[R-G] Bigwood: How U.S. funding of the world press corps may be buying influence

[Anthony Fenton]

Features > June 4, 2008
No Strings Attached?
How U.S. funding of the world press corps may be buying influence
By Jeremy Bigwood
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3697/no_strings_attached/

Lebanese men in Beruit watch Alhurra, a U.S.-funded Arabic-language  
television network. The name of the satelite channel means 'the free  
one' in Arabic.
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Domestic propaganda campaigns like the “Pentagon Pundits” fiasco have  
been exposed and decried. Mainstream media outlets hired high-ranking  
military officers to provide “analysis” about the war in Iraq. Turns  
out they had ties to military contractors with a vested interest in  
continuing the war.

Below the radar, another journalism scandal is brewing: the U.S.  
government is secretly funding foreign news outlets and journalists.  
Government bodies — including the State Department, the Department of  
Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the  
National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Broadcasting Board of  
Governors (BBG) and the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) — support  
“media development” in more than 70 countries. In These Times has  
found that these programs include funding hundreds of foreign  
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), journalists, policy-makers,  
journalist associations, media outlets, training institutes and  
academic journalism faculties. Grant sizes can range from a few  
thousand to millions of dollars.

“The bottom line is that we are teaching the mechanics of journalism,  
whether it be print, television or radio,” USAID spokesman Paul Koscak  
says. “How to do a story, how to write with balance … all of those  
types of things that you would expect in a professional piece that is  
published.”

But some people, especially those outside the United States, see it  
differently.

“We think that the real issues here are the foreign policy objectives  
behind these media development programs,” says a high-level Venezuelan  
diplomat who asked not to be identified. “When the objective is regime  
change, these programs have proven to be instruments for the  
destabilization of democratically elected governments that the United  
States doesn’t support.”

Isabel MacDonald, communications director at Fairness and Accuracy in  
Reporting (FAIR), a New York-based media watchdog nonprofit, is also  
critical. “This is a system that, despite its professed adherence to  
norms of objectivity, has often worked against real democracy,” she  
says, “by stifling dissent and helping the U.S. government spread  
misinformation serviceable to U.S. foreign policy goals.”
Show me the agency

Measuring the size and scope of independent media development is  
difficult because similar programs exist under different rubrics. Some  
agencies consider “media development” to be its own field, while other  
agencies categorize it under “public diplomacy” or “psychological  
operations.” That makes it hard to figure out how much money goes into  
these programs.

In December 2007, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA)  
— a State Department-funded office at the National Endowment for  
Democracy (NED) — reported that in 2006, USAID doled out almost $53  
million for foreign media development activities. According to the  
CIMA study, the State Department spent an estimated $15 million on  
such programs. NED’s budget for media projects was an additional $11  
million. And the small Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Institute for Peace  
may have contributed up to $1.4 million more, according to the report,  
which did not examine Defense Department or CIA media funding.

The U.S. government is by far the largest funder of media development  
in the world, giving more than $82 million in 2006 — not counting  
money from the Pentagon, the CIA or U.S. embassies in recipient  
countries. To complicate matters, many foreign NGOs and journalists  
receive media development funding from more than one U.S. government  
source. Some receive funding from various U.S. subcontractors and  
“independent international nonprofit organizations,” while others  
receive money directly from the U.S. embassy in their country.

Three foreign journalists who receive U.S. media development funding  
told In These Times that such gifts do not affect their behavior or  
alter their reporting. And they deny that they practice self- 
censorship. None, however, would say this on the record.

Gustavo Guzmán, a former journalist and now Bolivian ambassador to the  
United States, says, “A journalist who receives such gifts is no  
longer a journalist, but becomes a mercenary.”
A twisted history

The U.S. government’s funding of foreign media has a long history.  
During the mid-’70s, in the aftermath of Watergate, two congressional  
investigations — the Church and Pike committees, after Sen. Frank  
Church (D-Idaho) and Rep. Otis Pike (D-N.Y.) — delved into covert U.S.  
government activities in other countries. They confirmed that, apart  
from CIA-funded journalists (both foreign and American), the U.S.  
government also subsidized foreign print media, radio and television  
outlets — something the Soviets were also doing. For instance,  
Encounter, an anti-communist literary magazine published in England  
from 1953 to 1990, was revealed to be a CIA operation in 1967. And, as  
is the case today, benign-sounding organizations, such as the Congress  
for Cultural Freedom, have also been CIA fronts.

Congressional investigations found that clandestine U.S. funding of  
foreign media often played a decisive role abroad, but nowhere more so  
than in Chile in the early ’70s.

“The CIA’s major propaganda operation, through the opposition  
newspaper El Mercurio, probably contributed most directly to the  
bloody overthrow of the Allende government and Chile’s democracy,”  
says Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive,  
an independent nongovernmental research institute.

In These Times asked the agency if it still funds foreign journalists.  
CIA Spokesman Paul Gimigliano responded, “The CIA does not, as a  
matter of course, publicly deny or confirm these kinds of allegations.”
Enemies of the State Department?

