative career at the helm of Westwood One.

According to "Sparking Debate, Radio Czar Retools Government Media" (under the kicker "Popaganda"!) , he "has brought the razzmatazz of commercial media to the government's stodgy overseas broadcasts, including the storied Voice of America," King writes. "Though direct comparisons are tough, Sawa now has an audience many times larger than its VOA predecessor in most of the Middle East." On the TV side, Al Hurra "has done better than skeptics predicted."

Well, OK, both stations have attracted an audience, no question. Sawa is delivering a popular, formula-driven pop format that was bound win an audience larger than VOA's late, lamented Arabic service, which King characterizes as featuring "English-language lessons, dramatized Edgar Allan Poe stories and government editorials on the Middle East peace process, with a market share of about two percent of adults.

Two percent. Hardly worth going after if you're selling toothpaste. But like most of VOA's traditional, full-service broadcast audiences, that two percent included government officials, business people, academics, students — in other words, the opinion leaders of today and tomorrow. And what King fails to note in his dismissive description of VOA Arabic's content is NEWS! Sawa serves up a few minutes of headlines and abbreviated stories twice an hour, and there are numerous anecdotal reports of Sawa listeners, even ardent fans, tuning to other stations during the newscasts. VOA Arabic, in sharp contrast, included serious newscasts and lots of other informational programming. People tuned in for the news, not in spite of it.

And what, exactly, is wrong with English lessons?

Over on the TV side, al Hurra, while having won an audience, still trails al Jazeera and other competitors, both in audience share and, more importantly, in credibility. Its ambitious schedule includes much filler material, some of which is benign (nature documentaries), some of which is in dubious taste (scantily-clad models in fashion shows), and some of which is just plain bizarre (a documentary on the Loch Ness Monster). Like the runway outfits, the news is often skimpy. Time after time, while al Jazeera airs a news report or live event or a discussion program, al Hurra is broadcasting some retread, subtitled program obtained by Mr. Pattiz on the cheap. Oh, excuse me, at "patrotic prices."

Downing Street What?

On May 1, Britain's Sunday Times published the infamous Downing Street Memo, which details a meeting in the prime minister's office in July 2002 that suggests "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to justify an American invasion of Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein.

The document has become a cause célèbre in Britain, and the American media have belatedly given it some attention (though not enough).

Now finally, six weeks after its disclosure, the document has received its first mention on the Voice of America. In a story headlined "Congressman Tries to Renew Focus on US Justifications for War in Iraq," Congressional correspondent Dan Robinson reports on a forum called Thursday by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to "to shine a new spotlight on administration justifications for going to war in Iraq."

I wonder if that's the last we'll hear of the DSM on VOA.

Robinson's story was filed just hours before NPR's "Morning Edition" aired a piece by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik on "Changes at Voice of America," detailing political interference with news coverage at VOA. Although staff journalists asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, thay did provide Folkenflik with e-mails from VOA director David Jackson directing positive coverage of events that would show the Bush administration in a favorable light. Some of those story ideas came directly from military and White House press releases. As Jackson pointed out, a press release can certainly suggest a good story, but given Jackson's previous employment at the Pentagon, his motivation can't help but be viewed skeptically.

And speaking of the military, Pentagon correspondent Al Pessin has been traveling a lot lately. In Colorado Springs recently he filed a pair of pieces on the pervasive evangelical Christian atmosphere at the Air Force Academy. Only one ("US Air Force Cadets Work on Religious Tolerance Issue") made it to the VOA website. Both pieces — but especially the unpublished one — focus on Air Force efforts to resecularize the Academy while minimizing the history of intolerance for non-Protestants at what should be a secular institution.

Pessin also filed a couple of stories this week from Dakar, Senegal, (neither online as of this writing) on how American and African military forces are working together to combat terrorism and conducting joint exercises. Both read like Pentagon press releases, which is too bad. Pessin is one of VOA's most talented reporters. His assignments have included London, Jerusalem and Beijing (where Chinese authorities expelled him for his Tianamen Square reporting). He can do better, but admittedly it's difficult to keep your journalistic distance while on a Pentagon-organized trip. But why was he sent to West Africa at all? The military cooperation is a "story" that, according to a Google News search, has gotten approximately zero coverage in the mainstream press. Perhaps the idea came from one of David Jackson's Pentagon press releases?

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Former VOA program director Sid Davis had an op-ed in yesterday's edition of the Capitol Hill newspaper, The Hill ("Chinese scrutiny threat of VOA Hong Kong move"), where he suggests that VOA's bizarre plan to hire contract freelancers in Hong Kong could prompt unwanted attention from Beijing.

