The vast majority of media outlets in the world are reporting left-leaning, slight-to-extreme anti-US content. At times, that coverage goes so far as to even support, condone, and promote America’s enemies such as Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and others. Since we can count on the independent media to present the other side, Americans pay for publicly-funded media to present their side. What America says on the taxpayer dime matters.
Taxpayer-supported media content has contributed to the downfall of tyrannies (Poland, USSR, Ukraine, etc). Unfortunately, that power can also be used to contribute to the success of America’s enemies. In the case of Iran, unfortunately, that is what’s happening. The international broadcasts under the domain of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) are simply too important and too powerful in the world to be allowed to promote an agenda hostile to America’s interests.
During an Iran hearing chaired by Senator Coburn in July, 2006, several of the witness, including Iranian student leader Amir Abbas Fakhravar, testified that US taxpayer-funded broadcasts going into Iran were undermining US policy and were ineffective. After the hearing, Senator Coburn began oversight of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (the agency responsibly for US international broadcasting).
Summary of the Problem
Transparency: BBG content is untransparent: studies have to be commissioned in order to find out what Americans are paying to broadcast all over the world. This is not real oversight. What’s more, transparency has the added effect of not only after-the-fact accountability, but deterrence in the planning of programming. If VOA reporters knew that their programs would be translated and scrutinized by the BBG, Congress, State Dept, and public watchdog groups, they’d likely be more consistent with US policy.
Accountability: BBG structure leads to no accountability, that is, each member of the Board is solely responsible for a certain area or type of broadcasting and members generally have an unwritten mutual no-meddling policy – meaning each member avoids weighing in on the broadcasting supervised by other members. Management structures lead to individual broadcast services in individual regions operating autonomously without any oversight from above or coordination across similar services in neighboring or similar regions.
No Policy Guidance and Coordination from Key Policy-Making Agencies (State, Defense, Homeland Security, National Security Council, etc): There is no coordinated, coherent, and consistent message that all broadcasts are expected to follow, either generally (pro-U.S., pro-democracy and pro-freedom), or specific to regions or crises (such as the war on terror, or the Middle East). Decisions are made on the fly, on the ground, by unaccountable and sometimes even anti-American producers and reporters.
GAO: "U.S Public Diplomancy." (April 26, 2007) - There is "a general lack of strategic planning, inadequate coordination of agency efforts, and problems with measuring performance and results."
Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
