http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newsroom/journal_main en USC Center on Public Diplomacy Copyright 2005 2005-12-19T16:47:01+00:00 NAIROBI – December 10 Is Africa becoming part of the Middle Kingdom? That is a popular question in the news recently: The week began with a Council on Foreign Relations report describing Africa's strategic importance to the United States. The report was comprehensive, but most American media accounts focused on one chapter, about energy, and how the Chinese were cultivating African oil, gas and other resources. The week ended with the publication of Andrew Neil's remarks at the Institute of Economic Affairs, in which he detailed China's economic growth and worldwide expansion. But here in Africa, you did not to read either report to see how China has expanded its influence. All you had to do was turn on a television set. In the 1980's and 1990's, in addition to CNN, the U.S. WorldNet television channel brought a 24-hour service to Africa that included the PBS NewsHour, C-SPAN excerpts and public affairs programming from Washington. But the Cold War ended, and WorldNet was dismantled, along with much of the rest of the U.S. public diplomacy effort. Al Snyder, a senior fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, said that the United States believed that CNN was sufficient to show the flag. This was the first indication that American dominance in broadcasting in Africa was weakening, which allowed networks from other countries to establish themselves. CNN is still on throughout the continent, joined by Bloomberg News, but now they are just two of several 24-hour English-language television news channels. There is the BBC and Sky from London, SABC Africa from Johannesburg, and, live from Beijing, China's English-language Channel 9, which has particularly benefitted from the United States' scaled back influence. There are also news channels in French and Arabic, and NHK News from Tokyo is a factor. ESPN might be the worldwide leader in sports in the United States, but in Africa, it is just one of at least half a dozen 24-hour English-language sports channels from London and Johannesburg. Al Jazeera has also added a similar sports channel to its repoertoire of news and children's networks. MTV is here, but then again, so are other music video channels, including East Africa TV from Dar es Salaam and Kampala, which features a high-tech Web site. The American Discovery and Hallmark channels are widely available, but there are dozens of entertainment channels, including several from South Africa, London, India and a Middle East channel that features old American movies subtitled in Arabic (this week's highlight: Grease). Those are just the English-language channels; there are also 24-hour channels beamed here in other languages from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Middle East. However, all of these are only available on multi-channel satellite platforms. The services are expensive and therefore have very little market penetration in Kenya. The name of the game here is free, terrestrial, over-the-air channels, which can be watched by anyone who has a television set. Here is where the Chinese expansion becomes clear. There are only a few terrestrial channels, and as expected, their primary news and public affairs are locally produced and focused. But as in much of the continent, the terrestrial channels' broadcast schedule has gaps, because it is not cost-effective to produce local programming for the entire day. During these gaps, local broadcasters turn to the satellite channels, cherrypicking programs to drop into their schedules. Look at the newest additions: Every day at 10 a.m., The government-run KBC-TV picks up the CCTV Chinese news channel in English, running it live from 30 minutes to three hours. News, documentaries and travel programs from Beijing are now a daily staple of Kenya's most popular television station. The United States is undoubtedly still a force: on KBC-TV's most popular channel, CNN programming airs every day from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and Oprah Winfrey is shown Thursday at 6 p.m. KBC also broadcasts an occasional half-hour feature from Voice of America. The rest of the U.S. television presence is light entertainment: daytime reruns of "Walker Texas Ranger" and "21 Jumpstreet," late night showings of "Hill Street Blues" and "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman," and that hit from Cairo to Cape Town, seen here on Sunday nights, "The Bold and the Beautiful." Over at the independent commercial KTN network, which is seen in only a few cities, U.S. programming predominates: CNN fills part of the day, and the prime-times schedule features 24 and Friends. But as is so often the case on this continent, there is the unexpected. According to Nixon Kariithi, head of the Media Studies Program at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand, KTN actually taped CNN news programs and edited out any stories that might offend the Nairobi government before playing it back on the air. There is also Kenya's Family Channel, part of U.S. religious broadcaster Trinity Broadcast Media's Africa-wide terrestrial network. It features American religious programs including TBN's Paul Crouch in the afternoon and T.D. Jakes