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« Back to main page Transcript for: NARRATOR: Funding for Think Tank is provided by…The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, The Smith Richardson Foundation, The Lynde and Harry, Bradley Foundation and by Marilyn Ware. BEN WATTENBERG: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. Memories of the Cold War often focus on the military standoff or the intrigue of espionage, but some believe that the war was truly one with “soft power,” “public diplomacy” and a war of ideas. Witness the case of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and more recently Radio Free Asia. We ask are the lessons of the Cold War applicable to the battle with radical militant Islam? To find out, Think Tank is joined by… Robert Coonrod, a foreign service officer for 25 years and former Deputy Director of Voice of America, President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 1997 to 2004 and currently the President of the Public Diplomacy Council at George Washington University. And by… Michael Novak, a former member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversees America’s public diplomacy media efforts, the George Fredrick Hewitt scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of many books including The Universal Hunger of Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations is Not Inevitable. The topic before the house: Broadcasting in the war of ideas, this week on Think Tank. NAT SND: MONTAGE OF RADIO SPOTS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGEAS 'THIS IS RADIO LIBERTY SPEAKING...' NARRATOR: As communism spread in the wake of World War II, the United States government funded a campaign to broadcast news and entertainment behind the iron curtain. These stations would eventually become known as Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were 'surrogate stations' acting as examples of a free press in the local language. JEFF GEDMIN: Surrogate broadcasting what we do and what we learned through the Cold War and from the Cold War is, give people what they would need-accurate, honest, fair minded in terms of journalism and information-that they would have if they were in a fully free society with free and independent media. NARRATOR: In countries like Czechoslovakia, listeners had to search across the dial for the correct frequency as government jammers tried to block the incoming programming. OLGA KOPECKA: I listened to Radio Free Europe since my childhood, since 1951, when they started broadcasting for Czechoslovakia. RFE was a source of unbiased, truthful information but not only that, it educated people to its democracy, to it’s tolerance to other people’s opinion and it gave us hope that we are not forgotten. That the West has not forgotten us and things will change one day. NARRATOR: After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty moved to Prague, transforming the former Czech communist parliament building into their new headquarters. JEFF TRIMBLE: I think we’re struck everyday here at RFE/RL by the irony of where it is that we’re carrying out our mission. That this symbol of oppression from former times has become a symbol of openness and democracy in today’s Czech Republic. NARRATOR: Today, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has bureaus in 23 countries and programming in 28 different languages, 19 of which are for countries that are primarily Muslim audiences. JOYCE DAVIS: The people who we serve have limited access to news and information.// We are broadcasting to places as close as Turkmenistan, where there are even efforts to stop people from reading books to places such as Afghanistan that is in conflict but is in the middle we think of a development toward some sort of democracy. And in Turkmenistan they just turn to us for any bit of information from the outside world. Our job is to present a credible, professional, news product to them. NARRATOR: At the heart of the surrogate model is the challenge of building that credibility, reporting both the good news and the bad. Launched in 2002, Radio Free Afghanistan has been one of the most successful services in building a loyal following. AKBAR AYAZI: Our listenership reaches 75.3% amongst probably all the other international broadcast entities. We are number one in the market. In the morning when I come, I know my mission is to promote democracy. My mission is to promote tolerance. My mission is to promote nation-building. My mission is to promote peace, democracy. But, at the same time, considering the situation in Afghanistan right now, there are violence, bomb explosions, bombardments, fighting, war on terror. And it has become deteriorated recently so I’m just confused which one to follow, which one to go to. But then I have to report, I have to report both. I have to give them both so we always try to keep this balance. NARRATOR: In countries like Iran, government censorship and the detention of journalists, make reporting even simple man-on-the street opinions, a real challenge. JEFF GEDMIN: It has been an ongoing problem in recent weeks and months inside Iran that there’s not enough gasoline permitted. We had a reporter not so long ago in the country who sneaked into a gas line, put a microphone under a gentleman’s nose there and said, 'What do you think about this?' The gentleman said, 'Well, I’ve been waiting for gasoline for five hours and my government gives money to Hezbollah?' Okay, that’s powerful, it resonates. NARRATOR: Iran presents special challenges to surrogate broadcasters. As in much of the Muslim world, more than two thirds of the population is under the age of thirty. JOYCE DAVIS: Well, Radio Farda has a very high listenership in Iran. I think the latest research shows a 14% weekly listenership. That’s a big number of people turning to us for news and information. A large