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INTERNATIONAL
BROADCASTING
I. US envoy visits
STB TV, supports free media.
The US ambassador in Ukraine, Steven Pifer, visited
the STB television channel today.
He
had meetings with the channel’s management,
Volodymyr Simkovych and Dmytro Prykordonnyy, and talked
to journalists during a short tour of the studio. Mykola
Knyazhytskyy, a member of the National Council for
Television and Radio Broadcasting [and former STB
director], also took part in the meetings. During an
hour-long meeting they discussed various issues. Pifer
confirmed his support for the further development of free
and independent media in Ukraine. (Ukrainian STB TV,
Kiev, 24 September 1999)
II. Leftist party
proposes abolition of DW foreign TV.
On [21st September] employees of Germany’s
foreign broadcasting station Deutsche Welle (DW) and
trade unions once again protested in Berlin against the
cutbacks in funds for DW, which the federal government
has decided. Meanwhile, the debate on the future of DW
continued.
In
Cologne the ARD [public radio and TV organization]
announced that in the near future it would not massively
support the foreign broadcasting station. After a meeting
of the ARD directors in Cologne, ARD chairman Peter Voss
told journalists that now “it is the
politicians’ turn” to decide on DW. The federal
government “alone is responsible for German foreign
television and we must remind it of this,” Voss
stressed. However, he did not rule out long-term
cooperation with DW in the form of a joint corporation.
This model has a “certain attraction” for the
ARD. Regarding options, such as the public television
stations taking over foreign television, Voss said that
there was no legal basis for such a step.
In
contrast, the PDS [Party of Democratic Socialism]
suggested ending the DW-TV television programme and,
instead, transmitting a “ programme mix of ARD, ZDF
and Phoenix by satellite all over the world.” Angela
Marquardt, the media policy spokeswoman of the PDS
Bundestag [German lower house], stressed, however, that
foreign radio should remain “completely
untouched.”
According to the party, this proposal would save
DM200m per year.
According to the Association of Radio, Film and
Television Makers (VRFF), the budget cuts, which will add
up to more than DM70m by the year 2003, have endangered
more than 745 jobs at DW. The association urged the
federal government “to refrain from this
job-destroying measure.” (ddpADN news agency,
Berlin, 21 September 1999)
III. US stops aid
to private stations—paper.
Media sources have reported that the US Agency for
International Development [USAID], which supports
development projects in the Palestinian territories, has
suddenly decided to cancel its programme of assistance to
private television and radio stations in Palestine worth
6m dollars to be disbursed over a two-year period.
The
funds were to be disbursed in the fields of training of
journalists, statistical studies of the number of viewers
and listeners to television and radio stations and the
importance of these stations to citizens, encouraging
programme exchange, and studies of the legal status of
these stations.
The
decision to cancel the project took the owners and
employees of these Palestinian television and radio
stations by surprise, especially since USAID did not
officially explain the reasons for such a cancellation
and after owners of the 32 stations had committed
themselves to provide the staff for the project and abide
by its provisions.
Several
station owners said they were able to get an unofficial
reason for the cancellation, which is financial crisis
and the transfer of the allocated US funds to support
projects in Kosovo and in Turkey—following the
earthquake that hit it about two weeks ago.
Journalist
Dawud Kuttab, director of the Modern Media Institute at
Quds University that runs the educational Quds
Television, said he was pained by the decision. He added:
“Had this project been implemented, it would have
been a major opportunity to promote democracy in
Palestine.” He said the cancellation of the project
would deprive the Palestinian stations of a practical
development plan. He called for a reassessment of the
situation, pointing out that Palestine was the only
country besides Lebanon that can be viewed as a vanguard
in the field of audio-visual media, after it was deprived
of this for many decades under Israeli occupation.
(‘Al-Ayyam’, Ramallah, 5 September 1999)
IV. China accuses
BBC of launching "invasion."
