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INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING: ITS MISSION, BUDGET, AND FUTURE
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2001
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on International
Operations and Human Rights,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2 p.m. in Room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Smith, [acting Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. SMITH. The Subcommittee will come to order. At the outset I would like to thank and congratulate the new Subcommittee Chairwoman, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, for this important hearing, which is the second in a series of Full Committee and Subcommittee hearings on legislation to authorize the foreign relations agencies of the United States for fiscal years 2002 and 2003.
Chairwoman Ros-Lehtinen cannot be here today. She had an accident necessitating what will hopefully be a brief hospital stay, but she sends along her best, Mr. Nathanson, to you and to the panelists, members of the panel, for not being able to be here.
Let me just say a couple of points. The Members of this Committee and Subcommittee, both Democrats and Republicans, have been strong supporters of U.S. international broadcasting and other public diplomacy programs. I fully expect that support to continue, but our efforts will only be successful to the extent that we show our colleagues and the American people that these programs continue to serve their original purpose; the transmission of freedom and democracy abroad.
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Throughout human history, the most important battles have not been those whose object was to control territory. The battles that really matter have always been about values and ideas. When history of our century is written, it will be in large part the story of a long struggle for the soul of the world, a struggle between the values of a free world on the one hand and those of communism, fascism and other forms of totalitarianism on the other.
Throughout most of the world, the values of the free world have been victorious not only because we had better values, but because we were not afraid to stand up for them. Our international broadcasting services can be an important aspect in the next century as they have been in the last, but only if they succeed in sending the message of freedom to people whose government hates that message.
It is no accident, too, that the broadcasting services with the strongest support in Congress are Radio Free Asia and TV Marti, Radio and TV Marti. The need for freedom broadcasting to the people of Cuba, China, Tibet, Vietnam, North Korea and Burma is all too clear.
We should not make the mistake, however, of thinking that the rest of the world has no need for freedom broadcasting. Despite the end of official communist domination in eastern Europe, the habits of repression die hard. In the death throes of the Milosevic regime in Serbia, the regime attempted to quash its popular opposition by shutting down that nation's independent radio stations. Both Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America stepped into the breach.
These services not only provided the people of Serbia with minute-by-minute accounts of the popular resistance to Milosevic. They also provided the independent Serbian stations with air time to broadcast the programs the regime was attempting to keep the people form hearing.
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Fortunately, Milosevic is out of power, and it is now only a matter of time before he is brought to justice for his crimes against humanity. There are only a few regimes left in the world as brutal and bloodthirsty as his regime was, but there are other reasons not to abandon or to weaken our freedom broadcasting services and other tools of U.S. public diplomacy.
The world still contains many nations which have begun to adopt freedom and democracy, but they are just not there yet. The forces of freedom in these nations have always looked to the United States both as an example and as a comrade in arms. This is not the time to cut our lines of communication with them.
Finally, even in parts of the world that are fully free and democratic, freedom broadcasting and other institutions of public diplomacy may provide a flexible and efficient way for the United States to communicate with people who want to hear what we have to say. The more formal and structured approach typically taken by our official foreign policy apparatus has its place, but it may be wise to retain all the tools at our disposal.
I look forward to hearing the testimony of our distinguished witness, Chairman Marc Nathanson of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and at this point I would be very, very happy to recognize my friend and colleague, the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Ms. McKinney from Georgia.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to admit that I was taken aback when I first saw you at the helm because my expectation was that I would be sharing this particular hearing with our new Subcommittee Chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, but, of course, you know I am always very happy to have you by my side in more ways than one.
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I would also like to welcome Mr. Marc B. Nathanson, who is celebrating his second anniversary as chairman of the BBG. Now, Congressman Berman told me that I was to deliver something to you, and I do not know that I exactly want to do that after a particular rendezvous that I had with the President last night, but just let it be known that Congressman Berman was thinking about you.
To many, the Voice of America has been a beacon of hope from Nelson Mandela, who listened to the Voice of America while imprisoned in apartheid South Africa, to the citizens of Burkina Faso who listened to the Voice of America as the only source of news when government critic Norberto Zongo was murdered.
Even those on the poverty-stricken continent of Africa deserve good journalism, yet when it comes to funding programs like Radio Free Africa, the priority is simply not there. Africa is earmarked well less than 1 percent in the recent yearly budgets. Not many beacons of hope are going out to the African continent where resource wars and genocide conditions much like the situation in Europe in the Second World War when the Voice of America was formed and used heavily to fight the fascist propaganda wars.
One can only wonder what might have happened in Rwanda in 1994 with the messages of hate being broadcast for days leading up to the genocide if the Voice of America had been there in some way to counteract with alternative and constructive messages. It is utterly embarrassing that at the dawn of a new millennium that the Federal Government is funding Radio Free Africa with the paltry sum that it is.
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The VOA has also announced the closing of its Uzbekistan service, and, to add insult to injury, is replacing it with Russian language service. VOA's Uzbek service is the only voice bringing light to the Uzbek government's violation of human rights.
The VOA claims that the Uzbek service is redundant because it is already provided by Radio Liberty. However, Radio Liberty's objectivity has been in question by some that see it as nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Uzbek dictatorship.
Uzbek Voice of America service has been a godsend to the people of Uzbekistan covering such important issues as massive environmental degradation, so before closing down this beacon of hope I would like a comparative study done to determine the quality and objectivity of both VOA Uzbekistan and the surrogate Radio Liberty.
Last session I introduced a bill to authorize the Broadcasting Board of Governors to make available to a private entity archive materials from the Africa division of the Voice of America. Representative Lee also co-sponsored this bill. The bill authorized the Broadcasting Board of Governors to make available to the Institute for Media Development, a non-profit organization, archival materials of the Africa division of the VOA.
VOA programs are not broadcast in the United States. As a result, programs which may be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, history, literature and foreign policy are often inaccessible. Currently there is no system in place to preserve the analog tapes on which VOA's Africa broadcast are recorded. Programming that is rich in interviews of African political and cultural leaders is, therefore, being lost to posterity. Storing these VOA interviews and news stories in a central archive will make a substantial contribution to preserving the voice of Africans who are making history.
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There are other concerns that I have regarding exactly how the BBG does its business, and one centers on its hiring practice. Now, Mr. Chairman, I know that you were not at the helm in the day when the VOA ''where women and men were treated differently'' and where the Court found that between 1974 and 1984 that ''there were openings for 'warm bodies' as long as those bodies were male.''
There was documented rampant sex discrimination at the VOA and its parent, the U.S. Information Agency, during this period where some 1,100 women in the prime of their careers were denied opportunity based on their gender. After 23 years of fighting, the Government last year paid a steep price, $531,000,000 plus attorney's fees. It is by far the largest civil rights settlement in the history of the United States.
The Government blinked only after losing 46 of the first 48 compensation hearings as a part of the class action suit. Court documents describe the Voice of America as an old boy network run amuck. The agency's male managers routinely whited out women's application test scores if they were too high. Another tactic used was the agency claimed that there was a hiring freeze.
In addition, it is my understanding that the Voice of America's hiring numbers are still out of whack. For instance, there are 68 male electronics technicians and not a single woman in comparable jobs. Just six of 122 broadcast equipment officers are women.
Of course, we do not have to guess that if women had such a historic battle that African-Americans are also under-represented. African-Americans have been under-represented for many years at the Voice of America.
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While there have been advances in hiring in the Voice of America, the agency still has a long way to go. It is my understanding also, Mr. Chairman, that there are still outstanding lawsuits filed by African-Americans against the Voice of America. I would hope that those would be settled with speed and dispatch.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I wish you the best of luck and hope that you will fight to the best to make sure that there are more funds for Radio Free Africa, along with continued journalistic programs which, when funded, will be successful. We will definitely get a bang for our buck if we adequately fund Radio Free Africa where in Nigeria alone 20 percent of the Voice of America's worldwide listeners reside.
So, Chairman Nathanson, let's get back to adhering to the charter of 1976, a charter which rang the bell of objectivity, so that the one time concept or dream of a single American international broadcaster will be taken seriously enough so that we can challenge and in fact pull ahead of the likes of the BBC world service.
Thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Ms. McKinney, thank you very much.
Mr. Pitts, the gentleman from Pennsylvania?
Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As a new Member of the International Relations Committee and of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, I am very pleased to attend the hearing today.
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I have been active in amnesty for human rights for many years. I look forward to service on this Committee and on this Subcommittee. I am looking forward to the hearing today.
I do not have an opening statement.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Pitts, thank you very much.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Nathanson, let me first thank you for the services you have provided as the Chair and on your time on the IBG. We do certainly appreciate it.
It is an important mission. It is one that I have as a Member of this Committee supported for the last 8 years, the breadth and scope of its efforts, both with not only my words, but my vote.
But I am concerned, and I will save some of this for my questioning, but I am concerned. I read your statement. There is not anything I disagree with. I just want to say I am concerned as to what the IBBG says is its surrogate broadcasting mission.
Is it the same as commercial radio, which is to get the news first, or is it to get the news right? I think that this past election showed us the problems with commercial reporting; that is that getting it first is paramount to getting it right.
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It seems to me that in our surrogate broadcasting mission that it is incredibly important for the credibility, as well as for the information into closed societies, that the paramount importance is getting it right, not getting it first.
I would also like to hear, although I know it is not in your abbreviated opening statement, but I would also like to hear what the IBG sees is its role, particularly the board of the BBG. What does it see as its role as it relates to overseeing all of the barriers of surrogate broadcasting that we have before us?
I would like to understand what it views itself as its mission compared to what some of the things that I have seen taking place. I have some specifics.
I look forward to your testimony, and again we thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes a new Member of the Committee, the gentleman, Mr. Schiff.
Mr. SCHIFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very delighted to be on the Subcommittee and am looking forward to the testimony today. Thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you.
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Mr. Nathanson, if you could proceed as you will? Your full statement will be made a part of the record, but please proceed as you feel most comfortable.
