From: "Phillip M. Hallam-Baker" <hallam@ai.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 01:27:43 +0800
To: <declan@well.com>
Subject: Re: White House admits censoring Chinese dissident
Message-ID: <01bd0d66$a6bbe940$06060606@russell>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




>    The Clinton administration was in the middle of a firestorm yesterday
>after officials admitted blocking a global broadcast of a Wei Jingsheng
>interview for fear of annoying China.


>    Officials tried in vain to stop the government radio station, Voice of
>America (VOA), from broadcasting the interview, but succeeded in blocking
>it from Worldnet.

Both are propaganda arms of the US government. For better
or worse the idea is to allow the US President to promote his
political agenda across the world. If the US president decides
not to allow a person access to his propaganda machine thats
not censorship, its an editorial decision.

There is a great new history of both agencies called 'Warriors
of disinformation' written by Wick's second in command.

I am not opposed in principle to governments having a propaganda
agency but VoA and Worldnet should be shut down completely.
Unlike the BBC they have entirely failed to gain credibility, the
propaganda they broadcast is as obvious and transparent as 
radio Moscow, and about as interesting.

To appreciate the subtlty of World service propaganda you have
to listen very hard. For example during a refuge crisis there is
a long piece about the ex-pat Kurd communities in Australia and 
Toronto. The propaganda objective being to make refugees make
those places their destinations of choice.

CNN has made VoA entirely obsolete. The best thing the US 
could do would be to give them the VoA shortwave transmitters 
and retire.

The only place where Worldnet has had a measurable impact is 
in the West generally and the US in particular. Worldnet spin 
allowed the Russian shooting down of KAL 007 over Russian 
Airspace to be presented as an act of unconsionable perfidy
while the Vincent's shooting down of an Iranian civilian airplane
in international airspace was presented as 'an unfortunate 
accident'.

The piece de resistance of US propaganda efforts is TV
Marti which costs the US millions of dollars each year to 
broadcast from a blimp moored in Florida. It costs Castro
a few thousand dollars to jam it using cheap transmitters.
Television is much easier to jam than radio, both because
of the frequencies used and the need for a clear timing
signal.

Ironically the Cubans have said that they are quite happy 
to have US TV, they just can't resist an opportunity for a
cheap propaganda victory of their own. The idea that Cubans
can keep the Imperialist Americans at bay by being smarter
is the big idea keeping Castro in power. ABC, NBC and 
CNN signals are quite wellcome.

There is good reason to believe them since in Dresden the
East German authorities errected a relay station to broadcast
west german TV. They were finding it difficult to persuade 
people to work in Dresden which is out of range of the West
German TV signal. 

The best propaganda a democratic government can create
is that outside its control. Political change in South Africa 
came partly as a result of US TV shows which showed Blacks
in positions of authority. The Web will effect political change
through person to person interactions, on USEnet, IRC and
mailing lists. 


I don't think it is a good idea for a democratic government to
spend money propagandising to its own people. I don't think
that the US has the subtlety to propagandise effectively to 
others. Ergo it should get out of the propaganda business 
entirely.

                Phill