After the break-up of the Soviet Union and the
drastic change in Eastern Europe, the international radio
broadcasting order, as an international political
barometer, underwent a sharp change. While the
Western nations had focused their efforts on broadcasting
to the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries,
as the situation developed they adjusted their strategy
and tactics to sharply intensify their broadcasts against
China. The international broadcasting stations in the
former Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries
not only are no longer used against the Western nations,
but are rather renting their transmission equipment that
had been aimed at the Western nations to the same Western
nations, to be used for propaganda purposes against the
existing socialist and third-world countries, which has
faced China with an unprecedentedly grim situation. So,
doing an in-depth study and exploration of the broadcast
strategy, tactics, and means used by the Western nations
against China in order to take corresponding
countermeasures, is a crucial and pressing task facing
Chinese news broadcasting.
A. The radio
broadcast strategy of the Western nations against China
serves the West's anti-communist and anti-China foreign
policy.
International broadcasting is inseparable from
international politics, consistent with the foreign
policies of all countries. The Western nations have
always held that foreign or overseas broadcasting is an
effective strategic propaganda weapon.
In
the early 1960s, one of the specific means set forth by
US President Kennedy for the "peaceful
evolution" of socialist countries was to
"intensify Voice of America VOA broadcasts,"
making them "leap national borders and the oceans,
leaping the 'Iron Curtain' and stone walls," in a
"life-and-death competition with communism."
From the late 1960s to the 1980s, East-West relations
were expressed mainly in a US-Soviet fight for supremacy,
undergoing a tortuous process from easing, to tension,
and back to easing again, with the fight and competition
between the countries with the two different social
systems turning from its past stress on military
contention to a test of politics, economics, and overall
national might. The Western nations exploited the
situation to speed up their promotion of "peaceful
evolution." We would note that, in the late 1970s,
the US Congress issued an official document, which said:
"Radio broadcasting is a most valuable means of
promoting foreign policy." "We need to
re-acknowledge the strategic role of broadcast stations,
considering our strategic superiority, to conscientiously
reappraise radio broadcasting." "Radio
broadcasting is the only way to overthrow
socialism." After this, US broadcasting to the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe intensified sharply in
scale, time, and propaganda substance and means.
In
May 1989, the US authorities announced a new Soviet
policy of "super-containment." They set forth
the need to spend two to three decades "fighting a
smokeless new world war," "by which time we
will probably have withered away socialism, to build a
new world guided by our Western civilization." This
remains the global strategy of the Western nations, as
well as the established policy of Western broadcasting.
The Hong Kong ‘South China Morning Post”
reported on 17th January 1993 that US Secretary of State
Christopher said in Senate confirmation hearings that,
"through encouraging the economic and political
liberalization forces, we can push China into a
widespread and peaceful revolution from communism to
democracy." So the United States made immediate
plans to copy the Radio Free Europe against the Eastern
European countries, setting up Radio Free Asia to
broadcast to China, to get China into the Eastern
European rut. On 30th September 1996, Radio Free Asia
began official broadcasting, with its aim being to
"break through the 'bamboo curtain' around China and
other Asian communist countries." Its station chief
Richard Reston announced specially that the start of
Radio Free Asia broadcasting is "a new front in a
protracted radio war." Since 2nd December 1996,
Radio Free Asia has been broadcasting for two hours a day
in Tibetan. With the VOA already broadcasting in Tibetan,
the United States held that it was not enough. Starting
on 1st April 1997, its Chinese Putonghua broadcast was
extended an hour, being extended another hour on 2nd
June, for a total of five hours. Its ultimate goal is to
broadcast 24 hours a day. The start of Radio Free Asia
broadcasting showed a new escalation in the US radio
infiltration of China.
On
26th June 1996, the ‘Hong Kong Ming Pao' ran an
article by current VOA Director Jeffrey Cohen on
"The Six Major VOA Postwar Missions," which in
fact described the US global broadcast propaganda
strategy. Those six major missions are:
1. To resist the
Communist Party and ultra-authoritarian countries.
2. To instigate US-type freedom of the press.
3. To export US values.
4. To provide widespread learning opportunities.
5. To explain US policy to the world.
6. To serve US culture, trade, and tourism.
A look at a series of most
recent actions in US broadcasts against China shows the
new US "smokeless war" strategy.
