How Smith, Mundt, and a bureaucrat prevented VOA from providing a public service.

"Earlier this year, a community radio station in Minneapolis asked Voice of America (VOA) for permission to retransmit its news coverage on the increasingly volatile situation in Somalia. The VOA audio files it requested were freely available online without copyright or any licensing requirements. The radio station's intentions were simple enough: Producers hoped to offer an informative, Somali-language alternative to the terrorist propaganda that is streaming into Minneapolis, where the United States' largest Somali community resides. ... It all seemed straightforward enough until VOA turned down the request for the Somali-language programming. In the United States, airing a program produced by a U.S. public diplomacy radio or television station such as VOA is illegal." Matt Armstrong, Foreign Policy, 6 August 2009.
     Matt has found a good example of the most harmful outcome of the Smith-Mundt domestic dissemination prohibition. There are immigrant communities in the United States that would appreciate news about their home countries in their first languages. VOA can provide such a public service, at -- this is the best part -- no extra cost to the US taxpayers.
     Actually, per Gartner v USIA (1989) (see previous post), it is not illegal for any private US media unit to use VOA material. It is, however, illegal for VOA to spend money or effort disseminating its content in the United States, or to encourage such dissemination.
     A number of radio stations in the United States are using, or have used, VOA programs on a "don't ask, don't tell" basis. This includes WFED, Federal News Radio, 1500 kHz AM in Washington. The Raleigh Telegram frequently uses VOA news articles, most recently on 8 August. The Minneapolis radio station made the mistake of asking.
     Ameliorative legislation would have to be cleverly worded, to allow VOA content to be used for such a domestic public service, but in a way that money intended for international broadcasting is not diverted to an intentional domestic information campaign.
     By enforcing the domestic dissemination ban, VOA acceded to the presumption of Smith-Mundt that VOA is engaged in propaganda. If VOA were propaganda, people in Somalia wouldn't listen, and Somali-language radio programs in Minneapolis would not ask to retransmit its content. Another good reason to maintain distance between US international broadcasting and US public diplomacy. Posted: 11 Aug 2009 Permalink Print