http://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newsroom/worldcast_main en USC Center on Public Diplomacy Copyright 2006 2006-03-09T19:33:00-08:00 An estimated 28.8 million bloggers publish on the Internet, while by comparison there are only a paltry 2,500 U.S. daily and Sunday newspapers published. As blogging grows and matures, it needs to confront an ethical issue, as its senior ink-to-paper colleagues have, where free trips and other gratuities are offered by those who would likely expect a return on their investment. Print journalists have strict policy guidelines to help keep their objectivity and integrity intact and to control potential conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, many still take their junkets, especially plentiful in the entertainment and tourism fields. But individual bloggers who don't have publishing or broadcast organizations to foot the bills are often on their own. One of the most controversial recent events in the blogosphere was the 2nd Annual Al Jazeera Forum in Qatar in February, where at least 100 blogger-delegates had all travel and accommodation costs covered, courtesy of their host sponsor. Another instance involved 25 bloggers who were hired by Holland's tourist bureau to fly to Amsterdam, stay in a five-star hotel and tour the city with an unlimited credit card. And, oh yes, the bloggers might decide also to write about the great tourist destination, but were not obligated to do so. Daniel Glover in his Beltway Blogroll was highly critical. "No one who makes the trip is compelled to write one word, good or bad, about Amsterdam and maybe some bloggers will return home and say nasty things about the place. But somehow I doubt they will." He also felt bloggers who took expense-paid trips to the Al Jazeera conference ought to have been more transparent with their readers on disclosing gratuities they received. The online news association Cyber Journalist suggested adopting ethical guidelines, but acknowledged that "since not all bloggers are journalists and the Weblog form is more casual, they [bloggers] argue they shouldn't be expected to follow the same ethics codes journalists are. But responsible bloggers should recognize that they are publishing words publicly, and therefore have certain ethical obligations to their readers, the people they write about, and society in general." Policies of the larger news organizations are strict on acceptance of gifts from news sources. The San Francisco Chronicle advises its journalists: "No freebies….reduced-rate transportation, gifts, or junkets from current or potential news sources, including…agents of another country." The CBS policy states that "employees shall not accept free transportation, accommodations, services or gifts…to avoid compromising their journalistic independence, but also so as to avoid the appearance of such compromise." But one mainstream journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, cut bloggers some slack. "For journalists from less well-funded organizations…free travel and accommodation may make all the difference between being able to attend events or not." But, he added, "journalists who benefit from paid travel or accommodations should reveal this in their writing." Former New York Times and CBS News correspondent Bernard Kalb agreed that "if you do go the paid-for route, then obviously you add the alert that in fact the sponsor took care of the bill." But few disclosed to their readers that the sponsor of the 2nd Annual Al Jazeera Forum funded the trips. The theme for the event was "Defending Freedom, Defining Responsibility," but Guardian reporter Julia Day wrote that the forum "has been used to help launch the channel's [English-language] international channel." At least one blog obliquely informed readers that he was "flown out" to Al Jazeera's forum along with about 100 others, who traveled business class. Al Jazeera's press and public relations office did not return numerous telephone and e-mail inquiries to elaborate on the trip arrangements such as exactly how many were provided free transportation and lodging in the Sheraton Hotel. The BBC and most other mainstream media chose not to attend the session. A source who wished to remain anonymous said, "The BBC's official policy – which I personally agree with – is that it would not accept the payment of airfares or hotel accommodation associated with attending or covering a conference like the recent Al Jazeera event. Even if a BBC person was speaking at the event, the BBC would still insist on paying its employee's expenses at the event." Otherwise, he said, the recipient would be placed under a perceived obligation. Of course, there were those who funded their own trips, or whose organizations picked up the tab. It must also be pointed out that panelists engaged in sharp discussions, especially on the issue of whether the U.S. media have lost their direction. Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute told Worldcasting that it would be acceptable to receive transportation and housing if one were asked to appear on a panel discussion at a conference, and to later report about that panel. However, it would be unethical to "double dip" and report on other activities at the event without disclosing that the sponsor paid for the reporter's trip. Two bloggers who are also academics said they do a combined total of at least three dozen expenses-paid appearances per year. Professor Marc Lynch, who wrote about the Al Jazeera conference in his blog Abu Aardvark, believes his ethics are in tact because "travel and accommodations plus a small honorarium is the absolute norm for academics giving talks. It isn't the least bit controversial, and 'ethics' doesn't arise at all….I give a dozen talks a year, and every one offers the same – the only variation is the size of the honorarium." Lynch spoke on panels at the event and his travel and accommodations were also picked up by Al Jazeera. He said he blogged about the forum without informing his readers about the arrangement "because I was there, and it was interesting. I can't for my life imagine any reason why I wouldn't have. That's kind of the point of blogging – you do interesting things, and you write about it." Ethan Zuckerman, another forum panelist and research fellow at Harvard Law School 's Berkman Center for Internet and Security, received free transportation and lodging. "I speak several dozen times a year. I generally try to minimize the amount of travel I pay out of my own pocket, which means I usually ask conference organizers to pay my travel and hotel rooms," he said. McBride agreed that "academics have very different standards than journalists. So you end up with two sets of standards, one for the 'professionals' and one for everyone else. That's why I think transparency is so important. If the audience can at least discern which writers are financially independent in their pursuit of topics and who might have a conflict of loyalties." Blogger-critic Daniel Glover countered that "Too many public affairs bloggers are interested only in condemning the ethical lapses of others, especially journalists and politicians. "Those bloggers won't even consider the possibility that as they gain access and influence, their own ethics could be compromised. Even worse, they ridicule and attempt to ostracize anyone who dares suggest that bloggers may be susceptible to manipulation, whether knowingly or unknowingly. That's exactly the kind of hubris that ultimately leads to ethical breaches and outright corruption." Daniel Glover believes bloggers "should be talking amongst themselves to try to establish some norms, and I don't get the sense that many of them are or want to." As more bloggers begin to publish on the Internet, and as some become better established with large readership, an organization such as the Poynter Institute might be enlisted for guidance. It has an ethics adviser on call at an 800 number, and its advice on blogger transparency should be heeded. 28.8 million bloggers publish on the Internet, while by comparison there are only a paltry 2,500 U.S. daily and Sunday newspapers published. As blogging grows and matures, it needs to confront an ethical issue, as its senior ink-to-paper colleagues have, where free trips and other gratuities are offered by those who would likely expect a return on their investment.

Print journalists have strict policy guidelines to help keep their objectivity and integrity intact and to control potential conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, many still take their junkets, especially plentiful in the entertainment and tourism fields. But individual bloggers who don't have publishing or broadcast organizations to foot the bills are often on their own.

One of the most controversial recent events in the blogosphere was the 2nd Annual Al Jazeera Forum in Qatar in February, where at least 100 blogger-delegates had all travel and accommodation costs covered, courtesy of their host sponsor. Another instance involved 25 bloggers who were hired by Holland's tourist bureau to fly to Amsterdam, stay in a five-star hotel and tour the city with an unlimited credit card. And, oh yes, the bloggers might decide also to write about the great tourist destination, but were not obligated to do so.

Daniel Glover in his Beltway Blogroll was highly critical. "No one who makes the trip is compelled to write one word, good or bad, about Amsterdam and maybe some bloggers will return home and say nasty things about the place. But somehow I doubt they will." He also felt bloggers who took expense-paid trips to the Al Jazeera conference ought to have been more transparent with their readers on disclosing gratuities they received.

The online news association Cyber Journalist suggested adopting ethical guidelines, but acknowledged that "since not all bloggers are journalists and the Weblog form is more casual, they [bloggers] argue they shouldn't be expected to follow the same ethics codes journalists are. But responsible bloggers should recognize that they are publishing words publicly, and therefore have certain ethical obligations to their readers, the people they write about, and society in general."

Policies of the larger news organizations are strict on acceptance of gifts from news sources.

The San Francisco Chronicle advises its journalists: "No freebies….reduced-rate transportation, gifts, or junkets from current or potential news sources, including…agents of another country."

The CBS policy states that "employees shall not accept free transportation, accommodations, services or gifts…to avoid compromising their journalistic independence, but also so as to avoid the appearance of such compromise."

But one mainstream journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, cut bloggers some slack.

"For journalists from less well-funded organizations…free travel and accommodation may make all the difference between being able to attend events or not." But, he added, "journalists who benefit from paid travel or accommodations should reveal this in their writing."

Former New York Times and CBS News correspondent Bernard Kalb agreed that "if you do go the paid-for route, then obviously you add the alert that in fact the sponsor took care of the bill."

But few disclosed to their readers that the sponsor of the 2nd Annual Al Jazeera Forum funded the trips. The theme for the event was "Defending Freedom, Defining Responsibility," but Guardian reporter Julia Day wrote that the forum "has been used to help launch the channel's [English-language] international channel."

At least one blog obliquely informed readers that he was "flown out" to Al Jazeera's forum along with about 100 others, who traveled business class. Al Jazeera's press and public relations office did not return numerous telephone and e-mail inquiries to elaborate on the trip arrangements such as exactly how many were provided free transportation and lodging in the Sheraton Hotel.

The BBC and most other mainstream media chose not to attend the session. A source who wished to remain anonymous said, "The BBC's official policy – which I personally agree with – is that it would not accept the payment of airfares or hotel accommodation associated with attending or covering a conference like the recent Al Jazeera event. Even if a BBC person was speaking at the event, the BBC would still insist on paying its employee's expenses at the event." Otherwise, he said, the recipient would be placed under a perceived obligation.

Of course, there were those who funded their own trips, or whose organizations picked up the tab. It must also be pointed out that panelists engaged in sharp discussions, especially on the issue of whether the U.S. media have lost their direction.

Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute told Worldcasting that it would be acceptable to receive transportation and housing if one were asked to appear on a panel discussion at a conference, and to later report about that panel. However, it would be unethical to "double dip" and report on other activities at the event without disclosing that the sponsor paid for the reporter's trip.