STATEMENT OF MARC B. NATHANSON, CHAIRMAN, BROADCASTING BOARD OF GOVERNORS
Mr. NATHANSON. Thank you. I have abbreviated that because that will be part of the record, but I wanted to emphasize some particular highlights. All of the statement is important, but goes into a lot of detail that I do not want to take up the Members' time because I want to get into your questions and your concerns.
I want to first introduce my colleagues that are here with me today. Some of them may come forward in questioning if you have questions in specific areas. Sitting behind me are Brian Conniff, who is the Acting Director of the IBB, the International Broadcasting Bureau. Sandy Ungar is here, who is the Director of Voice of America. Dick Richter, who is President of Radio Free Asia, is here.
Kelly Lehman is here, who is our Chief Financial Officer; Carol Booker, our Acting General Counsel; Paul Goble, the Director of Communications of RFE/RL; Michael Marchetti, the Vice-President of Finance of RFE/RL; Bruce Sherman, who is our Program Review Officer; and Ambassador Joe Beeman, who is our Acting Chief of Staff of the BBG.
In addition, with me today is Governor Alberto Mora and two members who may appear at the witness table if you have specific questions, Governor Cheryl Halpern and Governor Norm Pattiz. Governors Halpern and Pattiz co-chair the board's language review committee. Governor Pattiz is the Chair of the board's new Middle East committee. I just wanted to mention that they are all here.
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It is a special honor for me to testify before this Subcommittee today on behalf of the Board of Governors. As Governor Halpern and I were commenting to each other on the plane ride down this morning from New Jersey, only in America, this great country of ours, could sons and daughters and grandchildren of immigrants be allowed to discuss with the highest decisionmakers in the land the needed role that BBG plays in U.S. foreign policy.
To quote from President Bush's speech last night, ''America has a window of opportunity to extend and secure our present peace by promoting a distinctly American internationalism.'' U.S. international broadcasting promotes our values, promotes peace and disseminates truthful information to the closed corners of the world, to the land of my immigrant grandparents.
Last Saturday my wife, Jane, and I saw a powerful movie, Before Night Falls, about a Cuban writer and human rights activist, Reinaldo Arenas. One could not help but be reminded of the need for the U.S. Government sponsored broadcasting to Cuba in order to offer hope to our neighbors in Cuba who are still living under the tyranny of the dictatorship there and the important role that Radio Marti has played in Arenas' and others' quests for freedom.
Whether it is Arenas in Cuba, Havel under the Czech communists, the Dalai Lama in exile from Tibet, or Aung San Sui Kyi in Burma, there is a need for Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio/TV Marti to offer hope, to offer accurate and unbiased news and information to both famous leaders, as well as ordinary people living in the darkest corners of the world. Our task is critical for it represents the best of America.
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One of the great occasions of my life happened earlier this year when I met with Nelson Mandela, who personally thanked me for the broadcast of Voice of America that he listened to on a secret pirated radio that was built by some of the prisoners while he was imprisoned for so many years on Robins Island. He gave me a copy of that homemade radio, which I have in my office.
While our past has been historic and noble, I am here to talk to you about the present and future of the BBG and U.S. international broadcasting. U.S. international broadcasting reaches out to the world in 61 different languages and touches more than 100,000,000 listeners, viewers and Internet users weekly. Freedom House estimates that more than 4,000,000,000 people live in society where governments severely control and suppress print and media or where media is only partially free.
The Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia provide these populations with news, analysis, insights into American policy and the straight story on what is going on in their countries.
Since the first broadcast on February 24, 1942, the Voice of America has provided its audience with accurate and objective programming. The VOA charter upholds the standard to be an accurate, objective and comprehensive source of news and to present well balanced and comprehensive projections of significant American thought and institutions and to present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively.
Twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week, VOA is on the air by radio, television and the Internet to bring America's point of view to an estimated 91,000,000 regular listeners in 53 different languages. In addition to authoritative news broadcasts, VOA offers its listeners music, education, cultural features, call in shows and English teaching. In recent years, VOA–TV has developed magazines and news programs in several languages, some of which are simulcast to VOA's radio programs, including Mandarin, Indonesian and the Balkan languages.
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VOA has particular success in broadcasting to Africa where an estimated 40 percent of its worldwide audience is located. VOA has expanded in recent years its innovative programming on AIDs awareness and prevention, polio eradication and in-depth coverage of political and economic issues throughout Africa, and I totally support that.
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting, OCB, manages Radio Marti and TV Marti from its headquarters in Miami. Radio and TV Marti are dedicated to the promotion of freedom and democracy in Cuba with a program strategy based on the promotion of human rights. This activity has strong bipartisan support from the Board of Governors.
With its first broadcast in 1985, Radio Marti now broadcasts 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, on mediumwave and shortwave. TV Marti telecast its first program on March 27, 1990. The service broadcasts four and a half hours of daily newscasts, as well as programs about public affairs, culture, music, sports and entertainment. It is looking for ways to expand its signal coverage to Cuba and overcome the obstacles of jamming by the Castro government.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have been on the air for nearly a century. They have broadcast more than 800 hours a week in 26 languages providing daily news, analysis and current affairs programming to provide a coherent, objective account of local, regional and world events.
As surrogate radio or home service to countries where independent media are struggling amid chaotic economic conditions or dictatorship to achieve financial and editorial independence, RFE/RL promotes democratic values and institutions by disseminating factual information and ideas.
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Based on the conviction that the first requirement of democracy is a well informed citizenry, RFE/RL strives to provide objective news and analysis, help strengthen civil societies, combat ethnic and religious intolerance and provide a model for local media. It does this at great peril to many of its courageous journalists.
Like RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia, RFA, is a private, non-profit corporate grantee providing surrogate radio broadcasting to Asian countries where free speech is not tolerated. The youngest of all the radios, RFA has been on the air for only 4 years. RFA's enacting legislation requires that it broadcast accurate, timely information, news and commentary about events to the people of China, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, North Korea, Tibet and Vietnam.
RFA is also tasked to be a forum for a variety of opinions and voices from within Asian nations whose people do not fully enjoy freedom of expression. The focus of RFA programming is in-country news and information. Currently RFA broadcasts 238 hours of programming a week in ten languages.
During the past 18 months, the BBG broadcasting entities have met a number of unanticipated challenges to our mission and management validating that broadcasting plays a key role in foreign policy crisis management. I would like to give you two examples of how we recently reacted to different types of crises.
The BBG, through broadcasting by VOA and RFE/RL, responded to Serbian aggression and oppression of independent media by blanketing the region with the latest news and information related to the hostilities. Through a cross border transmission ring around Serbia, the BBG and other western international broadcasting services, including BBC, Deutche Welle, Radio France International, provided objective news to those living within the boundaries of the conflict and worked with the International Red Cross to reunite refugee families.
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A survey of listenership in Serbia taken on October 4, 2000, found that over 25 percent of those surveyed had listened to RFE/RL the previous day, making it Serbia's number one radio station during the post-election crisis. Thirty-seven percent said that they had listened to RFE/RL during the 10 days since the September 24 election, while 31 percent said they had listened to VOA during that same time period. VOA and RFE/RL continue to make an impact in the Balkans as the political climate undergoes rapid change, and the people of the region are still struggling to rebuild.
Another example occurred early in 2001. RFE/RL correspondent Andrei Babitsky was detained by Russian authorities because of his on-the-scene coverage of the conflict in Chechnya. Mr. Babitsky's own human drama brought to light the work that is being done around the world by correspondents of each of our service entities, bringing news and information to societies that do not enjoy the free flow of news and information.
Just recently, statements made by President Putin have increased concerns about press freedom in the wake of the Babitsky detention. RFE/RL and VOA recently lost affiliate partners whose managers were put under pressure to drop RFE/RL and Voice of America programming and experienced a decline in our Internet traffic due to blockage by the Russian government.
In response to these ominous signs, Congress provided a funding enhancement of $5,000,000 for the BBG in fiscal year 2001 so that VOA and RFE/RL broadcasting can be increased to meet the challenges to the free flow of information.
These events demonstrate that international broadcasting is not an archaic Cold War tool of the past or a broadcasting method that has been made obsolete by the explosion of telecommunications around the world. It is an active participant in crisis response and a lifeline in the day-to-day promotion of human rights and democracy around the world.
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Let me conclude by saying the Board has made great strides in defining our mission, expanding our research, grappling with tough issues such as language review as mandated by you in Congress. Should we put more emphasis on closed societies and trouble spots throughout the world such as the Middle East and Africa? Are we supposed to continue as a goodwill Ambassador to all countries that we have historically served?
How do we overcome our dependence on shortwave with its declining listenership and increase our presence on the preferred listening vehicles of each particular country such as AM, FM, TV and the Internet? We have had long and painful discussions, hours upon hours, on questions such as these and many more within the Board, within the staff and within all the radios.
In my opinion, we are constantly reallocating our scarce resources to parts of the world that are struggling with freedom and democracy or where these words are not uttered, without risk of imprisonment.
Our Middle East initiative that we will be happy to go into detail with you today is our attempt to shore up the peace process and strengthen the forces of moderation and peaceful coexistence with particular emphasis on local broadcasting aimed at youth of the region.
Africa, the Middle East, Russia, China, Iraq are all great priorities of the Board. We are proud of our past achievement. We are proud of the 3,200 dedicated people who work for U.S. international broadcasting, yet there is so much more to do. We need your input. We need your guidance and direction. Together we can address the new challenges of the foreign policy needs of the United States through international broadcasting.
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Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Nathanson follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARC B. NATHANSON, CHAIRMAN, BROADCASTING BOARD OF GOVERNORS
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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Nathanson, thank you very much for your testimony and for the work of both you and your board and the Directors. We certainly appreciate the excellent work you do.
I have a few questions, and then I will yield to my good friend, Ms. McKinney, for any questions she might have.
On the issue of jamming, and you did mention jamming in your testimony, I will never forget when Jiang Zemin visited Washington first with President Clinton and then with a group of members for a lunch I raised a number of specific human rights abuses that China, including torture, was systematically engaging in and finished with an appeal to stop the jamming of Radio Free Asia, which I and others have worked so hard to beef up and to constantly provide sufficient funding for. Not only did he not answer. The blank stare that I got in response to that question spoke volumes.
