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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I am fine, and I want to nominate you for something.
J. Aughenbaugh: What am I being nominated for?
N. Rodgers: I want you to be the Voice of America. You do have a very pleasant speaking voice.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, thank you, Nia. I was going to say that you are in good voice today. Listeners, the reason why we seemingly are having not fun, but we are talking about voice because the second episode in our series of federal government agencies is the Voice of America, the VOA. Nia, what is the VOA?
N. Rodgers: The Voice of America it's basically America's propaganda arm for broadcasting how fabulous America is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Wow. You went right for the jugular, with the explanation of the agency. It is the International Broadcasting State Media Network funded and controlled by the federal government.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say the US federal government, and it is called VOA, Voice of America.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is broadcast in 48 different languages. It produces digital TV and radio content, as of November of 2022, it claims that it reaches 326 million adults per week all outside the United States.
N. Rodgers: That's a pretty big reach.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is a huge reach. Nia, when was the Voice of America created?
N. Rodgers: I want to say World War II or just before World War II.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nope. World War II, 1942.
N. Rodgers: Wait. I want to ask you a question before we get into the history.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: Isn't this another one of those small agencies with not a huge budget, or is this one of those small agencies with a huge budget?
J. Aughenbaugh: No. It's small. It has 961 staff in an annual budget of a little over $267 million.
N. Rodgers: That's relatively small.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is small.
N. Rodgers: In terms of the federal government. Sorry, listeners. Aughie and I think administratively about the federal government in terms of gazillions of dollars. When you say 961 people, I'm like, wow, they did fit in my apartment. You know what I mean? That's a relatively small agency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because Nia and I listeners spend so much time looking at the federal government, when an agency has the last six digits being zeros in its budget, we really don't think it's all that large.
N. Rodgers: Less than 1,000 employees.
J. Aughenbaugh: Please. We're just like, okay.
N. Rodgers: We could throw lunch for those people.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's interesting is the Voice of America is one of those agencies that is, as we are recording, being targeted by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
N. Rodgers: I'm not surprised by that. Although when you consider the small number of people and the small budget and the amount of reach, it's actually a pretty good return on investment.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: If you just think of it strictly in business terms.
J. Aughenbaugh: The law-making scholar in me is just fascinated by the fact Nia, that it was created in 1942, but Congress did not authorize it in law until 1976.
N. Rodgers: Based on continuing resolutions for years.
J. Aughenbaugh: The resolutions were forever. It fell into one of those just broad, generally phrased line items typically within the State Department for over three decades. The people who worked for that agency could not have felt as though they had really good job security.
N. Rodgers: A year to year of poof. That's it. Done now.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless, that just absolutely fascinates me.
N. Rodgers: We should remind listeners that, of course, World War II, in fact, prior to 1990, you don't have the Internet.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: You don't have widespread publication of things, even newspapers that had enormous publications New York Times, Sunday Times in London. Even those organizations did not have reach outside their countries. Really rich people in Europe may have gotten the New York Times sent over on a plane or on a boat. But they were reading three-week-old news. Then you get shortwave radio. You get radio that allows you to broadcast. By shortwave, we mean things that are within a certain number of hundred miles. It's not across the nation. But if you think about where, say, for instance, El Paso is. On a shortwave radio, you could reach into Mexico from El Paso. Just like on a shortwave radio in Albany, New York, you could reach into Canada.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That's the world you're living in when we're talking about the founding of the Voice of America.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then before World War II, almost all American shortwave radio stations were owned by private companies. I had a couple of examples in our prep notes. NBC, the National Broadcasting Company had an international network. They referred to it as the White Network, which was broadcast in six languages. CBS was noted because it had a Latin American international network, which had 64 stations across 18 countries, but again these were small operations owned by the private sector.
N. Rodgers: When Aughie says 64 stations located in 18 countries, literally not broadcasting from the United States, but from within Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, in the case of the Latin America.
J. Aughenbaugh: Where you begin to see a shift, and this is before the United States entered World War II, was in 1939, the FCC, set a policy that was designed to enforce the State Department's good neighbor policy. Nia, the good neighbor policy was this basic idea that the United States, should license international broadcasts to, you used the word propaganda earlier. But this is an example of what our colleague Judy Twigg would refer to as soft power. You try to influence what's going on in other countries through the use of media. You're not trying to change policy because you threaten to go in and engage in a war or blow up a building. No, you try to influence your neighbors through the use of culture.