every Saturday at 8 p.m. But China is the new power in Africa, on television and around the capital. During an assignment in South Africa a few months ago, it was clear CCTV9 was also widely distributed in that country (it is also available on satellite and online in the United States). It is highly professional and often visually quite striking, but sometimes is not yet quite as polished as BBC World. There is no doubt China has the resources to sustain its push into Africa. The Center's own Peter Herford provides dispatches from Guangdong Province. And Andrew Neil, in his remarks, described China's reduction of Africa's poverty rate from 64 percent to 17 percent. At week's end there was still more evidence of China's public diplomacy and economic expansion here. In an interview published on Dec. 15, Zambian trade minister Dipak Patel said, in passing, that the Chinese government had offered every country in southern Africa funding for a new sports stadium or a new government headquarters building. "Most countries chose the stadium," Patel told the Financial Times. He said he chose the office tower. So, barring a cataclysm, Beijing's initiatives can easily be sustained and increased, and Africans can expect to see more programs with the discreet CCTV logo in the lower right-hand corner of the picture. America's broadcasting supremacy might be down, but given it's light entertainment exports, it is not out. Despite China's media expansion in Africa, American entertainment stars are still the most prominently featured. Smiling out from the cover of the current television guide here, promoting the African debut of her new talk show, is a woman identified on the cover as "role model Tyra Banks." 2005-12-19T15:47:01+00:00 WASHINGTON -- Oct. 22 Thursday night was a big night for Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language television news channel in the Middle East. The preemptive lead story was the release of the UN report on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon. For most news organizations, it was a story worth at best three or four news reports. At Al Jazeera, editors decided this was the only story of the night. When the report was released, Al Jazeera's UN correspondent went to a small studio and read the report. On camera. All 54 pages of it. It took four hours. Any TV news producer with an ounce of sense knows that one man on camera reading for four hours is the most boring television in the world. Any TV news producer with an ounce of sense was wrong. Viewers across the Middle East were captivated, according to Al Jazeera news editors, who said other networks later copied their coverage. Those four hours of reading the report was followed by yet more hours of live reaction, from the region and across the world. By Saturday, the New York Times also took note of the interest in the region. "A young Syrian businesswoman, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation, stayed up all night Thursday with her family watching Al Jazeera's coverage of the Mehlis report." according to the Times. "'Everyone who loves Syria, who loves this country, was up watching,' she said. 'The report is a turning point in our lives.'" By Friday morning, Al Jazeera's Washington bureau had the lead, producing reaction from the U.S. A visit there Friday revealed a news organization on high alert. Morning newspapers lay discarded on tables and desks throughout the second-floor news center, while editors and producers were working reaction stories, live, to keep the story going. On small desk monitors and from a large video wall, the Arab-language network's live coverage served as a watchful eye over the journalists working the story. Syria's ambassador to the U.S. was being booked for an extended afternoon interview. Another producer was trying, in vain he said later, to persuade the U.S. State Department to send a spokesman to discuss the report. Even an English speaker would suffice: simultaneous translators were standing by. But was the coverage fair? To someone with limited Arabic language skills, the principal criterion was the video, and that was at best only partially informative - except when Al Jazeera cut away to live shots of hurricane coverage from Mexico. But one indicator was on the Al Jazeera Web site, where the link between the assassination and the Syrian government was reported in detail. It's not the Arabic-language Al Jazeera site, but it is an indicator. This all misses the larger picture: Al Jazeera as we know it is all part of the network's expansion into a multi-channel global television empire, just like News Corp. or Viacom. Already available on Dish TV in the US, Al Jazeera now claims to be one of the five most influential global brands, joining Apple and Starbucks. Now the network wants to expand, with a new C-Span-style channel that provides live video from Parliaments all over the world, a new Al Jazeera children's channel, a sports channel and of course the new Al Jazeera International channel, the Al Jazeera news channel for cell phones and an English-language all-news channel scheduled to launch next year. By this time next year, viewers around the world - including the US - will be able to see live reports from the more than thirty Al Jazeera news bureaus around the world, including Mexico City, Caracas