Several years before that when I was in China on one of three human rights trips in riding in with the DCM I asked him about Radio Free Asia and jamming, and he said well, everybody has cable here or satellite. Not cable. Has satellite transmission. I said well, maybe some of the rich and the elite and the hotels do, but the person in the countryside does not have a satellite television set, at least not yet. A pretty naive perspective, at least from my point of view. I said what are you doing about jamming? Again, no answer back.
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What is the level of jamming now in Asian countries, and you could touch on any country in terms of jamming. You did mention Cuba. How cooperative are our embassies and the other traditional avenues that might be pursued, the State Department and the like?
I have found, and this is, you know, the Assistant Secretary for Democracy and Human Rights and others may raise it, but, generally speaking, our Ambassadors are mute. Maybe you have a different view. I mean, what are we doing in a place like China to raise the jamming issue?
Mr. NATHANSON. Let me start with the last part of the question first. The embassy and the State Department cooperation vary country to country, Ambassador to Ambassador. Some have been very forthright and have gotten behind international broadcasting and have helped us in our negotiations with governments.
In the example you gave, under the last Ambassador to China they were no help whatsoever. The Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, the last Under Secretary of State, Evelyn Lieberman, was extremely helpful to us and supportive. Not all parts of the State Department are. It is a hit or miss situation with the State Department.
We are trying to get the new Secretary of State, and I am very optimistic, to issue a memo to all the embassies throughout the world talking about cooperation with international broadcasting since we are part of U.S. foreign policy and the Secretary is a member of our Board. It is early now, and we are working with them to do that. We are optimistic that a letter will go out and clarify that issue that you are raising.
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Now, as far as jamming is concerned, I believe China and Vietnam are the two countries where we are jammed. We are not jammed in Cambodia and Laos as severely. It is a problem. It is a problem that we have talked to the past Administration about; we want to have the opportunity to talk to the current Administration about.
This Board, in a bipartisan effort, would like the government of China to realize that jamming is not serving their purposes. There have been examples as recently as this year, where people in rural areas were caught listening to Radio Free Asia, and they were jailed by local governments for 10 years just because they were caught listening to a Radio Free Asia broadcast.
It is a very sad situation. If China wants to emerge with the rest of the world, I believe they have to not only stop jamming, but respect human rights.
Mr. SMITH. Let me ask you. In your prepared testimony on page 8 you have Vietnam as jamming effectiveness being very strong. I know that our embassy in Manila has been very anxious to get facilities in order to broadcast into Vietnam.
What is the status of that, and what is our own Ambassador, Pete Peterson, and his shop doing in Hanoi to try to mitigate the jamming in Vietnam?
Mr. NATHANSON. Dick, would you like to comment on that specifically?
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Mr. RICHTER. I think I would have to say that Ambassador Peterson and his staff are doing absolutely nothing.
Mr. SMITH. Could you come and identify yourself just for the record?
Mr. NATHANSON. I am sorry. This is Dick Richter, the President of Radio Free Asia.
Mr. RICHTER. Yes. Dick Richter, the President of Radio Free Asia.
I must say that on a recent trip to Manila the Charge was quite effective, and he set up a meeting with the foreign ministry for me and two of my associates to go and talk to the foreign ministry. We did not get anywhere, but at least we talked to them, which was something that we had not had access to for a long time.
The situation in Vietnam is such that depending upon the economics and also the weather, our transmission is better or worse. When there is a flood, the transmission is better. In and around Saigon and the delta listeners report to us that the ability to listen is not nearly as bad as it used to be. Around Hanoi it is terrible.
As a matter of fact, there is a new jamming station which has been put in by an American company that is being used against us to thwart our broadcast.
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Mr. SMITH. What company is that? If I may, what company is that?
Mr. RICHTER. I am not certain. I can get you that information.
Mr. SMITH. Can you provide the information?
Mr. RICHTER. Of course. Yes.
Mr. SMITH. I did ask whether or not Pete Peterson and his embassy personnel are being helpful.
Mr. RICHTER. Yes. I did say something very quickly previously. No, they have not been at all helpful.
Mr. SMITH. I appreciate the candor on that.
Vietnam. Is it among the worst? I mean, here it says it is very strong. And Cuba? How would you rate China? Cuba?
Mr. RICHTER. I cannot speak to Cuba, but Vietnam is more affected than China is in large part because it is a smaller country and it is easier to jam a smaller radius.
In China they jam constantly, but we come in from so many different directions that it is possible for us to be heard in many different places relatively effectively. The jamming in Shanghai, for instance, is not nearly as great as in Beijing. Beijing is the worst.
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Mr. NATHANSON. As to Cuba, the jamming is very effective, particularly during the daytime, in the Havana area. It is much less effective in the other parts of the island. We are working with the Office of Cuba Broadcasting to find other sites to broadcast to Cuba to further confuse the jamming of the Castro government, but it is severe in the Havana area.
Mr. SMITH. So options like alternative sites, changing the frequencies, that is all being——
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes. We would be happy to share that with the Committee in executive session.
Mr. SMITH. Let me ask one other question. I do have many others, but I will submit most of those for the record.
With regards to Uzbekistan and this whole central Asia region, would it not be possible, Mr. Nathanson to think outside of the box?
I know you probably feel constrained by the budget, and nobody likes the difficult choices anyone has to make. I know obviously for every reduction there is an enhancement, and we fully agree—I fully agree—that we need to be focusing on the Middle East. I would agree with Ms. McKinney. We need more for Radio Free Africa in terms of that kind of enterprise.
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I mean, if we knew the need and, you know, we would lay out a scenario whereby this is the money that is available rather than zero summing it and saying you need an offset, it seems to me that the Turkish VOA, which I think, you know, they continue to have major problems with violence. Journalists are targeted in particular and, of course, the use of torture, and yet that is going to be cut by 80 percent.
I mean, we saw the kind of retaliation even when you raise a situation like the genocide that occurred. We had a hearing in our Subcommittee that went on at length. The sabre rattling by the Turkish authorities, which they now say they are going to focus on France because they passed a resolution on the hermonean genocide. It was amazing. Our country buckled, unfortunately. The President sent a letter saying please do not bring the resolution to the Floor.
Underscoring if you can intimidate the White House and chill any action on the part of the House of Representatives how much more so within their own country, whether it be in Ankrah or anywhere else within Turkey, so it seems to me the need there is compelling.
Then with Uzbekistan and the Helsinki Commission, we have had a number of hearings on countries of that region, including Uzbekistan, and there is no press freedom. I mean, it seems to me it is opportunity lost to zero out that very fine programming.
If you could speak to, I mean, how do we get that back on the table?
Mr. NATHANSON. Let me speak to both of those issues and come back to comments that Congresswoman McKinney made about Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. I made a note of those, and I assure you that I will personally look into and we will conduct an objective study to make sure that our programming is objective in the standard and not at all doing anything that a first class journalistic organization would not do.
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The language review committee, and we have the two committee chairmen here, and I would be happy to have them testify before you. The reason they made the tough choices they made were purely based I am thinking within the box, within the budget box, and that was the restraint. They were not thinking outside of the box because of the budget restraints that we had.
In the case that you were talking about, the latter case, we increased the broadcasting through Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to the area, increased the coverage to the area. I want to make sure that coverage is objective and the point is well taken, but we were not cutting back RFE/RL broadcasting there, even though we were cutting back Voice of America because it was an overlapping programming, and the program analysis showed us the programming was very similar. We have to make sure the programming is accurate and objective, and that is what I am going to look into in that particular case.
We are not saying that is a nation that has freedom of the press or anything like it. There is an enormous need for American broadcasting. We were just saying the need was being fulfilled by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and we had overlapping services that were duplicative, which in some cases is good.
In that case we felt we would save money and still be able to serve the mission at hand, and that is why we made the decision there, not in Turkey. Turkey is a different situation, but I wanted to address that particular case for 1 second.
In Turkey it was a question of research. Our research that we conduct objectively and impartially showed we have absolutely no listenership in Turkey. Even though there are human rights issues that we are all concerned about in Turkey, there is a large amount of radio, television, cable television, satellite in the area, and we were not getting any listenership, which has to do with programming, with frequency, with outlets and so forth.
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We are looking at that matter, and we will reconsider it based upon the comments in both cases that have been made today. But that is why the decision was made. We are still committed to doing programming in the Turkish language. We are just cutting it back because of the lack of listenership.
Mr. SMITH. Are these reductions in cement?
Mr. NATHANSON. No.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just to follow up on Uzbek radio, now will those transmissions be in Uzbek language?
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes. Not in Russian.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Not in Russian.
Mr. NATHANSON. Not in Russian.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Okay. I see that you are eliminating seven staff. Will they then be transferred to Radio Liberty, or are those jobs just going to be lost?
Mr. NATHANSON. Sandy? This is Sandy Ungar, who is the head of Voice of America.
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Mr. UNGAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Congresswoman McKinney. The Uzbek service, if it is eliminated, those employees, if there are openings at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, of course, would be entitled to apply for them. We do everything we can when jobs are eliminated when these changes are made to try to help people find other jobs, and we were very successful at that with our reductions last year.
Some of the employees of the Uzbek service from VOA, if it is abolished, would conceivably qualify for other jobs at VOA, as well as other opportunities perhaps without Uzbek language.
Ms. MCKINNEY. What do you say to people who would suggest that this is quite a coincidence that at the moment of the discovery of huge oil reserves that the Voice of America is downsizing its presence in Uzbekistan?
Mr. UNGAR. Well——
Ms. MCKINNEY. And I might add U.S. oil company contracts with the government.
Mr. UNGAR. This is a decision of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to adjust resources, to reallocate resources within the Voice of America and within the various radios.
I think that obviously there are concerns about Uzbekistan. There have been some concerns about the level of listenership to VOA. We have a fine Uzbek service, people who worked very hard and tried very hard, but the surveys and the research indicated that the effectiveness of the service was not what we had hoped it would be.
