DATE=OCTOBER 16, 2003
TYPE=DATELINE
NUMBER=7-37951
TITLE=HISTORY OF VOA
BYLINE=JUDITH LATHAM
TELEPHONE=619-1101
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
EDITOR=CAROL CASTIEL
CONTENT=
DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]
HOST: The Voice of America reaches more than 90 million people worldwide in more than 50 languages. But it is familiar to only a few Americans. In a new book, Alan Heil, the former deputy director of VOA, chronicles its transformation from a fledgling short-wave propaganda organ during World War II to a global multimedia giant encompassing radio, television, the Internet, and 15 hundred stations across the globe. In today's Dateline, Judith Latham talks with the author about his book, Voice of America: A History.
JL: Using transcripts of radio broadcasts and numerous personal anecdotes, Alan Heil offers a front-row seat to the crucial events of the past 60 years, from World War II to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. He says VOA began broadcasting in 1942.
TAPE: CUT #1: HEIL Q&A [FM LATHAM]
AH: "It was 79 days after Pearl Harbor, and the broadcasters knew they would be asked to begin the first German broadcasts to Axis-occupied Europe. The Voice of America was on the air early in the morning of February 25, 1942. And then in rapid succession English and French and Italian broadcasts followed those of German. And by the end of the war, the VOA was broadcasting in about 50 languages, mainly to Europe and Asia."
JL: "The United States was at war. How did that frame what VOA broadcasters would do?"
AH: "From the very beginning, of course, there was a debate. Officials, particularly those in the military and intelligence communities, saw the necessity of making the Voice a propaganda organization. On the other hand, the Voice was endowed in those early years with major journalists and writers and artists and poets, and they were committed to telling the truth. They were committed to the slogan that ended the first broadcast of the Voice of America."
TAPE: CUT #2: WILLIAM HARLAN HALE (in German)
"Hier spricht die Stimme Amerika. Heute und taeglich von heute an…. This is a voice speaking from America. Daily at this time we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth." (OPT)
TAPE: CUT #3: HEIL Q&A [FM LATHAM]
AH: "So there were the struggles during World War II to keep it straight. And I suppose the classic example of that was General Stilwell, who commanded forces in Southeast Asia and in Burma. And he candidly admitted that the Japanese had given the Americans what he called a 'hell of a beating' in Burma. Well, the policy people were upset, but following the war, in debriefing Japanese and other listeners in Asia, they said that had imparted to them an enormous sense of respect because they knew the Voice of America would level with them." (END OPT)
JL: "The Voice of America is governed by its Charter. What was its role?"
AH: "In the 1950's, the Voice was emerging from the shadows of its worst crisis the McCarthy hearings in which Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin sought to prove his statement that in the State Department and in the Voice of America there were what he called 'communist fellow travelers.' It was a terrible period of interrogations of Voice employees, many of whom courageously stood up to the senator. The Voice was challenged by the Suez crisis of 1956, the Soviet invasion of Hungary. And the Voice felt it had to come up with a charter (OPT) formulated as an executive order in 1959 by VOA managers and employees. (END OPT) A draft was produced that was essentially the same as the Voice of America Charter of today.
JL: The Charter eventually was signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976
AH: "And it says that the Voice will be a source of accurate and objective and comprehensive news. That it will reflect all aspects of American society, and that it will explain the policies of the United States clearly and effectively and responsible debate on those policies."
JL: "As you look back, what are some of the peaks of VOA reportage?"
AH: "The peaks are when the Voice of America is able during a war to reflect fully the opinions of the world about that war, to reflect the front line action, and to reflect compassionately how that war affects people who are directly involved, civilians and military alike. I think the magic of good international broadcast reporting is when that reporting transports a listener to the scene of events. I think of Alex Belida's very moving reporter's notebook in which he describes the carnage in many places in Africa as a result of being amidst yet another one of the civil wars on that continent."
TAPE: CUT #4: BELIDA [FM HEIL}
(Sound of bullets) "I'm standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. (More bullets) Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. (More bullets) But I am not concentrating on this any more. I am looking at another corpse this one of a man, perhaps in his twenties, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record, but his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, his fingers together as if in prayer. It seems as if another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly because I do not know for sure. I do know that I have seen corpses like this before, victims of war or of genocide or of famine or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa. From arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo in the center of the continent. I have at times had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine, their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head. Sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry. If it were in my power, I would try to restore them to life. But I can't. That is not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try and tell their story. This is Alex Belida."
