PROPOSED CUTS WOULD EVISCERATE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE VOICE OF AMERICA

[Harold F. Schiffman]

PROPOSED CUTS WOULD EVISCERATE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE VOICE OF AMERICA

By Georgie Anne Geyer Thu Apr 6, 6:21 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- My first reaction, when I heard that the Voice of America is
going to abolish most of its English-language programs to the world, was
how downright stupid such a move is. Since President Eisenhower founded
organizations like the Voice after World War II as instruments to defend
the United States by broadcasting fair and accurate news to the world, the
Voice has been an inexpensive treasure house to the nation. It has
influenced countless leaders, often when they were young, standing in the
fields and back alleys of dictatorships and autocracies for whom the very
word "news" is subversive. Today, English has blossomed as the common
language of the world.  One-third of the world's population speaks
English, and more than half will speak it by 2050. I was recently
surprised to hear that big French oil companies -- the French, with their
hubristic pride of language! -- speak English on a commercial basis. The
United Nations speaks in English, as do most other world organizations.

Two weeks ago, Al-Jazeera, the fearsome TV network that has challenged
American news across the Middle East, flamboyantly announced its new
24-hour broadcasts in English. The Russians and the Chinese are right
behind, again with 24-hour broadcasts or Web casts. But even though the
proposed budgets for VOA and the U.S.-sponsored Middle East Broadcasting
Networks have gone up (5.3 percent for VOA, 13 percent for Middle East
Broadcasting Networks), VOA's flagship for the English service, "News
Now," will be cut completely. One of the most popular American programs
across the world, it broadcasts worldwide 14 hours a day on shortwave and
includes hourly news updates, correspondent reports and longer programs on
science, education and other subjects. (I should note here that I have
been, for some years, a frequent guest, with two other working
journalists, on the VOA news discussion program, "Issues in the News.")
English content will continue only on the Web and special broadcasts for
limited English speakers.

Sanford J. Ungar, director of the Voice from 1999 to 2001, said after the
budget proposals were put forward: "The broadcasting board of governors
and the Bush administration are eliminating the heart and soul of the
Voice of America. It would be better if they would just say that they
intend to destroy the Voice of America and be honest about it." The
English language itself, with its clear structure and boldness of
expression, is a perfect rhetorical expression of democratic principles.
As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in Washington in
1999, "The values of liberty, a bold sense of adventure, and ability to
adapt and change are mirrored in this language, four-fifths of whose
vocabulary was borrowed from other languages." But something else --
something important, threatening and dangerous -- is going on here.

As Mark Helmke, senior adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and a specialist on the American radios, told me: "They're doing this
because they want to shift more resources to the Middle East. Even with
the educational exchanges, where we spend a mere $400 million, which
includes Fulbright, Muskie and other programs, they are taking
scholarships from Russia and Ukraine and putting them in the Middle East.
It depends upon whether your world view is 9/11 or November 1989, when the
wall fell." By expanding service to Iran (the administration's new
bogeyman), and increasing Middle East television news coverage to Alhurra,
a TV network run separately from the VOA, and radio to Radio Sawa, the
United States is unnaturally tying itself closer to only one part of the
world -- and ignoring the rest. Its directors on the Broadcasting Board of
Governors are empowering the separate Middle East Broadcasting Networks to
be -- let's say it -- propaganda networks.

Now our broadcasting is teetering on the edge of becoming a propaganda
network that talks about democracy but doesn't at all understand the
qualities necessary for it. When the United States formally handed over
power to an Iraqi prime minister a year and a half ago, nobody from
Washington was on the air.  When there were elections in Egypt, Iraq and
Palestine, VOA English was barely audible. The English-speaking elites of
these and many other countries are, not surprisingly, ignoring both
Alhurra and the pop radio Sawa as not worthy of their attention. During
the fighting in Fallujah in Iraq, Alhurra was programming cooking shows
and documentaries about monkeys. Respected University of Maryland
professor Shibley Telhami released a six-nation survey on Arab media
habits in December 2005, in which he found that Arabs were watching
Al-Jazeera, 45 percent, and Alhurra, 1 percent, with Arab networks making
up the difference.

The reason given for killing most English-language programs was that they
were on shortwave -- but no effort was made to broaden their broadcasting.
Mark Helmke points out that no studies have been done to see who watches
what or where the elites are listening. In addition, Arabs today are
influenced by the realities of American policy (read, the Iraq war) and
not by propaganda and pop music. So we get more of this administration's
obsession with the Middle East, its lack of understanding of the power of
fair and accurate reporting, whether in Washington or to the world, and
its propensity toward propaganda. It's not a done deal yet, and Congress
could change it -- if, of course, anybody's paying attention there.


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