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I do not think it has anything—I mean, I think there are some unfortunate coincidences here. I would certainly agree with you about that. I cannot dispute anything that any of you have said about the lack of press freedom in Uzbekistan. Clearly no one is contending that there is internal press freedom in Uzbekistan.
Ms. MCKINNEY. So that that line between the downsizing by VOA to oil reserves to U.S. contracts or contracts for U.S. oil companies is a disconnected line?
Mr. NATHANSON. It is disconnected at least as far as the Board is concerned. It never came up. We did consult with the State Department Office of Policy Planning on all of these. They did not bring that up at all in any of the meetings that I was in, so it was disconnected as far as the Board was concerned.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Okay. Could you talk to me about the status of the lawsuits that have been filed by African-American employees at VOA and what the disposition of the board is toward settlement?
Mr. NATHANSON. Do you know the specifics there, or do we have to make a finding for the Congresswoman?
Mr. UNGAR. I think we could get back to you about that, Congresswoman McKinney. I think that I would state that in the 20 months that I have been Director of the Voice of America we have had a dramatic improvement in labor management relations. I think we have had a sharp decrease in complaints of discrimination. I think there is a new atmosphere at the Voice of America post Hartman case.
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I know you were gracious enough to point out earlier that the Hartman case did not occur on Chairman Nathanson's watch or any of our watch; that those abuses did not occur then. I think we have made very significant progress, and we would be very happy to report to you with those statistics.
Ms. MCKINNEY. That would be great, and I will look forward to that. I would hate to see the Voice of America follow the example of the Albright State Department with respect to foreign service officers where the State Department fought tooth and nail against legitimate complaints of African-American foreign service officers and that the BBG would in fact follow the example of former Secretary of Education Riley, who acknowledged that there was a problem once the lawsuit was filed and moved with dispatch to settle that lawsuit and to get rid of it, and I would hope that you would do the same thing.
Mr. NATHANSON. We will look into each of those cases and report back to you on each and every case that has been filed. I made a note earlier of your comments, and I will continue to follow up on those.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Great. Thank you.
Could you also while you are looking into the status of the lawsuits provide for me a profile of all of the various services that you govern by race or employment, management and minority contracts?
Mr. NATHANSON. Employment, management and minority contracts.
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Ms. MCKINNEY. Yes.
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes, we will.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you.
Now, it has been reported that the Voice of America relay station in Sri Lanka dumped toxic waste in a small fishing village. First of all, could you tell me what the VOA relay station is dumping, why it is dumping it, and have you moved to do clean up?
For those citizens of Sri Lanka who have been physically damaged, and I think there have been some deaths reported as well, is the BBG trying to make that village and those citizens whole?
Mr. NATHANSON. Brian Conniff, who is the Acting Director of the IBB, would you come up here?
I believe the facts—we looked into the facts on that case, and they are not as reported in the local press. Brian, will you clarify that?
Mr. CONNIFF. Right. I think we have the issue well in hand now. We had a fire when we were installing the transmitter in Sri Lanka. The transmitters were under the control of the contractor at the time. It was not our responsibility.
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There were damaged toxic material that the contractor hired another contractor to dispose of. They buried it on the——
Ms. MCKINNEY. What exactly would that toxic material be?
Mr. CONNIFF. Melted wires and the internal components of a transmitter. It was highly toxic. I do not know the exact chemical makeup.
Mr. NATHANSON. We could find out for you.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Yes. I would like to know.
Mr. NATHANSON. We will report on it.
Ms. MCKINNEY. And you buried it how?
Mr. CONNIFF. Well, we did not bury it. The contractor of the contractor buried it on the island of Sri Lanka, and once we became aware of this we made them excavate it. They brought it up, and we have now taken responsibility away from the contractor, and we are shipping it off the island. We will bring it back to the United States for purposes of proper disposal.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Where are you going to dispose of it?
Mr. CONNIFF. I am assured that there are proper toxic dumps in this country that we can legally dispose of it.
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Ms. MCKINNEY. Maybe New Jersey.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam Chair, New Jersey has more than met its responsibility for the nation in that regard.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you. I look forward to getting those reports.
I am finished, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Pitts?
Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Back to the Uzbek service.
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes?
Mr. PITTS. Why was the Uzbek service discontinued?
Mr. NATHANSON. It was discontinued, the Uzbek service, because the Voice of America, part of the service, did not have a significant audience, and it was duplicative of Uzbek language services that were being broadcast by Radio Free Europe /Radio Liberty.
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The reason that it was discontinued was because of budget costs, but not because of the de-emphasis in the country or the human rights or journalistic problems of that country. We are broadcasting. U.S. broadcasting is going on there as we speak right now.
Mr. PITTS. In what language?
Mr. NATHANSON. In their language.
Mr. PITTS. In Uzbek?
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes. We also broadcast in the area in Russian, but it is specific——
Mr. PITTS. Where is the broadcast from?
Mr. NATHANSON. Where is our broadcasting from? From our transmitter sites. Do you want to know which specific transmitter sites? I am not sure.
Do you know? From Germany?
Mr. PITTS. From Prague. So this——
Mr. NATHANSON. From Prague. Prague.
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Mr. PITTS. So this covers all central Asia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan?
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes.
Mr. PITTS. In what languages are these broadcasts?
Mr. NATHANSON. I am going to ask Paul Goble to come up and join us from Radio Free Europe because he can tell you the specific languages that we broadcast in the area.
Paul? Right here.
Mr. GOBLE. I am Paul Goble, Director of communications at RFE/RL. We broadcast in all five of the central Asian languages, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, of course.
Mr. PITTS. Turkmenistan?
Mr. GOBLE. Turkmenistan, yes.
Mr. PITTS. And Azerbaijan?
Mr. GOBLE. Azerbaijan is in the caucuses, but, yes, we broadcast there as well.
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Mr. PITTS. Okay. And in their languages?
Mr. GOBLE. All of them are in the languages of the particular nationality.
Mr. PITTS. And do you know how many listeners you have in these countries?
Mr. GOBLE. We have—depending on the country, we have better or worse surveys. Trying to survey listenership in Turkmenistan is extremely difficult, and so it is extremely difficult to do anything in Turkmenistan, but in the countries—in Kazakhstan we have projections and listenerships in the hundreds of thousands daily and in the millions weekly across this region.
Mr. PITTS. Now, are you satisfied with the kind of support that you get from our Department of State or U.S. embassies abroad in regards to these broadcasts?
Mr. NATHANSON. We are not. We get mixed messages from different areas. It is very much who is the head of the mission in that area. Some of them are enormously cooperative. Tom Hubbard, the former Ambassador of the Philippines, now the Assistant Secretary of State of Asia, is very cooperative.
We have had Ambassadors who just totally are uncooperative, do not want to have anything to do with us, do not want to help with transmission sites, are not interested in coverage, as a matter of fact do not want our reporters coming in to countries to cover events because we create waves, so to speak. But that has never stopped Voice of America and Radio Free Europe from coverage in these areas.
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Mr. GOBLE. It is worth noting, however, that even when the embassies may be less forthcoming and less supportive, they invariably keep track of the materials that we produce both on the Internet and the e-mail distribution, and it is also interesting to discover that many of the people on embassy staffs are listening to our broadcasts as a source of news about the country they are resident in.
Mr. PITTS. How do you measure the impact of the existing broadcasts? Do you talk to dissidents, members of opposition groups, religious leaders? How do you measure your impact?
Mr. GOBLE. We have a variety of ways that we measure it. One of the ways, of course, is that when we are condemned or criticized by governments that do not like us we clearly are reaching someone.
Second, we have in a number of countries where there is slightly more media from, not so much in central Asia, our materials are reprinted in the local press, and then you get comments that way.
We receive hundreds, literally hundreds, of e-mails every day from people in these regions, telephone calls. In addition, we perform a series of regular interviews with people across the political spectrum, everything from the government authorities to the dissidents who are just going into jail or just out of it so that we attempt to try to track the entire society.
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Depending on the country, our ability to do that is greater or lesser. You mentioned Turkmenistan. It is very difficult. In Kazakhstan or Kyrgystan it has been somewhat easier. Uzbekistan is, unfortunately, drifting ever closer to the Turkmen model.
Mr. PITTS. Let's take Turkmenistan, for example. When they begin some of these human rights violations, do you rely on NGOs, other sources of information, to broadcast the news? How do you do that?
Mr. GOBLE. In terms of gathering information, we spread our nets as widely as possible. We get information from dissidents, from emigrate communities, from people on the ground who are quite willing to tell their story despite the risk to themselves, and we use that material, you know, according to journalistic principles and broadcast it back.
Mr. PITTS. And do you specifically target repressive regimes? Do you have a strategy in analyzing how——
Mr. GOBLE. We were set up—there is some confusion about RFE/RL. We were never for media freedom because we were anti-communist. We were anti-communist because we were for media freedom.
Promoting the free flow of information is what RFE/RL has been doing for 50 years. We believe that a major part of that is to sell stories to people that the governments do not want them to hear, and the governments routinely try to block information about human rights violations.
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Across our broadcast region, the status of violation of human rights has become much worse over the last decade in many areas, and in the case of some of the larger countries, Russia in particular, much worse over the last year and so we cover that. We have special programs on human rights violations, we have special programs on democracy building, and we talk about human rights issues in every single one of our programs.
Mr. PITTS. Now, in your written testimony, Mr. Nathanson, you——
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes.
Mr. PITTS [continuing]. State that we must become more adept at marketing and promotion in order to make our message known in competitive local markets. What type of messages are currently in use, and what new strategies are being considered? Do you plan to use private sector experience as a model to increase audience share?
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes.
Mr. PITTS. In which countries, and what type of service are you talking about?
Mr. NATHANSON. Coming from the private sector from the media business for 30 years, when I first went on the Board almost 6 years ago it became clear to me that one of our problems in attracting audiences where it was possible was we did not have any money or any budget for promotion. We did not do any marketing of our programming even if it was very good quality programming. Now, in some countries we are not allowed. There is not free advertising even if it is purchased.
