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Broadcasting the War of Ideas

A Director's Forum with Seth Cropsey, Director, International Broadcasting Bureau

Date & Time

Wednesday
Oct. 6, 2004
11:00am – 12:00pm ET

Overview

In this Director's Forum, Seth Cropsey, director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, discussed the dramatic changes his organization has undergone over the past several decades, both technologically and strategically. He focused his remarks on the role of American international broadcasting in the war on terrorism.

"We are engaged today not in a clash of civilizations but rather in a war of ideas that pits civilization against barbarism: between those who value freedom and those who oppose it," Cropsey said.

Cropsey emphasized the commitment to the truth that U.S. international broadcasters share. This commitment was codified in the VOA Charter adopted by Congress in 1976 and signed into law by President Ford.

"All our broadcasters can tell you that the Charter requires that we offer only accurate, balanced news; that we talk about our country to the world; and that we present American policy and balanced discussions of that policy-—including the views of those who dissent from it," Cropsey said.

America's international broadcasting effort, with an audience today of more than 130 million, is very different today than it was a half century ago when it began. Part of the reason, according to Cropsey, is rooted in technology, but the dramatic political changes in the world over this same period better explains the transformation in international broadcasting.

When the United States launched its international broadcasting effort in 1942, there was only one way to reach an audience---by shortwave radio broadcasts, Cropsey explained. The signal could be relayed from U.S. territory and reach most of the world. Now, decades later, most of the audiences around the globe no longer own shortwave radios and instead prefer AM and FM radio, television and the Internet. These new technologies present certain challenges, such as the dependence on terrestrial transmitters near the audience, which requires establishing stations, leasing them, or entering into various kinds of affiliate relations with local stations. Meanwhile, Cropsey reported, they are putting more programming out on the Internet. But the lack of bandwidth or even access to the web remain major problems in many parts of the world.

But it is the political changes in the world that have been the most revolutionary in their impact on broadcasting. For more than 50 years, the basic agenda in U.S. international broadcasting was to reach those living under communist rule. Although the Cold War ended a decade earlier, it was in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that U.S. international broadcasting made the major break from its earlier profile. Since 9/11, international broadcasting has had to redirect its efforts to focus on a threat from a non-state actor---complicating the mission but at the same time making it more critical than ever to communicate with the audience. International broadcasting also had to "tailor broadcasting for specific audiences, especially young people who now make up half of the populations in the Islamic world, and who in many cases have extremely negative views about the United States—-sometimes because of differences over U.S. policy but far more often because their images of America were the result of tendentious and dishonest broadcasts by their own national media," Cropsey said.

Cropsey emphasized the need to reach not only these audiences but the greater non-Arabic-speaking Muslim world as well. He described the latest programs such as a new Urdu-language service for Pakistan, targeted at the most volatile group in the Pakistani population—15- to 39-year olds—a demographic group from which Islamist radicals have recruited terrorists. This program now reaches the neighboring countries of India and Afghanistan and according to Cropsey, initial surveys suggest it is one of the most popular stations in all three countries.

U.S. international broadcasts have been increased in Iraq, and over the next year, Cropsey hopes to increase broadcasts of satellite television programs to Iran and Afghanistan as well. Other goals include an increase of radio and television broadcasts to Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, and to Nigeria, Somalia, and Uzbekistan, three countries where Islamic militancy has increased in recent years.

"As we have done with other adversaries in the past, we believe that accurate and balanced news not only works in our favor but empowers those who receive it. Such empowerment is a threat to the autocratic regimes in many parts of the Muslim world, and this again is why President Bush has talked about our efforts to assist in the region's democratization," Cropsey said.

Cropsey concluded by looking to the future. He emphasized that international broadcasting needs to begin to cast a wider net by reaching out to the areas where international terrorists seem to be focusing new recruiting such as Europe, Russia and the post-Soviet states, and in the fault line between Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa.

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