U.S. Shortwave Broadcasting to Asia Is Muted

Once again, the U.S. government’s international broadcasting is at the center of a storm of its own making. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) announced deep cuts in services for Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe, and Radio Free Asia shortwave transmissions to Asia, effective end of business June 30. These cuts include programs in a slew of languages, including Persian, Azeri, Uzbek, Laotian, Vietnamese, and many others, as well as “Worldwide English,” which for decades has been a flagship broadcast helping to spread English around the world. Employees throughout VOA were in a state of shock.

Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who recently voted unanimously for extensive reform of the BBG, the agency that runs U.S. civilian international broadcasting, will feel confirmed in their judgment that the BBG is acting recklessly and in defiance of sound management principles.

The cuts will allegedly amount to a total of $1.6 million and were obliquely referred to in the BBG’s 2013 budget request. Yet, because controversy inevitably follows decisions to cut or add languages, the board last year decided to conduct a thorough study of shortwave’s viability as a communication medium.

The BBG announced with some fanfare that it was creating a Special Committee for the Study of the Future of Shortwave Broadcasting, chaired by newly appointed board member Matt Armstrong. As a technology whose origins go back to the beginnings of international broadcasting in the 1940s, shortwave radio has come under competition for resources from AM and FM radio, satellite television, and web-based products for resources at the BBG.

Yet, because of the physical properties of shortwaves, they are a medium that is hard to block, and is accessible for listeners in the developing world. A thorough study of their potential and contemporary relevance was clearly needed.

A comment period for outside experts concluded in February; in April, Armstrong paid a fact-finding visit to the last remaining U.S. shortwave transmitting station, in Greenville, North Carolina. No report or conclusions of this committee’s work have been made public.

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Putting a big chunk of U.S. shortwave broadcasting on the chopping block while the work of this committee remains under wraps is premature, and is likely to cause Members of Congress to ask again who is at the helm at the BBG. Given how important broadcasting is as a tool of U.S. foreign policy, broadcasting strategy should be both rational and transparent. Right now, it is neither.