N. Rodgers: The good neighbor policy is, hey, we're your buddy. Try this Coca-Cola and we'll try a siesta, and it'll all be great exchange to bind you to your in our case, literally our neighbors, to bind us to our hemispheric.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's fascinating to me, Nia, is the FCC policy occurred before the United States State Department was just like, we may need to engage in activities that will thwart Nazi propaganda, which was beginning to resonate in Latin American countries.
N. Rodgers: There's a reason that a whole bunch of Nazis ended up in Argentina.
J. Aughenbaugh: And other South American countries.
N. Rodgers: It's because those messages they were doing a really good job of telling their story.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: The United States was like, oh, no, we got to counter this. We have to figure out some way to tell our story.
J. Aughenbaugh: You see this even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Nia. You had the coordinator of information, which was in the Foreign Information Service, which was a very small unit of the State Department. A very well known playwright, Robert Sherwood, was employed by FDR. Now, Sherwood, was one of FDR's main speech writers. Sherwood was used to go ahead and start, if you will, creating programming that would send the United States message out to the rest of the world.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, and folks, remember, in 1940, the United States was just one player of many. In Europe, the United States was almost virtually unknown in the sense of the American culture and being endemic to the world culture now is a modern invention. That is not something that we had. We did not have massive influence over the world the way we do now until you get to World War II. We just didn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Nia, we discussed this with our colleague Chris Saladino in a previous podcast episode about how the United States foreign policy before World War II was isolationist.
N. Rodgers: Basically building our own Mojo. We don't have time to build yours.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Not only did the rest of the world not know us as the economic and military and cultural behemoth that we are today.
N. Rodgers: We weren't.
J. Aughenbaugh: We weren't but most Americans weren't really interested.
N. Rodgers: We didn't care that Europe didn't that we were. Whatever. We didn't care about them.
J. Aughenbaugh: But to me, what's fascinating about the history of the Voice of America is how quickly from the change in the FCC policy, which would bring all of these international shortwave radio transmissions from the private sector into the government. By 1942, the Office of War Information in the middle of 1942, officially took over the Voice of America's operations. The VOA started entering into agreements with corporations in other countries to where the United States federal governments, if you will, messages, news, radio, music, etc., would be transmitted in those countries. That's a remarkable short period of time to go from a private sector driven, if you will, transmission to a federal government control transmission to the rest of the world. Now we're talking Europe, Great Britain. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Can I read the opening for the messages?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, go ahead.
N. Rodgers: In Germany. The program opened every day they transmitted, and it was introduced with the Battle Hymn of the Republic. That's what played first. Then a statement saying today and every day from now on, we will be with you from America to talk about the war. The news may be good or bad for us. We will always tell you the truth.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Now, the GenX cynical person in me says, the first thing that you should do when somebody says, I will always tell you the truth is assume that they are lying to you from that moment forward.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like Nia, when somebody says to you, can I be honest? My response is, so everything you've been saying to me before wasn't?
N. Rodgers: Because you're from that generation. You're from the cynical generation, but also side note that they began transmitting from what address, Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Madison Avenue in New York City.
N. Rodgers: What's Madison Avenue known for?
J. Aughenbaugh: That is the advertising capital, not only of the United States but some would argue the entire world.
N. Rodgers: On a tiny blue dot at the edge of the universe, sits the center of marketing in Madison Avenue. There's a part of me that's like, I don't know how much I trust anything that comes out of Madison Avenue. That being said, part of what should be remembered about the Voice of America is that it was competing with. Germany was doing the same thing. Japan was doing the same thing. Tokyo rose. You have all these different actually, that was Korea. But that's a natural thing that governments do that governments say, well, of course, you want to be American. We're fabulous. We're the bestest ever. The Germans are saying the exact same thing at the exact same time. Of course, Germany is the best country ever because, hello, we're Germans, and it's the motherland. As Judy pointed out to us, that is a natural function of being a government is to promote your own culture and your world view because you're trying to build alliance.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because it's a fundamental assumption of most nations foreign policies that you don't necessarily always win in the competition for global influence through might, through power that you can develop some strong allies simply by sharing culturally, educationally, etc.
