Lost Voice of America

Tom Bethell

Washington Arecent episode in Washington made news only briefly, but looked at in more detail it reveals quite a bit about the political and philosophical struggles engag- ing the Reagan administration. Late last summer the administration appointed Philip Nicolaides, an occasional con- tributor to such conservative publications as Human Events and National Review, to be deputy programme director of the 'Voice of America'. This is a government-financed world-wide broadcasting operation with a budget of $109 million, broadcasting in 39 languages to an audience estimated at 100 million. (With the exception of Portugal, it does not broadcast to Western Europe, however.) Iron Curtain countries are an im- portant segment of VOA'S audience.

Before Nicolaides was appointed, Presi-

dent Reagan had named an old California chum, Charles Wick, to be, head of the International Communications Agency (IcA), the umbrella organisation above vow. It was Wick who recently put together the controversial documentary 'Let Poland Be Poland', starring Frank Sinatra and Pope John Paul II among others. Wick in turn appointed his old friend James Conk- ling to be director of VOA. Conkling, aged 67, had been head of Columbia Records, arranged music for the Dorsey brothers, and toured with a singing group called the King Sisters, one of whom he married.

When VOA began broadcasting to the

world (40 years ago this month) it seemed only natural for the radio station to project a favourable image of America. The Voice was thought of as an instrument in a 'war of ideas', having a 'mission' to give the news, yes, but at the same time to extol the virtues of America as a country where liberty and decency prevailed, in contrast to the op- pressed, coerced nations under communist domination.

That all began to change about ten years

ago. The Age of Detente arrived, Richard M. Nixon went to stay in the Kremlin, and enemies, now unfashionable outside America, reappeared within. Journalists began to win awards for exposing the CIA, for publishing the Pentagon Papers, and finally for helping to push Nixon out of the White House. A new philosophy arose to justify this adversary stance by the press, summarised by the phrase 'warts and all'. If only America showed itself to the world with all its imperfections on display, the theory went, then the world's admiration for America would increase.

This philosophy was soon embraced not just by the Washington Post and the New York Times, but by reporters working for the Voice of America. Soon enough, then, vow's broadcasts began to depict a warts'n'all America. As a result, optimists in vow believed (with the Post, the Times and the TV networks concurring), that VOA would become more credible and America more admirable. More than one vow jour- nalist was head to remark that broadcasting Watergate was VOA'S 'finest hour'.

The Soviet Politburo seemed to be in agreement with the warts'n'all approach (even if it did add to vow's credibility). In 1973 the Soviets stopped jamming vow's transmissions, thus saving themselves about $250 million a year. (For some reason, jam- ming costs a good deal more than the original broadcast.) The jamming resumed in 1980, however, when even VOA found that it could not ignore the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, nor developments in Poland.

Nevertheless, VOA broadcasting con- tinued in an antagonistic, warts'n'all vein in the Carter years. By the time President Reagan took office, then, there were those who were beginning to question whether the country really could enlist the respect of others by showing disrespect for itself. So warts'n'all broadcasting was challenged. The National Security Council, for exam- ple, rebuked Conkling for airing an inter- view with a prominent Soviet spokesman, Georgi Arbatov. Conkling tried to find out who in the newsroom was responsible, but he was told that such a request constituted `McCarthyism'. Conkling was intimidated by this and withdrew his request.

Was it really necessary for VOA to call the Afghans fighting Soviet troops 'anti- government guerrillas', a US embassy spokesman inquired? Why not call them 'freedom fighters'? Was it really necessary for vow to transmit a 22-part series on °Crime in America', with one instalment beginning, 'Crime is as American as Jesse James'?

There was great umbrage in the newsroom, where autonomy, integrity, in- dependence and professionalism were seen to be at stake (and don't forget, vow's credibility would suffer, too, if the warts were removed). Editorials blossomed across the land, warning of the dangerous whiff of McCarthyism.

