David Ensor (left), director of the Voice of America, does a live interview with Frank Sesno (right), director of the School of Media and Public Affairs, at an event on campus, January 27, 2015.
Note: This entry was originally posted on ipdgc.gwu.edu as an event recap.
David Ensor, director of the Voice of America, believes America’s voice is a “far more” effective weapon in foreign policy than most hard power tools, and that most Americans don’t realize the value it has in furthering US policy abroad.
He said this and more at Tuesday’s event, “America’s Voice: U.S. International Media in the Age of Putin, ISIS, and Ebola“, held at the School of Media and Public Affairs. In front of an audience of nearly 100 students, faculty, and professionals, Ensor shared his trajectory in becoming the director of VOA after 30 years as a journalist covering national security and a variety of other topics. He made the case for why VOA matters in today’s “crowded” global media market, despite having its roots in the U.S. government as a tool of public diplomacy.
“What VOA does is honest reporting and we do that because it’s the law of the land,” Ensor said. “There is room on the VOA platform for objective journalism and editorials supporting U.S. policy.”
After sharing two videos that demonstrated the VOA’s breadth of international news coverage in multiple languages, Ensor sat with Frank Sesno, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs, and discussed in an interview format the challenges VOA has faced in recent times, such as budget changes, the Russian crackdown on international media outlets, and the value of studying journalism despite declining job opportunities for recent graduates.
“If given a bigger budget right now, I would spend that on improving our news services in Russian, then Kurdish and Turkish, and then Mandarin,” Ensor said. In regards to Russia’s ban on VOA in the country, Ensor said he would reach out to private companies and set up alternate news outlets in the former Soviet space to help bring alternative voices to the country.
“There’s a reason some governments around the world try so hard to block alternative voices. It’s a powerful tool than most realize,” Ensor said.
Following the interview, Ensor took questions from the audience, which varied from the protection of journalists in dangerous countries and efforts by the U.S. in competing with terrorist communication networks.
“Yes, there a lot more voices out there,” Ensor said in his closing remarks. “But we offer a certain kind of credibility that cuts through the cacophony.”
David Warren Burke, a man who stood for the finest in public diplomacy, journalistic integrity and the independence of media, died this past Friday. America lost a great public servant.
Just a week before his death, the Broadcasting Board of Governors announced the winners of the 2014 David Burke Distinguished Journalism Awards for exceptional integrity, bravery, and originality in reporting. David Burke was the first Chairman of the BBG’s governing board, a position he was named to by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and for which he served until 1998.
The BBG award winners of this year’s David Burke journalistic prize include reporters from VOA, RFE/RL, RFA, Al Hurra, and the Office of Cuban Broadcasting – men and women who put their lives on the line to tackle tough topics like ethnic conflict in the Central African Republic, violence in Ukraine, and security challenges in Iraq. David would be so proud of them.
The loss of David Burke is personal for me. David was my first boss, a mentor, and a friend. He attended Tufts University and always believed in giving back to your university. As Executive Vice President of ABC News, David Burke gave back to his alma mater by hiring young, aspiring journalists (who had attended Tufts) to work for him. I was fortunate to be one of those whose career he shaped.
Ironically, later in life, I became under secretary of state for public diplomacy, representing the Secretary of State on the very board that David Burke had once chaired: The BBG. Things come full circle.Today, I salute the man who brought sense and sensibility to news, government, and public service. My thoughts are with his wife, Trixie, the Burke family, and the long list of David Burke admirers.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has always envisioned the video watching service to be on a streaming platform, not in mailing DVDs. Credit: Microsoft
I had the pleasure and privilege to attend yesterday’s meeting of the Broadcasting Board of Governors as a member of the public. The session featured two fascinating presentations and discussions. First, Voice of America Director David Ensor gave an inspirational presentation on the mission, goals, accomplishments, and challenges facing the Voice of America. Later, we listened to an insightful panel on Technology and Innovation that featured Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Coordinator for International Information Programs at the U.S. Department of State Macon Phillips, and Chief Technology Officer for the Atlantic Media Group Tom Cochran.