Two bloggers who are also academics said they do a combined total of at least three dozen expenses-paid appearances per year.

Professor Marc Lynch, who wrote about the Al Jazeera conference in his blog Abu Aardvark, believes his ethics are in tact because "travel and accommodations plus a small honorarium is the absolute norm for academics giving talks. It isn't the least bit controversial, and 'ethics' doesn't arise at all….I give a dozen talks a year, and every one offers the same – the only variation is the size of the honorarium."

Lynch spoke on panels at the event and his travel and accommodations were also picked up by Al Jazeera. He said he blogged about the forum without informing his readers about the arrangement "because I was there, and it was interesting. I can't for my life imagine any reason why I wouldn't have. That's kind of the point of blogging – you do interesting things, and you write about it."

Ethan Zuckerman, another forum panelist and research fellow at Harvard Law School 's Berkman Center for Internet and Security, received free transportation and lodging. "I speak several dozen times a year. I generally try to minimize the amount of travel I pay out of my own pocket, which means I usually ask conference organizers to pay my travel and hotel rooms," he said.

McBride agreed that "academics have very different standards than journalists. So you end up with two sets of standards, one for the 'professionals' and one for everyone else. That's why I think transparency is so important. If the audience can at least discern which writers are financially independent in their pursuit of topics and who might have a conflict of loyalties."

Blogger-critic Daniel Glover countered that "Too many public affairs bloggers are interested only in condemning the ethical lapses of others, especially journalists and politicians.

"Those bloggers won't even consider the possibility that as they gain access and influence, their own ethics could be compromised. Even worse, they ridicule and attempt to ostracize anyone who dares suggest that bloggers may be susceptible to manipulation, whether knowingly or unknowingly. That's exactly the kind of hubris that ultimately leads to ethical breaches and outright corruption."

Daniel Glover believes bloggers "should be talking amongst themselves to try to establish some norms, and I don't get the sense that many of them are or want to."

As more bloggers begin to publish on the Internet, and as some become better established with large readership, an organization such as the Poynter Institute might be enlisted for guidance. It has an ethics adviser on call at an 800 number, and its advice on blogger transparency should be heeded.
]]> 2006-03-09T18:33:00-08:00 The flight purser came back to where Fred Friendly was seated to tell him that his friend Edward R. Murrow had died an hour earlier. The plane had just cleared the Irish coast on a flight from London to New York, and the news about Murrow had been radioed from Shannon control with instructions to tell Friendly. It was April 27, 1965. Friendly recalled in a Columbia Records album we later prepared about Murrow, that “the message was only confirmation of what Ed and his friends had expected for months.” Edward R. Murrow smoked three packs of unfiltered Camel cigarettes every day, and died at age 57 from cancer that spread from his lungs to his brain. I thought of Friendly’s remarks when I watched the movie Good Night, and Good Luck, which has been nominated for six Academy Awards. George Clooney, who directed the movie and plays the role of Fred Friendly, does not entirely capture the dynamism of the real Fred Friendly I knew, nor David Straithairn the Edward R. Murrow that no one could ever duplicate. I was not with Murrow and Friendly and their See it Now staff on March 9, 1954, when their program took on Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was ruining lives in his witch hunt for suspected Communists. I was in college, but had my sights on CBS News long before I graduated. And because I did wind up at CBS News - I was on staff from the late 1950s through the entire next decade - the movie resonates with me in certain ways. My wife and I identify with two CBS News staffers portrayed in the movie. See it Now producer and reporter Joe Wershba, played by Robert Downey Jr., and writer Shirley Wershba, played by Patricia Clarkson, had married but tried to keep it secret because CBS News policy at the time forbade married couples from working in the same company division. Anne Glassman, a production assistant at CBS News, and I, a writer and producer, married while we were both at CBS News in 1961, and, like Joe Wershba, I stayed on at the network because my salary was greater than Anne's, a situation more commonplace then than now in the business world. Friendly became President of CBS News in 1964, and every story had to be airtight accurate, with all the facts on the table and no secrets, the way it was when he and Murrow went after Senator McCarthy almost 10 years earlier. Friendly had a New Yorker magazine cartoon framed on the wall near his desk, that he would point to when necessary, depicting a young blond woman, together with a man marooned on an island with a single palm tree. She says “I’ll know. That’s who!” No con job from a reporter or producer was permitted by Friendly, who wanted nothing kept from him. As he paced the room like a bear, he would confront a producer after something went wrong on the news, pounding his fist into his palm. “I want to know the name of the telephone man in the manhole who cut that…. telephone line,” he would bellow. He didn’t whisper, wimp, and wisecrack like George Clooney’s Fred Friendly, he would get right in your face. I used to watch Murrow nervously pump his foot while reading the news, as David Straithairn did in the movie, but Murrow had a rich timber in his voice unmatched by Strathairn, whose head is too small and body too slight to have captured Murrow’s commanding presence. No actor could do a perfect Murrow, who, as Time magazine noted in a cover story about Murrow, reads “like he knows the worst but will try not to mention it.” But perhaps even Murrow, whose salary was somewhere in excess of $300,000 per year, would have done a double take upon learning that NBC’s Katie Couric is paid $15,000,000 annually. Shortly after Murrow died, Friendly asked me to “prepare” a record album of Murrow’s wartime broadcasts, as I did with CBS News colleague Sheldon Hoffman. Friendly intentionally used the word “prepare,” because Murrow was the producer of the album, he said, and we were simply preparing his material. Friendly wanted the recordings to be played in "their original 15 or 20 minutes because that's what brought their original impact." While collecting Murrow’s broadcasts over a period of more than a year, mostly from BBC archives and old glass-based record disks at CBS, I came across his earliest radio reports from London, where he had been sent by CBS to set up its business office in Europe in the mid-1930s. He was not initally sent to do news broadcasts, which he began only as Hitler invaded Europe. In his first reports, Murrow did not sound anything like the Murrow that would report later from London about the war to audiences in the United States and Britain. He had received voice coaching critiques from a former drama instructor at the University of North Carolina, who taught him how to dramatically pause: “This – is London,” and “Good night – and good luck.” In the Columbia album that we prepared, “A Reporter Remembers,” which Friendly insisted that each new CBS news correspondent listen to in its entirety before filing his or her first piece, Friendly wrote that “Murrow hated obituaries, yet to my certain knowledge would have liked to be judged by the record of his reporting. This album is part of that record.” Murrow would not have much cared that his record album reports won a Grammy award, but it may have caused him to nod that his war reports likely influenced yournger CBS correspondents who came on after he died. After Friendly resigned from CBS News as its president in 1966 because the network cut away from Senate hearings on Vietnam for re-runs of “I Love Lucy,” he tried to right a wrong that is all-too apparent in Good Night and Good Luck; there were few minorities on the news staff. Friendly became a journalism professor at Columbia University in New York City, where he would attract promising young Black and Hispanic news broadcasters and help to teach them new skills. He would call me at CBS each semester with a list of his most promising young students, and I would come over to interview them, several of whom we hired for staff positions at WCBS-TV, the network’s flagship station in New York City. Good Night and Good Luck is an impressive effort and an important story, but it does not do justice to its main characters or their invaluable contribution to the news business; it is unlikely that any film could.
Friendly recalled in a Columbia Records album we later prepared about Murrow, that “the message was only confirmation of what Ed and his friends had expected for months.” Edward R. Murrow smoked three packs of unfiltered Camel cigarettes every day, and died at age 57 from cancer that spread from his lungs to his brain.

I thought of Friendly’s remarks when I watched the movie Good Night, and Good Luck, which has been nominated for six Academy Awards. George Clooney, who directed the movie and plays the role of Fred Friendly, does not entirely capture the dynamism of the real Fred Friendly I knew, nor David Straithairn the Edward R. Murrow that no one could ever duplicate.

I was not with Murrow and Friendly and their See it Now staff on March 9, 1954, when their program took on Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was ruining lives in his witch hunt for suspected Communists. I was in college, but had my sights on CBS News long before I graduated.

And because I did wind up at CBS News - I was on staff from the late 1950s through the entire next decade - the movie resonates with me in certain ways.

My wife and I identify with two CBS News staffers portrayed in the movie. See it Now producer and reporter Joe Wershba, played by Robert Downey Jr., and writer Shirley Wershba, played by Patricia Clarkson, had married but tried to keep it secret because CBS News policy at the time forbade married couples from working in the same company division.

Anne Glassman, a production assistant at CBS News, and I, a writer and producer, married while we were both at CBS News in 1961, and, like Joe Wershba, I stayed on at the network because my salary was greater than Anne's, a situation more commonplace then than now in the business world.

Friendly became President of CBS News in 1964, and every story had to be airtight accurate, with all the facts on the table and no secrets, the way it was when he and Murrow went after Senator McCarthy almost 10 years earlier.

Friendly had a New Yorker magazine cartoon framed on the wall near his desk, that he would point to when necessary, depicting a young blond woman, together with a man marooned on an island with a single palm tree. She says “I’ll know. That’s who!”

No con job from a reporter or producer was permitted by Friendly, who wanted nothing kept from him. As he paced the room like a bear, he would confront a producer after something went wrong on the news, pounding his fist into his palm. “I want to know the name of the telephone man in the manhole who cut that…. telephone line,” he would bellow. He didn’t whisper, wimp, and wisecrack like George Clooney’s Fred Friendly, he would get right in your face.

I used to watch Murrow nervously pump his foot while reading the news, as David Straithairn did in the movie, but Murrow had a rich timber in his voice unmatched by Strathairn, whose head is too small and body too slight to have captured Murrow’s commanding presence. No actor could do a perfect Murrow, who, as Time magazine noted in a cover story about Murrow, reads “like he knows the worst but will try not to mention it.”

But perhaps even Murrow, whose salary was somewhere in excess of $300,000 per year, would have done a double take upon learning that NBC’s Katie Couric is paid $15,000,000 annually.