Davis, who has a somewhat uneven reputation from his stint at VOA, is exactly right: dramatically expanding the existing VOA Hong Kong news center "would surely draw attention, perhaps harassment, from newly invigorated Chinese thought police whose marching orders are becoming more strident." A Chinese administration that imprisons journalists, jams VOA's broadcasts, and severly restricts residents' Internet access could be tempted to act against VOA, which plans to put both radio news writers and web staff in Hong Kong.

"VoA faces becoming a laughing stock" writes Davis, with "dependence on the untested reliability of freelancers in Hong Kong." He concludes: "Outsourcing one-third of the VoA’s news shifts to rented writers in China, the country that smashed the pro-democracy movement in 1989, is the wrong move at the wrong time to the wrong place. Enough already." Amen, Brother Sid.

VOA Should Be State Dept. Unit, Says Senate Aide

VOA belongs in the State Department, where it can be monitored by House and Senate foreign affairs committees, and it doesn't need no stinkin' BBG to oversee its work, suggests an aide to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar (R-IN).

Speaking at a Heritage Foundation Tuesday, at an event on public diplomacy, Mark Helmke said the BBG's grand strategy of "marrying the [message] to the market" is not working. But his solution would only make matters worse.

(Heritage will probably publish a transcript of this event later this year; in the meantime, you can watch a video. The audio link, which is currently broken, appears here.)

His comments, which are worth reading and do not appear to be available otherwise online, appear below.

The idea of VOA being enfolded into the State Department might have some appeal, given the desparate situation the Voice finds itself in: political meddling in news copy, continuing marginalization of English services, erosion of the correspondent corps and newsgathering capabilities both at home and abroad, management whose idea of innovation is outsourcing core newswriting functions to contract workers in the Peoples Republic of China, etc. But while placing VOA under State might have some short-term administrative and funding advantages (though that is not at all certain), it would effectively in the long term — and maybe sooner rather than later — end the Voice of America's role as a reliable source of news. It's impossible to imagine this administration especially (but, for that matter, most any other administration, too) from using its radio station for heavy handed propaganda, the Charter be damned.

VOA and, to a greater or lesser extent, U.S. international broadcasting's other brands, have a large and growing credibility problem. It's impossible to imagine a scenario in which direct State Department control would improve credibility. Credibility is gained, slowly and painfully, by honesty, integrity and reliability. It is not won by short-sighted efforts to manage the news, downplay the embarrassing and censor the inconvient. That happens often enough now, despite (OK, or maybe because of) the BBG and its "firewall."

Helmke says Congress would keep an eye on State's VOA. But we have been watching the death spiral of U.S. international broadcasting as Congress sits by and does nothing. Or, even worse, calls in Tomlinson and Pattiz and pats them on the back for the fine work they are doing. The failure of Congress to fulfill its oversight obligations in recent years is shameful, and Helmke give us no reason to suppose it would change if broadcasting gets shifted to another slot in the government's organizational chart.

Nice of him, by the way, to say that this mess ain't the fault of the dedicated professionals in the various broadcasting services. But then again, he says Tomlinson and "godfather" Pattiz (how apt!) aren't at fault either. Geez.

(It would probably be useful to review an earlier Heritage seminar on some of the same issues, "Regaining America's Voice Overseas: A Conference on U.S. Public Diplomacy," from July 2004.)

International Broadcasting: Building a Better House

by Mark Helmke

The Heritage Foundation Conference on
U.S. Public Diplomacy ─ Roadmap to Recovery

June 14, 2005
Washington, DC


International broadcasting financed by the U.S. government has lost its way.

The world has radically changed, but the institution supporting international broadcasting has not.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees the myriad of broadcasting entities under its control, has a grand strategy called “marrying the message to the mission.”

It’s not working. The various missions are uncoordinated. They often work at cross purposes, and the divergent messages are confusing and counterproductive.

Despite these problems, let me be clear: they are not the fault of the thousands of dedicated and professional people working for the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Marti, and the new Middle East Broadcasting Networks which runs Al Hurra and Radio Sawa. Nor are the problems caused by BBG Chairman Ken Tomlinson, Norm Pattiz ─ the godfather of Al Hurra and Radio Sawa ─ or others.

The fault lies with all of us for causing the creation and evolution of such a confusing federal agency of multiple public and quasi-private entities run by political appointees of both parties. The fault lies with the lack of long term bipartisan strategic thinking and agreement on American public diplomacy in the post-9/11 world.

Understanding the history of American international broadcasting provides direction for the reforms required today. Voice of America was started by the War Department soon after Pearl Harbor and America’s entry in World War II. America had seen the power of Nazi propaganda and determined to counter it with American government sponsored free press. That raises the first question we must now debate: Can the government sponsor free press? Interestingly, Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governor, and also the Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcast (CPB), which oversees the Public Broadcast Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), is asking serious, and controversial questions, about how open and free a government subsidized domestic media can be.

