Freer Information for Asians

Radio Free Asia debuted this weekend with a short broadcast to China. The subdued launching was a milestone in a five-year effort in Washington to use the airwaves to promote democratic values across the Pacific. The goal of the Asian counterpart to Radio Free Europe is to foster openness and democracy by freely disseminating news.

Congress created the new station, which began with two daily half-hour news broadcasts to China. The broadcasts, which originate in Washington, will be expanded to Tibet, Myanmar (Burma) and eventually North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Radio Free Asia will dedicate 80% of its programming to news of the country to which it broadcasts and the rest to world news. This is decidedly different from the Voice of America, which also transmits to the region but devotes 80% of its broadcasts to worldwide news and sometimes editorials (Radio Free Asia has none) that reflect the viewpoint of the U.S. government.

Radio Free Asia also will provide a forum for open debates and competing political viewpoints. The station will feature critics of the Chinese regime, such as Liu Binyan, an exiled journalist and writer, and Dai Qing, the Chinese writer who for years has been crusading against the massive Three Gorges Dam.

Credibility for the station will depend on balanced and responsible commentary and reporting. There is a lesson in Radio Free Europe’s irresponsible role in the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviets. Newly released documents of 40-year-old broadcasts reveal that commentators encouraged false hopes of Western intervention that helped to prolong the bloodshed. Radio Free Europe then was financed in part by the Central Intelligence Agency, but in 1970 it was put under an independent agency.

The governments of the countries to which Radio Free Asia will be beamed are not exactly waiting with open ears. China is expected to jam reception. Myanmar hardly wants outsiders to tell its citizens of the increasing crackdown on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Radio Free Asia aims to break those barriers.