Such was the struggle when Conkling in- vited his new subordinate, Phil Nicolaides, to write a memo suggesting how things could be improved. Nicolaides was pro- bably accurate, and certainly indiscreet, when he wrote, 'We are, as all the world understands, a propaganda agency. Pro- paganda is a species of the genus advertis- ing, i.e. advertising in the service of a government.' He continued: 'Since the word propaganda still suffers from negative acceptable substitute is information. But Spectator that t1 3 the h March r 1:15, 2 let's not let this lead us down another Path to confusion: the view that vow is a newsgathering and disseminating agency "- essentially a journalistic enterprise of some sort.' Vow should portray the Soviet Union as 'the last great predatory empire on earth, remorselessly enslaving its own diverse ethnic populations, crushing the legitimate aspirations of its captive nations • • Thereafter events followed a predictable pattern. Someone removed the memo from Conkling's office and sent it to Washington Post, which in turn trumPeteu select quotations on the front Page' Nicolaides's sentiments were then ec'lli demned, decried, deplored. The Past thought it 'too bad' that Conkling did rin't immediately fire Nicolaides. 'Fear' (°,` government repression) once again stalked the land; and Moscow was again in agree' went. Citing 'the prominent Washington observer Murray Marder' (author of t.h! Post article), Radio Moscow added its denunciation of `cold war rhetoric'. vnA itself repudiated Nicolaides's sentiments on the air. (The agency forbade its employs to 'engage in polemics' with Soviet media, but was willing to do so with itself.) Nicolaides was soon moved to an out-ni. the-way office with no secretary, ,n° assistants, and no writers assigned to linn,; All but one of his own scripts were rejected as 'too strongly worded'. From his corn- mentary on martial law in Poland the phrases 'tanks and bayonets' and tailitarY,,, junta' were excised as unnecessary `bn' words and name-calling'. At about the same time a reading fe011/,, Solzhenitsyn's new book October 1916 wa due to be repeated twice, but the repeats were abruptly ordered off the air and replaced by innocuous Joyce Carol Oates material. Terence Catherman, a Foreign Service Information officer (seconded fro the State Department) who was apPotnt,e,,, as Conkling's deputy, had lunch n,' Nicolaides one day and 'vigorously defen‘r ed the spiking of Solzhenitsyn'. Eaellear Charles Wick had suggested at a meenn,f that Solzhenitsyn (who lives in Vermont) be invited to broadcast regularly on vow. 1311 VOA'S 'counsellor', John Shirley, also frog', the State Department, 'strongly objected on the ground that Solzhenitsyn 'is con- sidered a traitor for having broken ranks in a regimented society by the slavish majoritY of Soviet listeners to the Voice'. Since Solzhenitsyn was 'very unpoPnial, except with a small group of intellectuals (according to a VOA memo), broadcasting him would undermine vow's credibilitY• At the same time it is unofficial vow policy riot to criticise Lenin for the same reason: he Is apparently so revered in Russia that v()./k criticism of him would make Voice broao casts less believable. Nicolaides was told not to use the phrase 'Iron Curtain' in broadcasts — too Prn: vocative. Likewise Radio Liberty and Radii" Free Europe in Munich are enjoined, ever) under guidelines published a year after

Reagan took office, not to use such 'ob- solete terminology' as 'communist bloc' or `capitalism versus communism'.

Terence Catherman also told an inter- viewer last month that the Soviet Union 'is smart enough to know that it is going with the tides of history. We lost Europe a long . time ago — with Vietnam, Cambodia, and Watergate.' (Airing the latter was sup- posedly voA's 'finest hour', of course.) It is symptomatic of US public opinion at pre- sent that when VOA'S deputy director uttered these defeatist sentiments there was not a peep of comment; but when his subor- dinate Nicolaides said that VOA should por- tray the Soviets as 'the last great predatory empire' he was immediately in hot water. The struggle inside VOA intensified after Nicolaides's memo was published. voA's newsroom expressed `outrage' at his pro- posals and demanded his resignation. In response about 200 language-service emigres' (many of them refugees from P-astern Europe) signed a counter-petition which read, in part: `We are shocked that VOA'S media in- formers are "distressed" that VOA should want to

States As a rosy picture of the T Inked As federal employees, we owe it to the taxpayers who provide our salaries to Put American life in perspective. If in the course of doing so the US image turns out to be positive, what's wrong with that?' Nicolaides eventually put a sign on his door saying 'Gorky', recalling the city of Sakharoy's exile. He wasn't allowed to talk to anyone in the press, and he wasn't even allowed to debate. Eventually Conkling told Nicolaides that he was 'upset' and should take a week off. A suspicious Nicolaides saw Wick, who expressed sym- pathy but said he wouldn't overrule Conkl- ing. He would try to find Nicolaides a slot somewhere else in the administration. Meanwhile, how would he like a trip to El Salvador?

So Nicolaides's career at voA came to an end. There was a brief notice to that effect in the Washington Post, and a familiar echo from Izvestia a few days later: `According to a report in the American newspaper the Washington Post, P. Nicolaides, the leader of VOA'S commentary desk, who is notorious for his hysterical calls for psychological warfare against the socialist countries to be toughened, will shortly leave his post.' It began to look as though Terence Catherman was right when he said, in an interview published at about the same time as the Izvestia article, that the Reagan administration was 'not a revolu- tion'. Catherman predicted 'no major change one way or another' in VOA'S pro- grammes.