Nice title for the last post of the year, no? I admit I “stole” it from a WSJ article on Jeffrey Gedmin who is President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and according to Enders Wimbush “the best thing to happen to RFE/RL in a decade”.
Excerpts of “Jeffrey Gedmin: A Voice For Freedom” by Matthew Kaminski, December 29, 2007, The Wall Street Journal:
Can radio change the world? It used to. On the walls at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty here hang pictures of Solidarity rallies in Poland and a smiling Vaclav Havel. The message isn’t subtle, or inaccurate: This legendary U.S.-funded broadcaster helped win the Cold War.
The glory days are past at RFE/RL, and for American public diplomacy as a whole.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, when history ended and freedom triumphed (or so it seemed), Munich-based RFE/RL landed on the chopping block. It was saved, on a threadbare budget, partly thanks to then Czech President Havel. In gratitude, he offered cheaper digs in a communist-era eyesore here in Prague that previously housed the Czechoslovak Parliament. Yet in the public mind, the station founded in 1950 by the likes of George Kennan and John Foster Dulles might as well be gone.“We’re trying to revive it,” says Jeffrey Gedmin. (…)
The neoconservative expert on Germany, and longtime denizen of Washington’s think-tank world, makes an energetic pitch. In his nine months in office, Mr. Gedmin has told anyone who’ll listen that government-funded, robust “surrogate broadcasting” — a stand-in where the real thing is missing — matters as much as ever. “Massive evidence suggests that it irritates authoritarian regimes, inspires democrats, and creates greater space for civil society,” he says. (…)
“At a time when everybody is arguing ’soft power’ is so important, this kind of broadcast is the ultimate in soft power,” he says. “It costs peanuts. And it has a measurable impact of success.”
Given the difficulties and dangers RFE/RL journalists are facing on the one hand (two have been killed this year!) and the considerable successes on the other hand (67% market share in Afghanistan), one should think that funding is no problem, but according to the article “None of Mr. Gedmin’s successors managed to get Capitol Hill to commit any new resources in 12 years.”
Well, one has to be the first.
So, go and win the (budget) battle, Jeff!