Among the many important issues raised in these discussions are a few key themes facing all of us who are engaged in the practice of public diplomacy. The dominant issue – as is often the case – is how to use our scarce resources most effectively. For the VOA, an organization with a multiplicity of missions (providing independent news, explaining U.S. policy, teaching English, training journalists, etc.) operating all around the world, this requires difficult choices on which audiences to target and which missions to prioritize. David Ensor pointed out, for example, that VOA recently cut the Croatian service after assessing that we have higher priorities elsewhere and that the audience there has ready access to other sources of independent news. Another way to make the most of limited resources would be for VOA to explore partnerships with like-minded media outlets and other organizations engaged in English teaching and journalism training (including the U.S. Department of State and USAID). Asked about the value of particular programs and broadcasts on American music, David Ensor gave a passionate and largely persuasive (in my view) defense of how these programs help Americans connect with foreign audiences around the world.
The VOA discussion featured a number of comparisons with broadcasting organizations of other countries like CCTV, Russia Today, and the BBC (usually to illustrate that VOA is relatively underfunded). BBG Governor Matt Armstrong highlighted a key point, however, when he remarked that unlike those organizations the VOA is not seeking to secure a permanent market share in each of its overseas areas of activity. Instead, the VOA is ultimately seeking to put itself out of business in each of these areas by encouraging the development of local, independent media sources (i.e., by “exporting the First Amendment”).
Unspoken but implied was the suggestion that we should be careful when we compare VOA and its sister broadcasting agencies with official foreign broadcasters. VOA Director David Ensor agreed, in part, but countered that we may ultimately decide that we should maintain at least some presence in order to explain U.S. policies. Personally speaking, I agree with Matt Armstrong and am inclined to believe that the U.S. Department of State can fulfill that function in said markets, while perhaps relying in part on VOA’s English-language resources available at the Washington headquarters and its online platforms.
The Innovation panel also proved exceptionally interesting, highlighting the significant challenges that technology poses for the BBG (and the State Department). Netflix CEO Reed Hastings emphasized the need to always keep the big picture of the future in mind if we hope to develop tools and programs that will be effective in the future. He noted, for example, that Netflix always believed that streaming video was the future of the company and that snail mail DVDs were always considered an interim measure. Likewise, we in public diplomacy should all keep in mind that in another 20 or 30 years the internet will be everywhere, even overseas (a remark that caused many in the audience to ponder a future when television and radio will simply be obsolete).
Another interesting theme was the benefits and dangers of “personalization” (using technology to deliver customized content to individuals as Netflix does) and “balkanization” (the development of virtual “gated communities” in which there are no longer public squares and water coolers where people are forced to debate issues of general interest).
Finally, IIP’s Macon Phillips, who recently joined the State Department after heading up the White House’s digital outreach efforts, described the challenges that he faces of leveraging technology and our public diplomacy personnel and platforms overseas to engage foreign publics in a meaningful way that not only communicates, but also helps advance our policies. He mentioned an initiative that he helped launch at the White House – “We The People” – that allows people to submit petitions and, if they gather enough signatures, receive a response from the White House. A possible model for a similar State Department initiative?
A couple of great discussions and a lot of food for thought!
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the State Department or the U.S. government. The author is a State Department officer specializing in public diplomacy, currently detailed to the IPDGC to teach and work on various Institute projects.
Diplomeet Tweetup co-sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Morocco and the Social Media Club of Casablanca.
Note: First in a new Take Five blog post series
The Office of U.S. Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Tara Sonenshine began several months ago to distribute summary PD activity highlights to interested members of the U.S. public. In a series of blog posts starting today, I’d like to showcase some of these highlights, and use them to illustrate key facets of ongoing U.S. public diplomacy work.
Last year, after diving into the world of public diplomacy scholarship as a Fellow at GWU’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication (IPDGC), I began to realize that a frequently missing piece of the academic puzzle is concrete discussion and analysis of what public diplomats actually do in the field. And considering that U.S. public diplomacy remains significantly field-driven, this feels like a major gap. Thus a blog series is born.
Each piece will begin with a few thoughts on what the selected programs and activities have in common, and what is significant about that common theme. The highlights speak for themselves.
Today’s theme is Opinion Leaders. Future topics will include: Not Always Setting the Agenda; Messaging Creatively; Arts Programs as Communication; and more. As always, readers, I welcome your interest, your feedback, and your additional thoughts.
Focus: Opinion Leaders
Over the years, debates have raged within U.S. Public Diplomacy about how much energy and resources to direct towards “opinion leaders” (journalists, professors, artists, political and social movement leaders) and how much towards the broad general public (e.g. via youth outreach.)