On
24th October 1997, US President Clinton said on the VOA
about China policy during Jiang Zemin's visit to the
United States that: "We have set up Radio Free Asia,
and are now working with the Congress to expand its
broadcasting and support to Chinese broadcasting to build
a civilized society and the rule of law."
"Through cooperating with China and clearly pointing
out the differences between us that need to be noted, we
can promote our interests and values, spurring China to
historic change, so that China will be as great in the
future as it was in the past." He also noted
specially that 70 per cent of Chinese college students
listen regularly to the VOA.
The
broadcast strategy against China of stations such as the
British BBC, Voice of Germany, and French International
is in fact absolutely no different from that of the
United States, being only slightly smaller in scale. On
27th December 1992, the British "Sunday
Bulletin" reported that, BBC admits frankly that it
is "going all out," "in all ways" to
conduct a spiritual and ideological "invasion"
of China. This article on "The BBC Mobilizes a Large
Scale 'Invasion' of Red China" says that, BBC
international news broadcasts to Chinese listeners every
morning a half hour of international news. The British
Financial Times' ran an article in 1997 saying that,
"Westerners are remoulding China in their own
image." That could be called the best footnote to
the matter.
B. The broadcast
might of Western nations against China is unprecedentedly
strong.
As far back as the eve of the founding of the PRC,
US Secretary of State Acheson said that US radio has
"absolutely not retreated from China." The
United States has gradually installed around China a
series of relay stations and transmitters. In the
Philippines, Okinawa, and Thailand, it has set up
1,000-kW mediumwave relay stations. US propaganda chiefs
bragged that, "these three relay stations enable all
of mainland China to hear the VOA," "making
Beijing's jamming ineffective."
After
President Nixon's 1972 visit to China, particularly after
the establishment of Sino-US diplomatic relations, US
officials in charge of foreign propaganda held that: This
is the arrival of "an absolutely unprecedented
opportunity since 1949 to really subject China to Western
ideological influences and values." So we need to
seize the "unprecedentedly good" opportunity,
launching propaganda against China, to make up "its
gap in Western ideology and values." The VOA has
adjusted its programming in line with changing
circumstances on one hand, while going all out to expand
its real broadcasting might against China on the other.
The VOA now also uses seven 500-kW shortwave transmitters
in places such as Russia's Novosibirsk, Irkutsk,
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, and Krasnodar to broadcast to
China and other Asian countries. The British BBC also
rents three Russian 500- kW shortwave transmitters in
Vladivostok, Cita, and Irkutsk to broadcast to China. The
Voice of Germany Deutsche Welle rents 11 Russian 1,000-kW
and 250-kW shortwave transmitters in places such as
Moscow, St Petersburg, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, and Samara
to broadcast to China, Northeast Asia, South Asia, West
Asia, and Russia. And French International Broadcasting
signed an agreement in 1988 with Japan's NHK to relay its
Chinese language broadcasts through Japan's Hachiho
transmitter, and is now setting up a new shortwave
transmitter in Thailand.
The
scale, dialects, and times of broadcasts against China by
the Western nations all show an alarming development
rate. The VOA added in the late 1980s an hour a day of
Cantonese dialect programming. In April 1991, it started
Tibetan broadcasting, beginning with 15 minutes a day,
increasing it to 30 minutes, increasing it further in
1993 to one and a half hours, and increasing it again in
March 1995 to two hours a day . The VOA now broadcasts
daily 11 hours of Putonghua programming and one and a
half hours of Cantonese on 21 frequencies. Added to its
two hours of Tibetan broadcasting, that totals 14.4 hours
a day of broadcasting to China. In 1997, the VOA also
started broadcasting to Xinjiang in Uighur and Kazhak
dialects. Meanwhile, VOA has expanded its broadcasting
agencies to China. Before 1990, the VOA Chinese
Department had only 52 programmers. This number is now up
to 85 (including 57 official programmers), and is even
more than its Russian broadcasters in the 1980s. And this
still does not include its Tibetan broadcasters,
programmers, and special researchers.