number of those people are indeed young people; young people who don’t have jobs, young people who want to know about what the outside world is like, but we have to be careful because if we give them information that seems to be one sided or propagandistic, we work against our credibility. NARRATOR: Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and the Voice of America are part of a larger foreign policy effort called Public Diplomacy, that depends on the power of ideas to transform enemies into allies. JEFF GEDMIN: A lot of the change that we hope takes place, you measure in years. And I’m sorry, but maybe even decades. That’s not a politically cool thing to say. But that’s the fact. No one wants to say that in Washington. You measure it in years and in some instance, decades. That’s what we did in the, in the Cold War. We didn’t win the Cold War in 1953, or ’62, or ’75. That’s a fact. JOYCE DAVIS: We now know, we have the research that shows they believe what we are saying and I would tell you that we are having an influence in those societies and that influence will clearly be seen if we persevere. JEFF GEDMIN: If we say it’s a battle of ideas, this is hearts and minds. How do you measure hearts and minds? Patiently and imperfectly, but you do it nevertheless. BEN WATTENBERG: Welcome to Think Tank two old friends, Michael Novak, Bob Koonrod. Michael—Michael, as you know there was a great deal of confusion always about the model of broadcasting so-called surrogate radio—Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. Very different from probably anything else that goes on in the world of broadcasting. Perhaps you could explain it to us and to our viewers. MICHAEL NOVAK: One of the most important things to remember I discovered—I hadn’t thought of it that way—is you always have to imagine that you’re broadcasting to an audience and for an audience with the things they need and want to hear, they things they would want to have said themselves. So it requires just a little bit more extra thinking… BEN WATTENBERG: And it wasn’t just news. It was… MICHAEL NOVAK: No, but in a way one of the most important things with news you can’t appreciate dictatorships unless you understand how little of the truth they allow to come in. Needless to say in Eastern Europe that they allow you you know it could be the weather report. BEN WATTENBERG: I mean the Communist governments tried to whitewash or eliminate any history that they didn’t like, and what the radios did was sort of like a vast library. We broadcast Solzinitsin (ph.) and Sarkaroff (ph.) and gave historical insights into the Soviet—Russia and how many republic—how many countries in Eastern Europe. I mean…. MICHAEL NOVAK: …twenty-seven services we had. BEN WATTENBERG: Twenty-seven and it was a huge staff in Munich not all of whom were terribly good, but the product we heard later that people would drive out into the countryside and tune in short wave and it was their only avenue into reality. I mean was that true on Voice of America as well? BOB KOONROD: Yeah. I think the difference was Voice of America had a global audience. Has a big audience in Easter Europe and the Soviet Union but we were broadcasting to the whole world. So it was a different kind of focus. BEN WATTENBERG: And the focus while not entirely was it was a Voice of America. It wasn’t the voice of Poland through Poland. BOB KOONROD: It was not the voice of Poland to Poland. It was the voice of America. But as the years went on it became increasingly clear that local context was important for any kind of a world news story. So it never—it was never a surrogate radio in the sense that RFP or RL were. But it did try to provide that context so that the story—a story in Poland might have a—might mean something different than it meant in Bulgaria. BEN WATTENBERG: The case is made, and I think appropriately, that look, we have to have this vast defense establishment to see that the Soviets didn’t push further on their expansionist ways. But once you did that the decisive victory was in the war of ideas. It was that their people were interested in what the West was doing and our people were not terribly interested in what they were doing. That is what I think long term fomented the Polish revolution and the Green Revolution and the Orange Revolution and ultimately the Yeltsin on a tank and really brought this thing to a halt. BOB KOONROD: I think the, one of the reasons that the effort was so successful was because it really sat at the nexus of sort of national interest and the shared cultural values. I think that we used radio at a time when radio was, on the one hand, the most appropriate mechanism, because it’s what people were listening to at the time, but also it was, radio was a very intimate medium. It’s a relationship between you and the speaker, and at that time, in those countries, that kind of intimacy was reassuring to people. MICHAEL NOVAK: And you could detect the change in tones in his voice, the alarm, the humor and the rest because you knew. BOB KOONROD: Right, right. I mean, I remember when, the first time Lech Walensa was in, no it was, I’m sorry, Havel, when he came to – BEN WATTENBERG: Vaclav Havel. BOB KOONROD: Vaclav Havel, when he came to Washington for the first time. He was en route from the Hill, Capitol Hill to the White House and they made an impromptu stop on a Saturday morning at the, at VOA. And we were out there to greet him with the members of the Czech and Slovak services, and the then director, Dick Carlson, was going to introduce the members of the service. And he said, no, just let them speak. I’ll tell you who they are. Then he got every one right, and he said, you kept me company when I was in prison. That’s, it’s that kind – BEN WATTENBERG: And you might tell us the story about Willis Conover, because that’s a really rich story. BOB KOONROD: Willis