Rhetoric in these debates tended to confuse “opinion leaders” and “elites.” Practically no one objected to the idea of going far beyond elites, but most public diplomacy practitioners recognized that opinion leaders come in all shapes, sizes, ages, classes, genders, and income levels. Acutely aware that there were only so many PD dollars to go around, they hesitated to abandon working with opinion leaders (sometimes termed audience multipliers) in order to concentrate on engaging ordinary citizens directly.
Fortunately, among the many benefits of digital technology and social media are two that have helped lay to rest the elites vs. opinion leader debate. First, digital media has expanded the communication power and resources of non-elites to the point where no one any longer can doubt their ability to shape public opinion; and second, digital communication means field diplomats can now reach the general public (in a more interactive and targeted way than broadcasting allows) with much less expenditure of funds and time resources.
The following recent State Department highlights are selected to showcase the variety of ways that U.S. public diplomacy continues to work with opinion leaders — journalists, teachers, professors, NGO leaders, entrepreneurs, and selected youth leaders, and to communicate – through them – with their own respective networks and audiences. (Text from State Department highlights is marked with *)
Journalists are opinion leaders par excellence.
* VOA Program Connects US and Pakistan: Viewers in Pakistan can now experience a slice of life in America, with the premiere of a dynamic new VOA program called “Sana, A Pakistani,” that follows show host Sana Mirza — one of Pakistan’s most popular television newscasters — as she gets to know this country. “I just moved here, so I’m seeing things with fresh eyes,” says Sana. “I want the program to a picture of what life is really like in the United States.” The first program focused on Washington D.C. and included a visit to a mosque, the White House, and an aid organization that provides free meals to the homeless. Sana says she plans to travel around the country so she can show viewers how people really live, including the many Pakistani-Americans that have moved to the United States.
* Alumna’s Recognition Marks Fulbright’s 20th Anniversary in Vietnam: July’s State Alumni Member of the Month is Do Minh Thuy, a Fulbright Program alumna from Vietnam dedicated to raising the professional and ethical standards of Vietnamese journalism. The honor coincided with Fulbright’s 20th anniversary in Vietnam.
* Embassy Seoul Hosts Student Journalism Seminar: In a first-ever collaboration with the Korea Association of International Educators (KAIE), Embassy Seoul arranged the 2012 Student Journalism Seminar, inviting 34 top student journalists from 17 university newspapers and broadcasting stations across eight cities in Korea. Under the theme of “Journalism and the Changing Media Environment,” participants enjoyed remarks from U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim, journalism workshops, visits to major media outlets, and meetings with U.S. and Korean journalists.
* Partnering with VOA in South Sudan: Voice of America’s (VOA) South Sudan Project held a reporting training workshop in Juba, South Sudan for 19 journalists, including reporters from VOA’s radio program, South Sudan in Focus, as well as reporters and announcers from the Voice of the People, Radio Miraya, and South Sudan Radio.
* IIP’s eLibraryUSA Wows Influential Ghana TV Station: The Accra Information Resource Center (IRC) hosted staff from one of Ghana’s most influential TV stations; showing them how to locate documentaries and books, podcasts, videos, articles and reference sources via the collection of 30 commercial databases available to audiences worldwide. Following the two hour session, TV3’s lead producer said they would extend training invitations to the most prominent people in Ghana’s media landscape.
But media influence is no longer just the domain of journalists.
* Libyan Civil Society Organizations Produce First Public Service Announcements: Four civil society organizations from the cities of Misrata, Tripoli, and Sebha completed technical training in video production and public messaging with a grant from the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). The organizations produced twelve public service announcements (PSAs) on electoral education, voter participation, rule of law, and mine risk awareness.
People listen to business leaders too (even those not profiled in major newspapers!)
*Russian Business Leader Credits FLEX Year in the United States for Success: Leading Russian businesswoman Marina Malykhina was featured in a July 27 article in The Moscow Times, where she attributed much of her success to the entrepreneurial values learned as a teenager on ECA’s Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) Program. Malykhina is the cofounder and CEO of one of Russia’s largest market research firms.
* Fortune Alum Pays it Forward with Mentoring Challenge in Nigeria: Consulate General Lagos partnered with Idea Builders Initiative, a non-governmental organization run by an alumna of the Fortune/State Department Mentoring program, to conduct a three-day orientation and training program for 35 young women. These 35 women accepted a “Mentoring Challenge” to reach out to 100 female students in area high schools over the next 12 months. They learned about public speaking, confidence building, goal setting, conflict resolution, money and time management, career planning, and handling peer pressure.