N. Rodgers: A huge thing that also should be recognized is most of Voice of America at the beginning was not speeches. It was music. They were playing American music. Who doesn't love American music? They were playing American music. They're playing jazz, they're playing country, they're playing all the different American music that's truly American and that people really enjoyed. Between those songs and between those, they're doing messaging.
J. Aughenbaugh: To me, what was fascinating is this idea that a radio station that might play American music for most of the hour at the top of every hour, Nia was what? News.
N. Rodgers: Well, yeah, we're just letting you know how things are going.
J. Aughenbaugh: To me, it was just fascinating. But just how quickly the Voice of America expanded into Europe, into North Africa, into North and South America. They got cooperation from CBS and NBC for a lot of the programming.
N. Rodgers: You could listen to the shadow. You could listen to write all of those Lawrence Welk. Lawrence Welk wasn't alive then, you know what I mean? Those shows where it's not just American music, it's American culture being exposed to and you're finding interesting.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Voice of America didn't end when World War II ended, Nia, because what then quickly arose after World War II?
N. Rodgers: The Cold War.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the Cold War. If anything, the Voice of America expanded its operations during Cold War.
N. Rodgers: Although, can I just say before we move to that, one of the things that I find fascinating about during World War II, is that Voice of America really cared about Northern Africa. In fact, had stations in Tunisia. It was reaching into the Middle East as well as reaching into Europe. Part of that is because part of the war was being fought there. But also part of that was American expansionism. It's this idea of the Middle East and oil. We're switching over to an oil economy at that point. Anyway, brilliant in terms of soft diplomacy. Forty countries. At the end of World War II.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Millions of listeners every single day. For many around the world, this was their first exposure to the United States other than a soldier. It wasn't just men in uniforms. This was, Oh, the United States is more than just this military giant that had this huge impact in the war. They have some really cool music, and they're serious about their news.
N. Rodgers: They have radio shows that are interesting to listen to and that have a cliff hanger each week so you have to come back and listen the next week.
J. Aughenbaugh: Voice of America learned even during World War II, early on that many of their foreign listeners actually would learn English or at least the American version of English, the programs you just mentioned.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Way to be learning English through a soap opera. Then you get the Cold War.
N. Rodgers: Russian expansion of its media.
J. Aughenbaugh: Almost immediately, the State Department figured out that one of the most effective ways to potentially counter the Soviet Union's influence in European nations was with the Voice of America. Because the fear of the United States in the early years of the Cold War is that many European nations that were devastated during the war would be susceptible to this new ideology. How do you effectively counter that without just rolling in American troops, etc. You counter this by basically having the Voice of America in all countries, but in particular, Nia, those that the State Department identified as the most susceptible to communist influence.
N. Rodgers: Communist influence. France and Italy and Spain.
J. Aughenbaugh: But even Sweden.
N. Rodgers: Oh, yeah, the Sweden.
J. Aughenbaugh: Over 190,000 regular listeners to the Voice of America in Sweden every year. The head of the Voice of America from 1949-1952, was Foy Kohler. He was one of those initial federal government bureaucrats that love to go ahead and count all these things that suggested that the Voice of America was influential.
N. Rodgers: Well, he didn't have a regular budget. He did prove it all.
J. Aughenbaugh: He went ahead and counted all the letters that they received from listeners around the world. Thirty thousand letters a month, according to Kohler.
N. Rodgers: Lots of young people. He cared about the fact that it was young people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, age was also a factor.
N. Rodgers: Because he's trying to capture young people. You want them because they're going to be the future leaders of their countries, because they have a positive response to the United States. That's a good thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a good thing, because they're going to want to emphasize individual freedom instead of collective action that you saw with communism.
N. Rodgers: You're also talking to a group of people who individual freedom is so important. To people who are from, say, Age 18 to say Age 30 or so. The collective only appeals at the older end.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kohler also justified an increase in his budget from Congress by pointing to the fact that Voice of America could also be heard by people in communist nations or satellite countries of the Soviet Union. He pointed to the fact that we know that the Voice of America is being effective because the Soviet Union jammed it.
