The Clinton administration was in the middle of a firestorm yesterday after officials admitted blocking a global broadcast of a Wei Jingsheng interview for fear of annoying China.
Officials tried in vain to stop the government radio station, Voice of America (VOA), from broadcasting the interview, but succeeded in blocking it from Worldnet.
Both are propaganda arms of the US government. For better or worse the idea is to allow the US President to promote his political agenda across the world. If the US president decides not to allow a person access to his propaganda machine thats not censorship, its an editorial decision. There is a great new history of both agencies called 'Warriors of disinformation' written by Wick's second in command. I am not opposed in principle to governments having a propaganda agency but VoA and Worldnet should be shut down completely. Unlike the BBC they have entirely failed to gain credibility, the propaganda they broadcast is as obvious and transparent as radio Moscow, and about as interesting. To appreciate the subtlty of World service propaganda you have to listen very hard. For example during a refuge crisis there is a long piece about the ex-pat Kurd communities in Australia and Toronto. The propaganda objective being to make refugees make those places their destinations of choice. CNN has made VoA entirely obsolete. The best thing the US could do would be to give them the VoA shortwave transmitters and retire. The only place where Worldnet has had a measurable impact is in the West generally and the US in particular. Worldnet spin allowed the Russian shooting down of KAL 007 over Russian Airspace to be presented as an act of unconsionable perfidy while the Vincent's shooting down of an Iranian civilian airplane in international airspace was presented as 'an unfortunate accident'. The piece de resistance of US propaganda efforts is TV Marti which costs the US millions of dollars each year to broadcast from a blimp moored in Florida. It costs Castro a few thousand dollars to jam it using cheap transmitters. Television is much easier to jam than radio, both because of the frequencies used and the need for a clear timing signal. Ironically the Cubans have said that they are quite happy to have US TV, they just can't resist an opportunity for a cheap propaganda victory of their own. The idea that Cubans can keep the Imperialist Americans at bay by being smarter is the big idea keeping Castro in power. ABC, NBC and CNN signals are quite wellcome. There is good reason to believe them since in Dresden the East German authorities errected a relay station to broadcast west german TV. They were finding it difficult to persuade people to work in Dresden which is out of range of the West German TV signal. The best propaganda a democratic government can create is that outside its control. Political change in South Africa came partly as a result of US TV shows which showed Blacks in positions of authority. The Web will effect political change through person to person interactions, on USEnet, IRC and mailing lists. I don't think it is a good idea for a democratic government to spend money propagandising to its own people. I don't think that the US has the subtlety to propagandise effectively to others. Ergo it should get out of the propaganda business entirely. Phill