Shortly after Murrow died, Friendly asked me to “prepare” a record album of Murrow’s wartime broadcasts, as I did with CBS News colleague Sheldon Hoffman. Friendly intentionally used the word “prepare,” because Murrow was the producer of the album, he said, and we were simply preparing his material. Friendly wanted the recordings to be played in "their original 15 or 20 minutes because that's what brought their original impact."

While collecting Murrow’s broadcasts over a period of more than a year, mostly from BBC archives and old glass-based record disks at CBS, I came across his earliest radio reports from London, where he had been sent by CBS to set up its business office in Europe in the mid-1930s. He was not initally sent to do news broadcasts, which he began only as Hitler invaded Europe.

In his first reports, Murrow did not sound anything like the Murrow that would report later from London about the war to audiences in the United States and Britain. He had received voice coaching critiques from a former drama instructor at the University of North Carolina, who taught him how to dramatically pause: “This – is London,” and “Good night – and good luck.”

In the Columbia album that we prepared, “A Reporter Remembers,” which Friendly insisted that each new CBS news correspondent listen to in its entirety before filing his or her first piece, Friendly wrote that “Murrow hated obituaries, yet to my certain knowledge would have liked to be judged by the record of his reporting. This album is part of that record.” Murrow would not have much cared that his record album reports won a Grammy award, but it may have caused him to nod that his war reports likely influenced yournger CBS correspondents who came on after he died.

After Friendly resigned from CBS News as its president in 1966 because the network cut away from Senate hearings on Vietnam for re-runs of “I Love Lucy,” he tried to right a wrong that is all-too apparent in Good Night and Good Luck; there were few minorities on the news staff.

Friendly became a journalism professor at Columbia University in New York City, where he would attract promising young Black and Hispanic news broadcasters and help to teach them new skills. He would call me at CBS each semester with a list of his most promising young students, and I would come over to interview them, several of whom we hired for staff positions at WCBS-TV, the network’s flagship station in New York City.

Good Night and Good Luck is an impressive effort and an important story, but it does not do justice to its main characters or their invaluable contribution to the news business; it is unlikely that any film could.




]]> 2006-02-27T17:40:57-08:00 Cultural and educational exchange programs are effective public diplomacy tools because they enrich both those who go abroad and the societies they visit. Right? That good intention may not be the primary motivation behind the au pair childcare program the United States facilitates. This mismanaged program is being exploited and turned into more of a profitable business than cultural experience. Au pair, French for "on par," means that the young person is on par with the American family. Young women ages 18-26 come from all around the world to care for children, become part of an American family and go to school. Meanwhile, there is an interaction between the international visitor and the hosts where each side stands to benefit from the experience. When the program was founded in 1986, the U.S. Information Agency supervised it as an Educational and Cultural exchange. From the beginning, the program lacked supervision and needed stronger regulations. The biggest complaint from current au pair families is the inadequacy of the government-sanctioned sponsor agencies, which recruit, screen, train and place au pairs with American families. Tracy Huber of West Milford, N.J., said she is happy with her present au pair, "but had to weed through a nightmare to get to this place." She and other families tried several au pairs "in a short period of time to find a suitable au pair for the children, with no support [from sponsors] once fees are locked in." Another family complained that their children "have seen five very flaky people come and go from our home." Lisa Thostenson of Inver Grove Heights, Minn., said the same sponsoring agency matched her with three unsuitable au pairs. Although au pairs must be able to drive, "one girl was blind in one eye," said Thostenson, and "unable to drive safely; this was not disclosed." Another refused to watch the children, and not all of them spoke English, in which they are required to be proficient. "My son, who is 8, told [the au pair] he was going to play with his friend in the neighborhood," Thostenson said. "When I noticed he was gone, I asked her where he was and she had no idea…also not a clue when he was planning to return." Before the USIA was disbanded and control of the au pair program was handed over to the State Department, it attempted to rein in the program by raising the minimum age and shortening the au pair’s childcare workweek as well as requiring them to attend class. Congress appeared reluctant to consider any changes in the popular program. Additionally, one major au pair-sponsoring agency lobbied against the shorter work week. The lax laws have allowed the agencies to continue making money on a flawed product. In 1992, 7,287 Western European au pairs came to the United States. Host families paid a fee of $3,500 to the agency separate from the au pair’s weekly wages. At that time, placing au pairs was a $25.5 million business. Today, there are nearly twice as many au pairs per year – 14,000 from all around the world – and the growth is reflected in the sponsors' annual fee – around $6,500. These agencies run a $91 million business and facilitate the largest childcare organization in the country. Stiffer regulations were adopted after an 18-year old au pair from Britain, part of the U.S.-administered program, was convicted in 1997 of killing an 8-month-old boy in her care, but the Department of State still does not hold agencies accountable for au pairs that do not meet job requirements. Rather, it warns families that "having an international visitor in one’s home, and as part of the family, can be difficult for families and the au pair," and that sponsor organizations cannot guarantee the competency of the au pair. It cautions au pair families "to read the small print of your contract with the sponsor agency." It seems families only stand for this because of the cost incentive of hiring an au pair over a domestic nanny. Huber, who shared her experiences with other au pair families on the Internet, said, "The reason these programs are so popular is because the lack of affordable childcare is like an epidemic in this country…$24,000 in daycare a year is just not affordable for us." The annual total cost for an au pair is about $16,000 per year, while a professional nanny can cost about $10,000 more than that. Au pairs are paid a $139.05 weekly stipend by families. By comparison, "the average compensation for nannies who work a 45-50 hour week is $350-$600 per week," said Kathleen Webb, president of Home Work Solutions, Inc., a professional nanny agency. "There are many $30,000-$50,000 [per year] professional nannies in the upscale urban markets," and this salary excludes the unemployment and social security taxes the family must cover when employing a domestic nanny. But Myrna Alphonse, a career nanny for 16 years, thinks the cost can be worth the continuity a long-term nanny offers a child; the au pair program is only one year, so families experience frequent turnover. Today, the au pair workweek remains at a maximum of 45 hours per week, and au pairs from ages 18 to 26 may still participate in the program. They must now complete 6 hours of academic study, and cannot be placed in a home where there is an infant less than three months "unless a parent or other responsible adult is at home." They are also required to receive "at least 8 hours of child safety and 24 hours of child development instruction" before being placed with an American family. Despite these requirements, the State Department must become even more involved with the oversight of a rapidly growing childcare program. Au pairs should be at least 21 years of age and the agencies must be held accountable for training that right now is poor to non-existent, according to numerous disgruntled au pair families. The State Department should grade sponsors based on surveys of au pair family experiences and post those grades on the government’s au pair Web site. Families can then select the most popular and best-qualified au pair sponsors. And finally, the department must show a strong commitment to making this primarily a cultural exchange program rather than a moneymaking one. Neither childcare nor American public diplomacy is something the U.S. government needs to scrimp on.
Right?

That good intention may not be the primary motivation behind the au pair childcare program the United States facilitates. This mismanaged program is being exploited and turned into more of a profitable business than cultural experience.

Au pair, French for "on par," means that the young person is on par with the American family. Young women ages 18-26 come from all around the world to care for children, become part of an American family and go to school. Meanwhile, there is an interaction between the international visitor and the hosts where each side stands to benefit from the experience.

When the program was founded in 1986, the U.S. Information Agency supervised it as an Educational and Cultural exchange. From the beginning, the program lacked supervision and needed stronger regulations.

The biggest complaint from current au pair families is the inadequacy of the government-sanctioned sponsor agencies, which recruit, screen, train and place au pairs with American families.

Tracy Huber of West Milford, N.J., said she is happy with her present au pair, "but had to weed through a nightmare to get to this place." She and other families tried several au pairs "in a short period of time to find a suitable au pair for the children, with no support [from sponsors] once fees are locked in." Another family complained that their children "have seen five very flaky people come and go from our home."

Lisa Thostenson of Inver Grove Heights, Minn., said the same sponsoring agency matched her with three unsuitable au pairs. Although au pairs must be able to drive, "one girl was blind in one eye," said Thostenson, and "unable to drive safely; this was not disclosed." Another refused to watch the children, and not all of them spoke English, in which they are required to be proficient.

"My son, who is 8, told [the au pair] he was going to play with his friend in the neighborhood," Thostenson said. "When I noticed he was gone, I asked her where he was and she had no idea…also not a clue when he was planning to return."

Before the USIA was disbanded and control of the au pair program was handed over to the State Department, it attempted to rein in the program by raising the minimum age and shortening the au pair’s childcare workweek as well as requiring them to attend class.

Congress appeared reluctant to consider any changes in the popular program. Additionally, one major au pair-sponsoring agency lobbied against the shorter work week.

The lax laws have allowed the agencies to continue making money on a flawed product. In 1992, 7,287 Western European au pairs came to the United States. Host families paid a fee of $3,500 to the agency separate from the au pair’s weekly wages. At that time, placing au pairs was a $25.5 million business. Today, there are nearly twice as many au pairs per year – 14,000 from all around the world – and the growth is reflected in the sponsors' annual fee – around $6,500. These agencies run a $91 million business and facilitate the largest childcare organization in the country.

Stiffer regulations were adopted after an 18-year old au pair from Britain, part of the U.S.-administered program, was convicted in 1997 of killing an 8-month-old boy in her care, but the Department of State still does not hold agencies accountable for au pairs that do not meet job requirements. Rather, it warns families that "having an international visitor in one’s home, and as part of the family, can be difficult for families and the au pair," and that sponsor organizations cannot guarantee the competency of the au pair. It cautions au pair families "to read the small print of your contract with the sponsor agency."

It seems families only stand for this because of the cost incentive of hiring an au pair over a domestic nanny. Huber, who shared her experiences with other au pair families on the Internet, said, "The reason these programs are so popular is because the lack of affordable childcare is like an epidemic in this country…$24,000 in daycare a year is just not affordable for us."

The annual total cost for an au pair is about $16,000 per year, while a professional nanny can cost about $10,000 more than that. Au pairs are paid a $139.05 weekly stipend by families.