On Aug. 19, 2002, the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, sent a cable  
to Washington. It read:

     “We expect Mr. Lacayo’s participation as an IV grantee to be  
directly reflected in his reporting on political and international  
topics. As he moves upward in his career, our improved ties with him  
would mean a potentially important friend in positions of editorial  
influence.” [Editor’s Note: Mr. Lacayo’s name has been changed to  
protect his identity.]

The State Department had chosen the Venezuelan journalist to visit the  
U.S. under what is known as an IV grant — a cultural exchange program  
started in 1961. Last year, the department brought some 467  
journalists to the United States at a cost of about $10 million,  
according to a State Department official who requested anonymity.

FAIR’s MacDonald says that the “visits serve to build ties between the  
visiting foreign journalists and institutions that … are extremely  
uncritical of U.S. foreign policy and the corporate interests it  
serves.”

The State Department funds media development through several of its  
bureaus, including the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs,  
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), and the Bureau of  
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), as well as through its  
regional bureaus and embassies worldwide. It also funds foreign  
journalists through another section called the Office of Public  
Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Most importantly, the State Department  
usually decides where other agencies, such as USAID and NED, should  
invest their media development funds.

(The State Department did not respond to In These Times’ requests for  
information about its media development budget, but the 2007 CIMA  
study shows that in 2006, DRL, for instance, received almost $12  
million for media development alone.)

The case of Bolivia is a revealing example of a country in which the  
United States has been funding media development. According to DRL’s  
website, the bureau sponsored 15 workshops in Bolivia on freedom of  
the press and expression in 2006. “The country’s journalists and  
journalism students discussed professional ethics, good reporting  
practices and the media’s role in a democracy,” the site says. “These  
programs were sent out to 200 radio stations in remote areas  
throughout the country.”

In 2006, Bolivia elected Evo Morales, its first indigenous president,  
whose rise to power the U.S. government and Bolivia’s mainstream press  
has repeatedly tried to impede. Morales and his supporters allege that  
the U.S. government is backing a separatist movement in Bolivia’s gas- 
rich eastern states, and they allege that part of that backing  
involves media development meetings, according to journalist and  
former presidential spokesperson Alex Contreras. USAID’s Koscak denies  
the charge.
This is the BBG

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), is most famous as the  
funder of the Voice of America. According to its website, BBG is  
“responsible for all U.S. government and government-sponsored, non- 
military, international broadcasting” that brings “news and  
information to people around the world in 60 languages.”

In 1999, BBG became an independent federal agency. By 2006 it received  
a $650 million budget, according to CIMA estimates, with about $1.5  
million earmarked for media development to train journalists in  
Argentina, Bolivia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Besides Voice of America, BBG also runs several other radio and TV  
stations. Alhurra television, based in Springfield, Va., “is a  
commercial-free Arabic-language satellite television network for the  
Middle East, devoted primarily to news and information,” according to  
its website. Alhurra, which is Arabic for “the free one,” has been  
described by the Washington Post as “the U.S. government’s largest and  
most expensive effort to sway foreign opinion over the airwaves since  
the creation of Voice of America in 1942.”

BBG also funds Radio Sawa (for Arab youth, with streaming to Egypt,  
the Gulf, Iraq, Lebanon, the Levant, Morocco and Sudan), Radio Farda  
(to Iran) and Radio Free Asia (regional programming in Asia). BBG also  
supports broadcasts to Cuba through Radio and TV Mart’, which will  
amount to almost $39 million this year, according to the Foreign  
Operations Congressional Budget Justification for fiscal year 2008.
Pentagon PR

The Department of Defense (DOD) refused to speak to In These Times  
about its media development programs. According to a Dec. 11, 2005,  
New York Times article by Jeff Gerth, “the military operates radio  
stations and newspapers [in Iraq and Afghanistan] but does not  
disclose their American ties.”

The task of media development in Iraq “was given to the U.S.  
Department of Defense, whose major contractors had little or no  
relevant experience,” states an October 2007 report by the U.S.  
Institute for Peace (USIP).

A 2007 study by the Center for Global Communication Studies at the  
University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication found  
that Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a longtime DOD  
contractor, was awarded an initial contract of $80 million for a year  
to transform an entire state-run media system into an independent, BBC- 
style national news service — in part to counteract the effect Al  
Jazeera was having in the region.

“Supervising SAIC was a DOD office specializing in psychological  
warfare operations, which many believe contributed to the perception  
among Iraqis that the Iraq Media Network (IMN) was merely a mouthpiece  
for the Coalition Provisional Authority,” the USIP report says.  
“SAIC’s performance in Iraq was considered costly, unprofessional and  
a failure in terms of establishing the objectivity and independence of  
the IMN.” SAIC eventually lost the contract to another company —  
Harris Corp.