N. Rodgers: They jammed it and created their own thing in response.
J. Aughenbaugh: They created their own broadcasting system.
N. Rodgers: It must have had an effect on them. He was right, probably. They saw that it was effective. It got jammed in a lot of communist countries. Then, in part, listening to Voice of America became an act of defiance for young people. Which is also a huge selling point when you're young. I'm going to listen to this thing that I'm not supposed to be listening to. That is more enticing. Then if the Russians had just said, go ahead, listen to whatever you want, that would have been way less enticing than you cannot listen to this. Oh, well, now I have to.
J. Aughenbaugh: I have to listen to this.
N. Rodgers: Anybody who's ever dealt with a teenager?
J. Aughenbaugh: This is a well known behavior of teenagers around the world.
N. Rodgers: All of them. It doesn't matter what culture they come from.
J. Aughenbaugh: If your parents, your teachers, and your government officials tell you as a teenager, you shouldn't do X because it's bad for you.
N. Rodgers: Oh, my gosh. How quickly can I go do it?
J. Aughenbaugh: The bureaucratic scholar and me is just fascinated how the Voice of America was located in the State Department until 1953, when a stand alone agency was created, the US Information Agency. Here, the Voice of America really focused on expanding its reach to the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Nia, you pointed out, according to some scholars, the most effective program that the VOA had during this period of time was the broadcasting of American jazz.
N. Rodgers: Nia Kiska doesn't love jazz.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, but it was the type of music that in communist nations was frequently banned or prohibited.
N. Rodgers: Because it's very American.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's very American.
N. Rodgers: Jazz is very American.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is a form of music where anarchy and ignoring musical rules is part and parcel of the experience. To me, what's fascinating for almost 50 years, the VOA broadcast the America Jazz Hour. They just had a designated hour just for jazz, which, to me, as a jazz lover, I'm like, Ah, yet another reason why the Voice of America is a great agency.
N. Rodgers: It exposed a lot of African American artists to the world. US musicians who had not been known outside the United States became known outside the United States, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington.
J. Aughenbaugh: In some cases, because of the Voice of America's Jazz Hour, you had American jazz musicians who were either not getting attention in the United States or in parts of the United States, could not play or could only play at black only clubs. They became superstars in European nations. Particularly in France.
N. Rodgers: Josephine Baker made an entire amazing career.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or somebody like beloved Miles Davis. He spent time in France, and they treated him like a God. He comes back to the United States, and he's getting arrested in New York City for being black. Again, it's this strange juxtaposition provided by the Voice of America. That in many ways, we were exporting a particular vision of the United States that perhaps didn't even exist back home.
N. Rodgers: It's amazing. The other thing too is that, can I just say that you get the first blogger? Since he's not a blogger, but you get the first influencer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Billy Brown, a high school senior from Westchester County, New York, had a Monday Night program where he just shared the everyday happenings in Yorktown Heights. He got so much fan mail that the Voice of America could not afford the $500 a month in clerical and postage costs required to respond to his listeners letters. They had to end his program because he was too popular.
J. Aughenbaugh: Too popular. Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's awesome. When I read that, I was like, Aughie, he's us, but way back then. Just having chats where he's just talking and hanging out. Now, we're not that popular. But I'm just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was about to say.
N. Rodgers: That'd be awesome if we were that popular. But I love the idea that humans have always wanted to listen to the gossip of somebody from somewhere. They don't know these people. They don't have vested interest in Yorktown Heights. But they had a vested interest in hearing the comings and goings, the daily gossip. It's awesome. I think that's wonderful.
J. Aughenbaugh: To your point, Nia, just think about, for instance, the fact that we occasionally get emails from listeners. Some of them will go ahead and talk about how they may learn stuff about the government and agencies, etc. But they're always fascinated and they'll always remark on, for instance, your desire to be in exposition in the government.
N. Rodgers: They like my megalomania.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or they like the fact that I give updates about my coffee consumption. They worry that I'm getting enough coffee.
N. Rodgers: It's wonderful to have people who interact with you in that way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. We've had listeners who are like, Aughie, I came across this particular type of coffee. Would you like me to send you some? I'm just like, where did you guys pick up on this? Well, you mentioned this in this episode. I was just like, yeah, we did. But back to the Voice of America.
N. Rodgers: Voice of America's path has not always been smooth, though.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: One, its financial support has waxed and waned over the years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They've had to prove themselves a lot.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they have.
