Resiliency of U.S.-Sponsored Radio Networks Speaks Volumes

It is late afternoon, but here in the studios of Radio Free Asia, Jenny Choi is reading the 7 a.m. news--to North Korea.

Speaking softly in Korean, she and a co-anchor report on long-running Korean negotiations, an upcoming visit by an American envoy and discuss the mysterious deaths of 71 cattle shipped to the famine-stricken nation. Every story is about North Korea.

“Today we have so much news!” program director Jaehoon Ahn says happily.

Never mind that the Stalinist regime in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, sometimes jams RFA’s twice-daily broadcasts. Or that few North Koreans own shortwave radios. Or that most radios there are configured to only tune in government propaganda channels.

Such problems hardly discourage those who champion U.S. government broadcasts as a way of opening closed societies. Radio networks created to help fight communism not only survived the Cold War, they are growing as never before.

Radio Free Iraq and a special Persian language service for Iran were launched Oct. 30. Like RFA, both are “surrogate” stations, reporting news that Baghdad and Tehran might otherwise censor about local corruption, human rights abuses and other sensitive topics.

Not surprisingly, the new networks infuriated their targets. Iran almost immediately recalled its ambassador from the Czech Republic for consultations and froze trade ties to protest the American broadcasts, which are directed from offices in Prague. Tehran radio quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying that the Czech Republic had “backed hostile action by America.”

U.S. Programs Target at Least 29 Nations

All told, the United States uses the airwaves to target at least 29 countries, from emerging post-Communist democracies to some of the world’s most repressive regimes. That is nine more than at the height of the Cold War. There’s also the Voice of America, Washington’s official broadcast arm.

VOA transmits international and American news, rather than local reports, in a record 52 languages, up from 36 a decade or so ago.

Costs have also grown. Congress approved a record $397 million for overseas broadcasting this fiscal year.

“I think we have vastly more support in Washington today than we did five years ago,” said Paul Gobel, Washington spokesman for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which still broadcasts to the former Soviet republics and most of Eastern Europe. “And that’s because the euphoria is over. When the Berlin Wall came down, and then the Soviet Union collapsed, people were saying, ‘History is over; capitalism and democracy have won; the bad guys are finished; good job, everybody, go home.’ Well, it didn’t work out that way.”

Gobel paused, then smiled.

“Frankly,” he said, “I don’t see any likelihood we’ll close any time soon.”

Such optimism--or pessimism perhaps--is recent.

Originally founded and funded by the CIA in the early 1950s, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was put under congressional control in 1971. But by 1994, with the Iron Curtain long down, Washington was ready to pull the plug.

RFE/RL then cost $220 million a year, and a scandal erupted over reports that officials at headquarters in Munich, Germany, were drawing $200,000-plus salaries. Critics called it a gold-plated Cold War relic.

But allies began surfacing in high places. They argued that uncensored U.S. broadcasts had played a key role in bringing down communism and that the job was not finished.

Among others, Vaclav Havel, the dissident-turned-president of the Czech Republic, weighed in with lavish praise, declaring that free and credible media were crucial for the transition to democracy. He offered the network a new home in the former parliament building in downtown Prague--for $1 a month.

The result: After bitter debate, Congress cut RFE/RL’s budget by two-thirds to $70 million. President Clinton backed off a pledge to eliminate the network by 1995. It moved from Munich to Prague, slashed its staff by nearly three-fourths, restructured itself and still managed to continue broadcasting about 750 hours a week.

Although RFE/RL is running the new Iraq and Iran services from Prague, transmission is from Greece, Germany and the United Kingdom. Initial broadcasts were only 30 minutes each day, but within a year, six hours daily are planned. As usual, the services will rely largely on exiles and emigres for reporters, and programs will use sensitive material smuggled out, as well as more traditional news sources.

Iranian officials began complaining even before the broadcasts began, calling them an obstacle to warmer relations with Washington.

Yet complaints also came from what would appear an unlikely source--the venerable Voice of America.