By comparison, "the average compensation for nannies who work a 45-50 hour week is $350-$600 per week," said Kathleen Webb, president of Home Work Solutions, Inc., a professional nanny agency. "There are many $30,000-$50,000 [per year] professional nannies in the upscale urban markets," and this salary excludes the unemployment and social security taxes the family must cover when employing a domestic nanny.

But Myrna Alphonse, a career nanny for 16 years, thinks the cost can be worth the continuity a long-term nanny offers a child; the au pair program is only one year, so families experience frequent turnover.

Today, the au pair workweek remains at a maximum of 45 hours per week, and au pairs from ages 18 to 26 may still participate in the program. They must now complete 6 hours of academic study, and cannot be placed in a home where there is an infant less than three months "unless a parent or other responsible adult is at home." They are also required to receive "at least 8 hours of child safety and 24 hours of child development instruction" before being placed with an American family.

Despite these requirements, the State Department must become even more involved with the oversight of a rapidly growing childcare program. Au pairs should be at least 21 years of age and the agencies must be held accountable for training that right now is poor to non-existent, according to numerous disgruntled au pair families. The State Department should grade sponsors based on surveys of au pair family experiences and post those grades on the government’s au pair Web site. Families can then select the most popular and best-qualified au pair sponsors. And finally, the department must show a strong commitment to making this primarily a cultural exchange program rather than a moneymaking one.

Neither childcare nor American public diplomacy is something the U.S. government needs to scrimp on.
]]> 2006-02-22T20:21:01-08:00 Al Jazeera held its “2nd Aljazeera Forum” Jan. 31 through Feb. 2 in its headquarter city of Doha, Qatar. The conference was titled “Defending Freedom, Defining Responsibility,” but its goal seemed to be to trash U.S. media and celebrate everything Al Jazeera. Part of the agenda of this year’s conclave was apparently to promote the oft-delayed launch of Al Jazeera International’s (AJI) new English-language service, now pushed back to May, and to quash stories that the new channel is distancing itself from the home Arabic channel. Prior to the meeting, AJI had stated specifically in its press information that it would have editorial autonomy, but, seemingly in an act of self-promotion, both AJI and Al Jazeera Arabic officials were “singing a different tune,” Professor Marc Lynch wrote in his blog from the conference. “[They] talked at great length about how much editorial coordination there has been, how much the two stations will draw on each other.” Lynch, a Williams College professor and author of Voices of the New Arab Public, appeared on panels at the conference, after an “obligatory tour of Al Jazeera’s headquarters.” The panels were on neutral topics such as professional ethics, blogging, and journalism in the 21st century, but they were all moderated by someone with a vested interest in Al Jazeera’s image: either a network representative, news presenter or news manager, and Lynch was instructed on what to discuss. In his blog, Abu Aardvark, Lynch talks about directions he received before appearing on one panel. “My instructions were to talk about how AJI (Al Jazeera International) would be received in the American market,” Lynch said. “Basically, I said it would have the best shot of succeeding if it embraced its Al Jazeera identity rather than running away from it.” Julia Day of The Guardian covered a panel in the forum and produced an article entitled “US media at ‘all-time low’”. Panelists Amy Goodman, the executive producer and host of “Democracy Now!”, Christopher Dickey, Newsweek’s Paris bureau chief, and Faisal al-Kasim, host of Al Jazeera’s “The Opposite Direction,” blasted American media for its coverage on the war in Iraq. “Even Arabs who live in the West are giving up watching Western networks and tuning to Arabic networks instead,” al-Kasim said. Blogger Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and Lawrence Pintak, director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism and a former CBS correspondent, put the blame on both American and Arabic media. Pintak warned against glossing over problems in Arab media. “I am concerned that someone from the US or Europe who doesn't know the Arabic world will think that all is goodness and light when we know that is not the case,” said Pintak, whose new book is called Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam, and the War of Ideas. Ayman al-Zawahri’s video tape that debuted on Al Jazeera last month in response to the U.S. military’s attempt on his life in a bombing raid was never discussed on a forum panel. The tape was aired and distributed by the network in record time. Prior to this, a terrorism expert told ABC news correspondent Brian Ross that terrorist tapes from a remote hideaway location are usually “delivered by a courier network that can involve as many as 25 people and can take eight to twelve weeks to reach its destination”. Al Jazeera has refused to say how it acquired and broadcast the tape in just over one week. And then there is the professional quality of the tape itself. It appears to those familiar with television production techniques to have been taped with professional high-quality camera equipment in a studio setting, and not in a remote cave. There was a key light which lighting directors use to highlight the “form, dimension, and surface detail of subject matter,” that dramatically modeled shadows on al-Zawahri’s face, in close up against a black background, to heighten the impact of his remarks. This would have made an interesting panel discussion at the Doha conference, but it would not have advanced Al Jazeera’s PR agenda. “2nd Aljazeera Forum” Jan. 31 through Feb. 2 in its headquarter city of Doha, Qatar. The conference was titled “Defending Freedom, Defining Responsibility,” but its goal seemed to be to trash U.S. media and celebrate everything Al Jazeera.

Part of the agenda of this year’s conclave was apparently to promote the oft-delayed launch of Al Jazeera International’s (AJI) new English-language service, now pushed back to May, and to quash stories that the new channel is distancing itself from the home Arabic channel.

Prior to the meeting, AJI had stated specifically in its press information that it would have editorial autonomy, but, seemingly in an act of self-promotion, both AJI and Al Jazeera Arabic officials were “singing a different tune,” Professor Marc Lynch wrote in his blog from the conference. “[They] talked at great length about how much editorial coordination there has been, how much the two stations will draw on each other.” Lynch, a Williams College professor and author of Voices of the New Arab Public, appeared on panels at the conference, after an “obligatory tour of Al Jazeera’s headquarters.”

The panels were on neutral topics such as professional ethics, blogging, and journalism in the 21st century, but they were all moderated by someone with a vested interest in Al Jazeera’s image: either a network representative, news presenter or news manager, and Lynch was instructed on what to discuss.

In his blog, Abu Aardvark, Lynch talks about directions he received before appearing on one panel. “My instructions were to talk about how AJI (Al Jazeera International) would be received in the American market,” Lynch said. “Basically, I said it would have the best shot of succeeding if it embraced its Al Jazeera identity rather than running away from it.”

Julia Day of The Guardian covered a panel in the forum and produced an article entitled “US media at ‘all-time low’”. Panelists Amy Goodman, the executive producer and host of “Democracy Now!”, Christopher Dickey, Newsweek’s Paris bureau chief, and Faisal al-Kasim, host of Al Jazeera’s “The Opposite Direction,” blasted American media for its coverage on the war in Iraq.

“Even Arabs who live in the West are giving up watching Western networks and tuning to Arabic networks instead,” al-Kasim said.

Blogger Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and Lawrence Pintak, director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism and a former CBS correspondent, put the blame on both American and Arabic media. Pintak warned against glossing over problems in Arab media.

“I am concerned that someone from the US or Europe who doesn't know the Arabic world will think that all is goodness and light when we know that is not the case,” said Pintak, whose new book is called Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam, and the War of Ideas.

Ayman al-Zawahri’s video tape that debuted on Al Jazeera last month in response to the U.S. military’s attempt on his life in a bombing raid was never discussed on a forum panel. The tape was aired and distributed by the network in record time. Prior to this, a terrorism expert told ABC news correspondent Brian Ross that terrorist tapes from a remote hideaway location are usually “delivered by a courier network that can involve as many as 25 people and can take eight to twelve weeks to reach its destination”. Al Jazeera has refused to say how it acquired and broadcast the tape in just over one week.

And then there is the professional quality of the tape itself. It appears to those familiar with television production techniques to have been taped with professional high-quality camera equipment in a studio setting, and not in a remote cave. There was a key light which lighting directors use to highlight the “form, dimension, and surface detail of subject matter,” that dramatically modeled shadows on al-Zawahri’s face, in close up against a black background, to heighten the impact of his remarks.