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We then engaged through one of the prior Board members, Carl Spielvogel, who is now Ambassador to Slovakia, but at the time was on our board and a renowned advertising man. We studied this issue.
We also engaged on a volunteer basis—they volunteered for it—the Ogleby Advertising Agency to look into this as an outside agency just to give us advice on what we should do. One of the things that they suggested where we were able to is that we should promote using traditional commercial models where the media would allow us to do that in the countries.
In many countries we are not allowed to do that, so we have had to promote internally, on our Internet, and other services in the specific languages of the people. But this is an area where we are trying to do more and more of and trying to source funds to it because you can have the best programming in the world, but if you do not have any audience your messages are not as effective as you would like them to be.
Mr. PITTS. In this year's appropriations, Congress mandated expansion of broadcasting to the North Caucuses. What is the status of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's efforts to fulfill this mandate?
Mr. GOBLE. In response to the congressional mandate, we have begun the planning process. We have identified groups of people whom we plan to begin recruitment of as broadcasters who have the competence in the three languages—Avar, Chechen and Circassian—we have been asked to broadcast.
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In addition, we are in the process even today of hiring an expert on the region to serve as expert support in background on getting information. We have begun the studies of looking at all of the issues that will be involved in gathering information about a part of the world that is very difficult to access now; increasingly so as the Babitsky case a year ago shows, to look at the political issues and try to make sure that our broadcasts, which we hope to begin this summer or early fall, will meet the same standards of all of our other broadcasts.
So we are at the beginning of the planning process. We have already filed our first report, and we expect to have a staff by perhaps the 1st of June and go on the air sometime late summer.
Mr. NATHANSON. We would be happy to give you a copy of that report if you are interested, Congressman.
Mr. PITTS. I would appreciate that.
That is all, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Pitts.
Mr. Menendez?
Mr. MENENDEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Nathanson, can you——
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Mr. NATHANSON. Yes?
Mr. MENENDEZ [continuing]. Tell me what you view the role of the BBG is? Is part of that role being involved in the day-to-day operations of broadcasting services?
Mr. NATHANSON. No. We do not believe our role is to micromanage any of the broadcasting services.
I am going to ask two of my fellow Governors to join me now, Cheryl Halpern and Norm Pattiz. Would you please come forward?
We do not believe we should be micromanaging the day-to-day broadcasting, but to set overall policy, to access a fire wall, and to do strategic planning on accomplishing our mission and our goals to bring broadcasting, U.S. broadcasting, to the targeted countries.
Mr. MENENDEZ. What do you mean by an active fire wall?
Mr. NATHANSON. The Board, as enacted by the legislation, stands in between the journalists, who are practicing their profession according to the standards of the VOA Charter of the State Department. The Charter is adapted by all of our broadcasting services, whether we are talking about Radio Free Europe, Radio and TV Marti, Radio Free Asia; that is, that they follow the standards of any other professional journalistic organization.
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The Board acts as a fire wall when anyone, any body, whether it is another government agency, whether it is an outside government, whether it is an Ambassador, tries to influence that journalist from following their job or doing their job as they see properly under the VOA Charter.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Let me ask you. What type of fire wall exists between the Board of Governors and those who may have an interest, either economic or otherwise, in a country that you are broadcasting to?
What type of code do you have for the Board of Governors as it relates to an interest that a member of the board might have in terms of someone he or she might represent as a company here in the United States and their interest in one of those countries that you would broadcast to?
Mr. NATHANSON. When the Board members, as you know, are appointed by the President and go through the confirmation, they have to go through not only the White House and the Senate process on conflict of interest, but they have to divest of all holdings that would be in conflict with the role of international broadcasting. In addition, they cannot vote on a specific issue if there is any type of conflict, whether that be economic or any other type.
The Board members are all private citizens, part-time, and they do have other lives. All of that has to be disclosed. There is a compliance officer within the agency that any violations of board members, as well as any staff member, can be reported to or investigated. The Office of the Inspector General also has the ability to do this, and our Inspector General has brought any potential conflicts to my attention or to the other Board members that we know of.
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Mr. MENENDEZ. So if I represent that Archer Daniels Midland, by way of example, and Archer Daniels Midland wanted to see a different policy as it relates to Cuba, for example, and would want to have different programming going to Cuba than that that exists, you feel that there are enough safeguards that that does not happen?
Mr. NATHANSON. If Archer Daniels Midland tried to influence me to vote in a certain way on Cuba or any other type of programming, I would see that as a violation that a private enterprise, in this case an American corporation, is trying to influence my vote on a particular issue, and I would report that and so forth.
Mr. MENENDEZ. That would take it upon you in your own sense of propriety?
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes, in that case it would because I was the only one who would know about it.
Mr. MENENDEZ. But the appropriate vehicle if someone were concerned about such an action would be the Inspector General?
Mr. NATHANSON. It would be the Inspector General to investigate it as an outside source. There is an internal source as well, but if they wanted an outside source with an investigative staff it would be in the Inspector General.
We do have a compliance conflict officer within the legal department of the general counsel of our organization, and she is here today, but the Inspector General has the investigatory staff.
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Mr. MENENDEZ. Let me ask you another question. I would refer to your opening statement. What is the mission? Is it to get the news right, or is it to get it first?
Mr. NATHANSON. Well, that is a very interesting question, and I heard you raise that. I know several examples, and you pointed to one in the recent elections, where there was a rush to get the news, and they did not get it right in that case.
We believe that it is to report the news accurately and truthfully. That is what Roosevelt said when he first set up the Voice of America. Timeliness is important in reporting the news, but not timeliness to the degree that it interferes with accuracy.
There is no reason why reporters, all reporters who are trained and who are professional, cannot report a story or a partial story, but say that they do not have all the facts on the particular case, and there will be more forthcoming.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Would you agree with me that particularly in the context of surrogate broadcasting and broadcasting to countries that for the most part have closed societies and do not permit their own free press that we might, more than any other entity in terms of reporting, be more concerned about accuracy than we would about timeliness?
Mr. NATHANSON. I do not agree with you that more than the Voice of America versus the surrogates, but I do agree with you that all U.S. broadcasting should report because they are all reporting to countries that many of them, three quarters of them, do not have free press. So even though it is Voice of America reporting, it should be accurate information. I agree with you as far as the surrogates are concerned, as well as the Voice of America
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Mr. MENENDEZ. Let me ask you another question with reference to who ultimately determines programming and content.
Mr. NATHANSON. Okay.
Mr. MENENDEZ. You mentioned some of the difficulties in response to the other questions that some of our embassies brought. When the State Department goals differ from the mission requirements for broadcasting, on which do you proceed?
Mr. NATHANSON. Cheryl, why do you not as the co-chairman of the programming review? I have my point of view, but they have heard a lot of that. You have been on the board as long as I have.
This is Governor Halpern.
Ms. HALPERN. Apropos the State Department, there is the fire wall that exists between State and the journalists. However, to the extent that there is going to be an editorial position presented by the State Department reflecting the position of the U.S. Government, that is able to go on air with the recognition that it is in fact an editorial from the State Department.
With respect to the journalistic content of both Voice of America and all of the other surrogate entities reflecting on your question of accuracy, that prevails across the board and so nobody is influencing or flexing muscle to control or coerce the content of what is put forward.
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Mr. MENENDEZ. So other than the State Department's editorial position, which would be so described by any of the various services——
Mr. NATHANSON. It is only on Voice of America.
Ms. HALPERN. Only on Voice of America.
Mr. NATHANSON. It is not on the surrogates. It is in our Charter. It has to be on Voice of America.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Voice of America is the only entity that has that?
Mr. NATHANSON. State Department editorials. Yes.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Okay. None of the others do?
Mr. NATHANSON. No.
Mr. MENENDEZ. And so then none of the others, including also Voice of America, have to in essence pursue the mission of the State Department when it pursues its own broadcasting mission outside of that one caveat?
Mr. NATHANSON. It has to support United States foreign policy. The determination of the Board is that the Secretary of State, or in this case his representative, is on the Board. They have one out of nine votes.
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That voice is taken into account in all policies, but the State Department is not the sole dictator of foreign policy. Congress, the Administration, other agencies also have input in that, and it is ultimately for the Board to determine, even though the Board is monitored obviously by Congress in doing this.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Now, I listened to your answer before about no micro managing and setting overall policy, enacting the fire walls so that in fact if a question of the programming content and its mission is safeguarded from the influences that would come maybe from a Federal agency or some other entity of the government.
Does it see itself getting involved in employment issues not at the macro level that Ms. McKinney spoke of in terms of trying to make services more inclusive, but does it see yourself getting involved in the promotion, firing, disciplinary actions of individual employees within the context of any of the services?
Mr. NATHANSON. We have in the past. We have had complaints that reporters or language services have been biased. We have reviewed it. We have a language review process.
We have a program review function, and if the service or an individual employee, for whatever reason, is not following journalistic standards or is biased in some way and management of the individual radio service does not take action, the Board will then intercede on behalf as it has the authority to do. This also includes any area of discrimination.
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Mr. MENENDEZ. What if the management of the service took action and you disagreed with this action? What would you do then?
Mr. NATHANSON. If the management of the service took action but the Board, by majority vote of the Board, disagreed with the action, then the Board would supersede that or—depending what service we are talking about.
For example, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting is under the supervision of the IBB Director. Then the IBB Director would look into that and talk to the head of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting if that is the example.
Mr. MENENDEZ. I raise these questions, and then I will close, as someone who has been incredibly supportive of the overall mission. I raise these questions because to my mind, and maybe we need to look at the congressional mandate that we gave all of you.
It is in my mind that as you first described your position it is one of overall policy. It is one of setting—certainly strategically looking at how we enhance our broadcasting abroad, how we view it successfully in generic ways.
Certainly I am very happy to see as part of your mission the creation of fire walls because I can understand very clearly how that can be a problem as it relates to the content and professionalism that might very well be intended, but a series of things have taken place over several years as it relates to Cuba Broadcasting that in my mind goes far beyond those provisions and puts you—not you personally, but the Board of Governors—in a position that I do not think it should be and that Congress never meant it should be in.
