EVENTS

Date:	Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Time:	9:00 AM -- 1:30 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

May 2004

Selling America

Since September 11, 2001, Americans have begun to face up to the growing problem of anti-Americanism throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Polls consistently indicate high levels of hostility to the United States, and the problem has only intensified since the Iraq war began. One answer to the problem has been to improve U.S. communication with the Arab and Muslim world through U.S. government-sponsored broadcasting. Television is used to send the U.S. message to millions, as well as to counter the institutional hostility of regionally owned networks such as al Jazeera and al Arabiya. But does it work? Can the United States replay the success of broadcasting during the Cold War? And is the Middle East really fertile ground for the American message?

At a May 11 AEI conference, two panels of government, media and public policy experts, including Mark Helmke, Salameh Nematt, Jeremy Sharp, Ken Tomlinson, Danielle Pletka, Andy Kohut, Mouafac Harb, Judy Milestone, Judy Siegel, and James K. Glassman discussed the role of broadcasting in public diplomacy and the methods to measure success of U.S. public communication efforts. The discussions were followed by a keynote speech by Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies.

Panel 1: The Role of Broadcasting in Public Diplomacy

Salameh Nematt
Al Hayat

The problem facing U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East and the Arab world is a political challenge rather than a media one.  The overwhelming majority of media organizations in the Arab world are owned and run by governments.  The Arab media has been, with very few exceptions, extremely hostile to U.S. and Western policies since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser. This hostility is partly due to the U.S. alliance with Israel, partly due to culture, and partly due to the legacies of colonialism.

The proliferation of the satellite channels has given a louder voice to anti-American sentiment, as Arab governments are happy to let the media criticize anyone except themselves. Internal and regional reflection is severely lacking.  Even in a relatively pro-western country like Jordan, an editor in chief of a weekly was sent to jail for fifteen days pending his trial because he wrote an article "disturbing relations" between Jordan and Saudi Arabia. 

Ironically, it seems that the Arab media can function freely only under occupation.  There was no media access to the massacre of Kurds in Syria two months ago or to the ethnic cleansing taking place in Western Sudan. Nobody is covering the Irani occupation of the three Arab islands belonging to the United Arab Emirates, even though blocking that waterway paralyzes the oil market. But you will find plenty of news from inside Iraq and Israel. Audiences in the Arab world are forced to focus solely on a regional agenda that means nothing to their daily lives.  Even al Jazeera has had bureaus closed because they tried to cover national issues rather than broader, regional ones. 

In order for the U.S. public diplomacy to succeed, it must report on issues that the pan-Arab media and the national media in the Arab world are not covering. Dictators are not going to provide a balanced view to their public.  Governments in the region are not going to allow al Hurra to expose stories of torture and massacre. Democracy cannot be built through cooperation with dictators, because democracy works to undermine them.  Because the United States is heavily involved on all levels with regional governments, the Arab public is reluctant to believe that it truly seeks democracy.  The United States must decide outright between promoting democracy or preserving strategic interests. If al Hurra is going to present itself as an alternative media, it will need secure political backing from the American government.  This is the only way that public diplomacy can take a different course.

Jeremy Sharp
Congressional Research Service

Al Jazeera may not deliberately misreport events or emotionalize the news, but many analysts have long documented that on al Jazeera, the United States is portrayed as a neocolonialist power in the Middle East, thwarting the aspirations of the common Arabs in alliance with Israel.  But al Jazeera has also aired Islamist opposition figures, earning it a pro-Zionist label. The Arab media walks a fine line between being independent and being state-controlled, but given the limited availability of advertising revenue, they need wealthy patrons to support themselves.

This does not excuse poor American broadcasting, however. American broadcasting in the Middle East seems far more concerned with damage control than it does with a long-term public diplomacy strategy.  Arab attitudes toward the American government differ from attitudes toward Americans, their institutions, and their popular culture.  The United States needs to take a hard look at our ability to communicate with the Arab world, both culturally and linguistically: in the entire State Department, there are maybe a handful of people who would feel comfortable debating in Arabic.

The United States also needs to question whether it can promote democracy and undertake public diplomacy simultaneously.  The United States is seeking to influence public attitudes on the formation and execution of its policies while openly touting political reform in the Middle East.  Can U.S. broadcasters provide hard-hitting interviews with foreign officials, asking them tough questions about human rights, instead of pandering to political sensitivities?

