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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.
AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES K. GLASSMAN, CHAIRMAN OF THE BBG
AUG 6, 2007 - 3:21PM PDT
Posted by Alvin Snyder
As the new Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, James K. Glassman is the U.S. government's number one broadcaster. An accomplished journalist, Mr. Glassman oversees all U.S. government non-military international broadcast channels. The BBG Chairman provided his unvarnished observations to Worldcasting this week. Q. As chairman of the BBG, a position which some refer to as "first among equals" on the Board, you have many of the same management obligations as the former directors of the old U.S. Information Agency. You have oversight of U.S. government non-military international broadcasters. Your responsibilities, and those of the Board, do in fact exceed those of the former USIA directors, as your charter also includes such broadcast channels as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia, that were not in the portfolios of the USIA directors. In addition, you have authority over America's Middle East TV and Radio channels, which didn't exist back then. What do you see as your calling as BBG chairman, and what are your goals? A. Let me thank you, Mr. Snyder. I have long been a fan, both of your own work and that of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. I am an avid reader of the Center's listserv. We are making a fresh start at the BBG, and I am grateful for this opportunity. As for my goals at the BBG: the first was to get the board itself to work more collegially and efficiently. That's happened. We have an excellent board, and it functions in a bipartisan fashion. The second goal is to define our mission more clearly and be sure we have the right structure to do our work. That is a task that we have started to tackle. It will be the focus of a board retreat in mid-September. The third and most important goal involves the work itself -- we are engaged, as never before (and I include the Cold War period here) in a struggle for freedom around the world. We have to win that struggle, not just for the sake of the people of the world who live under repression but for our own security as well. So our goal is to spread freedom through practicing highly professional journalism and to build on that foundation. The result is what I call "journalism with a purpose." It is clear that our opponents in this struggle -- including extremists in the Arab world and the governments of such countries as Iran and Venezuela -- understand the power of media. They are expanding the use of the very instruments of international broadcasting that the United States invented during World War II and the Cold War. Our opponents use these instruments in a very different way from how we use them, but they are formidable. At the same time, in places like Russia, China, and Vietnam (not to mention more obvious cases like Cuba and North Korea), governments are doing everything they can to stop our broadcasts and Internet transmissions from getting through.…... FULL TEXT
Read Comments (5) | Add Your Own
 Read Comments:
John A. Figliozzi on August 9, 2007 @ 2:01 pm:
Is anyone surprised by this? A new political appointee is charged (again) with turning the VOA and other elements of U.S. international broadcasting into (more or less) mouthpieces for the administration in power. He attacks another international broadcaster with a point of view not in lockstep with the views of the US government. (“You’re either with us or against us.” Sound familiar?)
Furthermore, I take great exception (and so does history) to his fallacious assertion that the U.S. invented "the instruments of international broadcasting". Please. The factual record shows that the US was a johnny-come-lately to international broadcasting and dithered for a further considerable time while commercial radio interests sought to dilute if not destroy the concept outright. It would be nice if--for just once--the BBG would hire an international broadcasting professional with a long track record in the field. But, then again, we'd probably get an international broadcasting structure and mission that made sense--one that valued the VOA and the principles enunciated in its Charter, for one thing.
Dan Robinson on August 10, 2007 @ 9:00 am:
While I find encouraging Mr. Glassman's comment that "BBG entities cannot perform their functions unless they are rock-solid, hard-core journalistic organizations" and vowing to do everything necessary to safeguard credibility, there are some uncomfortable facts:
(1) Since 9/11 the sucking sound has become louder and louder as BBG programming has been wrapped tighter and tighter in the cause of mounting an information offensive (or defensive?) post 9/11. This has been apparent at VOA for several years, reflected for example in the way the VOA web site has been observed to be frequently towing administration lines.
(2) Expansion of BBG and proliferation of "entities" in what supporters of this information battle might call a justifiable war to win hearts and minds has resulted in an ever more confusing broadcast structure, which remains without any broader constituency or intensified support from the American public, for whom VOA and other BBG material remains a curiousity (although web access did alter the playing field when it comes to Smith Mundt restrictions).
(3) The al-Hurra incident(s), which bring back to mind the Mullah Omar incident involving VOA after 9/11, raise some interesting questions, and call for additional discussion. It is unfortunate, however, that the picture conveyed by BBG testimony on Capitol Hill, and all of the controversy in the media, was not only of a manager group leaping to correct problems, but also of a bureaucratic protective reaction strike to "crack down" on those responsible (Register, et al) and avoid repetitions.