The
BBC broadcast to China three and a half hours a day in
the early 1990s, which it increased to six hours a day in
1995. That includes four hours in Putonghua and two hours
in Cantonese on 15 frequencies. In April 1996, it added
two hours of mixed Chinese-English programming which,
added to four and a half hours of Putonghua and 70
minutes of Cantonese, totals seven hours and forty
minutes. Besides, in 1992, BBC started a satellite
programme to China called "World TV News," with
simultaneous English and Chinese translations. While
BBC's Chinese Department had only 48 workers (including
temps), it is now up to 56.
Before
the 1989 political disturbances in Beijing, Japan's NHK
broadcast three hours a day in Putonghua. On 7th June
1989, it increased that a half hour a day. It now
broadcasts daily to China and Southeast Asia six times
for five hours and forty minutes, second only to its
foreign broadcasts in Japanese and English.
The
Voice of Germany broadcasts to China in Chinese Putonghua
an hour and a half a day. While its reception was
inefficient in the past, the station rented in the 1990s
Russian transmitters for broadcasts to China, for a
markedly better effect.
French
International Broadcasting started broadcasting to China
on 1st April 1990 for two hours a day in Chinese
Putonghua, with very good reception, which laid a base
for future improvements. On 2nd September 1996 it added
an hour of morning programming.
Canadian
International Broadcasting started broadcasting to China
on 20th June 1989 in Putonghua. It started with two
broadcasts a week of 10 minutes each, which was increased
to an hour a day in April 1990.
I would note that, on 23rd May 1996, a self-styled
"Voice of Tibet" station started broadcasting
to Asia from Norway in Tibetan for 15 minutes a day. This
shows that the Northern European nations have joined the
ranks of the broadcasters against China.
C. The
strategies and tactics of the Western nations in
broadcasting to China.
1. They stress data collection. The stations
of all nations sharply stress data collection on target
countries, combining it with intelligence work. None of
them stint on investing large amounts of manpower and
material to do such work. The BBC has a Listener Polling
Department with over 100 official workers, as well as
many outside workers. The regular polling substance is in
two major categories: 1. Broadcast reception results
(such as number of listeners, status, listening time,
place, means, and environment). 2. Target country
conditions and trends (such as where the centre of
political influence is, who makes policy, and which
groups are most influential, the positions and interests
of the leadership, whose influence is declining, and who
has the brightest future). Nations such as the United
States, Britain, Germany, and Japan all have huge
listening agencies, which widely gather Chinese foreign
broadcast radio and publication data, and exchange it
with each other.
Since
the 1980s, both the VOA and BBC have done sizeable
listener polls in China. The BBC solicited listener views
in 1993 on the radio, receiving letters from 15,000
listeners. In 1995, it polled 10,000 listeners in 10
cities, finding that as many as 10 per cent listened to
international shortwave radio, including 10.7 per cent
listening to the VOA, and 6.6 per cent listening to BBC
Chinese broadcasting. In February and March 1997, the BBC
did a written poll of 4,000 listeners in five Chinese
cities.
2. They praise "objectivity" and
"impartiality," stressing so-called
"factual" news, to separate news from
commentary. They stress "factual" news, with
only commentaries adding views . They do this to
intentionally create a false image, playing themselves up
as "innocent" information providers, to get
people to believe them.
The
BBC regularly brags about being "objective,"
"impartial," and "unbiased," which is
in fact not the case. As to opposing socialist countries,
it has never been reticent. As for matters such as human
rights in China and Tibet, it has never stressed any
"objectivity" or "impartiality." The
Western "current events" programmes use the
so-called "let the listeners judge for
themselves" format, which is also not unbiased.
3. They are grounded in a long-range strategy of
attracting listeners. In the 1950s, when the diplomatic
hand George Allen was in charge of the US Press Office,
he set forth a strategy of "letting out a long
vine," which changed the past "tactical"
"self-centred" propaganda strategy of victory
through fraudulent propaganda braggadocio. In its
peacetime propaganda, it regularly stresses speaking well
of its adversaries, while often noting the dark side of
its own country on certain inconsequential matters, for a
so-called "balanced" reporting principle. Since
the 1960s, the West has used the so-called "social
publicity" form of propaganda more against socialist
countries, which essentially uses perspectives such as
commercial advertising publicity, TV interviews, news
films, tourism, and exhibits to make socialist countries
accept its lifestyle. While it is apparently unrelated to
politics it, in fact, steadily indoctrinates its
listeners in negative views of socialism, to engender in
them unpatriotic sentiments, morals, and customs of
material lust, individualism, and anti-socialism.