and Rio de Janeiro in this hemisphere - and seven bureaus across Africa, more than any other television news organization. While US networks are butting back international coverage, petrodollars are funding Al Jazeera's expansion. And there will be no coverage of missing teenagers in Aruba. Upstairs on the fourth floor, where the new English-language channel is taking shape, if you look out of the windows from the Al Jazeera Washington bureau, across K Street you can see the headquarters of the Radio Television News Directors Association, which represents broadcast and cable journalists across the U.S. A year from now, if Al Jazeera continues on its present course, it will be members of RTNDA looking across K Street - and at their television monitors - looking at Al Jazeera. Regions, Middle East, Topics, International Broadcasting, Al Jazeera, Public Diplomacy - Non US 2005-10-25T17:07:55+00:00 As Karen Hughes begins to settle into her new office, she must see that one priority for U.S. public diplomacy is to get reporters out of Baghdad. No, not get reporters out of Iraq: Just get them out of their bureaus in the capital. The consensus of U.S. journalists in Baghdad is that it is just too dangerous to get out into the countryside, where they could report on what is happening - good and bad. But reporting what is happening - good and bad - should provide the world with a more complete picture of what the U.S. is doing in Iraq. So it should be a goal of American policy. Right now, the most memorable pictures from around the country come from video cameramen embedded with (or members of) the insurgency, showing bombings, beheadings and other anti-U.S. attacks of the day. The insurgents have grasped the power of the photograph, while U.S. media have largely abandoned the field, because it is too dangerous And that danger is real, cannot be ignored and must be addressed. It has been the subject of frequent dispatches over the summer, from stories by reporters including Joe Cochrane of Newsweek to the angry memo from Hannah Allam, Knight Ridder’s Baghdad bureau chief - promptly reprinted in Jim Romenesko’s widely read column - about the danger even of going to the store to buy bottled water. “The main obstacle we face is the severe limitation on our movement and our ability to get out and report,” said Mike Silverman, managing editor of the Associated Press, in an interview with the New York Times. “It's very confining for our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel." That concern was the starting point for a review of Iraq coverage by the Associated Press Managing Editors board. The APME discussion was especially important because of the power of the Associated Press: Much less familiar to the public than TV networks or national magazines, the AP, with a Baghdad staff of more than 70, is the most widely used source of Iraq coverage for newspapers and broadcasters, local and national, in the U.S. and in much of the world. “Some editors expressed concern,” wrote reporter Katharine Seelye in the New York Times, “that a kind of bunker mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.” One member of the AP board expressing concern was Rosemary Goudreau, editorial page editor of the Tampa Tribune. Following the meeting she wrote a lengthy column describing the AP meeting. She also discussed the divergence of journalists’ daily reporting from accounts brought back by relatives of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have served in the military and in civilian jobs in Iraq, and she quoted one of her fellow editors in the AP meeting. "Troops coming home are telling their friends - they're saying there's progress being made that we're not reporting," said George Stanley, managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, according to Boudreau. Which brings us to back to Karen Hughes. One of the priorities for public diplomacy is to get reporters out of the Palestine Hotel press center and into the field, so that they will report on what is happening around the country and that go beyond what journalists call the “bang bang” of the day. One way to get reporters into the field safely is to have them embedded with military units. But fewer and fewer reporters are willing to become embeds, and now there are "about three dozen," according to Silverman, down from 700 two years ago. One reason: journalists’ distrust of the military (shades of Vietnam). Another: money. Insurance alone costs $25,000 for "a short stay," Boudreau writes. But for Karen Hughes, this is a familiar problem: She certainly knows the power of getting out into the country - in her case, with candidate George Bush. She just needs to harness some of the same journalistic and competitive incentives - and some of the same logistics - to get reporters out on the road. News organizations will spend the money if they feel it's necessary to stay competitive. One start: Every time Secretary of State Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld or another government VIP travels to Iraq, the major press and photo opportunities should be as far away as possible from Baghdad’s barricaded Green Zone. Instead, put the VIP in a crowd of students at newly refurbished school in the northeast part of the country - and limit access to that one stop. That way the world’s