How to make dictators very happy
America and its British poodle are retreating from the battle for hearts and minds leaving the field open for the world’s most avid free speech suppressors
Apologists for the world’s worst dictatorships cannot believe the good fortune bestowed on them by the Trump administration’s decision to abruptly shut down Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other affiliates.
Margarita Simonyan, editor of the Russian state broadcaster RT, was seriously excited over what she described as being an ‘awesome decision by Mr Trump’. More tellingly she added, ‘we couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself’.
The ultra Chinese nationalist Hu Xijin, who used to edit the government mouthpiece Global Times, described the shutdown as ‘such great news’.
Equally effusive was the born again Khmer Rouge thug and former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, whose autocratic rule and rampaging corruption was regularly exposed by RFA. He said ‘this is a major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement, and chaos around the world’
It is a matter of embarrassment that the Starmer government in London has yet again followed meekly in Trump’s muddy footsteps by similarly curtailing the operations of the BBC World Service, which, despite an already constrained budget, manages to reach some 375 million people per week in places where the thirst for information is palpably unsatiated.
Both the BBC and the American broadcasters have played a seminal role in providing information in the languages of people starved of untainted news. In Asia broadcasts in Tibetan and the Uyghur language, have been avidly followed, despite the risks entailed. In Hong Kong, where free media has all but been destroyed, broadcasts in Cantonese have assumed a much higher importance.
Most but not all of the BBC World Service £369 million annual budget comes from the public purse. By curious coincidence this is exactly the sum of money allocated for the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace. Unless I somehow missed it, there has been no announcement about cutting this budget as part of the frantic attempt to balance the books.
The World Service plays a widely acknowledged role as part of Britain’s soft power armoury. Its foreign language services are staffed by people from around the world with an extraordinary depth of knowledge that is regularly accessed by the BBC’s domestic services. Many of these journalists will now be losing their jobs.
The BBC’s reputation ( and listenership) was always higher than that of its American counterparts and the quality of BBC World Service output provided a source of soft power for Britain at surprisingly little cost. Indeed the cost savings of slashing its budget will barely register on the government’s expenditure Richter Scale but will have a massive impact within the organisation.
As the dedicated enemies of press freedom are celebrating the elimination of competition they are busy ramping up their pro-dictatorship propaganda. China and Russia, continue to spend vast sums of money on their global news operations because they recognise the value of broadcasting in countering their poor reputation overseas.
To be fair America’s VOA and its associates have a chequered history as propaganda outlets, playing a dubious role when the cold war was at its height. However in recent years, especially in Asia, following the launch of RFA in 1989, the American broadcasters have done much to redeem their reputation, not least because of a policy of hiring knowledgeable and notably hardworking journalists from countries where the services of independently minded staff are not required.
Free speech advocates have every reason to be queasy over the role of state sponsored journalism which by and large has tended to cross the line between propaganda and information. But we do not live in a perfect media world where independence of the press is a given. On the contrary most of the world’s media is controlled by extremely rich business people and their companies. The idea that they tolerate total independence for their outlets is as probable as turkeys voting for Christmas.
Into this cauldron of pressures and conflicts of interests is a plethora of government sponsored broadcasters coming out of European capitals such as Paris and Berlin, Doha in the Middle East and Taipei in Asia. Following the admirable example set by the BBC they have shown themselves to be capable of adhering to the ethos of public service broadcasting.
The net result is that these broadcasters have acquired a degree of credibility which ends up burnishing the reputation of their home countries; a relatively low cost investment yielding disproportionate results. It’s there for all to see but apparently not clear in either Washington or London.