Oleg Melnik has an appetite for spy novels and playing soccer. The 12-year-old in Kiev, Ukraine, is also an avid English learner and a big fan of Voice of America radio broadcasts.
“Hello! My name is Oleg!” he wrote to Voice of America headquarters in Washington. “I like English lessons because it’s very interesting to learn something new. . . . It’s very important to listen to native speakers. Thank you so much, my dear friends.”
To the boy, the Cold War that gave the VOA its heyday is probably just another history term, because he’s growing up in a time of detente, when American broadcasts travel unimpeded to the new Ukrainian state.
But the Cold War’s demise also means the U.S. government’s international broadcasters are having a harder time justifying their existence, especially to members of Congress and a new administration under pressure to cut the nation’s widening budget deficit. The threat of reduced funding or even its elimination has pitted the VOA against other international broadcast operations in a scramble for limited funds.
The tug-of-war over money is being waged mainly between the State Department’s U.S. Information Agency and an independent federal agency, the Board for International Broadcasting. The USIA oversees several broadcast agencies, including Voice of America. The Board for International Broadcasting oversees Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which target Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union respectively.
Since 1942, the VOA has been America’s largest government-run broadcast operation, and its $355 million budget this year allows it to reach an estimated 100 million listeners in 49 languages. VOA broadcasts, which can be picked up worldwide, are sent by satellite to relay stations around the world, which then transmit mainly shortwave, and some medium-wave, signals.
The broadcasts carry news and tales of Americana, such as that of an American couple buying a home or the New England woman who celebrated her 90th birthday by skydiving. In addition, English lessons account for 12 of every 24 VOA broadcast hours. Other broadcasts target a younger crowd by airing only American pop music and news.
Vying with the VOA for listeners’ ears and broadcast funds are Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Created in the early 1950s as surrogate services, they were assigned a special mission: crack communism in Eastern Europe by giving listeners a real-news alternative to Soviet propaganda about their homelands.
Unlike the VOA, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty do not get their funding directly from the U.S. government but from the Board for International Broadcasting. The board is supposed to insulate broadcasts from political influence, giving the services the edge over the VOA when it comes to objectivity, board supporters say.
But Chase Untermeyer, the Bush administration Voice of America director who stepped down in January, remembers one example of attempted government influence over the VOA. An assistant secretary in the State Department asked Untermeyer to cancel a VOA interview with former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide because it might inflame the Haitian situation. Untermeyer fended off the request, using the VOA’s mandate for accurate, objective and comprehensive reporting.
The year for change
Although numerous government reports over the last decade have suggested how USIA and Board for International Broadcasting operations might be consolidated into one agency or otherwise revamped, this is the year for change, Untermeyer predicts.
“What happens this year is going to determine what happens for the rest of the decade, and I say that because it looks like this year there will be a broad-scale review in both Congress and the new administration on the future of international broadcasting,” Untermeyer said in an interview.
Legislative proposals range from consolidating all broadcasts under USIA to creating a broadcast operation for Asia. Key lawmakers are waiting to see what the Clinton administration will propose.
President Clinton recently nominated Joseph Duffey, a longtime friend and former president of the University of Massachusetts and American University, to be director of the USIA. Clinton tapped former U.S. Rep. Dan Mica (D-Fla.) to preside over the Board for International Broadcasting.
As plans get under way to revamp the way America talks to the rest of the world, change is likely to focus on two regions where the USIA and the board each have the most to win or to lose: Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe.
The communist stronghold in China makes the first of those regions ripe for more broadcasting. After Tiananmen Square protester Wang Dan was released from a Beijing prison in February, the VOA had him on the air within 12 hours, Betty Tseu, the VOA’s China branch chief in Washington, said with pride.
Because Wang’s parents didn’t have a telephone in their home, the VOA used its network of contacts to track down where they live, Tseu said. Using the address, they got the phone number of a store in the Wangs’ neighborhood, and with the help of store employees, the VOA put Wang on the air first.
Many lawmakers support legislation to create an Asian radio service, modeled after Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. The broadcast would be sent to China, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.
Who’ll run the show?
The USIA and the Board for International Broadcasting are vying to control the new Asia operation, for which the Clinton administration has allotted $30 million.
The VOA argues that it can do a better job of starting up the new broadcast service because it already has established an audience, transmitters and a respected reputation. The board counters that a surrogate service for Asia under its supervision could deliver more news about the region more objectively than would the VOA.
To fend off board bids for Asia, the VOA has begun to beef up its broadcasting there. The China branch has increased programming in Mandarin, the most common dialect in China, by 10 to 12 hours daily, added a news hour focusing on events in Asia and expanded its Hong Kong research office. On a request from the Clinton administration, East Asia and Pacific division chief Robert Knopes has outlined the VOA’s proposed Asia unit.
