I have been somewhat sanguine about Matt Armstrong’s position on the Smith-Mundt Act and its domestic dissemination ban on U.S.-produced international broadcasting. While I acknowledge that the Smith-Mundt ban is structurally ineffective in an age when much of U.S. communication material can be accessed by Americans online… I have not heard much about how American access to U.S. programming could improve U.S. public diplomacy efforts (other than perhaps a check on quality).
But Armstrong’s recent article in Foreign Policy, which describes how a Minneapolis radio station wanted to use VOA’s informative programming on Somalia to reach local immigrant audiences and was denied under the provisions of Smith-Mundt, provides a stark reminder of Smith-Mundt’s antiquated relevance. This hindrance becomes more galling when we consider that nothing in the Smith-Mundt legislation prevents terrorist organizations from targeting audiences in the United States, let alone the more high profile international broadcasting of China and Russia. Simply put – the quality programming provided by the VOA might have been a crucial intervention into a local audience that has produced fighters for Al-Qaida in Somalia. VOA provides comparatively accurate and balanced news programming, and allowing such programs to reach critical audiences within the United States costs nothing. To add insult to injury… Kim Andrew Elliott reminds us that U.S. programming is available to domestic broadcasters… you just can’t ask for it directly. Basically – to use the government’s valuable programming, you have to navigate a “don’t ask, don’t tell” farce.
And yet here we are… the U.S. continues to let Smith-Mundt serve as a firewall between U.S. international broadcasting and the domestic population. Why? Perhaps the phantom fears of a looming propaganda state.

There is a lot of useful common sense advice in James Glassman’s essay in the Layalina Perspectives publication about President Obama’s Cairo speech. Glassman’s title is thought-provoking, in that he calls for Obama to assert a new narrative that recasts solutions for Arab and Muslim audiences, rather than focus too much on U.S. actions and motivations in the Arab and Muslim world. His advice is intended as a guide for future strategic communication efforts. Glassman agrees with Obama’s call for mutual interest, and somewhat begrudgingly acknowledges the necessity of Obama’s apology for previous U.S. historical transgressions against the Arab and Muslim world. I think Glassman is spot-on to suggest that the U.S. should rightly focus on the principal and enduring sources of negative opinion about the United States. But I also believe the U.S. can’t edit itself out of the narratives that Arab and Muslim audiences find meaningful anytime soon.

by Craig Hayden
Shawn Powers, a fellow Intermap blogger, wrote over at the USC Center on Public diplomacy Blog about about the implications of transparency in journalism for public diplomacy and international broadcasting. In highlighting the shift from objectivity to transparency – he notes that governments should capitalize on how information is legitimated in today’s hyperlinked global media landscape.
The rapid erosion of journalistic credibility evidences a more fundamental challenge to the standards of legitimacy that people use to judge material they consume via media. But what does this mean for public diplomacy and state-based advocacy in general?