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| "A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham" |
| 2004-05-20 |
| Just the blowoff... ...The single most important Public Diplomacy official in the government is the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. But Charlotte Beers left that job in March 2003 and wasn't replaced for nine months. Her successor, Margaret Tutwiler, an able diplomat and information specialist, made it clear she didn't want the job, She said last month she's leaving June 30. Meanwhile, the Board of Broadcasting Governors, which operates independently of the rest of the P.D. system and has a budget nearly as big as the State Department's, has closed the Arabic service of Voice of America and started Radio Sawa, which mainly plays pop music. An expensive U.S. satellite-TV network in the Mideast has promise -- but it's not clear whether its goal is to build audience or actually change minds. Public diplomacy today, as Woody Allen said in an utterly different context, is "a travesty of a mockery of a sham." But it requires only a single step to fix. Just as the President declared war on terror, he needs to declare a mobilization of public diplomacy to support that war -- to eviscerate our enemies in the battle of ideas and images. He'll find eager warriors in the public and private sectors. He should begin by naming a Cabinet-level counselor in the White House to set and monitor an overall P.D. strategy for State, Defense, broadcasting and the rest of government. It's incredible, but we don't have a strategy today. The U.S. is home to Madison Avenue and Hollywood, to the world's best political polling and commercial marketing. But we are failing miserably to win hearts and minds, not just in the Middle East but around the world. There's no excuse. None at all. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #6 buwaya> if you look at even American t.v. which needs to show commercials to exist minus pbs - then that is US gov't PR. Your opinion maybe that VOA had no impact which is debateable (I've never lived in the bloc so can't say) but I'd say the best PR our gov't had in that situation was cnn showing American life. |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2004-05-20 10:11:05 PM |
| #5 "I don't think that the USIA or Radio Free XXX ever had much of an effect on the Cold War." So says someone who never lived in a society where all the information sources are controlled by the government. Guys, in the 1950s the "average joe communist" had NO source of non-party-approved information, other than rumor. (Old Soviet joke about the two principal Moscow newspapers: "There is no news in Pravda [Tr: "Truth"] and no truth in Isvestia [Tr: "News"].) Foreign broadcasts (including the American-backed radios) were the only exception, and they must have had at least some effect, because the U.S.S.R. and its satellites spent beaucoup bucks jamming them. (As for American TV getting into Russia, CNN-- the first network that had any penetration there at all-- didn't even go on the air until 1980.) Think of the US without the blogosphere. No, worse than that. No, even worse. (Any reader from the old Soviet bloc want to chime in on this?) And as for "the Soviet Union won the propaganda battle consistently," many of the third-country Communist movements were Soviet funded. They made a lot of noise, and that made it difficult to find winners or losers. But think: It's amazing how many of these "popular movements" disappeared as soon as the funds dried up. (Seems like about the only people who fell for Soviet propaganda were the useful idiots among the western left.) |
| Posted by: Old Grouch 2004-05-20 9:26:19 PM |
| #4 Jarhead, commercial TV, German, Austrian, Italian, etc. Also travellers back and forth. Not US government PR. |
| Posted by: buwaya 2004-05-20 9:17:04 PM |
| #3 I tend to agree w/the author on this one. As for the USSR, American t.v. and seeing/hearing commercials advertising unbelievable new products really helped us win that. The average joe communist learned through information flow both audio & visual how f*cked they really were. I say pursue this angle to the hilt. |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2004-05-20 8:07:16 PM |
| #2 Actually, I don't think that the USIA or Radio Free XXX ever had much of an effect on the Cold War. The Soviet Union won the propaganda battle consistently, with smaller resources, and with so many strikes against them that everyone but Robert Conquest lost count. It was reality that did them in - the fact of US prosperity, of European prosperity, of Asian tiger prosperity. There is only so much damage a skewed press can do - a lot, but it can buck reality for only so long. |
| Posted by: buwaya 2004-05-20 7:33:57 PM |
| #1 "...70% of Jordanians..." Would this happen to include the 60% of Jordanians who are also Palestinian, but not really Jordanian citizens? |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2004-05-20 7:30:58 PM |