MEDIA-MIDDLE EAST: U.S. Uses Airwaves to Tune Minds

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

N Janardhan

DUBAI, Jan 2 2003 (IPS) - As anti-American sentiments rise in the Middle East, Washington is stepping up its propaganda battle through new radio stations that are airing restyled programmes designed to woo the hearts and minds of the region’s youth.

The goal is to ”counter misinformation, disinformation and hatemongering; to show that the United States is not anti-Muslim; to build global support for the war against terror”; and more importantly, ”to promote democracy”, U.S. officials say.

Among the several multi-million-dollar public diplomacy radio campaigns the United States has undertaken is Radio Farda (‘Tomorrow’), which began airing in December and is aimed at achieving U.S. ideological interests in Iran.

Earlier in March, Radio Sawa (‘Together’), which is more Iraq-centric, started broadcasting in March.

The stations broadcast almost non-stop music – a sugary mixture of Arab or Persian and Western pop, carefully researched to appeal to the under-30s. They also have brief news bulletins in Arabic or Persian at regular intervals.

While Sawa, which replaced Voice of America’s Arabic service, was assigned an annual budget of 35 million U.S. dollars, Farda replaces Radio Azadi (‘Freedom’) with an allocation of eight million dollars.

The slant of the new programmes is dictated by demography. Nearly 60 percent of the population in the Middle Eastern countries is made up of youth, a trend that is the product of a deliberate effort to increase human resources in the post oil boom-era.

Washington believes that the new format and objective of these programmes are what Radio Free Europe and Radio Jose Marti in Cuba were established for decades ago – the promotion of democracy.

Accordingly, Sawa is now promising a better future for Iraqi youth if President Saddam Hussein goes – even as a U.S.-led attack on Iraq is expected in weeks.

The main competitors that the new American AM/FM radio stations face are the British Broadcasting Corp’s Arabic service and Radio Monte Carlo, both of which are immensely popular.

Given that the non-U.S. radio stations air more news and academic programmes, Sawa and Farda are banking on culture and music as their instruments of appeal and change.

The Sawa website, radiosawa.com, says it is a ”service of US International Broadcasting, which is operated and funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an agency of the U.S. governmentàIn reporting the news, Radio Sawa is committed to being accurate, objective and comprehensive.”

One of its ”guiding principles is that the long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly in Arabic with the people of the Middle East by radio,” adding that ”Radio Sawa seeks to win the attention and respect of its listeners”.

Asked political commentator Ahmed Saif of the UAE’s ‘Al Bayan’: ”If the U.S. government is ready to invest so much money to let ‘us’ know ‘them,’ will it also spend as much to let ‘them’ know ‘us’?”

”What we need is an insight in the United States as a country, the diversity of its people, and the complexity of its culture and politics. The same is what they require to know of the Middle Eastern people,” he said in an interview. ”Music can’t achieve that objective.”

In his inaugural message on Farda on Dec. 20, U.S. President George W Bush justified the shutting down of Azadi: ”For many years, the United States has helped bring news and cultural broadcasts for a few hours every day to the Iranian people via Radio Freedom.”

”Yet the Iranian people tell us that more broadcasting is needed, because the unelected few who control the Iranian government continue to place severe restrictions on access to uncensored information,” he added. ”So we are now making our broadcast available to more Iranians by airing news and music and cultural programmes nearly 24 hours a day.”

In response, Saif said: ”In the absence of hard data to back his claim, Bush has just joined the ‘unelected few’ in claiming that he speaks for the ‘Iranian people’ – and they to him. How, where and when did the Iranian people ‘tell us’ that they needed ‘more’ broadcasting?”

”These stations have been established to advance Washington’s agenda to rupture the social fabric of society and create turmoil through the claimed political smokescreen of enhancing democracy,” he added.

Meantime, surveys indicate that there is no doubt that a growing set of listeners is finding the programmes attractive.

One poll in Amman in September showed that Sawa’s programmes were favoured by at least one third of the listeners in the teenagers-young adults category.

High on the popularity charts are music programmes and features on films, computers and video games. Special chat shows asking probing questions such as ”Can women be good bosses?” and ”How do you know if the news media are telling the truth?” are a hit as well.

But Saif explained: ”Pop music and slick interactive programmes may well appeal to the youth but won’t mitigate hostility bred by unpopular U.S. policies.”

Some listeners, in fact, object to the choice of words used in the newscasts. For example, Sawa uses the term ”suicide bomber” instead of ”martyr” for a Palestinian who sacrifices his life in the fight for freedom against Israeli occupation.

”The music is good,” said Anas Al Nuami, a communications technology student at the Al Ghurair University in Dubai. ”But competing with television news-based programmes, which is bringing home the Israeli brutality inflicted on the Palestinians, is a tough task.”

”How can we accept that democracy is good if both so-called democratic countries – Israel and United States – are violating human rights so blatantly?” he asked.

That is ample indication that while the United States may be succeeding in winning the hearts of many youth in the Middle East, it is failing in its bid to conquer their minds.