Overall, the challenge for U.S.-funded broadcasting will be to do a better job than the Arab media at presenting opposing views of issues and maintaining an American identity without appearing to impose that identity on the Arab world.

Ken Tomlinson
Broadcasting Board of Governors

Al Hurra's viewership in the Middle East is expanding.  A U.S.-financed poll found that 29 percent of satellite-equipped households in seven countries watch al Hurra. When this media effort was being planned, President Bush remarked that it would be "the most important public diplomacy initiative of this administration."  He views it as a pivotal tool in the war against terror. But this will be a long fight: the Berlin Wall did not come down overnight, nor did the Cold War end quickly.  Broadcasting initiatives or public diplomacy do not often pay dividends in the short-term.  But that does not mean that they are not achieving the ends to which they are intended.

Mark Helmke
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee

The United States desperately need to reassess its public diplomacy efforts. American public diplomacy lacks strategy, vision, and funding; it suffers from bureaucratic disorganization, political infighting, and an insular Pentagon leadership. Public diplomacy at the State Department is no better, and also operates without strong and sustained leadership.  The Pentagon spent $200 million on the Iraqi Media Network, but this money went to contractors with technical knowledge of broadcasting who had no training in programming. 

Managed information dissemination is no longer the answer, and it is vital for the various broadcasting entities to be consolidated into one agency.  Unlike the Cold War, American public diplomacy broadcasting now occurs in highly competitive marketplaces, and foreign audiences are suspicious of broadcasting owned by the U.S. government. It is essential to reconsider whether we want to compete with regional broadcasters, or whether we should focus on providing programming to those already working in the marketplace instead.

Danielle Pletka
AEI

The biggest problem that many outsiders perceive, particularly people who spend more time looking at the Middle East than they do at public diplomacy in broadcasting, was a failure in the halls of public diplomacy and broadcasting to take account of the differences between the Cold War broadcasting and broadcasting to the Middle East.  We had a very receptive audience in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.  They loved America, and they wanted to hear news of the outside world.  They hated their own government. This is not the case in the Arab and Muslim world.  They begin with a prejudice against us and with general hostility and skepticism toward the media, which they view as a tool of state manipulation. 

We start with a credibility deficit that is very hard to overcome.  If we are going to talk to the Arab world, we need to talk to the people and have credibility and consistency in our policy.  Public diplomacy is not about teaching people to love America by giving them information about America; we must win people with deeds rather than words.

Panel 2: How Do We Measure Success?

Andy Kohut
Pew Research Center

Over the past two and a half years, the Pew Research Center has conducted over twenty-two thousand interviews with Muslim people around the world in eighteen countries; Muslim public opinion towards the United States has become the measure of our success in public diplomacy, despite limited access to data and limitations on what kinds of questions may be asked.

The war in Iraq was a key turning point.  In the surveys conducted in 2002, strong anti-American sentiment was centered in the Middle East, as well as Pakistan and Central Asia.  After the war in Iraq, anti-Americanism became a global phenomenon. A large percentage of the Muslim public expressed fear that the United States would attack their countries militarily. 

While Europe and the rest of the world continue to believe that the Iraqi people will be better off without Saddam in power, the public in the Middle East disagrees. Surveys in every country in 2004 confirmed that the Muslim public believes that the Iraqi people will be worse off as a consequence of this war.

Many Muslims see the war on terrorism as insincere.  They believe that Americans are attempting to control Middle Eastern oil, protect Israel, target unfriendly countries, and dominate global politics.  Thirty-one percent of the Turkish respondents, 46 percent of the Pakistanis, 70 percent of the Jordanians, and 66 percent of the Moroccans say that suicide attacks against the United States and other Westerners in Iraq are justified.

The good news is that there is strong support for Western-style democracy in Muslim countries; the bad news is that most Muslims do not see the war in Iraq as increasing the chances of democracy in the Middle East.  There is a great suspicion of Western institutions throughout the Muslim world. While Iraqis seem optimistic about a better life, Jordanians and Moroccans were far more skeptical.  And the prison abuse scandals will only reinforce the notion that Iraq without Saddam is no better than before.