(4) Although dwindling in number, there are still those laboring under the BBG structure who are committed not to "telling BBG's story" to the world, but simply doing the work of journalism. Certainly, VOA's overseas correspondents insist on continuing to do that, although all have been witnesses to the troubling events at VOA over the six years.
At the VOA Town Meeting recently, Mr. Glassman acknowledged that he is still mulling over this issue, preferring to describe it at least for now as "news with a purpose."
Unfortunately, that description itself is viewed by many as an undermining factor weakening the very effort to uphold credibility that Mr. Glassman and BBG members assert that they support.
Paul Westpheling on August 12, 2007 @ 11:22 am:
While Mr. Glassman states: "We are making a fresh start at the BBG, and I am grateful for this opportunity" he has failed to adequately say how he plans to navigate a very troubling course charted by his predecessor. The FY 2008 budget proposal calls for the elimination of nearly all news programs broadcast in English on shortwave, AM and FM radio. Several times in the last month, including during a town hall meeting with employees, Mr. Glassman pointed out that "tough decisions had to be made, and eliminating most English broadcasts was one of them". Money would be left to fund a fairly small English service to sub-Saharan Africa and for Special English, which teaches listeners how to speak our language. And it should be noted that English to Africa gets about half of its news programs in English from the very service Mr. Glassman and the BBG would eliminate.
For the last several years, the BBG has been using a scientifically deficient rubric to measure its audiences. Mr. Glassman, I would hope through no fault of his own, uses the BBG’s public estimates of English listeners at 3 million worldwide. The BBG’s internal estimates put that number at 10.5 million. What the numbers don’t say is how the BBG acquired that information. The BBG has trouble defending its own research.
It has been the practice for years to close down transmitters abroad and then go into the affected areas where VOA no longer broadcasts to survey listeners with predictable consequences.
English is now the official language of 79 countries; it is spoken by some 1.6 billion people around the world; it is the language of the world’s commerce and is, in short, the nearly universal language on this planet. The U.S. government would have no voice in English on a medium that has been proven to reach the largest audience in the most cost efficient manner? This just doesn’t make sense.
Shortwave radio, according to Mr. Glassman and his predecessors, is an outmoded technology yet the BBC World Service is ramping up its shortwave broadcasts in English and significant advances in digital technology will make the old shortwave “brand new again and better then ever.” Radio Russia, Radio China and even al-Jazeera have increased the hours they are broadcasting their programs in English on shortwave radio.
Mr. Glassman does have a superior track record putting him in the top tier of the profession. I hope he – and his colleagues on the BBG board – recognizes that the future lies in distributing our product using a proper mix of radio, in all its permutations. Television is good when it can reach its intended audience but its much more expensive than radio. Television is also easy to interdict. Shortwave broadcasts are not.
That is the real “tough decision” Mr. Glassman and the BBG board should be making – whether and at what level to pour money into TV at the expense of other much more effective channels of distribution. As a senior radio broadcaster in English I am distressed that the horse that made us a winner as an international broadcaster is being put out to pasture and headed for the glue factory.
vivien on August 27, 2007 @ 1:27 am:
"Journalism with a purpose"? The purpose being to promote freedom? I'm sorry I thought every good journalist was reflecting this ideal, but I might have got it wrong...I'm sure that is not insulting at all to foreign journalists and that will surely bring back the credibility the US has been running after for quite some time now...The equation here is simple: good journalism=credibility; with purpose=persuasion. Without credibility, it's damn hard to persuade; the US lacks credibility but still wants to persuade. Here's the problem!
I'm a bit skeptical about his perception of Alhurra. He says "we can explain the United States better, and the Arab world truly wants to understand America." It is a sensible argument, then do it! That's what everyone has bee asking for. Strangely, in his list of successful achievements, there's not a single reference to a US domestic policy event Alhurra covered. Besides, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are doing a fairly good job at covering the US.
"Alhurra, in its fair and accurate broadcasting, is free to be critical, when necessary, of corruption and repression by governments in the region and free as well to show the true face of extremism." Free to be critical? Of the others? Right. That's something Alhurra has been rewarded for? Wait, no actually.
Let's face it here. Register tried to be extremely courageous in a hostile environment. The Nasrallah scandal was surreal, and the Haniyeh one was even more ludicrous. That Congressmen and conservative watchdogs fight for tighter control, that's already too high a price to pay, but then again, it's a PD tool. My point is that as you evoked, Mr. Snyder in one of your questions, those who argue that international broadcasting and PD should be separated, I'm in. And I'm positive that the BBC TV Arabic will be more successful in a PD mission that it doesn't really carry out than Alhurra in a PD mission that it's stuck with.
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