press will have to show what is happening there, if only because of the competitive pressure to get the photos (and remarks) by the visiting VIP. Then leverage exclusives the way you do every day in Washington: If “60 Minutes” or “Prime Time Live” wants an interview with the Vice President, fine: but only in a photogenic location in Mosul, not in a sterile studio in Baghdad or Washington. Yes, this means careful planning - just like any Presidential trip. And this means organizing secure transportation, with only short notice for Baghdad reporters. That’s long standing practice, too, for White House correspondents. Of course, those are only for the highest-profile media events: In between, every day, a more complete picture needs to be conveyed. And that picture needs to go to local television stations and to local newspapers in town after town - not just to CBS and the Washington Post. That again is long-standing practice at the White House, where catering to local media has been honed to a fine art in both Republican and Democratic administrations. The military has already devised a tool to do just that: the “virtual embed.” Arranged by Lt. Col. David Farlow, deputy director of public affairs at Central Command, journalists around the U.S. can get telephone access to military personnel on assignment in Iraq. That way they can learn first-hand what is happening around the country, where Baghdad-based reporters are not traveling. Because American soldiers in Iraq can now be dialed using U.S. area codes, there is not even a charge for an international telephone call. That’s a start, but television needs pictures. For TV, the “virtual embed” program should use video satellite phones, with the service member in Iraq actually moving the camera to show the rebuilding projects that U.S. taxpayers are funding. The video embed program could begin with what is almost a cliché: linking service members in the field with TV anchors in their home towns. You can even do it live: Early morning in the U.S. is late afternoon in Iraq. And who knows: The flow of “virtual embed” stories on the air and in print might also act as another incentive for journalists to get out of the Palestine Hotel, to get out as real embeds, to file on-scene reports. It might even catch on: Remember, the most popular feature, by far, of the CBS Evening News at its audience peak was On the Road, with Charles Kuralt. Some might argue this is just propaganda, not journalism or public diplomacy. They’re wrong: it is an antidote to the anti-U.S. propaganda by the insurgents, propaganda which now goes unanswered because journalists are not able to see for themselves. Sending journalists to respond to propaganda is especially effective public diplomacy. Think of VOA (and CBS and NBC) using journalists to rebut fascist propaganda in World War II. The difference today is that the fascists are targeting democracy’s reporters, to keep them from covering the news. 2005-08-25T22:42:23+00:00 LOS ANGELES, July 13 - Nothing fascinates media as much as, well, media. That is the lasting impression after an extended visit to New Zealand and Australia, which boast world-class commercial, public service and international broadcasters and first-rate newspapers. But looking at America through South Pacific lenses, the focus more often than not seemed on American media. Coverage of the U.S. debate over and involvement in Iraq was a case in point: Stories about the policy debate or even events in Iraq were sot news, typically short items on the latest White House statement or pictures of the car bomb of the day, typically well inside the A section or far down in the newscast. Of course Iraq is a local story there. The kidnapping and rescue last month of Australian hostage Douglas Wood was big news. And the role of Australian and New Zealand troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is a recurring subject, and quite properly so. This morning we saw the announcement that Australia is sending more troops to the region. But in three weeks of monitoring national and regional newspapers and broadcast news, there was little analysis or context of the U.S. policy or effort, for which Australians and New Zealanders are now in harm's way. And as is typical of media in the U.S., there was no coverage at all of the progress, or lack of it, rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan. But when there was a controversy about coverage of Iraq in U.S. media, it was all hands on deck. The best example: Newsweek's apology for its May 9 report that American had mistreated detainees and had flushed a copy of the Koran, down a toilet at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Coverage of Newsweek's initial report was dwarfed by the continuing coverage of the apology. Much of the local coverage throughout the week echoed Middle East skepticism about the retraction, with broad hints that the original Newsweek claim was correct. One morning, New Zealand’s TV One Network "Breakfast" morning show presented an extended debate featuring guest "media analysts" in the network's studios in Wellington and Auckland. Following the debate, viewers were invited to email their comments, which were read by the "Breakfast" anchor in the next segment. There may have been more coverage on "Breakfast" than on one of the