was, I mean, Willis was the most famous guy in the Soviet Union. BEN WATTENBERG: Who was he? BOB KOONROD: Willis was the, a regular broadcaster on Voice of America. He did a daily show called Music USA. He also brought in the leading lights in American jazz to be interviewed. He played music and he played music that was, was unprecedented in that part of the world. And in 1956, when Dizzy Gillespie went to, took his first trip to the Soviet Union, the people who went to the concert knew his music because they’d heard it on the Voice of America. MICHAEL NOVAK: I know a nice little story, too, I heard at the United Nations. There was a guy who mentioned, U.S. delegation, who mentioned the names of specific Poles who were concerned in that because they were arrested by night at [unint.] and taken away to camps. This one fellow, who’s not in the government in Poland, was riding in the back of a truck and the drivers in front of the guards had on Radio Free Europe, and they caught this interview with a guy mentioning their names! He said, you can’t believe how their conduct with us changed. They treated us with a great deal more respect and trepidation. BEN WATTENBERG: I want to move on to two different topics. One is the advent of Radio Free Asia, which goes into that part of the world with the least freedom. I mean, you’re talking about Communist China, North Korea, Burma, those are the hell holes now, and also about the efforts by both Radio Free Europe and Voice of America to get into the world of radical Islam. So, you want to pick up on the Islam thing, Bob, and see – I think the radios are in there – VOA is in there, aren’t they? BOB KOONROD: VOA, well, there’s a relatively new service, radio service, in Arabic, called Radio Sawa, which is on for a couple, about three years now. And there’s a new TV service called Al Hura. In addition, RFERL and VOA collaborate on a service to Iran called Radio Farda. And then there’s Radio Free Afghanistan, which is a service of RFERL. So there are a number of sort of specialized services to that region of the world. Radio Sawa’s a little bit controversial. It replaced the Arabic service of the Voice of America, and it’s a, it’s a popular music format. It has news at the top of the hour, but it’s more of a music format. It’s different. My impression is that it, it’s doing exactly what it set out to do. You could question whether that was the right thing to do, but they’re doing a very good job of getting a large audience. BEN WATTENBERG: I’m sorry. People were saying it has too much music, it’s too much glitz, but the argument is that’s the way to capture young people’s heart. BOB KOONROD: That’s the argument. The other side is that there was a reliable voice in the VOA Arabic service, and while it didn’t have a large audience, it had an important audience, and the question is why did you have to kill one in order to start the other? Why was it an either/or proposition? BEN WATTENBERG: Well, I mean this is Congressional silliness. These services are, they aren’t even coffee money in terms of the Defense budget. They were [unint.] by the swizzle sticks for the coffee, and they pinch-penny on it, and they are enormously valuable in trying to conduct a foreign policy. And yet they nickel and dime them and they’re willing to spend a whole lot of money on a weapons system – MICHAEL NOVAK: My favorite example, Ben, is one day, Monday, the Shah of Iran had the fifth most powerful army in the world, and Khomeni came back from Paris and started preaching and by Friday his army lay down its arms. You never saw an example of how ideas are more important than arms. BEN WATTENBERG: Well, I mean, you know, Stalin famously said how many divisions does the Pope have? And it turns out he had more than Stalin did! I mean, you know, just because – and he was one of the great – MICHAEL NOVAK: I just want to back to – the incredible power of ideas. You change people’s minds, the weapons take second place. BEN WATTENBERG: Let’s move on now to a Radio Free Asia. Now in your current position, you cover the whole waterfront of public diplomacy, Bob. What don’t you give us a little sense of that? BOB KOONROD: I think today the difference is that the way that Radio Free Asia gets broadcast into China is not relevant any longer to the Chinese audience. Not only is it jammed, but more importantly – BEN WATTENBERG: It is jammed. BOB KOONROD: It is jammed, but more importantly, the telecommunications world that the Chinese live in now is so rich with media choices that a short wave signal – people aren’t going to tune to short wave, because they have other choices. They have satellite television, they have local television. They have all kinds of radio. They have cell phones, they have the internet and everything else. So that I think the purpose behind a Radio Free Asia is still the right purpose, that to have that kind of, what would it be like if there were a completely free press and everything else? So it, that is, the challenge is how do you adapt to the different technology, and it’s hard to do! Particularly – BEN WATTENBERG: Very difficult. So, are we winning this war of ideas? I mean, a lot of people, particularly in the light of Iraq, say boy, it’s a bummer, America’s going down the tubes and so on and so forth. How do you come out on that? BOB KOONROD: This is a really difficult time, and I, I wouldn’t say we’re winning or losing right now. We’re in a transition period. If we can, if we can use the technologies that are available to us in the 21st century that weren’t available to us before, effectively, and if we can increase the numbers of people who we have on targeted exchange programs, I think we will improve the overall atmosphere for the United States in the world. They’re not, I mean this whole idea, do you like the United States – it’s not about liking the United States. It’s