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I have never seen—I have never seen—of all of the services a service that has gone through more reviews, reports, audits, investigations and whatnot, and in my mind a lot of that is just people who disagree with even its existence and/or the policy of providing surrogate information into Cuba.
Now, I can disagree with those people. I can respectfully disagree with them, but they can have their point of view. It should not affect the ability of an agency to promote.
I mean, I get letters from Dr. Orlando Bissett, a Cuban, one of those people who languish in Castro's jails whose simple crime is that he refused to participate in the state sponsored forced abortion medical system in Cuba—he is a doctor, medical doctor by profession—and who denounced and in doing so and has subsequently been sentenced to 3 years in jail.
Before this, part of his effort to know that the rest of the world knew about him and what he stood for and what his views and many of his colleagues' were was Radio Marti, and so I have a real problem with the history that we have had with the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and what I believe to be under siege.
I have a real problem when some people who I believe have interests that do not coincide with our purposes of broadcasting and who should clearly divulge what their interests are and who should make it very clear and maybe abstain on votes in that regard.
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I would like to pursue it with you. I do not want to belabor the hearing. I do appreciate your work in general, but I have real problems as it relates to what is going on and what I have been, you know, constantly spending too much time as far as I am concerned when our mission of getting to the Cuban people 90 miles away from our shores a more powerful effort to try to penetrate, to get a message across to nearly 11,000,000 people who have no access, a closed society, whose journalists are arrested on a daily basis, whose human rights activists have no voice and that virtually their only voice while the world sits in blissful ignorance of what is happening inside of Cuba is Radio and Television Marti.
I look forward to trying to work with you.
Mr. NATHANSON. I look forward to that, Congressman Menendez.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Menendez.
Mr. Schiff?
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. Nathanson, I want to thank you for your testimony today. I apologize that I had to testify before another Committee and had to run out periodically, but very much appreciate the work that you do and recognize the incredible importance of the work the BBG does around the world.
I have a few things I would like to talk with you on later. I spent half a year in eastern Europe on a Justice Department/State Department assignment several years ago and am kind of interested in some of the changes with respect to the Slovak broadcasts, but I recognize what a difficult job that you have and incredible balancing act and the quality of the work product and its remarkable importance.
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One of the things that really strikes me is the old adage, I guess, the more things change the more they stay the same. The world has changed dramatically since the 1940's, and yet the need and demand for the work you do has never been greater. It is just different. Indeed, not only different targets perhaps, but also different media like the Internet, which I think is going to make remarkable changes.
I just want to tell you how much I respect the mission that you have and the work you do and look forward to working with you on this Subcommittee and elsewhere.
Mr. NATHANSON. Thank you very much.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Schiff.
I just have a few follow up questions, and then my colleague has some as well. Just for the record, and maybe Mr. Goble might want to come back and just briefly speak to this.
Last year while Mr. Babitsky was being harassed so severely by the Russians at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Bucharest we collectively, with the Russians being very disconcerted by the action, gave him the leadership journalism award for the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.
Much was made of it, you know, through speeches and by honoring his wife, but it begs the question as to whether or not some of our other journalists might be less tenacious and heroic in getting the news out in his case on Chechnya.
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I would just say for the record, and I say this about so many of you, but Paul has been one of the most candid, honest, straightforward people. I mean, we have had him, just so it reflects in the record, at hearings of the Helsinki Commission when we wanted to know the unvarnished truth about what was going on in places like Chechnya, when we were getting a lot of spin doctors trying to suggest this, that or the other thing.
I want you to know, Paul, that your opinions are very highly valued around here, but if you could just speak to that issue?
Mr. GOBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The extent of intimidation against journalists when they are all by themselves out in the city or in the countryside where there is no embassy, there are not any other journalists, is something that each journalist has to face every day.
What we see from our journalists, most of whom are incredibly courageous. I do not think I would be as courageous personally in the face of what they are up against. Are some of them intimidated? No doubt. Do people make choices that it might not be a good idea to follow this story up? That happens.
What is amazing to me are the risks that our people run every day to get the news out, but the level of intimidation, the level of coercion in the Russian Federation, in Ukraine, in central Asia, is significantly higher today than it was even a year ago.
Worse, the Babitsky case, which we are all very grateful for what you have done in support of him. Right now the Putin people messed up. This was their first crisis. They did not know how to handle it. Mr. Putin did not have the staff together, and they simply screwed up.
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We have been told by Russian officials and by people in Moscow who pay attention to these things that were that case to be repeated, we would not be talking about talking to Mr. Babitsky again; that the fact is that they are prepared to be far more brutal. As the world's attention has turned away from Chechnya, the terrible things that are going on there have increased, not decreased. But it is not just Chechnya. There are places across the Russian Federation, across our broadcast region, where people are told it would be a very bad idea to cover this.
The good news about our service is that because we pay our journalists, because we have stringers, because the money is our salary, they are not subject to one of the greatest temptations that affects journalists in this region. The average journalist in the Russian Federation today makes just over $50 a month. Do you know how easy it is to buy a story?
Earlier this week Moscow Times reported that the 13 newspapers published a story about a store that did not exist because their journalists were prepared to take money. This was done by an advertising agency simply to promote itself, of course, but, on the other hand, it highlights the extent to which poorly paid journalists are incredibly under pressure domestically, and it is why our journalists get paid by us who are on the front line. They are courageous. They are under more pressure.
I hope we never have a case as frightening as the Babitsky matter again, but we have cases every day that worry us.
Mr. SMITH. I thank you for that answer.
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Let me just comment. You mentioned fire walls before. You know during reorganization we went to great pains to insure the proper fire walls were in effect, but I would just, going back to our earlier conversation, hope that those fire walls do not extend to jamming. Its content, but not jamming.
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes.
Mr. SMITH. We will continue to press the State Department as well to be more forthcoming, especially Vietnam and some of the others. I raised that myself when I was in Vietnam and met with our Ambassador, and he periodically does come back here for consultations. I hope that all of us on the Subcommittee will do so.
Let me ask one final question. I saw the memo from Steven Stefanovich to you, Mr. Nathanson, dated January 19, and without objection I would like to make it a part of the record. He points out it is regarding the proposed cessation of the Voice of America Uzbek language service. He writes very briefly, and I will only quote a few excerpts.
''As the most populous nation in central Asia and a country with a strong national identity, Uzbekistan is a major player in the region. It should remain a priority for our information efforts. Uzbek speakers are the most numerous ethnic group in the region, and thus the VOA Uzbek language service has a wide potential audience.
''One of our highest priorities in Uzbekistan has been the development of a civil society in democratic institutions, including a responsible, independent media. VOA Uzbek language broadcasts provide objective information from the outside world to journalists and other influential opinion makers in a society where access to information is still tightly controlled.
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''The focus of RFE/RL broadcasts is different from VOA dispatches, and a continuation of RFE/RL's Uzbek broadcasts does not compensate for a loss of VOA programming.''
I would note parenthetically earlier when we were talking about Turkey you were talking about overlap. Obviously surrogate broadcasting, you know, there may be some, but they do have two, as we all know, entirely different missions.
I will go on with the brief quote.
''We have been working for some time to persuade the government of Uzbekistan to honor its 1992 agreement with VOA to permit direct broadcasting. To terminate the VOA service at this juncture conveys precisely the wrong message, suggesting we are backing off in our efforts to encourage a free flow of information in the region.''
Finally,
''I, therefore . . .'',
and again this is our Ambassador at Large, special advisor to the Secretary for the newly independent states, Steven Stefanovich.
''I, therefore, urge that the BBG defer any decision to eliminate the Uzbek service until there has been an appropriate opportunity to coordinate fully with our embassy in Tajikistan and to fully analyze such a step in terms of U.S. Government policy priorities in the region.''
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You might want to respond to that, but I would hope that you would reconsider. That is why I asked you earlier, you know, how much in cement. Thankfully, it is not all in cement.
Let us try to help you to work to up the funding. I agree with you that Middle East broadcasting is important. It is very, very important, but not to the detriment of other areas that we have vital interests and where democracy has at least some chance. That chance is diminished, it would seem to me, if this broadcasting were to be eliminated.
Mr. NATHANSON. Governor Pattiz, do you have anything to add on Uzbek? You were co-chair of the language review committee.
Mr. PATTIZ. Thank you. I am Norm Pattiz. In my day job I am the Chairman of Westwood One, which is the largest radio network in America. We are the owners of NBC Radio, the Mutual Broadcasting System, and we manage CBS and distribute CNN.
I just want to say that since I am the new kid on the block and have only been on the board for the last 4 months, it is a great honor for me to be able to serve my country in an area that I feel that I have some expertise and to be able to work with a group of professionals that I have met on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which in the short period of time that I have been on it has seen every decision come down by unanimous vote of a bipartisan board, so I would simply like to say what an honor it is to be able to serve on the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
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As it relates to Uzbek, let me see if I cannot kind of give you the overall—let me give you an overall feeling of why talking about Uzbek is so difficult as it is talking about almost any other service that we provide through U.S. international broadcasting.
When I first was asked to be on this board, the first thing I asked was what is the budget because I wanted to know what kind of an impact, you know, this board really could have. I was told that it was $450,000,000. I compared that to the budget that I have of running my own company, and I thought well, you know, $450,000,000. We can do some serious stuff here.
Of course, what I did not realize was that we were broadcasting in 61 different languages, you know, to countries all over the world and that when you start to divide $450,000,000 up by the types of services and the mission that is involved it winds up becoming almost an impossible task.
When we on language review, when I was asked to co-chair the language review subcommittee in my, you know, first go round on this board, we started taking a look at all the various possibilities, realizing that there were other things that the board was very committed to, not the least of which was maintaining and building our services on the African continent, creating something in the Middle East which did not exist. We were looking for areas where we could redirect some resources in order to do things that we felt that were serious priorities.
