Voice of America Will Retool for Arab World

With pervasive anti-American sentiment in the Arab world threatening President Bush’s Middle East policy, the Voice of America wants to completely remake its Arab-language broadcasts to appeal to a younger, more radical audience.

Under a plan awaiting approval by the independent board responsible for U.S. government radio outlets, VOA would broadcast around the clock throughout the Arab world, targeting much of its programming to the under-30 crowd that is most likely to blame the United States for the region’s ills.

Right now, according to broadcast board officials, only a tiny fraction of potential Arab listeners tune in to VOA’s seven hours of daily programming. In a region with vast cultural differences and wide variations in vocabulary and pronunciation, the service beams the same programs, using a formal dialect that many Arabs consider laughable.

“It is dismal,” said Norman J. Pattiz, chairman of the broadcast board’s Middle East committee. “What we do now is one-size-fits-all to the entire region. It’s broadcast on shortwave, which has minimal or no listeners, as well as on [AM] from Rhodes [in Greece], which is inaudible in daytime and only a little less inaudible in the evening.”

If if works, VOA’s expanded presence in the Arab world would reinforce Bush’s strategy of rebuilding the U.S. relationship with moderate Arab governments such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and others--a change from former President Clinton’s intense focus on Israel and the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Even in countries with governments generally friendly to the United States, the streets seethe with resentment of U.S. power and, especially, Washington’s support for Israel.

If VOA can neutralize some of that anti-Americanism, it will move U.S. international broadcasting closer to its World War II and Cold War roots, when the radio services played a much more direct role in advancing Washington’s foreign policy aims.

It also would help justify an ongoing role for the government broadcasting services in the post-Cold War world. In the decade since the Soviet Union collapsed, some critics have suggested that there is no longer a need for the program.

Created during World War II, VOA broadcasts worldwide in English and 52 other languages, delivering news, music, call-in talk shows and features on the United States. In recent years, it has branched out into tightly focused regional news beamed mostly to Africa. It claims an audience of 91 million people, but only a small number of them in the Middle East.

In addition to VOA, the independent Broadcasting Board of Governors supervises Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Marti, which are targeted to a few generally unfriendly countries with heavily censored and government-dominated media.

The nine-member bipartisan board was established in 1999 to be a “firewall,” preventing the administration from dictating program content to the government-funded but legally independent broadcast services. Board members and top officials of the radio outlets were unanimous in insisting that the White House, State Department and other agencies refrain from interfering in broadcast policy. When they do try to intervene, they are usually rebuffed.

According to Richard Richter, president of Radio Free Asia, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing sometimes complains that his station is making life difficult for American diplomats by hammering away at official corruption in China. Richter said the station never gives in to pressure.

VOA Director Sanford Ungar said his organization provided saturation coverage of impeachment proceedings against Clinton, almost certainly annoying the White House.

Pattiz, chairman of Culver City-based Westwood One radio network, has drafted a plan that would put VOA on the air 24 hours a day across the Arab world.

For the key broadcast hours of 7 to 11 a.m. and 3 to 7 p.m., the network would split into five geographic segments that could focus on local-interest news and regional accents. The separate broadcasts would be aimed at Israel, the West Bank and Jordan; Iraq; Egypt; the Persian Gulf region; and Sudan and Yemen.

VOA’s present broadcasts are mostly on shortwave, a frequency band that most radios can’t receive. Pattiz said the new service would include FM, AM and digital satellite broadcasting, enabling it to reach many more ears.

No one really knows how big the potential audience is. Board officials estimate that 33 million people across the Middle East listen to some sort of radio each day. But the officials say they have no way of knowing how many of those listeners will tune in to a revised VOA.

The board is expected to approve the plan and forward it to Congress for funding. In the meantime, VOA plans to curtail broadcasts in the following languages: Bulgarian, Romanian, Slovak, Uzbek, Portuguese (to Brazil), Thai, Turkish, Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian. About $4 million of the $5.5-million savings would be diverted to fund the start-up of the new Arabic programming.

In recent years, CNN, MSNBC, BBC and other broadcast organizations have circled the globe by cable and satellite television. But these programs are in English, not local languages, and are available mostly in luxury hotels. They don’t generally reach the public in developing nations.

The Middle East is awash in Arab-language radio and television programming, at least some of it independent of government control. But U.S. officials say most of it is designed to feed public prejudices against Israel and the United States.

“Clearly, there is a media war taking place in the region,” Pattiz said. “U.S. international broadcasting has little, if any, impact. Hate radio, incitement to violence, disinformation, state censorship, journalistic self-censorship are common.”

Some experts say much of the Arabic broadcasts are anti-Israel and anti-U.S. because that’s what the listeners like. They say VOA might find it difficult to attract an audience for broadcasts that do not have an anti-Semitic undertone.

Director Ungar disagreed, saying: “There is no reason for VOA to behave any differently in Arabic than in any other language. We will tell it straight. The idea is much the same in Arabic as any other language--VOA has something to offer in the free flow of information.”

Tom C. Korologos, a Washington lobbyist and a member of the broadcasting board, acknowledged that VOA might never attract a vast audience in the Arab world. But he said opinion leaders are likely to listen “and get another viewpoint.”

VOA and the so-called surrogate radios were in a fight for survival a decade ago as the Cold War ended. Korologos said he once had serious doubts about their viability, but he is now an outspoken supporter.

“I’m the truest believer,” he said. “I lobby it on the Hill on my lunch hour.”

Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor in the administration of Bush’s father, said he once considered the radio services to be “a relic of the Cold War.” Now, he said, he has concluded that “it is always useful for people to understand more about America and what it is about.”

During the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war against Yugoslavia in 1999, VOA and Radio Free Europe broadcast extensively into Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, from transmitters in surrounding countries. Board officials claim that the broadcasts were listened to heavily.

“We were the enemy in Serbia, but we were listened to,” said broadcasting board chairman Marc Nathanson of Charter Communications in Los Angeles.

The U.S. broadcasts gained credibility by covering statements critical of the bombing from the Yugoslav mission at the United Nations, Nathanson said.