Reply #1: No strings attached? How US funding of international press may be buying influence

[Judi Lynn]

No strings attached? How US funding of international press may be buying influence
Submitted by jonathan on Thu, 2008-06-12 08:57. Propaganda and War | Newswire
Full Story:
by Jeremy Bigwood, In These Times

Domestic propaganda campaigns like the "Pentagon Pundits" fiasco have been exposed and decried. Mainstream media outlets hired high-ranking military officers to provide "analysis" about the war in Iraq. Turns out they had ties to military contractors with a vested interest in continuing the war.

Below the radar, another journalism scandal is brewing: the U.S. government is secretly funding foreign news outlets and journalists. Government bodies -- including the State Department, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) -- support "media development" in more than 70 countries. In These Times has found that these programs include funding hundreds of foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), journalists, policy-makers, journalist associations, media outlets, training institutes and academic journalism faculties. Grant sizes can range from a few thousand to millions of dollars.

"The bottom line is that we are teaching the mechanics of journalism, whether it be print, television or radio," USAID spokesman Paul Koscak says. "How to do a story, how to write with balance ... all of those types of things that you would expect in a professional piece that is published."

But some people, especially those outside the United States, see it differently.

"We think that the real issues here are the foreign policy objectives behind these media development programs," says a high-level Venezuelan diplomat who asked not to be identified. "When the objective is regime change, these programs have proven to be instruments for the destabilization of democratically elected governments that the United States doesn't support."

Isabel MacDonald, communications director at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a New York-based media watchdog nonprofit, is also critical. "This is a system that, despite its professed adherence to norms of objectivity, has often worked against real democracy," she says, "by stifling dissent and helping the U.S. government spread misinformation serviceable to U.S. foreign policy goals."

Show me the agency

Measuring the size and scope of independent media development is difficult because similar programs exist under different rubrics. Some agencies consider "media development" to be its own field, while other agencies categorize it under "public diplomacy" or "psychological operations." That makes it hard to figure out how much money goes into these programs.

In December 2007, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) -- a State Department-funded office at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) -- reported that in 2006, USAID doled out almost $53 million for foreign media development activities. According to the CIMA study, the State Department spent an estimated $15 million on such programs. NED's budget for media projects was an additional $11 million. And the small Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Institute for Peace may have contributed up to $1.4 million more, according to the report, which did not examine Defense Department or CIA media funding.

The U.S. government is by far the largest funder of media development in the world, giving more than $82 million in 2006 -- not counting money from the Pentagon, the CIA or U.S. embassies in recipient countries. To complicate matters, many foreign NGOs and journalists receive media development funding from more than one U.S. government source. Some receive funding from various U.S. subcontractors and "independent international nonprofit organizations," while others receive money directly from the U.S. embassy in their country.

More:
http://reclaimthemedia.org/propaganda_and_war/no_string...