Nonetheless, Penn Kemble, Clinton’s nominee to be deputy director of the USIA, said he is leaning toward a surrogate-style radio for Asia.
“What makes those surrogate radios so successful is that people start to listen to them as if it were their own radio,” Kemble said in an interview before his nomination. He disputes the notion that there is simply a “meaningless bureaucratic distinction” between VOA broadcasts and surrogate broadcasts such as Radio Free Europe.
But Chinese dissident Nien Cheng, who wrote the book “Life and Death in Shanghai” to tell her story of imprisonment, says a surrogate station would be irrelevant because TV is becoming so popular and China’s old communist leaders are dying off.
“By the time we set up this new radio broadcasting station, the situation will change, so what is the point?” Cheng asked.
Fighting on a 2nd front
The USIA and the Board for International Broadcasting are also in a turf battle in Eastern Europe.
Unlike Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, Voice of America broadcasts less region-specific news, which many people view as a flaw. Furthermore, the VOA cannot seriously criticize the U.S. government, its funding source, and is too bureaucratic, said Jacek Kalabinski, Washington correspondent for Gazeta Wyborcza, a Polish newspaper.
“The VOA radio service has less independence than any other network,” said Kalabinski, a former Radio Free Europe employee. He characterized VOA conditions as “very disturbing,” saying everything in the organization is decided by a central desk that consists primarily of U.S. journalists.
“The VOA language sections don’t produce any news,” Kalabinski said. “They have no choice and no freedom. They are reduced to a position of translators. What kind of journalism is that?”
Kalabinski, who worked for Radio Free Europe for six years, said its journalists are free to choose their own beats and political positions. But he also said it was too bureaucratic, with the administration in Munich even assigning housing for employees.
Kalabinski said he would prefer to see the two agencies merged, given as much independence as possible, and restructured in the mode of the British Broadcasting Corp., where language sections are independent and the central desk only coordinates and tailors their work.
In the meantime, the VOA tries to stay in existence and preserve its identity by using new methods and approaches.
One of its most popular new programs in the new democracies of Europe, for example, is “Democracy in Action,” a series in which the VOA describes the U.S. system of governance and gives entrepreneurial advice, such as how to start a business.
“Of course, you cannot teach a person how to be successful, but you can teach him how to work,” said a VOA official. The VOA already has run 400 “Democracy in Action” pieces.
Tuning in to America
Together with the USIA’s Worldnet Television and Film Service, the VOA now transmits popular U.S. TV shows to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Now people in Poland and Czechoslovakia are receiving “MacNeil-Lehrer,” C-Span, “Nature” and Bill Moyers’ “Creativity” programs. For Ukraine, where national and local broadcasting services are extremely weak, the VOA and Worldnet provide the country with its own TV show, “Window on America,” broadcast in Kiev once a week.
This show, set up in January by direct order of Untermayer, was requested by Ukrainian officials during his last trip to Kiev as VOA director.
Once dominated by broadcasts from Russia, Ukrainians turned to the U.S. for help, asking it to create a made-for-Ukraine program that would compete with Russian programming and raise the quality of Ukrainian broadcasting.
Weeks later, “Window on America” started airing in Ukrainian. The half-hour show, consisting of U.S., world and Ukrainian news, has existed for only five months but already is one of the most popular programs on Ukrainian TV.
“I like `Window’ because of their fresh news, novelty and high informational level,” said teacher Halina Tkachuk, in an interview in Kiev. “It is a very good sign that the American mass culture and this program came to Ukraine.”
Ukraine and many other countries still think they may need U.S. broadcasting. In Serbia and Croatia, the VOA has increased radio broadcasts because of the civil war. While Eastern Europe is already free from communist rule, many of its states still experience problems of autocracy.
Polish law, for example, says broadcasters should be bound by Christian traditions. “This means journalists cannot criticize the Roman Catholic Church,” Kalabinski said.
In Krakow, Poland, the RFM-FM private station aired a story by a young female reporter on how churches refuse to help pregnant women who lack means of support, Kalabinski said. “Now, that station’s license may be taken away or not renewed,” he said. “For stories like that, we need international broadcasting.”
Although broadcasts from other international organizations such as the BBC, Deutsche Welle and Cable News Network are also inundating the world, America will always have a need for an official voice, say experts in the field.
Bernard Kamenske, who worked at the VOA from 1955 to 1981 and then moved on to CNN for three years, cautioned U.S. lawmakers against being shortsighted about global broadcasting. “It could be the day they send everyone home that they have to go looking for them again.”
