Wrestling, Bikinis And Soft Power

Michael Hedges July 7, 2011 Follow on Twitter

International broadcasting remains an important element of soft power diplomacy. Nations want to tell their story to peoples around the world. Those goals remain the same even as the means of telling those stories has changed dramatically.

Fifty years ago shortwave radio bands were dotted with voices from afar. The appeal was to the sympathetic, at most, and the curious, at least. Where radio receivers were communal or even risky they were highly valued. International broadcasting thrived on the shrinking of the post-World War world and generous government funding.

In tune with the times, those governments have switched off the lumbering shortwave transmitters in favor of satellite television and local FM radio rebroadcasting. More recently, the move to internet distribution has changed the face of international broadcasting. The “soft power” message is also undergoing transformation.

German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) ended radio broadcasting to Russia July 1st. DW isn’t the first major international broadcaster to shut down a language service, to Russia or elsewhere. The Voice of America (VOA) ended radio broadcasting in Turkish the same day.

“Ending  broadcasting does not mean reducing the presence of Deutsche Welle on the Russian media scene,” said DW’s Russian and Eastern European department director Ingo Mannteufel in an interview with Russian news portal lenta.ru (June 26). “On the contrary, we want to expand and strengthen its position and so we go to the internet, in social networks and in television. Russia was and remains one of the most important target regions for Deutsche Welle.”

“In the past few years we have witnessed a sharp reduction in the total number of listeners to shortwave radio, including our programs,” he offered. “At the same time, visitors to our online portal has grown  from year to year so we want to direct more resources to online development. This means that there will be more good online materials, more videos and more time will be devoted to the development of our Facebook and Vkontakte communities.”

Local FM radio distribution has been a preferred choice by many international broadcasters, FM receivers being widely available. The BBC, Radio France International (RFI), VOA and others have developed networks of FM rebroadcasters, funding some, that carry programs and news bulletins. “Obtaining a license for FM broadcasting in Russia for an international broadcaster like Deutsche Welle is a very difficult task for political reasons, “ explained Mannteufel.

The VOA Turkish radio service also ended July 1st, after 69 years. “This was an important decision for us emotionally,” said VOA Turkish manager Hülya Polat to Hurriyet (July 1). “We all have emotional ties with radio.” Like other region specific services of international broadcasters, VOA Turkish lives on via the internet.

The BBC World Service has cut several regional broadcast offerings, first mostly in Eastern Europe closing Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Kazakh, Polish, Greek and Hungarian services in 2005. The Romanian service closed in 2007. Emphasis, as with many international broadcasters, was shifting to the Middle East and television. The BBC Russian Service closed in March 2011 and the Turkish service closed in May. Austerity budget cuts by the Conservative Party government and restructured funding away from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the BBC general fund threatened cuts to more services. Under some diplomatic pressure, the FCO found enough money to save the BBC Hindi Service as well as funding for Arabic programming.

“Following significant cuts to the central government grants that support the World Service and BBC Monitoring, we have had to reduce the number of posts in these areas by 387,” wrote BBC head of news Helen Boaden in an email to staff (July 5). “We have done all we can to reduce the number of compulsory redundancies by offering voluntary redundancy and redeploying staff elsewhere. Regrettably the extra funding for the World Service announced last week is on its own not enough to allow us to avoid having to continue with this process.” Members of the National Union of Journalists voted for an industrial action protesting the job cuts.

With another austerity plan the Dutch government cut the Radio Netherlands Worldwide budget by 70%, effectively closing most of its services. At the same time the Russian and, in particular, Chinese governments are vigorously expanding their international media services. Russian English language international television channel RT (formerly Russia Today) has distinguished itself by fomenting conspiracy theories.

“Most people still get their news from TV and radio,” said United States Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee (March 7) as they debated funding US international broadcasting. Illuminating the struggles of soft power diplomacy in times of a zillion television channels, Secretary Clinton told the American Senators an instructive story:

“We are engaged in an information war. You know, during the Cold War, we did a great job in getting America’s message out. After the Berlin Wall fell, we said, "OK, fine, enough of that. You know, we’ve done it. We’re done." And unfortunately, we are paying a big price for it. And our private media cannot fill that gap. In fact, our private media, particularly cultural programming, often works at counter purposes to what we truly are as Americans and what our values are. I remember having an Afghan general tell me that the only thing he thought about Americans is that all the men wrestled and the women walked around in bikinis, because the only TV he ever saw was Baywatch and World Wide Wrestling. So, we are in an information war, and we are losing that war. I’ll be very blunt in my assessment. Al Jazeera is winning. The Chinese have opened up a global English-language and multi-language television network. The Russians have opened up an English-language network. I’ve seen it in a few countries, and it’s quite instructive. We are cutting back. The BBC is cutting back.”

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