Radio That Makes Right Kind of Waves

It would be a great and self-wounding mistake if Congress or the Bush Administration begin to regard the government’s foreign broadcast services as Cold War artifacts, to be curtailed or even eliminated now that U.S.-Soviet ideological competition seems to be fast receding. Yet that is exactly what is being threatened.

The Voice of America, which beams news and information worldwide in 43 languages, saw its $171-million budget cut in an interim appropriations bill recently approved by Congress. That left VOA with the choice of eliminating one day a week of broadcasting or reducing such other activities as its cultural exchange programs. The decision for the time being was to maintain seven days a week of programming.

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which broadcast from Munich in 23 languages to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union respectively, are being scrutinized along with VOA by an interagency task force whose report will go to a bipartisan commission later this year. The combined budgets of the two services total $190 million. The presidential-appointed Advisory Committee on Public Diplomacy has already recommended phasing out Radio Free Europe.

The fight over the financing and even the survival of the broadcast services to a great extent reflects bureaucratic battles that go back 20 years or more. From the 1950s until the early 1970s, RFE and Radio Liberty were secretly financed out of Central Intelligence Agency funds. Since then appropriations have been made openly. Some in Congress have long felt that all three services should be combined into a single independent agency. That view deserves careful study. The important thing is that there should be no significant reductions in overall broadcast operations.

There’s no such thing as too many sources of information. Broadcasting may now be free or at least freer in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but the peoples of those countries still deserve the right to choose among diverse news and information services. If nothing else, competition helps keep the official media honest. A recent Soviet visitor to this newspaper, a renowned scientist and political free-thinker, offered a passionate and spontaneous endorsement of Radio Liberty. Everyone, he said, listens to it. Everyone has come to trust it.

Americans too often forget that most people in the world can’t enjoy an unfettered press. Foreign news broadcasts may provide the only accurate information they get. In the budgetary scheme of things American foreign broadcast services consume little. But they make a notable and vital contribution to intellectual freedom, and it’s that consideration that should be foremost as their futures are pondered.