N. Rodgers: It reminds me similarly of PBS, Public Broadcasting Service. Where they have to regularly go before Congress and say, no, really, we're a public good. We're a good thing and you should support us, you should fund us. But they got McCarthy-ed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they did. In 1953, a number of VOA personnel were targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Now, many of those charges were eventually dropped. But nevertheless, VOA personnel were targeted, like many in the State Department. Because a lot of what we were doing in the Cold War seemed to be like we were collaborating with or too friendly with communists. Though much of the Voice of America was designed to go ahead and say to people in communist nations or those in the West who might be sympathetic to communism, Hey, look at us. We're an alternative. You don't have to be communist.
N. Rodgers: You could be American or American like.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, American like.
N. Rodgers: What is it? The beacon on the hill. It's that idea of this is a place where you'd want to go because there's freedom and there's respect and there's hope and there's all these things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It's much like President Reagan's house on the hill. We should be the aspiration for others. In 1954, VOA's headquarters moved from New York to Washington, DC, but it didn't seem to affect the VOA's programming and reach because there were numerous examples of how the VOA got jammed in various communist nations because those governments didn't want their citizens to be exposed to the VOA. I got an example in our prep notes during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the VOA broadcasts were deemed so controversial that the Hungarian government, communist led government jammed the signals. But you had Hungarians who left the country who thought that the VOA was fantastic.
N. Rodgers: The Pols jammed it, the Bulgarians jammed it, the Russians jammed it. That was a pretty irregular thing for the iron curtain countries to try to jam the broadcast. What's interesting is their jamming costs more than the agency budget. According to Edward R. Murrow.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because Murrow after he left CBS, became one of the most prominent, if you will, broadcasters for the Voice of America. But, the Voice of America also did hard news. The VOA covered some of the most important news here in the United States. They were there for MLK Junior's, I Have a Dream speech, the assassination of President Kennedy, Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon in 1969. At one point, it was estimated in 1973, Nia, that the Voice of America was drawing between 615 and 750 million people each year.
N. Rodgers: Wow.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is phenomenal.
N. Rodgers: That is two to three times the population of the United States. That's a big reach. Are we still jammed in some countries?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, we are.
N. Rodgers: I shouldn't say we because I don't work for Voice of America. Is Voice of America still jammed in some countries?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Is it jammed in Russia still?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is. Yes.
N. Rodgers: I assume China bans.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Interesting, North Korea has attempted to, but their citizens have been rather resilient in finding out ways to listen to the Voice of America.
N. Rodgers: Well, and I can't imagine from a technological point of view that they would be successful at jamming anything. I'm not trying to cast dispersions, except that I am going to cast dispersions. I'm pretty sure that I could build a rocket that would go further than they do, just saying. Is VOA getting regular infusions of money to build and rebuild its networks? Anybody who's ever tried to use an old cell tower can tell you that that stuff breaks down over time. That's not a thing you can just build once and then don't have to rebuild, don't have to service. There's a lot that goes into the physical part of putting out transmissions.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the early 1980s, Congress allocated $1.3 billion for the VOA to improve their broadcasting and technical capabilities. The VOA during this decade also began to do television production. They had regional programs in Cuba, Afghanistan, Beijing.
N. Rodgers: Wow.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then after the Cold War, the VOA really diversified its programming. They began to add language services. Standard Tibetan, Kurdish, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Rwanda Rund. What's interesting is at the same time that the Voice of America was diversifying its programming, you had the Clinton administration advise cutting funding for radio free Europe because their logic was, well, we no longer have the threat of the Cold War. But the plan wasn't well received. Actually, in the 1990s, you saw an expansion. In part because the VOA was the first broadcast news organization to continuously update its programs on what new media, Nia?
N. Rodgers: I mean, interwebs. Internet.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the Internet.
N. Rodgers: 1994.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That was extremely.
J. Aughenbaugh: Familiarly. But the Voice of America has been also very strategic. In 2002, it abolished, on one hand, its I'm going to I mispronounce it. Arabic service. But they replaced it with the Middle East Radio Network, Radio Sawa. They allocated $22 million to that particular program. Again, listeners, think about that. That's about one fifth of the voice of America's current budget today. That's a significant capital investment but it's a recognition that the importance of world.
N. Rodgers: Importance of Arab World.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, radio programs in Russia ended in July 2008 and why might that have been?