This would have made an interesting panel discussion at the Doha conference, but it would not have advanced Al Jazeera’s PR agenda.
]]> 2006-02-09T00:12:56-08:00 This posting has been moved to the Public Diplomacy Blog. This posting has been moved to the Public Diplomacy Blog.]]> 2006-01-30T07:23:00-08:00 Worldcasting has obtained exclusive comparative independent television ratings that document a steady decline in Al Jazeera's popularity among viewers in Saudi Arabia over a one-year period. That country is the most important television market in the region; 70 percent of the region's television advertising is spent there. These consecutive 12-month ratings measure actual daily viewership of Middle East transnational television channels and not only bode ill for Al Jazeera's marquee Arabic channel; they also impact plans for Al Jazeera International, the network's new English-language service scheduled to debut in only two months. In what can be interpreted as a move to distance itself from the home-based channel, Al Jazeera International stresses that while the new English channel is the "sibling network to Al Jazeera Arabic…(it) is independent administratively, financially and editorially." In a monthly charting of audience ratings prepared exclusively for Worldcasting by the premier independent Middle East television survey organization IPSOS-STAT, the Saudi government-financed Al-Arabiya surpassed Al Jazeera in audience viewer rankings for the first time in the history of the two channels. IPSOS-STAT says that in 2003 and 2004 "the gap between the two stations was very big" in Saudi Arabia, with Al Jazeera holding a significant lead. IPSOS-STAT says that the weakening viewership of Al Jazeera is not confined to Saudi Arabia, which is inhabited by some 18 million persons, "most of whom are wealthy with high purchasing power." The trend shows a weakening of Al Jazeera's former lead throughout the region, with Al Arabiya getting stronger, although Al Jazeera is still leading in Kuwait, for example. Could it be that some Middle East viewers are tiring of Al Jazeera, which is often perceived as a more "radical and Islamic" network? This image of Al Jazeera as a conduit for terrorist videos is currently being reinforced with the video obtained from kidnappers showing Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter who is being held hostage, and the Osama bin Laden audio tape threatening another attack on the United States. Al Arabiya's content is seen by IPSOS-STAT as more moderate and seemingly more in tune with what viewers want to watch, and Al Arabiya's management is given credit for being "more enlightened and visionary." However, IPSOS-STAT's continuing monthly tracking surveys are at odds with the findings of a recent one-time Zogby International poll, which shows Al Jazeera still in the lead. Although the results of the Zogby poll have been widely reported, most informed observers believe they are deeply flawed, and that the poll's methodology is unfamiliar to reporters whose stories have not adddressed the nuances of audience polling. While IPSOS-STAT shows the actual viewing numbers that a channel receives, Zogby reports only audience preferences - what people say they prefer to watch, but in fact may not. Actual viewing numbers are what most advertising agencies and media use in their promotional planning. Zogby also limited its survey to satellite channels, leaving out terrestrial channels such as Al Arabiya, whose programs can be picked up with standard roof-top or television set-top antennas and reach large numbers of viewers with easy, free access. While leading Arab television channels discredited Zogby's findings, Al Jazeera promoted them with a special program featuring Karen Hughes, the U.S. government's ranking public diplomacy official. The apparent trend away from Al Jazeera comes at an especially inopportune moment for the Qatar-based all-news channel. Because Al Jazeera International is scheduled to officially launch its service to the United States and Australia in March, it is hurrying to persuade cable television systems to carry its program service and get commercial sponsors to pay the bills at a time when its parent channel is hawking a kidnapper video. The controversial cable channel reportedly is not succeeding in lining up cable channels or advertisers in the United States, the world's largest commercial market. All this is not lost on those who are putting together Al Jazeera's English channel. At its Washington, D.C., headquarters, where Worldcasting recently visited, executives are doing pre-emptive damage control by distancing themselves from the perceived news biases of the home office in the Middle East. They are emphasizing a new ethical code and independence from its Middle East parent in a region of the world where the novelty of Al Jazeera is rapidly wearing thin.
These consecutive 12-month ratings measure actual daily viewership of Middle East transnational television channels and not only bode ill for Al Jazeera's marquee Arabic channel; they also impact plans for Al Jazeera International, the network's new English-language service scheduled to debut in only two months.

In what can be interpreted as a move to distance itself from the home-based channel, Al Jazeera International stresses that while the new English channel is the "sibling network to Al Jazeera Arabic…(it) is independent administratively, financially and editorially."

In a monthly charting of audience ratings prepared exclusively for Worldcasting by the premier independent Middle East television survey organization IPSOS-STAT, the Saudi government-financed Al-Arabiya surpassed Al Jazeera in audience viewer rankings for the first time in the history of the two channels. IPSOS-STAT says that in 2003 and 2004 "the gap between the two stations was very big" in Saudi Arabia, with Al Jazeera holding a significant lead.

IPSOS-STAT says that the weakening viewership of Al Jazeera is not confined to Saudi Arabia, which is inhabited by some 18 million persons, "most of whom are wealthy with high purchasing power." The trend shows a weakening of Al Jazeera's former lead throughout the region, with Al Arabiya getting stronger, although Al Jazeera is still leading in Kuwait, for example.

Could it be that some Middle East viewers are tiring of Al Jazeera, which is often perceived as a more "radical and Islamic" network? This image of Al Jazeera as a conduit for terrorist videos is currently being reinforced with the video obtained from kidnappers showing Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter who is being held hostage, and the Osama bin Laden audio tape threatening another attack on the United States.

Al Arabiya's content is seen by IPSOS-STAT as more moderate and seemingly more in tune with what viewers want to watch, and Al Arabiya's management is given credit for being "more enlightened and visionary."

However, IPSOS-STAT's continuing monthly tracking surveys are at odds with the findings of a recent one-time Zogby International poll, which shows Al Jazeera still in the lead.

Although the results of the Zogby poll have been widely reported, most informed observers believe they are deeply flawed, and that the poll's methodology is unfamiliar to reporters whose stories have not adddressed the nuances of audience polling.

While IPSOS-STAT shows the actual viewing numbers that a channel receives, Zogby reports only audience preferences - what people say they prefer to watch, but in fact may not.

Actual viewing numbers are what most advertising agencies and media use in their promotional planning. Zogby also limited its survey to satellite channels, leaving out terrestrial channels such as Al Arabiya, whose programs can be picked up with standard roof-top or television set-top antennas and reach large numbers of viewers with easy, free access. While leading Arab television channels discredited Zogby's findings, Al Jazeera promoted them with a special program featuring Karen Hughes, the U.S. government's ranking public diplomacy official.

The apparent trend away from Al Jazeera comes at an especially inopportune moment for the Qatar-based all-news channel.

Because Al Jazeera International is scheduled to officially launch its service to the United States and Australia in March, it is hurrying to persuade cable television systems to carry its program service and get commercial sponsors to pay the bills at a time when its parent channel is hawking a kidnapper video. The controversial cable channel reportedly is not succeeding in lining up cable channels or advertisers in the United States, the world's largest commercial market.

All this is not lost on those who are putting together Al Jazeera's English channel. At its Washington, D.C., headquarters, where Worldcasting recently visited, executives are doing pre-emptive damage control by distancing themselves from the perceived news biases of the home office in the Middle East. They are emphasizing a new ethical code and independence from its Middle East parent in a region of the world where the novelty of Al Jazeera is rapidly wearing thin.]]> 2006-01-19T23:03:37-08:00 Did the commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) really say those things about the media, and the war in Iraq? If so, why the big secret? The remarks attributed to General John Abizaid that mysteriously surfaced on the Internet and were sent anonymously to media outlets were said to have been from the General’s recent address at the Naval War College, date unknown. The speech was not (and is not) mentioned on the web sites of either CENTCOM or the Naval War College. It was one of the great mysteries of the holiday season in the blogosphere as to whether reports of the speech were bogus. http://www.karmalised.com/archives/001233.html In the purported speech, General Abizaid set forth clearly and succinctly how the U.S. military assesses the present situation in Iraq, and where things are headed. There are at least two major versions on the Internet of General Abizaid’s remarks, one from “a student at the Naval War College,” another from “CAPT Chuck Mull, USN (Ret.), USNA ’50, who was in attendance at the address.” They are word-for-word the same (“BS would not sell to this audience&#8221. The version signed by the student, which pre-dated CAPT Mull’s, was posted on numerous blogs, including the West Point Old Grad Network. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1527192/posts Both the anonymous student and the CAPT Mull versions report that General Abizaid told the audience of “mid-grade/senior military officers” that he was “amazed as he goes around the country and testifies before the Congress how many of our countrymen do not know or understand what we are doing and how we are doing. There are very few members of Congress who have ever worn the uniform (or our armed forces). He said that the questions he gets from some in Congress convince him that they have the idea that we are about to be pushed out of Iraq…where the insurgency is in only 4 of 18 provinces.” General Abizaid reportedly stressed that “you will never see a headline in this country about a school opening or a power station being built and coming on line, or a community doing well…We are focused on the things that we (Americans) have done wrong, like Abu Ghraib, and not talking about this enemy. We need to talk about this enemy. “Since Desert Storm in 1991, US forces have not lost any combat engagement in the region at the platoon-level or above. Al Qaida has no belief that they can defeat us militarily. They see our center of gravity as being the will of the American people. That is influenced by the media and they are playing to that. They don’t need to win any battles. Their plan is to keep the casualties in front of the American people in the media for long enough that we will become convinced that we cannot win and leave the region. That would be tragic for our country.” On its web site, C-SPAN also carried the student’s summary, with a notation of support submitted by the Army Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker, http://www.c-span.org/pdf/abizaid_comments120905_3.pdf. In addition, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal quoted General Abizaid and carried comments by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from a Public TV interview, where Mr. Rumsfeld was critical of the media’s reportage on Iraq. General Abizaid’s remarks also became fodder on radio talk shows. But did General Abizaid really utter those words at the Naval War College? Or was it someone trying to fool us, like the anonymous sender of bogus documents faxed to CBS’s 60 Minutes from Kinko’s in Abilene Texas, which disparaged President Bush’s National Guard Service? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathergate In the holiday crease between Christmas/Chanukah and January 1, when knowledgeable public affairs aides became available, Worldcasting confirmed with both U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and the Naval War College that General Abizaid did indeed speak at the College on November 10. He spoke from notes, the speech was not recorded, and there is no official transcript of it. LT. Tawney Dotson at CENTCOM public affairs says reports on the Internet “accurately reflect the spirit” of General Abizaid’s remarks. It remains unclear why the definitive report on General Abizaid’s remarks had to come from an anonymous student, or whoever it really was, with the inevitable questions raised of its authenticity, which surely diminished its impact. An official transcript of General Abizaid’s off-the-cuff remarks could have easily been supplied to the press to avoid the confusion, and to promote a fuller understanding of U.S. military operations in Iraq. Central Command (CENTCOM) really say those things about the media, and the war in Iraq? If so, why the big secret?

The remarks attributed to General John Abizaid that mysteriously surfaced on the Internet and were sent anonymously to media outlets were said to have been from the General’s recent address at the Naval War College, date unknown.

The speech was not (and is not) mentioned on the web sites of either CENTCOM or the Naval War College. It was one of the great mysteries of the holiday season in the blogosphere as to whether reports of the speech were bogus. http://www.karmalised.com/archives/001233.html

In the purported speech, General Abizaid set forth clearly and succinctly how the U.S. military assesses the present situation in Iraq, and where things are headed.

There are at least two major versions on the Internet of General Abizaid’s remarks, one from “a student at the Naval War College,” another from “CAPT Chuck Mull, USN (Ret.), USNA ’50, who was in attendance at the address.” They are word-for-word the same (“BS would not sell to this audience”. The version signed by the student, which pre-dated CAPT Mull’s, was posted on numerous blogs, including the West Point Old Grad Network. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1527192/posts

Both the anonymous student and the CAPT Mull versions report that General Abizaid told the audience of “mid-grade/senior military officers” that he was “amazed as he goes around the country and testifies before the Congress how many of our countrymen do not know or understand what we are doing and how we are doing. There are very few members of Congress who have ever worn the uniform (or our armed forces). He said that the questions he gets from some in Congress convince him that they have the idea that we are about to be pushed out of Iraq…where the insurgency is in only 4 of 18 provinces.”

