Sanford J. Ungar
09/01/2005
In the dark, early days of World War II, not even three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, officials in the U.S. Office of War Information came up with a brilliant, disarmingly simple idea. To counter Nazi propaganda, the United States would launch a radio service in German offering up an unusual commodity: the truth. The Voice of America, as it came to be known, promised to deliver the straight news daily, whether good or bad. Other broadcast languages soon followed, giving the U.S. a rather effective instrument of what would today be called “public diplomacy”—a means for the U.S. government to communicate openly and more-or-less honestly with ordinary citizens of other countries.
Today, with the United States’ image in steep decline and its reputation under attack, we need an effective, respected vehicle for transmitting American values and principles around the world. A multimedia news organization that can be trusted to perform balanced reporting in these troubled times might do more good than any number of attack helicopters or strident speeches. The Voice of America still exists, and it remains one of the best brand names the country ever had for carrying out public diplomacy. Yet at a time when it should be strengthened and unleashed to do what it does best, it is being subjected to systematic cutbacks. Its Arabic service, which fed intellectuals and policymakers a steady stream of important news from around the world, has been replaced by a commercial-style radio broadcast that recruits teenagers with pop music. While its esteemed counterpart, the BBC, provides two 24-hour-a-day streams of news in English, the VOA is down to 14 hours daily.
Political interference, kept at bay by generations of professionals, has returned to haunt the VOA newsroom, prompting its reporting to become more sympathetic to administration policy and to minimize bad news from Iraq. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, intended
to serve as a firewall to protect the VOA, is now part of the problem, and Congress (few of whose members have ever heard a VOA broadcast) seems unwilling or unable to muster the financial and political support that is needed to keep the operation strong. It is time to find a new way to fund and sustain this vital American institution.
From Listeners Like You . . .
Media pundits have suggested in recent
years that private media organizations with global reach, such as CNN, could do
the VOA’s job just as well or better, especially because they would not have the
hiring and firing constraints of a U.S. government agency. But it is
preposterous to think that a commercial operation could or would sustain the
financial losses inherent in providing the news in 40 or 50 languages to mostly
poor people around the world.
A better way to insure the VOA’s survival would
be to establish an independent foundation that would channel both private and
public funds in its direction. One model is the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for
the Advancement of Military Medicine, named for the late senator from Washington
state. The foundation was established in 1983 to support medical research and
education in the U.S. military and to improve public health. The foundation now
manages some 60 endowments and 800 education funds and coordinates cutting-edge
research programs on HIV/AIDS, breast and prostate cancer and other medical
issues. Because it can operate outside the regular federal appropriations
process and accept private gifts, it has been a principal funder of the
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and ensures a steady stream
of qualified physicians to the military.
Other examples abound. One of the
best known is the National Trust for Historic Preservation, established during
the Truman administration and weaned from its partial federal funding only seven
years ago. The National Park Foundation was created by Congress in 1967 as a
vehicle to privately support perennially underfunded national parks. Many
so-called hybrid organizations, such as the Smithsonian Institution and Fannie
Mae, achieve a public purpose with a combination of funding sources.
Creative
efforts to do the same for the VOA—and to protect it from political mischief—are
urgently needed, lest this vital instrument of diplomacy disappear
entirely.
 | Sanford J. Ungar, president of Goucher College in Baltimore, was director of Voice of America from 1999 to 2001. |