N. Rodgers: Was that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it's the end of the Bush administration, but.
N. Rodgers: It's 2008 when they walked into Crimea?
J. Aughenbaugh: It might have been. I don't know. Now.
N. Rodgers: I think it's later.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think it was more the influence of a certain leader in Russia. Yes. But even today, Nia, you have Hindi, Muslim, Latin.
N. Rodgers: Crimea was 24.
J. Aughenbaugh: Fourteen.
N. Rodgers: Just check I want because.
J. Aughenbaugh: But I mean, the Voice of America is still a potent soft power operation around the world.
N. Rodgers: They leave Russia and they focus that money in on the Middle East. Is that in part because the Middle East is perceived as more of a hotbed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Geopolitical.
N. Rodgers: Geopolitical area of the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Like, Putin's Russia, for one could argue is not as much of an enemy anymore as it once was in part because Russia is not particularly economically as powerful as it once was.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think it reflected, if you will, about a decade and a half of thinking that Russia was no longer the other hegemon that the United States had to worry about. Now, that could be.
N. Rodgers: I don't know if I think that's still true.
J. Aughenbaugh: True. But nevertheless and a number of our colleagues in the political Science Department would go ahead and contest that notion and a number of prominent politicians, including most recently Joe Biden. Before that, Mitt Romney thought that Russia was still a significant, if you will, opposition force. But again, when you're a Voice of America and you have had to struggle, I mean, it's hard wired, I believe, into that agency's culture. Again, you don't get official recognition in law until 1976. You've been operating for three plus decades.
N. Rodgers: As the scrappy agency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, you get a significant capital investment in fusion in the early part of the Reagan years. But it's got to be hardwired into that culture's DNA or that agency's cultural DNA that we got to pick and choose how we go ahead and fulfill lot of mission.
N. Rodgers: We can't do it all. What more competition in the world. Once was. Like, now you've social media. You've got all kinds of stuff. Voice of America probably is not reaching the same number of people that it once did.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, like we're going to do with pretty much all these agencies in the series, let's go ahead and talk about some positives of the Voice of America. For decades, it was viewed, particularly around the world as an authoritative news source. It was reliable. It was oftentimes viewed as extremely accurate, objective, comprehensive.
N. Rodgers: There is criticism to that, which we will go a little.
J. Aughenbaugh: It presented American values.
N. Rodgers: It did a good job of that. A good job of humanizing America to people who didn't have experiences in America.
J. Aughenbaugh: It helped people understand American values, institutions, America's emphasis on free markets, promoting democracy around the world. Nia, in our lifetime, how many of the presidents in our lifetime have talked about spreading democracy around the world?
N. Rodgers: All of them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Pretty much all of them. With maybe the exception of Trump. He doesn't seem to be all that concerned about promoting democracy around the world. But Biden, Obama, Bush 43, Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, Carter.
N. Rodgers: Hello, Nixon opened China.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah
N. Rodgers: It does occasionally tell stories that do not reflect well on the United States. Watergate, scandals scandals. There's been some honest treatment of that that I think goes in its favor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Goes in voice of Americans favor. I'm willing to say, sometimes we don't get it right.
J. Aughenbaugh: I pointed this out earlier, and I know we made jokes about helping people learn English around the world or at least the American version. But the sheer volume.
N. Rodgers: The British would say, I'm not sure they're learning English.
J. Aughenbaugh: English. But the sheer volume of programs that the VOA did or continues to do. English in a minute English at the movies, everyday Grammar TV, which by the way, I've listened to a couple of those episodes, and they are absolutely fantastic listeners. Learning English TV, American stories, words and their stories, everyday grammar, let's teach English, which I got to admit, I wish the nuns of my primary education had used that instead of their version. Not that I'm a little bitter. Then news literacy. Just absolutely fabulous programming. In the VOAs impact, I don't know how you measure this, but.
N. Rodgers: Italy's not communist.
J. Aughenbaugh: Italy's not communist. France isn't mean, listeners.
N. Rodgers: Sweden isn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: France after the war.
N. Rodgers: It could've gone either way.
J. Aughenbaugh: It could have gone either way. It was a.
N. Rodgers: Italy was fascist.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then the VOA has helped countless defectors. The number of defectors, that I came across in my research, who were, like, my initial exposure to the United States. What is American? Was because of the VOA?