General Abizaid reportedly stressed that “you will never see a headline in this country about a school opening or a power station being built and coming on line, or a community doing well…We are focused on the things that we (Americans) have done wrong, like Abu Ghraib, and not talking about this enemy. We need to talk about this enemy.

“Since Desert Storm in 1991, US forces have not lost any combat engagement in the region at the platoon-level or above. Al Qaida has no belief that they can defeat us militarily. They see our center of gravity as being the will of the American people. That is influenced by the media and they are playing to that. They don’t need to win any battles. Their plan is to keep the casualties in front of the American people in the media for long enough that we will become convinced that we cannot win and leave the region. That would be tragic for our country.”

On its web site, C-SPAN also carried the student’s summary, with a notation of support submitted by the Army Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker,
http://www.c-span.org/pdf/abizaid_comments120905_3.pdf. In addition, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal quoted General Abizaid and carried comments by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from a Public TV interview, where Mr. Rumsfeld was critical of the media’s reportage on Iraq. General Abizaid’s remarks also became fodder on radio talk shows.

But did General Abizaid really utter those words at the Naval War College? Or was it someone trying to fool us, like the anonymous sender of bogus documents faxed to CBS’s 60 Minutes from Kinko’s in Abilene Texas, which disparaged President Bush’s National Guard Service? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathergate

In the holiday crease between Christmas/Chanukah and January 1, when knowledgeable public affairs aides became available, Worldcasting confirmed with both U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and the Naval War College that General Abizaid did indeed speak at the College on November 10. He spoke from notes, the speech was not recorded, and there is no official transcript of it. LT. Tawney Dotson at CENTCOM public affairs says reports on the Internet “accurately reflect the spirit” of General Abizaid’s remarks.

It remains unclear why the definitive report on General Abizaid’s remarks had to come from an anonymous student, or whoever it really was, with the inevitable questions raised of its authenticity, which surely diminished its impact. An official transcript of General Abizaid’s off-the-cuff remarks could have easily been supplied to the press to avoid the confusion, and to promote a fuller understanding of U.S. military operations in Iraq.]]> 2005-12-29T06:18:47-08:00 The latest international television satellite channel, Russia Today, debuted this week, after securing a bank loan of $30 million to cover start up costs. It will broadcast in English, as do satellite networks from the BBC, the Chinese government, and the proposed Al Jazeera channel. The satellite news bandwagon is getting more crowded all the time and English will be the language of choice as new channels develop. Russia Today is a 24/7 all-news channel, with a staff of more than 300. It began beaming English-language programs to the United States, Europe and Asia to provide a modern-day image of President Vladimir Putin's Russian Bear. The language is not the only import at Russia Today - the network is also built on the BBC and U.S. government broadcast models. An independent Board of Governors oversees the broadcast services and provides a firewall to keep the government from influencing news content and ensure objectivity. Seventy-two non-Russian journalists, including many Americans and Britons, are on the news staff to give the network a coveted international flair. Russian news is simply the latest example of English rapidly becoming the "in" language in international satellite television. Other languages - Russian, Chinese, even French - are passé in this medium, and Arabic is only now beginning to gain steam. Content and presentation of the English-language channels are usually developed by American and British mercenaries, who are making a cottage industry of getting the networks off the ground and on the air. CNN International has long been on the air around the world, but it targets the most "influential" 10 percent of the world's population who speak English and are often traveling and watch in hotel rooms and airports. The newcomers to the English-language satellite business want to reach a mass audience in the United States and around the world - a lofty goal in a risky and competitive market filled with long-established channels. Al Jazeera's English-language channel will be beamed to the United States and Australia and is planning to broadcast in 2006. That service is also top heavy with British and American news teams, including professionals with impressive news credentials, such as Editor Kieren Baker, formerly of CNN, and Managing Director Nigel Parsons, formerly of the BBC and Associated Press Television News. British talk show icon Sir David Frost will be Al Jazeera International's top news interview personality and Josh Rushing, a former U.S. Marine public affairs officer in Iraq, will report from Al Jazeera's Washington, D.C., bureau. Two of the four primary news bureaus will be located in Washington and London. As predicted, because Al Jazeera's Arabic channel rose to world prominence with the help of its Bin Laden and kidnapper videos, cable systems in America have been loath to sign agreements with the controversial channel. If the network does not have access to large audiences in the most influential country and richest commercial market in the world, they will be crippled from the outset. They have failed to make any deals with American carriers as of yet, but Al Jazeera's desire to be a major player in the West in general, and Washington, D.C., in particular, seems to outweigh the risks in their minds. They are refusing to be left behind in the English-language craze and are slated to launch in the spring. China's new English-language television news channel is all the rage in South Africa, reported Adam Powell, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy. Powell, who recently attended an international broadcast conference in Nairobi, Kenya, said, "China is making its move on TV. As with CNN and the BBC, CCTV9 - the English-language news channel - is on in hotels in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Nairobi. And now, as with CNN and the BBC, African 'terrestrial' broadcasters are carrying CCTV9. It's on right now on KBC - Kenya's government-owned BBC look-alike. The global broadcasters here are buzzing about it. They say it has caught the U.S. unawares, burying [Voice of America] TV - and bumping it from multi-channel platforms and hotel rooms." More efforts to reach into Africa via television could be in the works soon. A report by an independent task force sponsored by America's Council on Foreign Relations notes that "Africa is of growing international importance, playing an increasingly significant role in supplying energy, preventing the spread of terrorism, and halting the devastation of HIV/AIDS," and that "40% of African states are now electoral democracies." Can additional English language channels be far behind? The French, however, have ignored the trend. The government's plan for an international channel is modeled after CNN International's quest for elite audiences, but will be for French-speaking travelers. They will be able to view programs expressing "French values and vision to the world," said President Jacques Chirac. Additionally, the BBC, which has had its own international World Service television channel in English for some time, will debut its new Arabic television service in the year 2007. But despite these few anomalies, global news of the future will largely be reported in English and conceived by Americans and the British. English-language programming will come out of Beijing, Moscow, Atlanta, Cape Town, Qatar, Washington, Kuala Lumpur, London and elsewhere, and be transported to tiny villages, plush hotel rooms, government offices, airports, cafes, teeming marketplaces, and I-Pods everywhere. What Voltaire said in 1761 stands the test of time in today's instant communication age: "The first among languages is that which possesses the largest number of excellent works."
Russia Today is a 24/7 all-news channel, with a staff of more than 300. It began beaming English-language programs to the United States, Europe and Asia to provide a modern-day image of President Vladimir Putin's Russian Bear. The language is not the only import at Russia Today - the network is also built on the BBC and U.S. government broadcast models. An independent Board of Governors oversees the broadcast services and provides a firewall to keep the government from influencing news content and ensure objectivity. Seventy-two non-Russian journalists, including many Americans and Britons, are on the news staff to give the network a coveted international flair.

Russian news is simply the latest example of English rapidly becoming the "in" language in international satellite television. Other languages - Russian, Chinese, even French - are passé in this medium, and Arabic is only now beginning to gain steam. Content and presentation of the English-language channels are usually developed by American and British mercenaries, who are making a cottage industry of getting the networks off the ground and on the air. CNN International has long been on the air around the world, but it targets the most "influential" 10 percent of the world's population who speak English and are often traveling and watch in hotel rooms and airports. The newcomers to the English-language satellite business want to reach a mass audience in the United States and around the world - a lofty goal in a risky and competitive market filled with long-established channels.

Al Jazeera's English-language channel will be beamed to the United States and Australia and is planning to broadcast in 2006. That service is also top heavy with British and American news teams, including professionals with impressive news credentials, such as Editor Kieren Baker, formerly of CNN, and Managing Director Nigel Parsons, formerly of the BBC and Associated Press Television News. British talk show icon Sir David Frost will be Al Jazeera International's top news interview personality and Josh Rushing, a former U.S. Marine public affairs officer in Iraq, will report from Al Jazeera's Washington, D.C., bureau. Two of the four primary news bureaus will be located in Washington and London.

As predicted, because Al Jazeera's Arabic channel rose to world prominence with the help of its Bin Laden and kidnapper videos, cable systems in America have been loath to sign agreements with the controversial channel. If the network does not have access to large audiences in the most influential country and richest commercial market in the world, they will be crippled from the outset. They have failed to make any deals with American carriers as of yet, but Al Jazeera's desire to be a major player in the West in general, and Washington, D.C., in particular, seems to outweigh the risks in their minds. They are refusing to be left behind in the English-language craze and are slated to launch in the spring.

China's new English-language television news channel is all the rage in South Africa, reported Adam Powell, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy. Powell, who recently attended an international broadcast conference in Nairobi, Kenya, said, "China is making its move on TV. As with CNN and the BBC, CCTV9 - the English-language news channel - is on in hotels in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Nairobi. And now, as with CNN and the BBC, African 'terrestrial' broadcasters are carrying CCTV9. It's on right now on KBC - Kenya's government-owned BBC look-alike. The global broadcasters here are buzzing about it. They say it has caught the U.S. unawares, burying [Voice of America] TV - and bumping it from multi-channel platforms and hotel rooms."

More efforts to reach into Africa via television could be in the works soon. A report by an independent task force sponsored by America's Council on Foreign Relations notes that "Africa is of growing international importance, playing an increasingly significant role in supplying energy, preventing the spread of terrorism, and halting the devastation of HIV/AIDS," and that "40% of African states are now electoral democracies." Can additional English language channels be far behind?

The French, however, have ignored the trend. The government's plan for an international channel is modeled after CNN International's quest for elite audiences, but will be for French-speaking travelers. They will be able to view programs expressing "French values and vision to the world," said President Jacques Chirac.

