If you read The Mountain Runner blog, one of the items the authors discuss most is the Smith-Mundt Act. Indeed, the Act came in Armstrong’s discussion of The Daily Show episode featuring the VOA-produced Parazit, a Farsi doppelganger of the John Stewart’s routine.[1] The Daily Show, according to the law, should not have been to show the clip from Parazit. That is because the Smith-Mundt Act prohibits the government from broadcasting its own information products to an American audience, or even distributing for private use on request.[2] Therefore, the Act is an inconvenience to the practitioners of American public diplomacy. As Armstrong notes in his post, if the American media cannot fully grasp and analyze their government’s public diplomacy, then the opportunity for an independent critique is lost. In a field such as public diplomacy where there are not set rules of what “works” and what does not, the lack of constructive criticism is not helpful. However, to categorize the act as completely asinine would be foolish because it still serves some necessary functions.
Chief among those functions is to keep the U.S. government from propagandizing against its own citizens. Certainly, no one is advocating that we allow the VOA or RFE/RL to target Americans, if that is the right verb. However, we should be leery of any trend in that direction. If we accept the notion that government broadcasting can influence people, than we should be loath to have domestic government broadcasting in the style of the VOA. (yes, I know we already have PBS and NPR) What Sure, the VOA and other agencies like may not take order directly from the President, but they don’t come off as strident forums for opposition to the U.S. either. Since they have a tradition of echoing the government’s line, they would continue to do so if allowed to give out content domestically to diaspora communities, as almost happened in Minnesota to a Somali community. Essentially, there are two, conflicting and equally legitimate needs. The first need is to advance American interests abroad through propaganda, and allowing the domestic audience help mold and tailor PD messages best serves that end. The second need is to makes sure that the government is affecting its own tax-payers with its own self-aggrandizing propaganda.
A compromise solution that would both boost American public diplomacy and keep our democracy safe would be to maintain the ban on direct government broadcasting to American citizens, but allow private media, organizations, and individuals to request those public diplomacy products. That way, there will always be a set of critical eyes on government broadcasting, but American citizenry will be spared the effects of their own government’s propaganda.
Nice post, Jacob.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely one of MA's favorite topics. In 2009 he had an article in Foreign Policy asking (pretty reasonably) "Why is it OK to broadcast terrorist propaganda but not taxpayer-funded media reports?" (Link here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/06/the_censoring_of_voice_of_america).
The question arose when a Minneapolis-based radio station asked VOA for permission to rebroadcast some of its Somali-language reports on Somalia to counter the terrorist propaganda that was on the airwaves in Minneapolis, home to an enormous Somali community. Thanks to the Smith-Mundt Act, they were denied.
How would you feel about an alternative that allowed direct government broadcasting to American citizens, overseen by a board that combined government reps with reps from private media and NGO watchdogs?