By David S. Jackson
Voice of America is:
A. A tool of American public diplomacy.
B. An editorially independent news organization.
C. A strategic asset.
D. All of the above.
You may be surprised to hear that these descriptions are controversial, and even hotly debated. But I think the right answer is D, and I’ll explain why.
VOA’s journalists bristle whenever someone refers to their organization as a “tool” of public diplomacy or of anything else, and their sensitivity is understandable. If you’re a tool, it would seem to imply that you could be used by the U.S. government in some manipulative way, and that would clearly be incompatible with VOA’s Charter, which guarantees VOA’s editorial independence. In fact, neither the White House, nor the State Department, nor anybody else can tell VOA what to broadcast or what to say in a news story, and for good reason. If VOA’s content and journalism were to reflect only the government’s view, it would have no credibility and, eventually, no audience. It would be propaganda. That’s why protecting that editorial independence is one of the most important responsibilities of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees VOA and its fellow international broadcasters Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV Marti, and Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV.
But, there’s also another way to look at the “tool” concept.
Even though VOA cannot be “used”, it could still be considered a tool in this sense: When White House or State Department officials think about what “tools” they have to support their policy toward a country such as Iran, they know that having VOA broadcast credible, objective news and information to that country every day plays an important role in their strategy of dealing with the Iranian government and countering the biased information that Iranians hear from it.
Or consider another example: A democratizing country where citizens learn from VOA’s broadcasts (which include debate about our own government’s policies) how a free press is supposed to work. When U.S. policy toward that country is aimed at helping it democratize and develop a free press and resilient political institutions, VOA’s broadcasts support that by its very nature. Our diplomats don’t have to tell VOA what to broadcast in order to benefit from those broadcasts.
A similar argument could be made for whether VOA is a “strategic asset.” Helle Dale, a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a staunch believer in the value of Voice of America, recently posted a comment on Heritage’s The Foundry blog that took the president to task for, among other things, waiting so long to give an interview to the Voice of America. “…It would be encouraging,” she noted, “if the White House finally realized that it has a strategic asset in U.S. international broadcasting…."
Her comment provoked an immediate (and prickly) response from Kim Andrew Elliot, an audience research analyst at the International Broadcasting Bureau, a support agency of VOA under the BBG, who wrote on his own blog: “When a president considers USIB (U.S. international broadcasting) to be a ‘strategic asset,’ USIB is screwed. How can a ‘strategic asset’ provide a comprehensive, reliable, and independent news service, which is the main reason for the audience to tune in?”
The answer to that question is easy: VOA not only can be “comprehensive, reliable, and independent” and also be a “strategic asset,” it has been for nearly seven decades. Just ask the millions of people in countries around the world who have relied on VOA – and the country that supported it – as the only source of information they trusted.
That same charter that requires VOA to be, among other things, “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” also requires it to be a “reliable and authoritative source of news” for international audiences and to “present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.”
I don’t know of any U.S. president – or any U.S. diplomat, for that matter – who doesn’t consider that a “strategic asset.”
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