network TV morning programs in the U.S. On radio, there were similar debates and discussions, including, of course, on talk radio. One national news-talk network played the apology as a running story. One national newscast devoted much of an hour to the Newsweek apology, dominated by a guest analyst who had what seemed an inconsistent set of views: that the magazine had erred in its original report, but that it should not have apologized. These longer segments were augmented by updates and short reports throughout the week from Washington and from Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the Newsweek report prompted protests. Perhaps most interesting was the dog that didn't bark: a lack of explanation. Broadcasters clearly assumed viewers and listeners already knew about American news media in considerable detail. Newsweek cannot have very many readers in Auckland or Christchurch, yet local stories never characterized the magazine. It was always assumed New Zealanders knew enough about the U.S. magazine to distinguish it from, say, the National Enquirer or the (London) Sun. There was also an assumption that viewers and listeners were familiar with earlier missteps of U.S. journalism. Plagiarism in American media must have had heavy coverage, given the quick and otherwise unexplained references to missteps at the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the New Republic. And everyone seemed to know the name Jayson Blair. 2005-07-14T20:32:37+00:00 WASHINGTON, July 12 - There's truly no business like show business. That old song title was reinforced during a recent visit to Australia and New Zealand, where coverage of the U.S. was frequent, detailed and prominently played. But the lens through which America was presented to the South Pacific was not Wall Street or Capitol Hill. Day in and day out, coverage of Washington is trumped by coverage of Hollywood. True, the latest news from the White House merits a news spot or a brief story on the inside international news page. But it's Hollywood that gets the big play, the expansive layout, and of course the best photos. Take television: Australia's national morning "Today" show is immediately familiar to visiting Americans, right down to similar formats, studio design and absolutely identical graphics -- yes, the very same graphics package and logo. Go check out the Web site: don't they look like Matt and Katie? But the U.S. is thousands of miles away. As everywhere in the world, local news dominates. Regionally, Australia and New Zealand seem to be paying more attention to Asia than, say, a decade ago. Some of this is the rise of China, a rapidly growing trading partner for Australia. Japan is enormously important for New Zealand. And there is more and more attention devoted to Indonesia and the Philippines. Australia's international broadcaster invests heavily in broadcasting to its neighbors in languages ranging from Mandarin and Vietnamese to Indonesian and Khmer. In the other direction, CCTV television from Beijing is everywhere – in English – fully competitive with the BBC and far more sophisticated than VOA-TV from the U.S. More about that in a later report. The preponderance of international reporting was not from Iraq or the European Community. Rather, the major overseas stories were filed from Indonesia and the Philippines, often live. Both were focused on Australians abroad, one an evidently disabled Australian citizen deported, perhaps by accident, to the Philippines. The other was a daily running story of an Australian woman on trial in Indonesia for smuggling drugs into that country concealed inside her surf board. Her photo was on page one day after day, and Australia's TV networks devoted hours of covering the sentencing hearing, live from Indonesia. Many Australians are charged and convicted of drug smuggling every year, but newspapers and TV loved this case, involving an attractive young woman. It was great for ratings. Think of it as the Down Under counterpart to American networks' devoting hours of air time to coverage from Aruba. But what of news of the U.S.? What is the predominant image of America in media there? Once again consider Australia's "Today" show. In the U.S., "Today" on NBC features a mix of politics and hard news with fluffy features and show business items. If there is a live report on international news, more often than not it is a live shot from the NBC bureau in London. In Australia, the "Today" show goes one better, institutionalizing international coverage by placing a co-host in the U.S. who is part of every hour, every morning. And with the time difference, morning in Sydney is afternoon in New York and Washington, where the business day is almost over and the American news cycle is nearing its end. But that is not where Australian television invests its reporting resources. No, it's not New York or Washington that merits the live segments every hour. Instead, the "Today" co-host is anchoring live via satellite from. . . Los Angeles. Forget the White House or Wall Street: it's Burbank and Hollywood that dominate the morning news Down Under. Again, this is not to the complete exclusion of U.S. politics or economics: those topics are covered in news spots supplemented by regional reaction and analysis – when warranted. But Hollywood is locked into the hourly format of the program. Forget the News Hour. Think "Entertainment Tonight." The takeaway lesson for public diplomacy: Karen Hughes is trumped every time by Tom Cruise. There was one exception to that golden rule. More on that tomorrow in my next report. 