VOA officials archly noted that with few interruptions, they have been broadcasting nonpolitical news and features to both Iran and Iraq since 1942 and have a large following. So do the British Broadcasting Corp., German radio and other international networks.

“The fact is that in Iran, the VOA has a huge listenership,” said former VOA Director Geoffrey Cowan, now dean of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication. “They know they get balanced information about Iran. . . . And we had a gigantic listenership in Iraq. That’s how people get their news.”

VOA’s ire is mostly aimed these days at Radio Free Asia, which went on the air two years ago and broadcasts to Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Tibet and North Korea. All of them already received VOA local-language broadcasts.

“The reality is RFA is very often jammed more than not,” said Evelyn S. Lieberman, VOA director. In any case, she added, “we already have high listenership in many of the places they’re broadcasting to.”

VOA says its research shows that 83 million people listen to its shortwave broadcasts each week. And that, spokeswoman Mary Ellen Glynn gleefully added, “is more than watch ABC, CBS and NBC news combined.”

Skepticism Is Voiced on Capitol Hill

RFA cannot yet demonstrate that it has a large audience or, indeed, any significant audience at all.

Senior U.S. diplomats and journalists in China and Vietnam, the two countries where jamming is heaviest, say they can’t find anyone who regularly listens to RFA or can even find it on the dial. That has raised doubts on Capitol Hill.

“I’m very skeptical of how useful it is,” said a senior congressional staffer who follows Asia. “I’ve asked but never seen any concrete evidence that this is an effective use of our financial resources in terms of listenership.”

In response, RFA officials cite mail, tapes, phone calls and other evidence of what they believe to be a growing audience.

“A lot of activists feel this is their organization, their radio, democracy radio,” said Soe Thinn, head of RFA’s Myanmar service, which has received more than 800 letters from listeners inside Myanmar, formerly Burma. “They want us to support them.”

Congressional funding for RFA last year helped it renovate three floors of a Washington office building previously used by National Public Radio.

RFA now boasts that it is the world’s largest user of advanced digital editing equipment. Sleek decks of state-of-the-art gear line its studios and master control room. Nearby are spacious offices and conference rooms decorated with ornate Chinese wall scrolls and large floral displays.

Transmission problems dogged early broadcasts, attributable in part to the refusal of Thailand and the Philippines to let RFA use facilities on their soil for fear of angering nearby nations.

Those problems are expected to ease this year with the launch of a powerful new station the United States has purchased in Saipan, one of the Mariana Islands. And new efforts should help evade jamming, which is a particular problem in Beijing and Shanghai.

“We broadcast into China from five directions in different frequencies,” said Richard Richter, RFA president and former executive producer of ABC Evening News. “Most of the time, at least one of the frequencies gets through.”

Still, the bulk of RFA’s Mandarin language programs to China are broadcast in the middle of the night because of an agreement not to compete with VOA for listeners.

“They have all the good hours,” complained Jennifer Chou, head of RFA’s Mandarin service, as she oversaw a news broadcast live at sunrise in China. “At 5 a.m., nobody is up.”

That doesn’t mollify China.

“We say this is a sort of Cold War mentality,” complained Yu Shuning, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy here.

Richter acknowledged that he had some of the same doubts when he joined RFA.

“I was afraid it was going to be a ‘kill the Commies’ organization,” he said.

It hasn’t been. RFA has already scored several news scoops, from telephone interviews with Chinese dissidents to reports of peasant unrest in Vietnam.

So far, RFA’s biggest story was inadvertent. In June, the Chinese Embassy suddenly revoked visas for two RFA reporters and a producer set to accompany President Clinton to China.

The U.S. protested, and Clinton granted RFA a last-minute interview before leaving. RFA stayed behind, and the flap was front-page news.

Reporting isn’t always so easy. Take Laos, for example, a poverty-stricken Southeast Asian nation that is one of RFA’s targets.

At afternoon program planning meetings, RFA spokesman Patrica Lute said, “sometimes we have to admit, ‘There is no news in Laos today.’ ”