In addition to VOA, the United States also created during World War II Radio Free Europe and later Radio Liberty. These were creations of the OSS and then the CIA. These were transformational communications entities. The enduring images of RFE/RL are of the Free French fighter, and later Vaclav Havel behind the Iron Curtain, listening to their crystal sets, and then taking action against totalitarian dictatorships.

VOA and the so-called surrogates, RFE/RL, were powerful forces in the liberation of Europe and Asia during World War II and the Cold War.

Three confusing and confounding policies, however, have emerged from these efforts.

First, Congress did not want to create an American BBC. Once a country was “liberated,” American government financed broadcasting stopped, regardless of whether there was an indigenous free press that could survive and thrive. Consequently, we’ve never developed a comprehensive policy for how free press fits into democracy and nation building.

Second, and most importantly, there has not been an open and thoughtful discussion about how best to communicate to the rest of the world American values, diversity, and the inherent messiness of democratic decision making, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

The third point is the most volatile. It is the quaint and irrational fear that a President will use the broadcasting entities to propagandize the American public. The fear is based on propagandists George Creel and Joseph Goebbels more than 60 years ago.

Nazi propagandist Goebbels is better known historically than Creel, but Creel’s work still influences the laws and policies surrounding American public diplomacy. Creel was a Progressive era muckraking journalist who became Wilson’s information minister during World War I. The Creel Commission created hundreds of thousands of posters and other communications maneuvers promoting the patriotism of fighting the war, and also the role of Wilson as America’s savior.

I’m the proud owner of a wonderful Creel poster depicting Wilson under a Bald Eagle and American flags. A portrait of Washington on Wilson’s right shoulder announces “Washington Gave Us Freedom,” and a portrait of Lincoln, on his Wilson’s left, says “Lincoln Kept Us United.” Under Wilson are the words, “Wilson Fights for America and all Humanity.” Below Wilson’s portrait, are portraits of America’s fighting men with the slogan, “America We Love You: The Brave Boys of 1918 Will Fight and Die for You.”

This was powerful stuff. Whatever you call it: propaganda, strategic communications, public diplomacy, it’s all the same: communications techniques and technologies aimed at influencing public opinion and political decision making.

Fearful of another Goebbels and Creel after World War II, Congress passed the Smith-Mundt Act to organize VOA and other public diplomacy initiatives as long as they were not aimed at the American public.

Smith-Mundt has created an inherent conflict in American public diplomacy, and a political and bureaucratic contradiction. American public diplomacy is hobbled by these conflicts and contradictions today. If Congress sees American public diplomacy as propaganda not fit for Americans, how is the rest of the world expected to view and understand it?

The Smith-Mundt restrictions should be repealed. Let the public decide. Let the world see and hear America’s open and democratic discussion.

The United States has three different missions regarding international broadcasting.

The first is to use broadcasting and other communications techniques to help explain and promote American foreign policy; America’s commitment to democracy, human rights and economic opportunity; and ─ this is the hardest part ─ the diversity, complexity and inherent messiness of American political decision making.

The second mission is to support indigenous media reporting on democracy, human rights and transparency in countries that do not have a free press.

The third mission builds on the second, and that is support for the development of free, fair and self-sustaining free press in those same countries.

Presently, the BBG embraces all three missions. This is counterproductive. This first mission is public diplomacy. The second and third involve fostering international democratic institutions. These missions are complementary, but need to be separated.

The first mission of promoting and explaining American foreign policy is what the VOA has long been about. This the VOA should continue. And it should expand its work to involve Congress by serving, in part, as an international C-SPAN.

No independent bipartisan commission is needed to oversee the work of VOA. It belongs in the State Department, monitored in a bipartisan way through the Constitutional oversight powers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and House International Relations Committee.

The second mission of supporting indigenous media reporting in countries without a free press has long been the work of RFE/RL, and recently RFA and Radio/TV Marti. They should become truly independent non-profits, run by independent boards, and financed by Congress. Their jobs are to put themselves out of business over the long-term. In doing so, they should coordinate their efforts with the National Endowment for Democracy, which Senator Lugar last year convinced Congress to designate as the strategic coordinator for the development of free, fair and viable free press.

If we review the BBG’s various entities in this light, questions arise about Al Hurra and Radio Sawa. If the goal is to develop free and independent media in the Arab-speaking world, then they too should have an independent board and receive Congressional funding based on a plan to eventually get off the government dime.

If the goal of Al Hurra and Radio Sawa is to serve as a platform for explaining and promoting American foreign policy, they should be merged back into VOA.

These are ideas I throw out to stimulate debate. Since 9/11 too much of the public diplomacy debate has been about tactics – buy advertisements, start a new TV station – and not about strategy. We need to reach a consensus on public diplomacy strategies before we get bogged down and waste more money on tactics that may or may not work.