2005-07-12T19:14:23+00:00 WASHINGTON, March 30 – One of Al Jazeera’s fiercest critics in the U.S. now says the Arab satellite channel has become a vehicle to spread democracy in the Arab world. Acknowledging this reversal of his longtime criticism of the channel, Richard Perle this morning said Al Jazeera’s broadcasts of elections in Afghanistan and Iraq and anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon was advancing democracy in the region – just by the pictures it showed. “Images conveyed by Al Jazeera have been very powerful,” Perle said. Just a few years ago, Perle was complaining that Al Jazeera's powerful images of civilian casualties in Iraq and its broadcasts of statements by Osama bin Laden were anti-American propaganda. But speaking this morning at a forum at the American Enterprise Institute, Perle said democracy was advanced just by showing pictures of Iraqi voters’ ink-stained fingers and of women voting in Afghanistan. These and other images carried in newscasts throughout the Arab world, he said, are having an impact. “People see possibilities for self-government that may not have existed before,” Perle said. The role of Al Jazeera and other Arab satellite channels echoes the role of the arrival of the telegraph in that region a century ago, according to another speaker at the forum, Michael Rubin. Rubin, an historian who has studied Iran’s political history, said it was clear from the daily news reporting from 1905 and 1906 that Iranians were using the then new telegraph technology to follow closely the pro-democracy protests in neighboring Russia – and then to make similar demands on their own government. “What the telegraph did then,” said Rubin, “the Internet does now.” That same pattern may now be playing out in Syria, according to Rubin, beyond the control of the Damascus government. “Syria can try to crack down on the Internet,” he said. “But they just dial out” to Lebanon, next door, to get unrestricted Internet access. A third speaker, Michael Novak, cited yet another influence: religion. On a recent trip to Jeddah, Novak said he saw pilgrims from around the Arab world who came and saw the relative affluence of Saudi Arabia. Perle, a senior Pentagon official from 2001 to 2003, was especially critical of U.S. State Department relations with totalitarian states in the Middle East and elsewhere. “The diplomatic profession is focused narrowly on state to state, government to government,” he said. This empowers dictators, said Perle, and discourages those who are fighting for democracy and freedom. “The dominance of the diplomatic bureaucracy stands in the way of [democratic] revolution,” said Perle. “The Europeans are hopeless on this.” 2005-03-30T18:37:07+00:00 WASHINGTON, March 4 -- There are no independent news organizations in the Arab world. That was the assertion of Arab journalists addressing a conference on Arab media today, who said the only truly independent voices in the Arab world are bloggers. Even the new satellite television networks, such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, were criticized -- including by one of Al-Arabiya’s anchors, Hisham Melham. He credited the new networks with breaking taboos and showing the Arab world through Arab eyes, instead of through the eyes of European and American observers. But the networks focus only on the extremists. “Misleading and staged debates,” said Melham, are the prime feature of the Arab satellite networks. “The huge and important center is absent.” Instead, said Melham, the networks feature traditional “tribal” views, dressed up in the latest modern video “look” imported from the U.S. Jon Alterman, director of the CSIS Middle East Program, went even further this afternoon, describing many of the Pan Arab television talk shows as political pornography and wrestling. But Marc Lynch, a political science professor at Williams College, disagreed. Some programs are “very different in tone, in quality, in issues that are raised,” said Lynch. “Hisham [Melham] has a brilliant show. What’s happened in the past ten years is that it’s okay to disagree. You can be an ‘authentic’ Arab and still disagree.” Lynch said the real innovation in Pan Arab satellite networks has been broadcasters siding with the Arab people and against Arab governments -- with the exception of the government paying the bills. And one consequence, he said, was recent online polls conducted by Al Jazeera and others showing “90% of respondents” saying Syria should withdraw from Lebanon. Those interactive polls, call-in shows and interactive entertainment, such as “Star Academy,” where viewers can vote for singers they like, have become “extraordinarily popular.” Melham also noted that every major newspaper and broadcaster in the Middle East loses money, with the possible exception of the Lebanon Broadcasting Corporation, a network featuring popular entertainment programs including “Survivor” and “Star Academy.” And that, he said, means they are relying on government subsidies to survive. As a result, according to Melham, the only