4. They exploit psychological principles to
broadcast news . In the 1970s, NATO held a conference of
certain propaganda officials, psychological warfare
experts from special sectors, and ideological workers
from all NATO countries, to discuss matters, one of which
was the exploitation of psychological methods to
broadcast news to individuals. That included so-called
catering to likes, preconceived ideas, first strike, near
to the heart, the celebrity effect, suggestion, and
exploitation of psychological weaknesses, to manipulate
listener psychology to the service of their propaganda
strategy .
Western
radio focuses on attacking the Communist Party and
socialism. They stint on no time limits, going all out to
cover the internal affairs of countries that are led by
the Communist Party, with it seeming that their foreign
broadcast stations are aimed exclusively at listeners in
such countries. In Radio Free Asia broadcasts, around 80
per cent of their time is spent on matters involving
internal Chinese affairs.
5. They put renegades to their service. Such
so-called renegades are mainly "political
dissenters," traitors, and criminals who have fled
socialist countries. They hold that using the
"powerful tones" of such exiles "can most
effectively achieve their ends." In which respect,
they particularly use the "one-on-one" format,
broadcasting programmes on youth, workers, intellectuals,
peasants, women, scientists, soldiers, and even Communist
Party members.
6. They engage in a large-scale "human rights
war." The major broadcast tactic and means of
Western radio to overthrow socialist countries is to
stress "human rights" endlessly, which was the
past case against the Soviet Union and the Eastern
European countries, and is the current one against China.
They adopt a "professorial" pose, openly
supporting "political dissenters" in all
countries. Since they hold that opposing "political
dissenters" is "opposing human rights,"
they go all out to support such people, providing forums
for them to oppose the Communist Party and socialist
countries, which is the essence of the "human
rights" propaganda of Western radio. The United
States has always had a double standard on human rights
matters. When Marcos was governing the Philippines, while
he had an awful human rights record, since he was pro-US,
the VOA never criticized him on human rights. And while
the VOA used to go all out in attacking the Soviet Union
and the Eastern European countries on human rights,
nothing is heard of that anymore.
7. They spread rumours. Western radio propaganda
also resorts to the advertising arts. They follow the
principle of "using all means to achieve their
ends," holding that a propagandist should never be
too conscientious about proof or evidence, meaning that
he can lie. In the psychological warfare theory of the
Western nations, the spread of false intelligence is
allowed in principle. An American propagandist said that,
if the propaganda substance is essentially truthful,
certain lies can be mixed in, and the listeners will
believe them strongly. The famous US literary historian
Feng Lun holds that, "in real political life, what
is important is not what the truth is, but rather what
the majority holds to be the truth."
8. They coordinate their operations. As to
countering socialist countries, the Western nations
always have and still do use the strategy of coordinated
operations. As far back as a 1959 NATO conference, they
talked about "the need to ensure the use of joint
operations on the psychological front." That
conference also passed a resolution that NATO would set
up an agency similar to an ideological struggle command
post. They still hold regular meetings to coordinate
their propaganda activity. This is no longer any secret.
I would note that the broadcasts to China by Western
nations do have a certain influence. Among the broadcasts
to China by Western nations, the VOA is most influential.
The VOA estimates that it had 18 million Chinese
listeners in 1984. Second in influence to the VOA is the
BBC, which has received around 30,000 letters a year from
its listeners in the last three years. These figures are
larger than the sum of letters from listeners in Russia
and the Eastern European countries. Some listeners write
to Western radio stations, praising them for being
"objective" and "impartial," while
complaining that China has no free press. Some curse
their own country and socialism on foreign stations. Some
praise Western nations on human rights matters, while
opposing Party policy, to serve as yes-men for Western
nations. Yet others worship foreigners, confusing right
with wrong, to lose their dignity as Chinese. This merits
our stern attention. (Zhongliu', Beijing, 12 June 1999)
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