Mouafac Harb
Middle East Television

Radio Sawa listeners tend to have a more favorable attitude toward the United States than those who do not listen to Radio Sawa, but we do not know whether this is because of Radio Sawa or not. Media in the Arab world is not the same as media in the Western world.  U.S. journalists want to report the news accurately. In the Arab world, journalists believe that their job is to mobilize the nation at a time of crisis.  This makes it impossible to compare the relative success of Radio Sawa and al Hurra. 
 
America must stand by two values: freedom and democracy.  We must understand that being in bed with governments hated by their own people leaves us in a position far more uncomfortable than that of the Cold War.  Journalists are not diplomats.  If public diplomacy is imposed on media organizations abroad, it may affect the credibility of the newsroom.

Judy Milestone
Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World

Al Hurra should be reconsidered.  Exporting the message of democracy through state-run television is probably not the most effective mechanism. In a democratic system, the press should be a check on the government, not its cheerleader.  In places with a long history of state-run media, that role of the press is more difficult. The public U.S.-run government broadcasting must never seem one-sided; otherwise, the credibility of our message deteriorates.

What indicators can we use to measure the success of our efforts: critical reviews in the Arab media, polling, focus groups, and the number of Fulbright applicants or graduate students who choose to go somewhere else rather than America?  Will the success be measured by how many governments in the region complain about its reporting?  Will other networks pick up their stories? All of this reminds us that we need to take that first step toward a systematic and measurable series of changes in the way we look at public diplomacy. 

Judy Siegel
U.S. Department of State

The non-broadcast exchange and information programs at the State Department are elements of international public diplomacy.  The exchange programs consists of Fulbright students and scholars, international visitors, citizen-to-citizen programs, cultural programs, and English-teaching programs.  These exchanges are supposed to promote mutual understanding.  The purpose of information programs is to disseminate information about the United States, its people, and its policies abroad. 

More than fifty years ago, the U.S. Embassy was the information broker.  But now we are engaging audiences who have been learning about the United States since early childhood from a variety of sources. The GAO report says the State Department relies on anecdotal evidence that fails to thoroughly measure the progress of its public diplomacy strategies.  The State Department does not have the funding, nor does it have the strategic direction to do otherwise. 

James K. Glassman
AEI

The United States is not making a serious effort to tell its story and convince both its enemies and its friends of our cause. Many in Congress, the press, and some elements of the administration warmly embraced the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World's highly critical report on the state of public diplomacy last October. But the White House was silent. Recent events in Iraq, especially in Abu Ghraib Prison, emphasize the need for strategic and properly-funded public diplomacy. 
 
Public diplomacy should aid our effort to promote democracy in the Arab world.  Al Hurra has covered the Abu Ghraib scandal in great detail, but they still do nothing to expose the crimes of Arab governments.  According to an Egyptian-born friend, we will know that al Hurra is succeeding when Secretary Powell is besieged with complaints from heads of government in the Arab world.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) - Keynote Speaker
Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies

Lincoln said that the Declaration of Independence is a covenant with the entire world, but now we are losing the hearts and minds of people around the world.  It is quite striking to see that more South Koreans are more afraid of the United States than of North Korea. Our subcommittee has put more money into public diplomacy than the administration has asked for every year, but there has been a failure to implement almost any of the solid recommendations of the Djerejian commission. 

The United States is not judged solely on the actions it takes: failure to act on an opportunity carries the harshest criticism.  The U.S. appointment of a special envoy to Sudan was a good decision, and there should be an American envoy to the entire Middle East. Dealing with the Arab-Israeli issue will help us in fighting the war on terrorism.  But this administration and previous administrations have failed to involve people who understand the conflict and the broader context of the Middle East.  Perhaps a special envoy team of people who understand both sides can bring the understanding of faith, religion, and culture into the region.
 
Our current public diplomacy efforts are not working effectively, even though the product is high quality.  We have given Egypt $50 billion dollars since the Camp David Accord, but the Egyptians will not give us a site for a transmitter in their country. We must assure that out "friends" act like friends.

Better public diplomacy can make a big difference in the region and make America safer and more secure, as well as help export democracy around the world.

This summary was written by AEI intern Przemek Praszcalek with AEI research program manager Molly McKew.