U.S. PROPAGANDA TELLING AMERICA’S STORY: METHODS UNDER CRITICISM

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32945, 17 June 1972, Page 14

U.S. PROPAGANDA TELLING AMERICA’S STORY: METHODS UNDER CRITICISM

(By

PETER BENCHLEY,

Newsweek Feature Service)

Every year, American taxpayers spend more than SUS2OO milliot for a product they seldom, if ever, see—a product whose effects are im possible to assess accurately and a product over which they have virtual!* no control. The product is propaganda—official United States propaganda beamed through several media to scores of countries around the globe, enunciating the American line, directly and indirectly, subtly and openly, on every issue imaginable.

Ostensibly, the United States propaganda arm operates to tell America’s story abroad, and in simpler times that was a modest enough and logical enough goal. But nowadays with the country in turmoil and consensus on anything almost nonexistent, criticism of the propaganda machine is mounting. Some critics disagree with what the United States is saying about itself abroad; others want to diffuse the responsibility for conveying that message; and still others believe that in an era of growing detente with the Communist countries, propaganda programmes are — in the words of Senator J. William Fulbright — “cold war relics” that should be discontinued altogether. Critics’ chief target In recent months, the primary target of the critics has been the United States Information Agency (U.5.1.A.) which employs 9877 people and operates, among other things, a film division, hundreds of libraries around the worlj, the Voice of America and a magazine called “America Illustrated.” Earlier this year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Mr Fulbright is chairman, voted to cut President Nixon’s budget request for the U.S.LA. from SUS2OO million to SUSIS4 million — a slash that would have meant the firing of more than 2000 persons and the effective emasculation 6f the Voice of America. The vote was meant as a slap at the President who had refused to let U.S.I.A. director Frank Shakespeare provide the committee with certain documents concerning the agency’s future plans. It was a show of Congressional pique at the President’s adamant and ongoing refusal to give the Senate a greater voice in foreign-policy decisions.

The money was later restored to the U.S.I.A. budget by a vote of the full Senate, but the battle over the uses and abuses of propaganda shows no signs of abating. In April, for instance, the conservative Senator James Buckley, of New York broadcast a U.S.I.A. film on Russia’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia on a television show — theoretically in defiance of a law that prohibits the U.S.I.A. from allowing its goods to be shown to the domestic market.

A doubtful film Supporters of the broadcast claimed that the film, called simply “Czechoslovakia: 1968,” was certainly worthy. After all, it had won an Academy Award. Furthermore, they said, Americans should be permitted to see what they are paying all that ' money for. Critics claimed that the film was heavy-handed, sim- ’ plistic, occasionally misrepre--1 sentational and larded with 1 gratuitous anti-Soviet bias, i And, they insisted, the United ■ States public should not be r subjected to Administration propaganda — presented as ; fact — on issues that are complex and controversial. The Czechoslovakia film is ’ only one that has raised the , hackles of politicians who complain that the Administration is using taxpayers’ money to stump for its own programmes abroad. Another was “Vietnam! Vietnam!”, a $U5250,000 venture produced and directed by John Ford that was so one-sided in its defence of the United States effort in Indo-China that it

was withdrawn after a few public showings abroad. But when U.S.I.A. films steer relatively clear of politics, they can be first-rate documentaries about life in America. “An Impression of John Steinbeck: Writer,” for example, is a lovely, graceful and moving film about the late Nobel Prize-winning novelist. And some of the other U.S.I.A. efforts are equally honest and professional. "America Illustrated” is studiously uncontroversial —largely because if it were not, Poland and the Soviet Union, the countries that accept the magazine as part of a cultural-exchange programme, most probably would not allow it to be distributed. Popular features U.S.LA. exhibits, especially the ones that feature United States consumer goods, are universally popuir. And the music programmes on the Voice of America are not only well received but are often as good as, if not better than, the radio fare offered to Americans at home. The Voice of America is one of three radio outlets that broadcast in 35 languages for 1400 hours every week. (Soviet radio propagandists, by contrast, push their message around the world in 84 languages for 1900 hours a week.) It beams a steady diet of music, news, analysis and commentary, and while it is generally inoffensive it carries nowhere near the weight of the overseas service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The two other radio organisations — operating separately from the U.S.LA.—are Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which broadcast news of the Soviet-bloc countries to the citizens of those countries. “If we hear anything about events in this country,” Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said in Moscow in April, “it’s through [Radio Liberty].” Until last year, the United States Government tried to maintain the fiction that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were financed solely by private contributions, while in fact they were bankrolled by the Central Intelligence Agency. Now both programmes are surviving —

barely—on stopgap Congressional funding. The basic purpose of all this propaganda, of course, is to win friends for the United States. How well it Is succeeding varies from country to country and the overall picture is indistinct. No propaganda effort can overcome American policy decisions regarded as hostile by a' foreign country. Even since the Indo-Pakistani wgr last winter, for example, the United State’s pro-Pakistan stance has made the job of U.S.I.A. officials in India an exercise in futility. And sinqe the abrupt change in United States relations with mainland China, the people bn Taiwan have been less than receptive to United States propaganda. But in most of the world’s less explosive spots, the U.S.I.A. is usually well regarded, if for nothing but its objectivity. “The Americans generally push their own line but they always tell the truth,” says the editor of an Ethiopian paper. “The Russions are out-and-out liarsAnd they pay to get items in our press, something an American would never do.” New approach On a world-wide scale, the United States seems recently to have adopted a less aggressive, less paternalistic attitude in its approach to the people it is trying to impress. Ideological platitudes have given way to basic collaboration and communication. More importantly, the U.S. I.A. has shown a willingness to paint a realistic portrait of several of America's less sightly blemishes. Foreign editors and government officials are given fully paid trips to the United States and spared none of the grimmer aspects of American life. And in many countries, U.S.I.A. officials are conducting seminars on how to avoid the repetition of America’s mistakes, teaching courses in traffic management and offering reams of information on various forms of pollution.

The propagandists apparently believe in a new approach: that sharing our mistakes — and the lessons we have learned from them — can be as valuable as boasting about our successes.