truly independent media are online. However, there are opposition newspapers, noted William Rugh, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. But he said these opposition newspapers are almost all owned by political parties, so they are not at all impartial. Rugh also expressed concern about Arab media’s reliance on subsidies, noting even such popular networks as Al Jazeera are built on shaky financial foundations. The ambassador noted Al Jazeera was supposed to be subsidized only for the first few years, but “that didn’t seem to work.” Now, Al Jazeera is up for sale, but Rugh said that is no guarantee it will last. “If Al Jazeera is privatized and sold, will it be able to survive?” asked Rugh. The network has alienated both advertisers and governments, he said, and that does not bode well for its future as an independent commercial enterprise. Mona El Tahawy, a columnist at the daily Asharq Al Awsat, agreed, emphasizing the role of blogs. Bloggers in Iran and Iraq “have inspired others in the Arab world,” she said, singling out Big Pharaoh as an example of an independent voice in Egypt, where all of the media are state-controlled. She also pointed to Saudi Girl as one of the first voices in any medium of Saudi women. Bloggers are “young, very articulate and the very people we write about,” said El Tahawy. Despite working in an elite medium, requiring a computer and literacy, she said bloggers are the voice of the true Arab street, especially the young. Reliable data does not exist about the Arab street, according to another speaker this morning. Brian Katulis of Freedom House said there are no meaningful public opinion surveys of any kind published about the Arab world. “Extreme caution” should be exercised, he said. “Nationwide or representative” samples often turn out to be “college-educated men in cities.” In addition, many of the most valuable survey questions are deleted by government censorship or by self-censorship, because surveyors fear government reprisals. The one country where accurate surveys can be taken and where media can be independent is Iraq, which has other problems: "The biggest threat to press freedom in Iraq is security,” he said. Katulis conducted research on Iraqi media for his report published last summer, "Liberated and Occupied Iraq: New Beginnings and Challenges for Press Freedom." But the last word on what is now driving Arab media came from Lynch, who said the most popular channels attract audiences with a particular form of entertainment familiar to viewers of MTV: “Music videos are the single thing that attracts the most Arab viewers to a station,” he said, adding the most popular videos are quite “risqué,” featuring lightly clad female singers. “They (television networks) are spreading this unstoppable form of sexy music videos,” he said, adding no one really knows where that is leading. [Ed. Updated with new material at 3:30 p.m. March 4, 2005.] 2005-03-04T17:31:50+00:00 WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 -- U.S. public diplomacy should be centered in a new federal agency with triple the current staff levels, according to a White Paper issued today by the Public Diplomacy Council, a non-partisan organization based here. The report also recommends permanent off-budget funding for international exchanges, increased funding for international broadcasting and a cabinet-level interagency coordinating committee. "United States public diplomacy is in crisis," the report stated. "Buffeted by a decade of budget cuts, hampered by bureaucratic structures that marginalize it and call on its expertise too late in the policy process, public diplomacy as currently constituted is inadequate to perform the urgent national security tasks required of it -- to inform, to understand and to influence world publics." The report prompted a lengthy dissent from some members of the Council who said the recommendations were inadequate to meet the current crisis. "In our view," the dissenters wrote, "the White Paper draws too heavily on the past and assumes that a restoration of an organization resembling USIA within the State Department, conducting the same programs but enjoying greater resources, will regain United States prestige and leadership on the global stage." The dissent, in addition to supporting a call for more resources, called specifically for more face-to-face programs and "cultural comprehension." "We need to conceive of a global communication strategy on the magnitude of our cold war effort with comparable time, societal and resource commitment," the dissent stated. Read the entire report here. Read the text of the dissent here. 2005-01-25T19:44:23+00:00 WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 -- A key post in global soft power will soon be vacant: James Wolfensohn confirmed today that he expects to step down as president of the World Bank when his current term ends this spring. Last month, Wolfensohn signaled he would not continue to serve, in a year-end message to the Bank's staff. Wolfensohn refered to "leadership succession" and "an effective transition" early in 2005, according to an account in the Washington Post. Wolfensohn first became president of the Bank on June 1, 1995, and he will have served for ten years when his current term ends in May. The bank is playing a key role as