JL: Alan Heil says another major broadcasting high for VOA was its coverage of the 1991 Gulf War and the months leading up to it.
TAPE: CUT #5: HEIL Q&A [FM LATHAM]
AH: An ABC crew that was in Baghdad before the war broke out interviewed Saddam Hussein, and he clearly indicated that he had been listening to the Voice of America Arabic Service to get the very latest news of what was going on in that conflict."
JL: "Another major theme that weaves its way through your book is the struggle for independence."
AH: "The central thread of that struggle was the VOA Charter, which conveys not only an obligation but also serves as a shield. The policy-makers may wish to alter or trim, for what they believe are sound national reasons, some of the news. This struggle has gone on in many forms over the six decades of the Voice's history. You can read about the particulars of that in the book. It is a constant struggle. The last chapter is called 'VOA in the 21st Century: The Struggle Goes On,' and there are examples given following the 9/11 crisis of efforts to alter VOA news and how VOA and the journalistic community in the United States and the world reacted to it."
JL: "How do you see the major challenges since the end of the Cold War and at the dawn of the 21st century? One thinks of the attacks of September 11th two years ago at this time, the unraveling of the Middle East peace process, and the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. VOA no longer broadcasts in Arabic. What has been the impact of that change?"
AH: "The VOA Arabic Service was replaced in April 2002 by Radio Sawa, which has a pop music format with brief headline summaries and some chat and occasional interviews and some stringer reports. Sawa has been enormously successful among the youth in countries like Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. However, when it comes to giving a full palate of information on a day-to-day basis, there is some evidence that listeners in the Arab world have turned mostly elsewhere to find out what was really going on. I think one bright ray on the horizon, however, is that VOA's Arabic Service came back in a sense in January 2003 with the establishment of a web site. And the web site contains all of the classic programming of VOA Arabic, including the comprehensive news, some analysis, and in-depth documentaries, as well as a full reflection of life in the United States, and English lessons in Arabic. And the response to the web site has been very heartening. I think it gets more than 170,000 daily site visits, and prominent individuals in Egypt and Saudi Arabia have praised the revival of this service and asked for more."
JL: Here's an example, Alan Heil says, of how VOA reported the Iraq conflict ---heard in English but not in Arabic --- on the fifth day of the war…,
TAPE: CUT #6: HEIL Q&A [FM LATHAM]
"Alisha Ryu OPT had distinguished herself by moving initially from her base in Hong Kong to Afghanistan, and had done front-line coverage of the Northern Alliance in the coalition effort in northern part of Afghanistan. And then she (END OPT) volunteered to be embedded with the Third U-S Army as it moved from Kuwait to Baghdad in March and April 2003. And her front-line reporting was absolutely compelling. One was her description of a desert sandstorm in southern Iraq on the fifth day of the war."
TAPE: CUT #7: RYU [FM HEIL]
"We were told that a bad sandstorm was coming but we had no idea what to expect. I will try to describe to you what happened about an hour ago. The wind started picking up. It was howling at one point. Then the skies began to turn orange in color like I have never seen before. Everything turned like it was on the surface of Mars. Then the orange turned into 'orange-ish' black. All of a sudden we had pitch-black. We couldn't see anything in front of us. All of a sudden it started hailing and raining. It was actually raining mud. That went on for about 15 minutes. Now it seems to be clearing up. And the 'orange-ish' glow is back again. I don't know what to say except that it seemed almost biblical. We joked around in the Army command center that the seven plagues of Egypt were coming, and perhaps this was the eighth plague."
JL: Alan Heil says he thinks of VOA radio reporting as a form of "soft power," to borrow a phrase from the dean of Harvard University's School of Government.
TAPE: CUT #8: HEIL Q&A [FM LATHAM]
"Radio is soft power with a hard edge. And the hard edge is the news it conveys in reports to the world. And that is where credibility comes in. I would take Joseph Nye's very wise admonition that in the 21st century it's necessary for the United States not only to project hard power but also to project soft power in the sense that it projects ideas, establishes dialogue. And I think credibility is the key to doing that successfully."
JL: Former deputy director Alan Heil and author of Voice of America: A History, just published by Columbia University Press. Heil says he believes VOA will continue to be a "beacon" for many millions around the world their reliable window on the world.
For Dateline, I'm Judith Latham.
TAPE: CUT #9: Take the A Train, Duke Ellington