Additionally, the BBC, which has had its own international World Service television channel in English for some time, will debut its new Arabic television service in the year 2007.

But despite these few anomalies, global news of the future will largely be reported in English and conceived by Americans and the British. English-language programming will come out of Beijing, Moscow, Atlanta, Cape Town, Qatar, Washington, Kuala Lumpur, London and elsewhere, and be transported to tiny villages, plush hotel rooms, government offices, airports, cafes, teeming marketplaces, and I-Pods everywhere.

What Voltaire said in 1761 stands the test of time in today's instant communication age: "The first among languages is that which possesses the largest number of excellent works."
]]> 2005-12-16T00:52:47-08:00 The Senate Foreign Relations Committee conceded that its recent call for a debate on Alhurra's effectiveness should have happened before America’s Arabic television channel went on the air. But the oversight committee is too late. The dispute rages daily in Washington and the Middle East, and battle lines have been drawn on two major issues. One is who is watching Alhurra, and the other is what they see there. Audience ratings are important because the message means nothing if no one is there to receive it, as noted by Norman Pattiz, who founded Alhurra and Radio Sawa, the United States government-owned Arabic radio station. How many people are watching the channel might seem like a point everyone could agree on, but there are no neutral zones in the great Alhurra debate. The numbers released by the station paint a much more optimistic picture of its viewership than do those calculated by outside sources. Recently, Worldcasting cited that Alhurra had a 14 percent viewership in Iraq, according to one independent survey. However, a survey released by the network showed 44 percent viewership in the country. Both surveys had about the same number of respondents in their samples for national representation of actual viewing, both did face-to-face interviews throughout Iraq, which is considered more reliable than telephone polling. Each defended to Worldcasting its sample model - the locations of respondents within Iraq - as the most representative of the entire country. Why the differing results? The survey showing 44 percent recorded the percentage of the adult population in the Iraq sample that said they viewed Alhurra in the past week, while the lower figure, 14 percent, represented viewers who watched the channel the day before. Previous day numbers are "the currency of the market, most of the agencies, media and advertisers are relying on such data," according to a spokesperson for IPSOS-STAT, a leading independent marketing company in the Middle East. I also know from my personal experience at CBS in New York, that the overnight ratings delivered to my desk first thing each morning were grabbed before coffee. A representative from the U.S. government’s International Broadcasting Bureau spoke to Worldcasting and granted that “weekly audiences are normally greater than daily audiences for all channels, since more people watch any given channel at least once over the course of a week than watch on any given day." The spokesperson defended the network's research by saying that "Weekly viewing and/or listening is the standard audience measure used for all" - the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and others - and that it is also the standard measure by other international broadcasters including “the BBC, Radio France International, Deutsche Welle, Radio Canada...We use the weekly measure to maintain consistency…” And this has yet to get to the heart of the controversy. According to one critic, Alhurra is known as “Al Jazeera lite in the Middle East." Salameh Nematt, Washington Bureau Chief of the international Arab daily Al-Hayat and the Lebanon-based Arab satellite television channel LBC claimed that Arab audiences are disappointed that Alhurra does not have a harder edge in its reporting, “to expose torture and massacres" that are taking place in repressive Arab countries, and “rulers in the Gulf who pocket one-third of the country’s income.” Nematt said that “Middle East viewers were hoping that Alhurra would do the kind of reporting about repressive governments as the U.S. had done with Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America Arabic service,” the latter of which was replaced by the music and news channel, Radio Sawa. Deirdre Kline, communications director of the U.S. government’s Middle East Broadcasting Networks, countered by citing a list of 17 reports on issues carried regularly on Alhurra’s news broadcasts. Those include several stories from Saudi Arabia on such topics as human rights violations and the problem of domestic violence, plus the Kifaya movement’s demonstrations in Cairo before the general elections, and anti-war demonstrations in Washington, DC, and London. Alhurra gets its lightweight reputation in part because it “outsources” Middle East coverage, said Nematt, who was fired as an Alhurra talk show participant after he criticized the station’s management. He said it uses reporters from its mammoth contractor, Associated Press Television News (ATPN), instead of having its own full-time, staffed news bureaus in the region, as Al Jazeera does. APTN touts on its website that “We are now the primary source of foreign news and technical support for the growing number of satellite stations in the Middle East as well as Alhurra…” Farmed out reporting might work for now, but the new BBC Arabic channel launches in 2007; the British broadcaster said it "will draw upon the BBC's un-matched newsgathering resources," which have the potential to dwarf Alhurra's efforts to compete. This sentiment was echoed at a November congressional hearing of a subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee. Chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) criticized Alhurra for not having bureaus in locations such as Jordan, where network reporters arrived late to cover the hotel bombing in Amman. The congressman nevertheless gave "high marks" to station representatives for their forthcoming testimony. Nematt leveled more serious charges when he questioned the ethics of Alhurra's relationships with Middle Eastern countries that permit Radio Sawa to transmit programs from their territories on their radio frequencies. “Radio Sawa had to be on good terms with those countries, especially the security sections, to get the deals, and now Alhurra must try to please those countries as well, not to take the hard line and upset Radio Sawa’s transmitter agreements,” said Nematt. Radio Sawa lists 24 FM and AM radio stations that carry the channel throughout the Middle East. Deirdre Kline retorted, “The allegation that Alhurra shows favoritism to any country is unequivocally false. Alhurra’s mission, by law, is to broadcast accurate and objective news and information without bias or favoritism. Alhurra frequently broadcasts news reports, talk shows, magazine programs and town hall meetings on issues such as human rights, the rights of women, freedom and democracy.” A debate on Alhurra and Radio Sawa might happen on the Hill some day, but the shouting match has already begun.
One is who is watching Alhurra, and the other is what they see there.

Audience ratings are important because the message means nothing if no one is there to receive it, as noted by Norman Pattiz, who founded Alhurra and Radio Sawa, the United States government-owned Arabic radio station.

How many people are watching the channel might seem like a point everyone could agree on, but there are no neutral zones in the great Alhurra debate. The numbers released by the station paint a much more optimistic picture of its viewership than do those calculated by outside sources.

Recently, Worldcasting cited that Alhurra had a 14 percent viewership in Iraq, according to one independent survey. However, a survey released by the network showed 44 percent viewership in the country. Both surveys had about the same number of respondents in their samples for national representation of actual viewing, both did face-to-face interviews throughout Iraq, which is considered more reliable than telephone polling. Each defended to Worldcasting its sample model - the locations of respondents within Iraq - as the most representative of the entire country.

Why the differing results? The survey showing 44 percent recorded the percentage of the adult population in the Iraq sample that said they viewed Alhurra in the past week, while the lower figure, 14 percent, represented viewers who watched the channel the day before. Previous day numbers are "the currency of the market, most of the agencies, media and advertisers are relying on such data," according to a spokesperson for IPSOS-STAT, a leading independent marketing company in the Middle East. I also know from my personal experience at CBS in New York, that the overnight ratings delivered to my desk first thing each morning were grabbed before coffee.

A representative from the U.S. government’s International Broadcasting Bureau spoke to Worldcasting and granted that “weekly audiences are normally greater than daily audiences for all channels, since more people watch any given channel at least once over the course of a week than watch on any given day." The spokesperson defended the network's research by saying that "Weekly viewing and/or listening is the standard audience measure used for all" - the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and others - and that it is also the standard measure by other international broadcasters including “the BBC, Radio France International, Deutsche Welle, Radio Canada...We use the weekly measure to maintain consistency…”

And this has yet to get to the heart of the controversy. According to one critic, Alhurra is known as “Al Jazeera lite in the Middle East." Salameh Nematt, Washington Bureau Chief of the international Arab daily Al-Hayat and the Lebanon-based Arab satellite television channel LBC claimed that Arab audiences are disappointed that Alhurra does not have a harder edge in its reporting, “to expose torture and massacres" that are taking place in repressive Arab countries, and “rulers in the Gulf who pocket one-third of the country’s income.”

Nematt said that “Middle East viewers were hoping that Alhurra would do the kind of reporting about repressive governments as the U.S. had done with Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America Arabic service,” the latter of which was replaced by the music and news channel, Radio Sawa.

Deirdre Kline, communications director of the U.S. government’s Middle East Broadcasting Networks, countered by citing a list of 17 reports on issues carried regularly on Alhurra’s news broadcasts. Those include several stories from Saudi Arabia on such topics as human rights violations and the problem of domestic violence, plus the Kifaya movement’s demonstrations in Cairo before the general elections, and anti-war demonstrations in Washington, DC, and London.

Alhurra gets its lightweight reputation in part because it “outsources” Middle East coverage, said Nematt, who was fired as an Alhurra talk show participant after he criticized the station’s management. He said it uses reporters from its mammoth contractor, Associated Press Television News (ATPN), instead of having its own full-time, staffed news bureaus in the region, as Al Jazeera does. APTN touts on its website that “We are now the primary source of foreign news and technical support for the growing number of satellite stations in the Middle East as well as Alhurra…” Farmed out reporting might work for now, but the new BBC Arabic channel launches in 2007; the British broadcaster said it "will draw upon the BBC's un-matched newsgathering resources," which have the potential to dwarf Alhurra's efforts to compete.

This sentiment was echoed at a November congressional hearing of a subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee. Chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) criticized Alhurra for not having bureaus in locations such as Jordan, where network reporters arrived late to cover the hotel bombing in Amman. The congressman nevertheless gave "high marks" to station representatives for their forthcoming testimony.

Nematt leveled more serious charges when he questioned the ethics of Alhurra's relationships with Middle Eastern countries that permit Radio Sawa to transmit programs from their territories on their radio frequencies. “Radio Sawa had to be on good terms with those countries, especially the security sections, to get the deals, and now Alhurra must try to please those countries as well, not to take the hard line and upset Radio Sawa’s transmitter agreements,” said Nematt. Radio Sawa lists 24 FM and AM radio stations that carry the channel throughout the Middle East.