the world begins years of rebuilding now required after the Indian Ocean tsunami, pledging $250 million last week, meaning leadership at the bank's H Street headquarters will be even more important -- and more closely scrutinized -- than usual. But even before last week's tsunami, the World Bank -- and Wolfensohn's leadership -- have been the focus of increased comment and analysis inside the Beltway. The bank has a high profile around the world, earned by its annual multi-billion-dollar investments in developing countries (for details, see its 2004 Annual Report). One analyst whose comments are gaining prominence is Sebastian Mallaby, longtime journalist at The Economist and now a Washington Post columnist, who has stirred comment with his new book, "The World's Banker." Post-tsunami, Mallaby's book is even more timely than when it was published a few months ago. Mallaby argues that Wolfensohn's leadership has been the best of times for the bank and the worst of times, acknowledging his intelligence and contacts but bemoaning his lack of direction and hypersensitivity to criticism. But he also wrote that several NGO's critical of the World Bank and of mainstream global development efforts have been unresponsive to Wolfensohn's initiatives to include them in the Bank's programs. Mallaby has been featured on such national forums as public radio's "Marketplace" (listen to his commentary here), where he suggested more direction and control is needed at the top of the World Bank. And he expanded on his thoughts at a book forum here late last month (watch his comments here), where several of the people he criticized joined the discussion to rebut his, and Wolfensohn's, criticism. D.C.'s Great Mentioners place at the top of the list of possible replacements for Wolfensohn none other than outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell. But Powell has been mentioned for just about every possible high-profile job inside or outside the Beltway, with the possible exception of president of CBS News, another chair which may or may not soon be vacant in coming days. 2005-01-03T03:22:30+00:00 US government criticized for slow aid, but tsunami relief attracts record private donations online WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 -- By the time President Bush spoke publicly yesterday and promised U.S. leadership in tsunami relief, a wave of donations from individuals had swept over the Internet. Google and amazon.com are among the popular Web sites that have added disaster relief links to their home pages, and those electronic bits of support are already adding up to millions of dollars, according to the Washington Post. By last night, amazon.com alone had raised $3 million from 53,000. That means amazon.com, by itself, has raised more disaster relief than either the European Union or China, according to figures tabulated by the Associated Press and published in today's Washington Post. Amazon.com support is greater than Ireland, Sweden, Greece, South Korea, New Zealand and Singapore COMBINED, according to the AP chart. So many tried to donate to the American Red Cross online that its site crashed. Even with the technical difficulties, Internet contributions to the Red Cross outnumbered the older phone bank donations by more than two to one, according to the Post. On Tuesday, 25,000 people contributed on the Red Cross site, while 9,000 people donated by telephone. As of noon yesterday, the Red Cross reported receiving a total of $18 million from donors in the U.S., over half of what the U.S. government has promised in aid. If the American Red Cross were a country, its tsunami relief assistance would rank eighth in the world. (Of course since it is not clear what percentage of Internet donors are in the U.S., so it would not be correct to refer to attribute online donations as entirely American.) The biggest problem now may be logistical difficulties of delivering aid to the stricken areas, according to reports from the scene. President Bush’s remarks yesterday were his first public statements on the disaster, after criticism that his response had been tardy. And Mr. Bush himself conceded that it took three days for the U.S. to recognize the scope of the disaster. One factor may have been the low level of government staffing over the Christmas holiday, with some agencies leaving only skeleton staffs in place. The U.S. had also been criticized as “stingy” by U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, who later withdrew his comment. Now, many in Washington believe disaster relief could be a major opportunity for public diplomacy, for the U.S. to show leadership in the global disaster relief effort, according to reports in The New York Times and elsewhere. The U.S. has even mobilized its spy satellites to help relief efforts. But online, thousands of Americans have moved more quickly than government. And what the Howard Dean campaign proved in the 2004 campaign -- that small online contributions can quickly add up to millions -- is now being proven once again in tsunami relief. This time, it is on a global scale -- digital soft power, as it were -- pooling small donations across the country and directing them to the other side of the world. And remember, in this year-end season, donations may be tax deductible. 2004-12-31T03:00:00+00:00