N. Rodgers: That's interesting.
J. Aughenbaugh: When I wanted to leave my country, the only place I thought about relocating to was the United States. But there have been criticisms, Nia. Various criticisms. Conservatives have complained that the VOA has historically been a left leaning news organization. It is pretty much the conservative critique.
N. Rodgers: Of all news organizations.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I was going to say the public broadcasting system. Liberals, on the other hand, have been very critical of how the VOA has been a source of American propaganda.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say it is a source of American propaganda. Propaganda isn't always bad. Propaganda is to propagate the idea of something. Voice of America has been unabashedly pro-American, sometimes to the point where maybe it's been a little hypocritical. America is the greatest thing ever. You're like, oh, but is it? It's really awesome, but is it the greatest thing ever? I don't know. That's a discussion worth having, and that is a nuanced discussion that is hard to have in foreign language.
J. Aughenbaugh: I oftentimes go back to, again, what our colleague Judy Twigg said about soft power, the idea of soft power is to help minimize the likelihood of wars occurring. It doesn't forgive the flaws of your own country. But it's a recognition that you would like to not have to address the flaws of your own country while also fighting a war against other countries, right?
N. Rodgers: Right. There is something to be said for the idea that, yes, my country is flawed and yes, democracy is flawed, but it's still the better system. Isn't that what Churchill said?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Democracy is the worst system except when you compare it to all the others or something like that. It's that idea of it's not perfect, but it's still better than communism, or it's still better than fascism or it's still better than that kind of.
J. Aughenbaugh: We would be remiss, folks, if we did not mention that the current presidential administration has a number of critiques of the Voice of America.
N. Rodgers: See earlier note, they think it's too lefty, probably, and that it's a waste of money.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a waste of money, because in the Trump world view, Trump is very, shall we say a realist. As a school of foreign policy, you measure things in terms of who's got the military might, who's economically superior, etc. The voice of America is soft power. It's fuzzy. It's hearts and minds. It's not force.
N. Rodgers: It's wooing. It's not beating.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I like that.
N. Rodgers: I can woo you into doing something or I can beat you into doing something. But one of those is not going to end nearly as well as the other. If I make you want to do a thing, you are more likely to do it much better than if I beat you into doing a thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Instead of forcing you. It's the difference between carrots and sticks.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. This is a yummy roasted carrot with a little bit of honey dressing on it. That's the whole point of this carrot is that you will enjoy and you will want to help create a similar carrot in your own world.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Now I'm thinking about making a nice pot roast with some carrots and potatoes.
N. Rodgers: Carrots and potatoes. That's right. Potatoeise. Dan Coyle, thank you. He'll never live it down. But I do think that we should say that and we should acknowledge that it is an arm of the federal government. By the nature of its agency, of it being an agency of the federal government, it is going to be pro federal government.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: I can't not be. Even when it tells the occasional story of bad things that the government does, it's still, for the most part, going to be pro America because that's the entire point. That's the point of propaganda, is that even when occasionally says, this thing is bad, what you're saying is, but overall, it's a good thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Acting like it's a neutral thing is probably not accurate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it's a like our previous discussions, Nia, about how we can support the US Constitution while also recognizing its flaws.
N. Rodgers: Yes. I generally love the Constitution, but there's some stuff vagueness of it, but really I couldn't be a little more clear on what you meant, like come on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, it's not forgiving the flaw, but it's saying that I still like it.
N. Rodgers: Overall it still it's a pretty decent document.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, one of the joys that Nia and I have in recording this podcast, and it's one of the reasons why we look forward to recording it every week is that we end up learning new stuff.
N. Rodgers: Always. The government is like one of those Russian dolls where there's a thing inside a thing inside a thing inside a thing except you never get to the end with the American government. There's always something else that you go, oh, I didn't even know that was a thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Once again, that happened with the Voice of America, which I knew existed. I've known it's existed for years.
N. Rodgers: I had no idea that it had changed focus so much to the Middle East. I find that fascinating. Now I want to go to do even more research on it.
J. Aughenbaugh: When I went ahead and pulled up a couple of their learning English TV programming episodes, I was just utterly fascinated. To me, it was just like, I wish I had learned English in my youth this way. Anyways, thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you. This has been fun.
You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.