about seeing the United States as a constructive force in the world, and one that you’d rather be allied with than – BEN WATTENBERG: My own thought is sure, it’s nice if they like America. The important thing is, whether it is we or the Brits or the French or whoever puts these ideas in play, that the ideas are considered seriously, and it seems to me that that is the wave of the future, that this increasing democratic governance. And if the various countries want to beat up on the United States, be my guest. It’s not what I like, but it’s not what – BOB KOONROD: The disturbing part right now is that with younger audiences, getting back to the Jihadists and the terrorists, they seem to be using new technologies better than we are, in terms of attracting young people and recruiting them and everything else. We’re not as, we’re not as versatile as they are, and that’s something we need to work on, I think. MICHAEL NOVAK: But the big idea is happening in Iraq and in Afghanistan. One Arab scholar wrote that in the last three years there have been more articles on democracy in Arabic in all the newspapers in the world than there had been in the last one hundred years. MICHAEL NOVAK: I had, was asked to a lecture to leaders of the guerrillas in Sudan, couple years back. All Muslim – more than half Muslim, which surprised me. One of the Muslims had been a professor at McGill. Another at the Sorbonne. And they kept pleading with you, please show us the theory of human rights in a democracy. How do you get there? said I can’t do it from Muslim, but I can show you how Jews and Christians have done it, I can show you how atheists have done it. But one of them cried out, look, I’m Muslim, I want to be Muslim, I love Islam, but I don’t want to go back to the 7th century or the 11th century. You’ve got to help us answer these objections we get. You’ve got to give – I think we just need to do some patient little work on answers to question. Answers to – how do you understand this idea. Does freedom mean what people think it means from the Islamic world? I don’t think so. First thing that opened up in St. Wenceslas Square in Prague in the first six weeks after the wall fell was a porno theater. It was right up on the marquee. That’s not freedom! You know, it’s – BEN WATTENBERG: And you say porno is not freedom? MICHAEL NOVAK: Well, it’s not what we mean by freedom. BEN WATTENBERG: It’s freedom everywhere around the world. MICHAEL NOVAK: Well, it’s – BEN WATTENBERG: I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but – MICHAEL NOVAK: It’s one idea of freedom, but the real heart of the idea of freedom is self-control and self command. You know how I love that, Ben – to [unint.] my soul in self control. And if you don’t have that kind of freedom, you can’t make democracy work. BEN WATTENBERG: That is a verse from – MICHAEL NOVAK: The great American hymn, America the Beautiful. BEN WATTENBERG: America the beautiful. Yeah, but, unless you have things like porno and other things like that, there’s not much to control, so that’s the byplay. Is that freedom opens up some things that are very, very broad and perhaps dangerous, and then you have to figure out ways to control those, those passions. MICHAEL NOVAK: Some of those are easy to understand, you know. But to understand the kind of freedom that means self control and self command, that takes a little bit of thinking – BEN WATTENBERG: Very hard, very difficult. MICHAEL NOVAK: It’s hard to teach your own kids that, let alone – BEN WATTENBERG: Tell me about it, right. BOB KOONROD: I think another thing we as a nation need to do, that is we need to understand the world better. We need spend more time understanding the world that we are such a big part in, such an important part of. It isn’t just knowing foreign languages and understanding foreign cultures, but it’s appreciating that when they look at us, they’re seeing something different than what we see when we look in the mirror. That kind of – which is not to agree with what they’re seeing, and it’s not to in any sense to capitulate to that, but it’s to understand that there’s that view and it’s a different view. MICHAEL NOVAK: I’ve heard visitors to this country, especially from eastern Europe or somewhere where they had less access to information, be really surprised at how ordinary ordinary Americans are. The clothes are not all that snappier than their clothes and they see Americans as working very hard, much harder than they had imagined. They also see churches all over the place. They can’t believe it! You come to a suburban crossroads, there’s a church on every corner. Nothing like that have they seen before. And that’s almost never shown in our media. BEN WATTENBERG: May I suggest a fitting close for this very interesting discussion? Michael, would you recite those lines again from America the Beautiful? These are very beautiful, and the come to the essence of the discipline of democracy. MICHAEL NOVAK: Self-government. Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law. Law and liberty are not enemies. 01:55:07:13 BEN WATTENBERG: All right. On that note, Bob Koonrad, Michael Novak, thank you very much for joining us on Think Tank and thank you. Please send your comments in via email to PBS.org. We think it helps our program. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg. NARRATOR: Funding for Think Tank is provided by…the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and by Marilyn Ware. We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our program better. Please send your questions and comments to New River, Inc. 4455 Connecticut Avenue, northwest Suite C-100, Washington, DC 20008 or email us at Think Tank at PBS dot org To learn more about Think Tank visit PBS online at pbs dot org. And please let us know where you watch Think tank. 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