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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY’S 10,000 POUND GORILLA: IT’S EVERYWHERE
AUG 4, 2006 - 5:47PM PDT
Posted by Alvin Snyder
All posts by this author

Some Worldcasting readers are said to take issue with our most recent piece contending that the Fox News Channel is a key player in U.S. public diplomacy. A great misperception is that FNC is solely a domestic U.S. cable news service, with minimal foreign distribution. But Fox News Channel is not only international in scope, it is in fact broadcast in 88 countries worldwide. Like the meaning of life, there is endless philosophizing about what public diplomacy is. The USC Center on Public Diplomacy, for which I write, defines public diplomacy as "focusing on ways in which a country (or multi-lateral organization such as the United Nations) communicates with citizens in other countries," while the U.S. Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World calls public diplomacy outright "promotion of the national interest." The U.S. Information Agency Alumni Association says the unfortunately-defunct Agency strove "to explain and advocate U.S. policies in terms that are credible and meaningful in foreign cultures," and the State Department has a 1,300-word definition for its new Transformational Public Diplomacy. That said, most would agree that public diplomacy is directed at international audiences and the Fox News Channel is not a player because it is considered as solely a domestic outlet. But Fox News Channel is actually available throughout the world -- if not via satellite TV, via satellite radio, as evidenced on their Web site. Fox News Channel spokesman, Paul Schur, informs Worldcasting that the FNC is seen in more than 88 countries. That means that Fox's so-called fair, balanced, and unafraid views, as they often say on Fox, reach a huge audience abroad, and could therefore be considered part of U.S. public diplomacy according to many definitions, including this one from the U.S. Information Agency Alumni Association, which foresaw the popular FNC talk shows, with their variety of spokespersons and views, bounding worldwide. …[P]ublic diplomacy deals not only with governments but primarily with non-governmental individuals and organizations. Furthermore, public diplomacy activities often present many differing views as represented by private American individuals and organizations in addition to official U.S. Government views. Those of us who managed at the USIA during the Cold War know well that some of the most effective points were made for us abroad by third parties, in interviews and discussion programs, in news reports and otherwise.. The Fox News Channel also fits the PD description of the Murrow Center, that: "Central to public diplomacy is the transnational flow of information and ideas." Mr. Schur of the Fox News Channel discloses that the "FNC also has one feed, so that all interviews on FNC, including Shepard Smith's exclusive first TV interviews with Naom Shalit, the father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and wife and father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Ehud Goldwasser from Israel, are seen around the world." Therefore, when President Bush was interviewed exclusively on July 31 by Fox's Neil Cavuto, and discussed in some detail the U.S. government's position on the Israel-Hezbollah war, the president's…... FULL TEXT
 
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