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U.S. looks for a voice in Arab world
By MARY JACOBY
© St. Petersburg Times, WASHINGTON -- The United States spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year trying to crack open closed societies by broadcasting news reports to citizens isolated from a free press. Yet the Middle East, of all places, can't hear the Voice of America. The signals of the U.S. government-funded international broadcasting service are too weak to be heard clearly over shortwave radio in 22 Arab countries from Morocco to Jordan. It has virtually no listeners among Palestinians in Israel or the people of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Lebanon -- countries where anti-American invective regularly appears in government-owned media. The destruction of the World Trade Center, the flame-scorched crater in the Pentagon, and four hijacked airliners have convinced Washington policymakers that the United States needs to end this silence. Much of the Arab media "daily depict the United States as a force for evil, accusing this country of an endless number of malevolent plots against the world," House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said at an Oct. 10 hearing. "How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has such trouble promoting a positive image of itself overseas?" Hyde asked. The Broadcasting Board of Governors -- the independent agency that oversees the Voice of America and is supposed to protect its news operations from political influence -- has asked Congress for $30-million to build FM and AM transmitters in Jordan and Cyprus and to fund a new Middle East Radio Network. "The Middle East Radio Network will expose the future leaders of the Arab world to American ideas, values and culture," said Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., a major backer of the project. The proposed service would be aimed at young people whose ideas of America may not yet be set in stone. "The battle for the 11-year-old mind," as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Charlotte Beers, a former advertising executive, described it to the International Relations Committee. The service would be hip and modern, including call-in shows and music, and air around the clock in more accessible FM and AM as opposed to the current seven hours a day now broadcast to the Middle East by the Voice of America on shortwave. But there is a formidable hurdle: Sen. Jesse Helms. Angry over a snub by the Voice of America's governing board, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican signaled in an Oct. 4 letter to President Bush that he will oppose creation of the Middle East Radio Network. The dispute is not likely to find a quick resolution, because Helms' objections go beyond this particular project to the very philosophy that has underpinned Voice of America for a quarter century. A propaganda arm of the United States during World War II and most of the Cold War, the Voice of America's mission changed in 1976, when President Gerald Ford turned it into an objective news-gathering organization with the mission of getting information into closed societies -- and letting the people there make up their minds about the United States. Today, the Voice of America employs 800 journalists from countries around the world who reach an estimated 91-million people in 53 languages. It has also expanded from radio to satellite television and Internet operations. But some conservatives, as Helms put it in his letter to Bush, believe "it should not be broadcasting ideas contrary to American interests and values in the strained name of 'balance.' " Helms and other conservatives were inflamed by the service's decision to air parts of an interview with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar on Sept. 25. The interview was broadcast into Afghanistan in the native Pashto and Dari languages. The service has defended its Omar interview. But it acknowledges a mistake in airing comments the day after the terrorist attacks from Yasir al Serri, identified in a report from London as "a leader of Egypt's largest Islamist group, the Gama'a Islamiyya," without mentioning that the group claimed responsibility for the massacre of 58 foreign tourists in Luxor in 1997. "It's not wrong to be sure that something we're paying for as taxpayers is being used to further our ideals," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said. "Some people might call it censorship. It's not," said the California Republican, who in the 1980s spent time in Afghanistan observing the Islamic mujahedeen fighting to expel the Soviets. But there are signs the conservatives will lose this debate. Robert Reilly, a former editorial writer for the Voice of America and known for his conservative views, is the new director of the service, appointed by Bush at Helms' behest. Reilly said he would not have censored the Omar interview, though he would have edited it differently to convey more of Bush's views on the war. "I don't think you can intelligently discuss an issue without presenting both sides," Reilly said. "We're trying to reach an intelligent audience that is going to have an influence over the future of their country. We're not going to talk to them like they're children." In response to Bush's declared war on terrorism, the Voice of America has expanded its shortwave broadcasts into Afghanistan to 2 hours and 15 minutes a day for each of the south Asian country's two main native languages. A Voice of America survey showed that 80 percent of males in Afghanistan regularly listen to its reports. The Pashto-language broadcast reaches the Pashtun ethnic group in the south, from which the Taliban draws most of its support. A Dari-language broadcast reaches the north, where rebels fighting the Taliban are based. On a recent afternoon, Spozhmai Maiwandi, head of the Pashto service, sat with headphones over her long black hair in a studio in the anonymous government building at the foot of Capitol Hill that houses the Voice of America. Speaking into a microphone, she narrated news reports from the Pentagon, White House and Congress. Snippets of audio from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott were aired in English, with Pashto translation in a voice-over. In Afghanistan, it was 11 p.m. Maiwandi and most of the 11 other Pashto speakers who work for the Voice of America fled Afghanistan during the 1980s conflict with the Soviet Union. "My family in Kabul have seen so much bombing from the Soviet era," producer Khan Alami said, swiveling his chair as he kept an eye on Maiwandi through the glass window of the control room. "Those people were blindly shooting everyone. This time it is not like that," said Alami, 50, a former Peace Corps adviser clad in loafers and a white cotton sweater. But the Voice of America's Pashto-speaking journalists suffer an image problem in some Washington quarters. Because they came to the U.S. as refugees of the Soviet conflict and never lived under the Taliban's repressive Islamic regime, they are perceived as sympathetic toward the Taliban, which draws support from their Pashtun ethnic group. A Voice of America spokesman denied any bias, but the charge is one of the arguments driving the politics behind another pet project of conservatives: the reopening of Radio Free Afghanistan. A California Republican, Rep. Ed Royce, has bipartisan support on his bill to restart the service, which broadcast into Afghanistan from 1985 to 1992. The United States operates several "radio free" services for Europe, Iraq, Kuwait and Asia that have a more overt advocacy element than the Voice of America. All are overseen by the independent federal Broadcasting Board of Governors. With a $450-million budget, the Broadcasting Board of Governors funds Voice of America's radio, Internet and satellite TV services; the Radio and TV Marti services into Cuba; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; and Radio Free Asia. Many conservatives feel the "radio frees" more actively promote American values abroad than the Voice of America. This belief, in turn, has spilled over into the political skirmishing that has delayed creation of the Middle East Radio Network. One of Helms' main objections to the proposed network is that the Voice of America will give it a pro-Arab tilt in the name of balancing the news, Helms aides say. Helms also doesn't like that the network is the brainchild of Norm Pattiz, a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, president of the Westwood One commercial radio network and a major Democratic Party fundraiser. Suspicious of a project championed by a Democrat, Helms several months ago placed an informal legislative "hold" on the broadcasting board's request to spend $2-million to build a transmitter in Cyprus. But Republican members of the board support the proposed network as well. And so on Sept. 30 the board voted 5-1 to defy Helms' wishes and proceed with building the transmitter. For the moment, the insult has caused Helms to dig in strongly against the network. The impasse might eventually be resolved with a little legislative wheeling and dealing, observers say. Give me Radio Free Afghanistan, Helms might propose, and I'll give you the Middle East Radio Network.
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