* Coca-Cola Scholars: The State Department’s Bureau of Near East / North African Affairs hosted 100 young leaders from the region on July 13 to mark the completion of their month-long entrepreneurship education program sponsored by the State Department and the Coca-Cola Company in partnership with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (IU.) The young leaders showcased community-based initiative proposals they developed during their program at IU. Under Secretary Sonenshine and White House Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes addressed the scholars and NEA Spokesperson Aaron Snipe took extensive questions from the group.
All posts aspire to engage future government and political leaders:
* ECA Alumni To Play Key Role in Yemen Transition: Yemen’s President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi has appointed five ECA alumni (from International Visitor Leadership Program and Fulbright) to serve on the Preparatory Committee for the National Dialogue. Committee outcomes will set the stage for the anticipated constitution-drafting process.
* First Mongolian Fulbrighter Joins Parliament: Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, a Fulbright and Eisenhower program alumna and a board member of the Embassy Alumni Association, was recently elected to the Mongolian parliament. She is the first Fulbright and the third Eisenhower alumna to become a Mongolian parliament member. She is one of only nine women parliamentarians serving alongside 67 men.
At the local government level, ensuring that at least one or two people know the U.S. can have a big impact:
* International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) Transforms Iraqi Views of Muslim Life in America: A member of the Anbar (Iraq) Provincial Council shared his views of Muslim life in America, after participating in the “Transparency in Federal, State, and Local Government” IVLP. He said his colleagues thought it was “impossible to be a Muslim in the United States, since the Americans all hate Muslims and kick them out of the country.” He said, “I immediately corrected my friends’ misunderstanding and told them about the vibrant community of Muslims that I met in Miami. I knew what they were saying was wrong, and I couldn’t stay silent.”
Teachers and scholars spread knowledge and shape opinions for a living.
* A Record Number of Fulbrighters Prepare for Departure: 180 new Fulbright Masters and PhD scholars from every province in Pakistan, the largest group of Pakistani Fulbrighters ever, prepared in June / July to head off for universities throughout the United States.
Exchange and public affairs reach current and future influential Americans too:
* ECA Teacher Alumnus Is Connecticut Teacher of the Year: ECA’s Teaching Excellence and Achievement (TEA) alumnus David Bosso was honored by President Obama as the 2012 Connecticut State Teacher of the Year for his passion for learning and teaching about the world. The TEA program provides outstanding secondary school teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), social studies, math and science with unique opportunities to develop expertise in their subject areas. One student wrote: “Mr. Bosso has taken what he has learned from classrooms across the globe and shared his insights with us. When he learns something new, so do we.”
* USUN Panel on Media in a Changing World: Nearly 100 [U.S.] students interning at news outlets in New York City came to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations (USUN) on July 23 to discuss “Media in a Changing World” with peers and media veterans. The program began with a panel, moderated by Deputy Spokesperson Kurtis Cooper, featuring Richard Roth of CNN, Marcelle Hopkins of Al-Jazeera, Sylvan Solloway from the New York University Curtis Institute of Journalism, and Koda Mike Wang of the Huffington Post. The convergence of media and tech, social media, changing business models for news outlets, and many other aspects of covering international affairs were part of a lively discussion.
State-funded broadcasters face more competition for publics’ attention. With the wide proliferation of information sources globally, audiences have the option of accessing a multitude of news outlets while increasing their own engagement through two-way communications technologies. The growth of other international broadcasters, or state news media aimed at foreign audiences, as well as private news media, is part of increasingly complex informational environments.
For state broadcasters constrained by host governments’ strategic interests and/or lethargic bureaucracy, adapting to the information age is especially challenging. They are bound by old missions, institutional pressure, declining budgets, and domestic politics, not to mention the presumption of propaganda by many receiving publics. However, the source of their new challenges—the growth of information and communication technologies—also offers a possible way forward.
These factors along with financial crises and the demise of clear, global geopolitical polarity, has engendered identity crises among many state-run broadcasters already facing the ever-difficult dilemma between being news with instrumental purposes – the pursuit of the host country’s national interests – while not being dismissed as propaganda.
State broadcasters can re-define themselves by focusing on specific information poor and weakly governed societies, often termed failed or non-transitioning states – of which there are still dozens according to Foreign Policy’s Failed State index.
