As a VOA foreign correspondent reporting from Sudan back in 1969, I recall distinctly a tiny mud hut within a mile or so from the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. Its rough mud bricks were splashed with crude white lettering, a makeshift campaign poster back in the relatively brief period when Sudan had…
In this era of expanding use of new communications tools, accuracy in media matters as never before. Globally, truth and fairness in journalism is endangered in unprecedented ways. Two specialists from the National Endowment for Democracy recently explained to a First Monday of the Month forum of the PDC and PDAA how China, Russia and…
He held senior Public Diplomacy positions in South Africa, Nigeria, and Indonesia too, but Bernard J. “Bernie” Lavin (d. 2002) would surely have said his greatest contributions in the field of Public Diplomacy were in Korea. During his first tour in Seoul from 1957 to 1967, he focused on Korean education and the rising generation…
Oil rich Saudi Arabia, despite its great wealth, seems oblivious to the potential damage to its global public diplomacy because of its sustained continuing violation of human rights of its own citizens. Young Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) is considered the supreme ruler of the kingdom with his elderly father, King Salman, playing a secondary…
In a crisis where military forces are deployed, information operations and public diplomacy specialists must be integrated into planning and operations from the first day. This was the conclusion of a case study of mass atrocity prevention and response – OPERATION PALLISER, the British intervention in the Sierra Leone civil war in 2000 – by…
During World War II, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS) monitored broadcasts from around the world, providing valuable intelligence on conditions in other nations for U.S. national leaders. Organizationally, FBIS was part of the Federal Communications Commission. The founding president of Bennington College, Robert Devore Leigh (1890-1961), left the academy to direct FBIS through 1944.…
What is U.S. “soft power” in a digital world? A key facet is the ability to form international friendships, person-to-person and organization-to-organization, in the 21st century. This enhances, in a very human way, “hard power,” the ability to affect militarily the fate of societies and nations around the globe. Here in Washington, soft power advocates…
The formal rollout March 5 on Capitol Hill of an around-the-clock Persian Service led by the Voice of America in cooperation with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a landmark advance in reform of this country’s international broadcasting. The new broadcast stream to Iran and the Iranian diaspora is called VOA 365. First, some background on…
“Metrics,” “data,” “evaluation,” and “results, not outputs” have proven to be real challenges for Public Diplomacy and strategic communication. So has demonstrating that a program, activity, or campaign “moves the needle.” Yesteryear Foreign Service Officers at U.S. Information Service posts religiously tallied “placements.” From time to time, USIA’s research office commissioned surveys. At the dawn…
Former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia James B. Smith – he served in Riyadh from 2009 to 2013 — was interviewed by Checkpoints, the alumni magazine of the U.S. Air Force Academy, his alma mater. The interview was conducted long before the current debate – occasioned by the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — over…