Mark Helmke
Senior Professional Staff Member
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Chairman
202-224-5918

14 Senators Urge Jackson to Cancel Outsourcing Plan

Some of the Senate's top democrats have written to VOA director David Jackson to express concern about plans to replace staff news writers on the overnight shift with contract workers in Hong Kong.

In a letter obtained by AFGE Local 1812 and posted on their website, the senators term "troublesome" the message sent by the move, even though it only affects a handful of employees (who would be reassigned to other shifts).

Jackson and senior newsroom manger Ted Iliff have made unsubstantiated claims that the move would save around $300,000. The alleged savings could not possibly be anywhere near that amount. Existing overnight staff will be reassigned, not sacked, and the only out-of-pocket savings will be 10 percent shift differential — maybe $50,000 or less annually by my back-of-an-envelope calculation, or a bit more than the cost of flying the Board of Governors to Prague for their meeting there earlier this month.

In their letter to David Jackson, the senators say the small cost savings will be "vastly outweighed by the harm you will do to VOA's journalistic integrity."

They also find it "difficult to believe VOA will be able to satisfy its [Charter] mission of projecting 'significant American thought' through non-American cititizens" who "live half way around the world under an entirely different system of government."

Hong Kong, you may recall, is part — albeit a "special" part — of the People's Republic of China, whose government has shown rather little understanding of the role of a free press. On the other hand, neither current managers at VOA nor the Board that is supposed to insulate VOA from political interference, seems to get it either.

It is heartening that at least some lawmakers have finally discovered that they have an oversight role in U.S. international broadcasting. It's a shame that no Republican signed on to the letter. Poor quality journalism, of the sort that is increasingly evident on VOA's air, should not be a partisan issue.

So far there is no evidence that Jackson is backing down, and the expanded Hong Kong News Center under the well-connected Jennifer Janin should be turning out news copy within a month or so.

Signers of the June 9, 2005, letter to David Jackson

Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD)
Marbara A. Mikulski (D-MD)
Russell D. Feingold (D-WI)
Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
John F. Kerry (D-MA)
Barack Obama (D-IL)
Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)
Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT)
Richard J. Durbin (D-IL)
Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA)

Cancelling VOA Arabic "was a mistake," says Council on Foreign Relations

A report issued yesterday by the Council on Foreign Relations urges restoration of VOA's traditional Arabic language broadcasts.

"In Support of Arab Democracy: Why and How" [PDF text] [press release] was the product of a task force chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Vin Weber, a former Republican member of the House of Representatives. Here's some of what they had to say about U.S. international broadcasting to the Arab world.

The United States should also leverage the new media space in the region to spread its message about democracy and freedom. On balance, the United States has done a poor job in this area. Although Radio Sawa, which the Broadcasting Board of Governors established in March 2002, is a relative success among younger Arabs, with its mix of American and Arabic pop music and regular news bulletins, it is unclear what affect the station is having on the way Arabs view the United States. VOA’s service was defunded in favor of Radio Sawa. This was a mistake as VOA’s Arabic service and Radio Sawa serve different functions and audiences. Whereas Radio Sawa is geared exclusively toward Arab youth, the VOA has traditionally provided news and information from and about the United States for a wider-range audience, including elites. The service should become an integral component of Washington’s public diplomacy strategy, emphasizing reform issues in addition to news and information about the United States.

Washington should also rethink the role of its own Arabic satellite channel, al-Hurra. Because the channel is operated by the U.S. government, the suspicion is strong within the region that it is merely a conveyor of propaganda. This critique will continue to hamper al-Hurra’s efforts to draw a larger market share, especially in comparison to al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyya. There is, however, an important programming niche that al-Hurra could fill, which has the advantage of being pro-reform without the taint of the U.S. government. Some of al-Hurra’s programming should be shifted to a C-SPAN-style format. Broadcasting the processes of the U.S. and other democratic governments, including congressional and parliamentary hearings, political rallies, and debates, would expose Arabs to the spectacle of free political systems in action. (pp. 29-30)

The 88-page document is highly critical of U.S. broadcasting efforts aimed at the Arab world. It could be even more critical. An analysis of Sawa's programming would show a tiny news hole that, despite promises at the radio's inception made in a public meeting in the VOA auditorium, has never expanded. In fact, in some streams it actually contracted some time ago in response to commercial pressures from competitors who emulated the Sawa programming model without the taint of its American origins.

The content of al Hurra is even more disappointing. The schedule is replete with nature documentaries, fashion shows, and stale technology segments. Not that there's anything wrong with that sort of programming, which can nurture viewer affinity for the station. But since al Hurra does not go out of its way to advertise its American origins (though no one is fooled), if any affinity develops it will not necessarily work to the advantage of the country that is footing the bills. Too, as al Hurra is airing that soft programming, key competitors — notably al Jazeera — are often broadcasting news reports or commentary and analysis segments. Hard to see how al Hurra wins hearts and minds that way.