In a newly published paper in a special symposium in the Journal of Public Deliberation, we propose international broadcasters find renewal by fostering deliberative technologies in such societies. By sponsoring mediated forums for average Somalis, Afghans, Haitians and so on to discuss public matters, international broadcasters can aid development through hosting safe communicative spaces for articulating public concerns, reaching shared expectations of governance, and, advancing norms of citizen participation in public affairs.
To support this policy prescription, we offer two case studies. The first is Voice of America’s Middle East Voices (MEV) online portal, launched in November 2011. Its goals are explicitly deliberative. According to managing director Davin Hutchins, “We wanted to find a place where people could start conversations about the news. There are plenty of sites and organizations that cover the Middle East. What we wanted was a site that enhanced the level of dialogue.”
VOA’s use of deliberation technologies in non-transitioning and authoritarian states facilitated informed dialogue on divisive issues, much of which is based on user-generated content and collaborative journalism. While MEV has not reached nor involved large audiences, it offers a new model for international broadcasters to encourage the flow of information and political expression where domestic media are under assault. Such deliberative infrastructure for national and transnational dialogue is valuable as an avenue for circumventing state censors and informational controls.
The second is “Somalia Speaks,” a collaborative project spearheaded by Al Jazeera English that combines several communication technologies to solicit short message service (SMS) texts about Somalia and shares them on its website. Soud Hyder, an AJE staff member, said the project’s aim is to circulate “the perspective of normal Somali citizens” and let them “tell us how the crisis has affected them.” It tapped into the growth of mobile phones in Somalia.
Respondents expressed how the famine and decades of conflict impacted them. For example, one SMS posted on January 1, 2012 read:
“I lost both my parents and the elder brother in the bloodshed that has been going for the last 20 years. In addition, my students and their children all perished in this conflict and there is a lot which I can’t count all here.”
The graphic to the right is from the project’s webpage and it outlines the process. AJE partnered with Souktel, a cell phone service provider with a development ethos, to provide the local response number to receive the SMS texts and the subscriber lists. A crowd-sourcing platform, Crowdflower, let 80 volunteers translate 1,000 messages into English. Using Ushahidi’s mapping application, AJE’s website displayed the messages in both map and catalog formats. This exemplified the possibilities that arise from an international broadcaster working collaboratively with other technology platforms and organizations.
With adjustments, both the MEV and “Somalia Speaks,” could be used to better facilitate domestic information flows. For example, AJE could have done more to re-circulate the texts through Somali media. This would be easier, of course, if Al Jazeera goes forward with its planned East Africa news channel. Similarly, VOA could find ways to expand circulation of user-generated content beyond the Internet, perhaps through its broadcasting functions. These projects do show how international broadcasters can engage in particular media poor environments to benefit local publics.
Some may argue that deliberation, or institutionalized public exchange, is impossible in authoritarian and failed or failing states. Lisa Wedeen’s excellent ethnographic study of public engagement in Yemen, Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (2008), shows how overly formalistic definitions of deliberation do not capture the vibrancy of public sphere practices in informal, everyday life settings. She examined Qat chews, in which circles of men share the mildly narcotic leaves while discussing public issues and exchanging information. This is a form of Yemeni citizenship in action even in lieu of a fully functioning state or formal civil society. Our proposal would mean more mass mediated channels for the spreading of such deliberation among wider audiences.
Broadcasters may protest that this puts their primary audiences in a handful of countries. This proposal complements rather than supplants current broadcasting. Also, as the case studies show, such projects can generate valuable content for reporting. For example, AJE reported on a market fire in a region in Somalia where there are no journalists after receiving text messages. This alone can give state-sponsored news organs something novel to contribute. Such reporting adds to, rather than replicates or spins, the dominant news stream, and is more interesting than the typical fare showing the host country in a good light.
We recognize that development problems cannot be resolved by talk and the exchange of ideas alone. Rather than a panacea, this is about a pragmatic use of state resources to benefit foreign publics with the understanding that this is not done selflessly. There must be mutual benefit.
Building on notions of deliberative development, we argue that international broadcasters can offer positive, incremental improvement of the internal flow of information and expectations, which can fuel growth in civil society and improve informal or quasi-governance structures – potential precursors to more responsive institutions. By serving as proxies in places with weak media, broadcasters get a new purpose, a developmental one, and this is a step forward for both.
Of course, since they are intervening in foreign information spaces, broadcasting agencies must approach carefully, self-reflexively and in partnership with groups and audience members in receiving countries.