What I have learned in my short time on the board is we have a service there where once we go in it is almost impossible to get out, not because our mission may not have been completed or because we may not even be having much of an impact in terms of the kind, the size or the type of audience that we are reaching, but because it creates a whole lot of goodwill issues that we are, frankly, you know, not at this particular time funded to be able to really deal with.
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The point is how do we take a look at the Uzbek service, and I agree with you on every single thing you have said. I think we all do on the board, but how do we match that up with the other priorities that we are mandated to look at on an annual basis by Congress to determine how we are, you know, to go forward because in many cases a lot of the directions that we get with Congress do not come along with funds attached to it.
So there is not a thing that I disagree with you about on the Uzbek situation. It is just that when we were sitting there looking at the various priorities, looking for ways to maintain and enhance services in other areas, we had to make some judgmental decisions, and these were the decisions that we made, quite frankly.
Mr. SMITH. Just to follow up very briefly, you are talking to a panel, and I think all of us are pretty much of one accord, and it is bipartisan, that if we can have the data from you of what is going into your thinking as to what you feel you could actually accomplish we will fight for that money.
I mean, when there was an effort to make Radio Free Asia 24 hours and to significantly boost its timeliness, I offered that amendment. We got a lot of good information from, you know, people at Radio Free Asia as to what they feel they could accomplish if and only if they had a certain amount of resources.
This one hit me somewhat out of the blue. I have had the hearings. I have met with, you know, we mentioned the caucuses earlier. Yesterday I met with the former foreign minister of Azerbaijan. You know, we are talking there about a dictatorship and a son who hopefully is more benign, but we do not know.
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They set up the last election was an absolute farce, and it did not have any impact on the Council of Europe or the Europeans, and 2 days later they give them the green light and say you are okay. I mean, all the wrong messages.
What I am saying is that since we really have not achieved democracy, you know, I think we can make a fighting case rather than blipping something up, which is fine, at the detriment of something else. That is my only point I wanted to make on that.
Ms. HALPERN. If I can respond, Congressman?
The fact of the matter is we have to look at the 1994 International Broadcasting Act, and there Congress mandated that we are obligated, the BBG, to do this annual strategic review. Specifically, the language calls for us to consult with the State Department and to make a determination regarding the addition and deletion of language services.
What is relevant with respect to that are the specifications of the act that broadcasting, and I am going to quote here, ''be designed so as to effectively reach a significant audience, be conducted in accordance with the highest professional standards of broadcast journalism, be based on reliable information about its potential audience and allocate funds appropriated for international broadcasting activities among the various elements.''
When we do the annual audience research and we find that we have no listenership in a given targeted market and we have two services broadcasting into that country, we have to somehow deal with our responsibility to fulfill the mandate that you have tasked us with and so we are not being capricious.
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It is a significant study that is taking place to try to provide the enhancements that our entity Directors have requested, given the limited budget and resources that we have in fulfilling the mandate of the International Broadcasting Act.
Mr. SMITH. I do understand fully. Again, as I said earlier about thinking outside the box, when our Ambassador at Large, and I have met him. I think he is a very fine person——
Mr. NATHANSON. He is.
Mr. SMITH [continuing]. And knows the region. That is his focus. Sees this as a major step backwards and simply asks for deferral, you know, it is worth paying attention to.
Mr. NATHANSON. And we would be more than happy to work with you and the other Members of the Committee to try to find more funds so we do not have to make these decisions. We can think out of the box, which would be very exciting for all the members of the Board.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Nathanson.
Cynthia?
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Could you tell me how you measure your listenership?
Mr. NATHANSON. We measure the listenership by using independent research organizations that measure weekly listenership of each service on a cumulative basis.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Is that done by focus groups? What is the mechanism?
Mr. NATHANSON. No. That is done through standard research techniques. In addition, we do do focus groups, but on how we measure the audience it is done through survey techniques, either in person survey or phone surveys, depending on what countries we are talking about and where we are allowed to do this.
In China we are not allowed to do this, for example, but in other countries we are, and we use research firms that specialize in very difficult countries to do this. In some countries it is very easy to do, and we can use standard research techniques with adequate samples to reflect all the audience.
Ms. MCKINNEY. So now what is the reliability of your information in say Uzbekistan?
Mr. NATHANSON. Do you have a comment on that, Governor Pattiz, on the research?
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Mr. PATTIZ. Well, I would say that from the information that we got there is no question that any kind of research that you do there is an awful lot of, you know, possibility for error as we just——
Ms. MCKINNEY. The question is how did you get the information?
Mr. PATTIZ. Well, we got the information through using the independent contractors that we used to research——
Ms. MCKINNEY. In Uzbekistan?
Mr. PATTIZ [continuing]. In each of those areas. The one that we did was in Uzbekistan.
The question of the reliability. You know, we have that question in each area that we deal with, but I think that when it shows nothing, okay, and when other services are showing something and a significant amount of something, whether the information is absolutely reliable or not completely reliable is pretty indicative of the fact that we are not making much of an impact in the area, which is, I think, one of the reasons why we looked at that in that way.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Could you provide us that information as to who that independent contractor was and background information on other contracts they had done and the reliability in other areas?
Mr. NATHANSON. Yes, and we will provide you with exact research documents themselves if you would like to see them as well because we also research other international broadcasting in the same surveys, and you might be interested in that as well.
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Ms. MCKINNEY. Yes, we would be.
Mr. NATHANSON. I would be happy to provide that.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thanks.
Now, what about the information that has at least come to me and perhaps to the Chairman as well about intimidation of Voice of America employees by Uzbek officials? Are you familiar with that?
Mr. NATHANSON. No, I am not.
Sandy, are you familiar with that?
Mr. UNGAR. We do not have——
Mr. NATHANSON. This is Sandy Ungar, the Director of Voice of America. Are you familiar with it, Sandy?
Mr. UNGAR. We do not have staff on the ground in Uzbekistan. We have an Uzbek service here in Washington. We have had stringers in Uzbekistan, part-time correspondents, and they have been intimidated by the Uzbek government, yes.
Ms. MCKINNEY. So you do acknowledge that your employees have been intimidated?
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Mr. UNGAR. Again, they are not full-time employees. They are in the journalistic terminology stringers, part-time correspondents for us, and they have been intimidated over time in Uzbekistan, yes. I do not think anyone has any illusions about the situation of press freedom in Uzbekistan.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Director Nathanson, could you tell me what you are doing to promote diversity?
Mr. NATHANSON. When I became Chairman, and I was not even aware of the past problems that USIA had had specifically in this, and I was not only surprised and shocked, but we had a session of the board where we dealt with this when I became Chairman, and we issued clear policies.
We had those policies not only distributed, but printed in large posters and distributed and have to be shown in all offices where we have employees overseas as well as here talking specifically about our policies on discrimination, diversity, hiring, but not minority contracting, which you asked about. That was not addressed in that.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Is it true that you have the top 20 people in the Senior Executive Service, of them 19 are white and 17 are male and all 20 are native English speakers with little or no broadcasting experience?
Mr. NATHANSON. In the BBG or the Voice of America or the IBB?
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Ms. MCKINNEY. In the IBB Senior Executive Service. The top 20.
Mr. NATHANSON. I do not know. We can get you information on every agency, as well as the IBB, and give you those statistics, which I believe you requested earlier, but I cannot answer that question yes or no.
Ms. MCKINNEY. That is the information that I have been given.
Mr. NATHANSON. That may be accurate.
Ms. MCKINNEY. And then could you tell me finally is it true that the IBB invested over $1,000,000 in a word processing program that has turned out to be a complete failure and is now being replaced by products that were available a long time ago, and no one at the IBB is being held accountable for that?
Mr. CONNIFF. We would need specifics, but——
Mr. NATHANSON. Come forward.
Mr. CONNIFF [continuing]. We will look into that.
Mr. NATHANSON. Come forward.
Mr. CONNIFF. We would be happy to look into that, but we would need more specifics.
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Ms. MCKINNEY. Who is this again?
Mr. CONNIFF. My name is Brian Conniff. I am the Acting Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Brian?
Mr. CONNIFF. Conniff.
Ms. MCKINNEY. C–A–N–I–F?
Mr. CONNIFF. C–O–N–N–I–F–F.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Okay. I will give you the information that I have, but I would think that a $1,000,000 word processing program would not be difficult for you to find in your records.
Mr. CONNIFF. It should not be. I just do not know whether it fulfills the other part of your statement.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Okay. We will dialogue on this because this goes back to how you use the funds that you are given.
Mr. CONNIFF. Absolutely. We will be happy to look into it.
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Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Schiff?
Mr. SCHIFF. Yes.
Mr. NATHANSON. We would be happy to look into that specifically because I have not heard of that before, and I would like to know much more about it so I will personally look into it as well. Thank you.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you.
Mr. SCHIFF. Actually, I wanted to follow up on one of Ms. McKinney's earlier questions because I was wondering the same thing about how do you evaluate the reach effectiveness of your broadcasts.
I would imagine there are several different measurements. There is the technological question, for example, in countries that are using a jamming technology of how often are you getting through. Then there is the question of even if there is no jamming how many people are tuning in when there is no impediment to their doing so except they simply may not want to listen, and then I guess there is the question of when they do tune in how effective is the broadcasting in changing attitudes, views, education.
When you do your evaluation component, whether it is deciding one language to curtail, move to another language or another region, how do you do that analysis? How do you evaluate not only the technological reach of the broadcast, but the effectiveness in terms of changing attitudes?
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Mr. NATHANSON. You are absolutely right that there are a lot of factors that go into that because you can have a very needed and important service, but because of where it is located the government, North Korea being an example, will not allow us to come in there, and there is not a nearby area from which we can broadcast.
There are other areas where we have been kicked out of broadcasting where we have gone to neighboring countries that allow us to rent space or have a frequency, and we broadcast into that country that has not allowed us to come in there, so this is all part of the equation.
The other thing is in many countries there has been a shift to FM broadcasting as being the most popular media, and it is a shorter line of sight signal and so we need to have FM signals within the country to have maximum reach because the habits of the listeners are to listen to FM or AM, but not shortwave. So we have had to also shift our affiliates or find FM outlets in order to get our message across, which would affect these surveys and this research that we are doing.
