Don’t Silence America’s Voices : U.S. foreign policy must remain linked to huge radio audience abroad

One of the nation’s most cost-effective tools for projecting American influence abroad is in danger of being eliminated by shortsighted budget cutters in Congress. The targets are the broadcasts of the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, all of which operate under the U.S. Information Agency. Indeed, if the House Budget Committee has its way, funding for the broadcasts will be phased out completely, leaving the United States with no official foreign-language broadcasting capability.

The result would be that the 125 million listeners who make up the weekly audience for the U.S. programs would be denied the news and information they have come to depend on. In addition, U.S. foreign policy would be stripped of a highly efficient means for promoting the American goals of democracy and intellectual freedom throughout the world.

No one argues that U.S. international broadcasting has to be maintained at Cold War levels, when the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in unrelenting competition to influence opinion in scores of countries. However, neither can it be argued convincingly that the end of the Cold War means the United States can pack away its commitment to provide accurate information to the tens of millions of listeners whose governments seek to keep them in ignorance.

The compelling necessity to reduce budget deficits requires cuts in broadcasting costs along with virtually every other department and program. The Clinton Administration proposes taking $121 million from the USIA’s $1.4-billion budget. The House International Relations Committee would cut $148 million more. Such cuts would curtail or even eliminate services in some languages but leave the basic broadcasting structure intact. Others in Congress, as noted, seek nothing less than the destruction of the entire broadcasting capability.

Foreign-language broadcasts are not a favor the United States provides for strangers overseas. They are a valued and honorable instrument of American policy, in fact a national asset, and preserving them clearly is a national interest.