SAIC wasn’t the only Pentagon media subcontractor that massively  
failed. In an April 30 USA Today article by Peter Eisler, the Iraqi  
news website Mawtani.com was exposed as a Pentagon-funded information  
outlet.
USAID: ‘From the American people’

President John F. Kennedy created the U.S. Agency for International  
Development (USAID) in November 1961 to administer humanitarian  
assistance and economic development worldwide. But while USAID prides  
itself on promoting transparency in the affairs of other nations, it  
is itself hardly transparent. This is especially true of its media  
development programs.

“In a number of countries, including Venezuela and Bolivia, USAID is  
acting more as an agency involved in covert action, like the CIA, than  
as an aid or development agency,” says Mark Weisbrot, an economist  
with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.- 
based think tank.

Indeed, while investigators have been able to obtain general budgets  
for USAID’s global programs through the Freedom of Information Act, as  
well as names of countries or geographic regions where money has been  
spent, the names of specific foreign organizations receiving this  
money are state secrets, just as in the case of the CIA. And in cases  
where the recipient organizations’ names are known, and information is  
requested about them, USAID responds that it is “unable to confirm or  
deny the existence of records” about them, using the same language as  
the CIA. (Disclosure: In 2006, I filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against  
USAID in an attempt to identify which organizations it funds abroad.)

USAID funds three major media development operations: the  
International Research & Exchanges Board (more commonly known as  
IREX), the Internews Network and the largely privately funded Search  
for Common Ground. To complicate matters, all three have also received  
funding from the State Department, the Middle East Partnership  
Initiative (MEPI), the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the  
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

According to its brochures, IREX is an international nonprofit  
organization that “works with local partners to advance the  
professionalism and long-term economic sustainability of newspapers,  
radio, television and Internet media.” IREX’s 2006 “990” tax form  
states that its media activities include “small-grant support for more  
than 100 journalists and media organizations; training for hundreds of  
journalists and media outlets” and has a staff of more than 400 that  
delivers programs and consultation to more than 50 countries.

The Internews Network, more commonly known as “Internews,” receives  
only about half of IREX’s budget but is better known. Founded in 1982,  
most of Internews’ funding comes through USAID, although it also  
receives funding from NED and the State Department. Internews is one  
of the largest operations in the independent media development  
business, funding dozens of NGOs, journalists, journalist  
associations, training institutes and academic journalism faculties in  
dozens of countries throughout the world.

Internews’ operations have been shut down in countries such as  
Belarus, Russia and Uzbekistan, where they have been viewed as  
undermining local governments and pushing U.S. agendas. In a May 2003  
speech in Washington, D.C., Andrew Natsios, USAID’s former  
administrator, described USAID-funded private contractors as “an arm  
of the U.S. government.”

The other major USAID media development recipient, Search for Common  
Ground, receives more money from the private sector than it does from  
the U.S. government, most of which goes into “conflict resolution,”  
according to the CIMA report.

Two major targets for USAID’s media development and assistance are  
Cuba and Iran. USAID’s budget for “Media Freedom and Freedom of  
Information” — to “transition” Cuba under the Commission for  
Assistance to a Free Cuba II (CAFC II) — totals $14 million. This  
represents a $10.5 million increase from the amount allocated in 2006.  
In Iran, USAID has budgeted some $25 million for media development for  
fiscal year 2008. It is part of a $75 million package for what USAID  
calls “transformational diplomacy” in that country.
Funding U.S.-style ‘democracy’

“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”  
said Allen Weinstein, one of National Endowment for Democracy’s  
founders, in a 1991 Washington Post article.

Formed in the early ’80s, NED is “governed by an independent,  
nonpartisan board of directors.” Its purported aim is to support pro- 
democracy organizations around the world. Historically, however, the  
foreign policy objectives of Washington have defined its agenda.

“When the rhetoric of democracy is put aside, NED is a specialized  
tool for penetrating civil society in other countries down to the  
grassroots level” to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals, writes  
University of California-Santa Barbara professor William Robinson in  
his book, A Faustian Bargain. Robinson was in Nicaragua during the  
late ‘80s and watched NED work with the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan  
opposition to remove the leftist Sandinistas from power during the  
1990 elections.

NED also came under major public scrutiny in Venezuela, where it was  
exposed for funding the anti-Chávez movement. In her book The Chávez  
Code, Venezuelan-American attorney Eva Golinger writes that NED (and  
USAID) grantees were involved in the 2002 coup attempt against  
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, as well as in the management-driven  
“labor strikes” aimed at shutting down the country’s petroleum  
industry. Golinger also notes that NED funded Súmate — a Venezuelan  
NGO whose stated goal is to promote the free exercise of citizens’  
political rights — which orchestrated the failed recall referendum  
against Chávez in 2004.
Dependency and obligation

The concept of separation of the powers of the press from the  
government is a basic tenet of not only the U.S. political system, but  
also Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. U.S.  
government funding of any press risks establishing client-donor  
relationships that cannot be considered independent media.

“Even the donation of equipment, such as computers and recorders by  
the U.S. government, affects the work of journalists and journalist  
organizations,” says Contreras, the Bolivian journalist, “because it  
brings about dependency and an obligation to the hidden agendas of  
U.S. institutions.”