Deirdre Kline retorted, “The allegation that Alhurra shows favoritism to any country is unequivocally false. Alhurra’s mission, by law, is to broadcast accurate and objective news and information without bias or favoritism. Alhurra frequently broadcasts news reports, talk shows, magazine programs and town hall meetings on issues such as human rights, the rights of women, freedom and democracy.”

A debate on Alhurra and Radio Sawa might happen on the Hill some day, but the shouting match has already begun.]]> 2005-12-08T05:43:45-08:00 Karen Hughes is America's Top Gun communicator. But how will her job performance be rated 25 or even 50 years from now by her team in the State Department, elsewhere around the world and in the many politico-history books that will be written about her? Of course it's too early to tell, as she is just finding her way as the new undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. But does she have the qualities that helped raise some former directors of the defunct U.S. Information Agency to legendary status? There were more than a dozen USIA directors during the agency's almost half-century existence before it disbanded in 1999. Worldcasting asked professionals who served under some of them who was their favorite and why. This is not a run at nostalgia, but rather an attempt to focus on the very real problem of communicating America's story abroad and to examine what type of person it will take to fix the problems. More than six years have passed since the effort has had a powerful figure that was not only himself great, but also inspired others to greatness. The common thread among employees' memories of their directors is that the most revered leaders had an uncanny ability to make young and low-ranking USIA officials feel like integral cogs in the public diplomacy mission. Ambassador Jock Shirley, a veteran counselor to USIA directors, told Worldcasting the director he knew best was Jim Keogh, who is "no longer a young man now, but as spry as ever." Director Keogh had previously been the chief White House speechwriter for President Nixon and the executive editor of Time magazine. Jock Shirley, a USIA icon himself, believes "Jim Keogh's successes lay in his clear understanding of [three things]: USIA's role in the Cold War as it was being contested during his tenure, how best to use our skills in the struggle to contain and weaken the Soviet Union, and the strengths and weaknesses of the men and women of USIA and how to put those strengths to efficient use." Shirley continued, "Jim Keogh knew that a smoothly functioning Washington bureaucracy was the sine qua non for success in the field, but he knew also that it was the men and women scattered around the world on whom our usefulness ultimately depended. To them he devoted his greatest focus, traveling to every corner of the globe, visiting every major post in the world, and getting to know hundreds of our colleagues, from senior public affairs officers to junior trainees." Shirley observed after hundreds of hours with Keogh that the director's "insights into our operations were incisive, and his memory for people and judgment on where and how to assign them, phenomenal." But what Shirley remembers best was the warmth and affection Jim Keogh and his wife, Verna, showed to the USIA support staff. "Wherever they went morale soared. After long days of meetings, inspections, not-always-easy conversations with this or that ambassador or PAO [Public Affairs Officer], Jim and Verna Keogh loved nothing better than an evening of laughter and easy companionship surrounded by the men and women of the post." Others give former USIA director and ambassador Frank Shakespeare high marks. When Bob Wozniak was Public Affairs Officer in Cyprus in the early 1970s, Shakespeare planned a three-day trip there. "What does one do with the Agency director for so long a time on so small an island?" Wozniak asked himself. "More to the point, unlike what came to be practice with his successors traveling with support staff, area directors, security types...Frank came alone." Wozniak recalls that Shakespeare performed well in an hour-long interview on Cyprus state television, "an unprecedented opportunity for projecting the U.S. and its policies on neutral Cyprus' airwaves." But what most impressed Wozniak was the USIA director's graciousness to "an essential non-entity in the USIA hierarchy. My small staff and I were on razor's edge wondering if what we had arranged and were doing would meet expectations and requirements. Evidently they did." A promotion to Foreign Service Officer-3 came for Wozniak the following year. Public Affairs Officer Paul Blackburn also gave Shakespeare the highest marks, especially for his interest in getting the best from young people. "I had great respect for the leadership skills and personal sensitivity of Frank Shakespeare, a man whose political views were considerably to the right of my own," Blackburn told Worldcasting. "As Director during the traumatic Vietnam War years, Shakespeare gave unequalled attention to the morale of younger Foreign Service Officers [FSOs] and Civil Service personnel throughout the Agency...On one memorable occasion he met with us shortly after the U.S. 'incursion' into Cambodia...During that session he candidly shared our collective deep pain over both that legally and morally dubious action and also its effect on USIA's efforts to sustain America's standing in the world. Later Shakespeare paid this 34-year-old [Foreign Service Information Officer] the extraordinary compliment by taking a direct interest in my 1972 assignment" as Director of the Tokyo American Center. Professor Nancy Snow at California State University, Fullerton ranks Joseph Duffey, who presided over the demise of the USIA in the Clinton administration, at the head of the class. "Duffey was tasked with a no-winner," said Snow. A Cultural Affairs and Academic Exchange Specialist in the "E" Bureau, Snow said that while it was "clear to me that although [Duffey] had a strong commitment to cultural diplomacy and international exchange, the writing was on the wall that the USIA was going to lose its independent status. I appreciated the personal affability that Duffey displayed to his staff, including this lowly Presidential Management Fellow." It would be a pity if Karen Hughes is summoned back to the White House, where it is suspected she may wind up, to help calm the communication waters over there. She is desperately needed where she is - at the center of a broken U.S. public diplomacy effort - so she can jump start future generations of public diplomacy officers who need someone to admire.
Of course it's too early to tell, as she is just finding her way as the new undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. But does she have the qualities that helped raise some former directors of the defunct U.S. Information Agency to legendary status?

There were more than a dozen USIA directors during the agency's almost half-century existence before it disbanded in 1999. Worldcasting asked professionals who served under some of them who was their favorite and why.

This is not a run at nostalgia, but rather an attempt to focus on the very real problem of communicating America's story abroad and to examine what type of person it will take to fix the problems. More than six years have passed since the effort has had a powerful figure that was not only himself great, but also inspired others to greatness. The common thread among employees' memories of their directors is that the most revered leaders had an uncanny ability to make young and low-ranking USIA officials feel like integral cogs in the public diplomacy mission.

Ambassador Jock Shirley, a veteran counselor to USIA directors, told Worldcasting the director he knew best was Jim Keogh, who is "no longer a young man now, but as spry as ever."

Director Keogh had previously been the chief White House speechwriter for President Nixon and the executive editor of Time magazine.

Jock Shirley, a USIA icon himself, believes "Jim Keogh's successes lay in his clear understanding of [three things]: USIA's role in the Cold War as it was being contested during his tenure, how best to use our skills in the struggle to contain and weaken the Soviet Union, and the strengths and weaknesses of the men and women of USIA and how to put those strengths to efficient use."

Shirley continued, "Jim Keogh knew that a smoothly functioning Washington bureaucracy was the sine qua non for success in the field, but he knew also that it was the men and women scattered around the world on whom our usefulness ultimately depended. To them he devoted his greatest focus, traveling to every corner of the globe, visiting every major post in the world, and getting to know hundreds of our colleagues, from senior public affairs officers to junior trainees." Shirley observed after hundreds of hours with Keogh that the director's "insights into our operations were incisive, and his memory for people and judgment on where and how to assign them, phenomenal."

But what Shirley remembers best was the warmth and affection Jim Keogh and his wife, Verna, showed to the USIA support staff. "Wherever they went morale soared. After long days of meetings, inspections, not-always-easy conversations with this or that ambassador or PAO [Public Affairs Officer], Jim and Verna Keogh loved nothing better than an evening of laughter and easy companionship surrounded by the men and women of the post."

Others give former USIA director and ambassador Frank Shakespeare high marks.

When Bob Wozniak was Public Affairs Officer in Cyprus in the early 1970s, Shakespeare planned a three-day trip there.

"What does one do with the Agency director for so long a time on so small an island?" Wozniak asked himself. "More to the point, unlike what came to be practice with his successors traveling with support staff, area directors, security types...Frank came alone."

Wozniak recalls that Shakespeare performed well in an hour-long interview on Cyprus state television, "an unprecedented opportunity for projecting the U.S. and its policies on neutral Cyprus' airwaves."

But what most impressed Wozniak was the USIA director's graciousness to "an essential non-entity in the USIA hierarchy. My small staff and I were on razor's edge wondering if what we had arranged and were doing would meet expectations and requirements. Evidently they did." A promotion to Foreign Service Officer-3 came for Wozniak the following year.

Public Affairs Officer Paul Blackburn also gave Shakespeare the highest marks, especially for his interest in getting the best from young people.

"I had great respect for the leadership skills and personal sensitivity of Frank Shakespeare, a man whose political views were considerably to the right of my own," Blackburn told Worldcasting.

"As Director during the traumatic Vietnam War years, Shakespeare gave unequalled attention to the morale of younger Foreign Service Officers [FSOs] and Civil Service personnel throughout the Agency...On one memorable occasion he met with us shortly after the U.S. 'incursion' into Cambodia...During that session he candidly shared our collective deep pain over both that legally and morally dubious action and also its effect on USIA's efforts to sustain America's standing in the world. Later Shakespeare paid this 34-year-old [Foreign Service Information Officer] the extraordinary compliment by taking a direct interest in my 1972 assignment" as Director of the Tokyo American Center.

Professor Nancy Snow at California State University, Fullerton ranks Joseph Duffey, who presided over the demise of the USIA in the Clinton administration, at the head of the class. "Duffey was tasked with a no-winner," said Snow. A Cultural Affairs and Academic Exchange Specialist in the "E" Bureau, Snow said that while it was "clear to me that although [Duffey] had a strong commitment to cultural diplomacy and international exchange, the writing was on the wall that the USIA was going to lose its independent status. I appreciated the personal affability that Duffey displayed to his staff, including this lowly Presidential Management Fellow."

It would be a pity if Karen Hughes is summoned back to the White House, where it is suspected she may wind up, to help calm the communication waters over there.

She is desperately needed where she is - at the center of a broken U.S. public diplomacy effort - so she can jump start future generations of public diplomacy officers who need someone to admire.
]]> 2005-11-30T05:33:42-08:00