We look at all of these areas, and all of these areas are evaluated as part of the language review process, as well as our expanded affiliate relations effort, which is an ongoing effort throughout the world to get us more affiliates to carry our programming so that we can reach a mass audience in a particular targeted market.
Mr. SCHIFF. Do you have any reliable information, for example, in those countries that do jam the signal where you are nonetheless able to penetrate to some degree? Do you have any reliable way through vendors or otherwise of finding out actually how many people are listening?
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Mr. NATHANSON. We would be happy to talk about jamming with the Committee, but I would rather not do it in a public forum such as this because of some of the information we have on the effectiveness of signal, not the size of the audience.
We do have techniques of finding out effectiveness of their jamming, of the country that is jamming us, and how we do that I would rather not discuss in open session, but can do that either personally or privately, however the Chair would prefer. We do do that. We do the best we can.
Mr. SCHIFF. I mean in general terms, though, in countries that jam do you have some mechanism of getting reliable data about how many people are actually tuning in?
Mr. NATHANSON. Not reliable data, but we do get data. In some countries, even though we are being jammed, we are able to do research because research—you are able to do research in those countries. In some countries, China being one that jams us, Cuba being another that jams us, we are not able to get as effective research.
For example, in Cuba we interview people that have left Cuba and who have come to the United States. We interview them as to their listening habits and their neighbors' and whether the broadcasting gets through and so forth, but that is not accurate research information. That is anecdotal, but that is all we can do in the case of Cuba or in China. In other places we are able actually to do research.
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Mr. SCHIFF. And on perhaps a more difficult question of the effectiveness regardless of the reach of the broadcast, how do you evaluate that?
Mr. NATHANSON. Well, it is a long process. Cheryl or Norm, would you briefly describe how we measure the effectiveness? It is a whole long criteria of the evaluation that we do.
Ms. HALPERN. The research that we engage in in terms of the type of questions that need to be answered from the listeners is one way in which of gauging the effectiveness of the broadcasting, and you would really—I mean, it would be a pleasure to provide you with a sample, for example, of the length, and we are talking about pages of questions for you to define your listening habits, what you think of the programming, the content.
If you do not listen, who do you listen to instead? Why? Are you listening to the BBC or Deutche Welle? Are you not listening to any international broadcaster at all? It is an in-depth survey that is conducted.
In addition, we then have, as Chairman Nathanson referenced, the focus groups that are taking place in country. Finally, there are also professionals that are hired in country to listen to the programming, listen to the content and also to then give their professional critique of what we are producing.
Then, of course, you have the mail, both the physical mail, the e-mail and the phone calls to call in shows where you are able to gauge the response of the listener. What I find fascinating is when you reunite people, for example, in Rwanda and Burundi and you hear the accolades, the thank yous, that because of your programming this reunification of a family torn apart by the violence was able to occur.
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Or, in the case of the Serbian crisis when CNN in fact was reporting it referenced the broadcasting of VOA and RFE/RL that was so effective, and this was from a refugee camp, in providing the vital information as to how to provide food, how to find medical supplies.
Going back in time, because I am the longest serving member on this board, having previously been on the BIB——
Mr. SMITH. And what state are you from?
Ms. HALPERN. What state am I from? The great state of New Jersey. In fact, Mr. Smith swore me in in Beijing onto the BBG at the U.N. Conference on the Status of Women.
Going back to those earlier anecdotes, which most Americans are unaware of, you have to know that, for example, the President of Estonia nominated Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for the Nobel Peace Prize.
You go and reflect on President Yeltsin, who at the time of the coup attempt in Russia was able to be heard by the Muscovite population only because of the telephone line that existed between RFE/RL in Munich and the Yeltsin White House, and that is how the people were able to come forward and stop the tanks.
Effectiveness is measured in such a diverse manner across the board. We take it all into account when we then make our decisions about enhancements, deletions, which are so very difficult, and going forward and testifying before Congress. Everything has to be considered, and it is not an easy equation.
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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Chairman, you did a great job on that swearing in.
Ms. HALPERN. Thank you.
Ms. MCKINNEY. I just have one final question or one thought particularly as I heard the references to CNN and woke up to shocking and appalling news stories that the Defense Intelligence Agency CIOPS operation had placed some of their agents inside the newsroom at CNN and I presume were feeding the American people their psychological operations.
I am wondering. Does this happen with you guys? Do you allow this kind of penetration?
Ms. HALPERN. I certainly hope not.
Mr. NATHANSON. Norm, would you like to answer that question?
Mr. PATTIZ. I want that question because I have been on the board for 4 months, so obviously I have no idea, but I simply would——
Mr. NATHANSON. I thought you worked for CIOPS.
Mr. PATTIZ. Thank you. You know, it is interesting that you mention that because Cheryl and I just came back from a trip to the Middle East where we visited Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
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We met with a number of journalists and a number of broadcasters and a number of ministers of communications and so forth, and a lot of questions that were asked to us about first they wanted to know why we were there, and we told them that we were there because we felt that U.S. international broadcasting needed to increase its presence within the region, and we were there on a fact finding mission to talk to people and watch and learn and listen.
What you are talking about is something that U.S. international broadcasting is saddled with. I will let CNN fight their own battles. There is a perception certainly in the Middle East and in other places around the world that U.S. international broadcasting, be that Voice of America or any of the surrogates, is simply a mouthpiece for the United States Government, and that is something that, of course, we have to deal with all the time.
We talk about our mission. Our mission is to promote democracy through the accurate, free flow of credible, reliable information, news and information, and so we tell people that, but it is something that we are faced with all the time.
I mean, obviously, you know, if we were aware of it it would make our jobs a whole lot more difficult, but we found in the Middle Eastern region, for instance, right now we are currently reaching the Middle East with a one size fits all kind of approach, one Arabic service that covers 21 languages 7 hours a day in Arabic provided by shortwave and a mediumwave signal out of Rhodes that is wholly inadequate.
There is a tremendous feeling on the part of the entire board that that is an area of the world that we need to focus more of our attention and more of our resources. You know, since I have now spent 10 days there, of course, I am an expert on that region, and I can tell you that in watching what was going on whether one speaks Arabic or not, one can tell that there is a media war that is being fought in that area, and we are not even a participant.
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There is a tremendous need for us to be involved in that area. We had some great opportunities to discuss waves of providing signals into the area through the use of FM signals in various areas within the region. We are talking about if you want to talk about outside of the box thinking, we talked to the satellite providers. We can find ways to get in by using Nilesat. We can find ways to get in by using cable systems that exist within the region.
The government of Qatar will make an FM signal available to us. We are in very close—we have a very close relationship with the government of Oman, who has made an FM signal also available to us. There are a lot of things that we could be doing in that area where we could have significant impact.
Those are the kinds of things that when we go through the language review process there are many more things that we could be doing, you know, on the continent of Africa. By the same token, one of the areas which is a real bright spot for us in terms of what we are doing with limited funds is on the continent of Africa, so, you know, we have to look at—you know, we are having great success for a relatively limited investment in that area.
Would it not be great to invest more and have more success? Sure. If we had the money to do that, we ought to do it, but there are other hot spots in the world where we are doing nothing, and there are other places where we have been and maybe our mission has been accomplished.
We are private citizens, and we are just doing the best job that we can with the information that we get. Obviously every single time we make a decision it not only affects our ability to be able to do the job of international broadcasting, but affects people's lives. You know, whether it is 34 people that are being laid off, you know, or whether it is closing an entire service, you know, nobody likes to be on the other side of that.
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All I can tell you is with the information that we have gotten in the short period of time that I have seen this board function, I think they do a very, very responsible job of that. You know, hopefully with your help——
Let me say one other thing because, you know, a number of things have been said about the State Department. I would absolutely be remiss if I did not say that the cooperation from the State Department on this trip to the Middle East was outstanding. They helped us in every single area that we asked for their help and in some areas where they did not, and I believe that is because they feel it is in their interest for us to be there.
Obviously, you know, I am sure there are cases where that is not the case, but, you know, I just wanted to put my pitch in for the State Department and all the help they gave us in the Middle East.
Anyway, thank you.
Mr. NATHANSON. But no member of CIOPS is a member of our staff as far as we know.
Mr. SMITH. Again, lest there be any wrong impression, nor are we—nor am I—in any way against the State Department. It is just that we have found when it comes to human rights, especially human rights and broadcasting, that the State Department demurs to dictatorships nine times out of ten, and that drives me nuts.
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Mr. PATTIZ. I have never liked those guys anyway.
Mr. SMITH. I mean, all of us who have fought that battle, and I have been in Congress now 21 years. I will never forget when we were fighting against Nicholas Charchezko in Romania. His picture adorned one State Department office after another, and we were told how he was different from the Moscow line.
We found out when Ian Bichepa wrote his book that that was all a ruse, but when we raised questions about the securitate and religious freedom infringements, which were mega infractions, we were told that we were just whistling Dixie.
You know, I have learned the hard way. I have learned definitely the hard way when it comes to human rights. Jamming with China, Vietnam. I mean, we have raised those same questions, and we come up to that same oh, is that a problem? When it comes to accommodating visits and all, they are outstanding.
Let me just say one other thing, and your point was very well taken about the Arabic countries, that we not look at them monolithically. That is the same mistake we made with the central and eastern European countries, the so-called satellite nations. They were all independent countries that got merged into a hodgepodge by the Soviet authorities, but to recognize their diversity. I commend you for that in that that is what you are seeking to do.
Mr. PATTIZ. Let me just say that what we are examining are the ways to be able to have a local presence in a number of different areas throughout the region, a regional presence and an international presence through the creation of a Middle Eastern service that will fulfill all of those functions.
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Mr. SMITH. If there are no further questions for the panelists, I want to thank you very much for your patience.
Mr. NATHANSON. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Mr. SMITH. I look forward to working with you on some of those outstanding issues still.
Mr. NATHANSON. We look forward to working with all of you.
Mr. SMITH. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4 p.m. the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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