More complaints about VOA and those pesky Taliban spokesmen.

"Complaints that the U.S. government's Voice of America (VOA) interviewed a top Pakistani Taliban leader have sparked an investigation into VOA's Pashto language service to determine if it has allowed itself to become a platform for terrorist propaganda. ... The investigation of VOA's Pashto service is another example of the long-standing tension about the role of American-funded broadcasting. The professional staff of VOA consider the operation akin to the British Broadcasting Corp. and other Western news outlets, Mr. Austin said. Hence, the correspondents from time to time interview Taliban leaders in the process of covering news from the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and Pashtun areas in neighboring Afghanistan. State Department policymakers, however, have recently bemoaned the absence of an effective operation to counter Taliban propaganda in the group's Afghanistan-Pakistan stronghold. Last month, Richard C. Holbrooke, the chief U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States lacked 'counter-programming' to Taliban FM stations, which he likened to the Rwandan radio stations that broadcast ethnic Hutus' propaganda against the Tutsis during the 1994 genocide." Eli Lake, Washington Times, 2 June 2009 (see also comments).
     Broadcasts that provide only the non-Taliban side of the story would not be "counter-programming." They would just be more propaganda. Real counter-programming is accurate, reliable, balanced news, which must necessarily include coverage of what opponents are doing and saying.
     If decision makers want to use broadcast media to transmit one-sided broadcasts into Afghanistan and Pakistan, they can do so. They can be public diplomacy under State, or information operations under Defense, as long as they are not part of or confused with US international broadcasting under the Broadcasting Board of Governors. While Taliban one-sided broadcasting might appeal to local prejudices and ideologies, US one-sided broadcasting would not (unless it is an uncommonly clever "black" clandestine operation). The latter would therefore probably not have much of an audience. Posted: 02 Jun 2009 Permalink Print