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RFE/RL in the Age of Glasnost
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14138 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1988 |
1,925 Words |
| Author
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Mark G. Pomar
Mark G. Pomar is deputy director of the Board for
International Broadcasting. The views in this article are the
author's and do not necessarily reflect official BIB-RFE/RL
policy or U.S. government policy. |
From its very inception in 1953, Radio Liberty (RL) has been vilified by the Soviet Union and its broadcasts in the 12 languages spoken there have always been jammed. In spite of the vicissitudes of Soviet foreign and domestic policy--from Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization and "thaw" to Leonid Brezhnev's economic stagnation and foreign policy activism and now to Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring)--the Soviet attitude toward RL has remained unchanged. The Munich-based station is viewed as an implacable foe of the communist regime and a wellspring of dangerous ideas and information about internal Soviet affairs.
Radio Free Europe (RFE), broadcasting to countries of Eastern Europe since 1950, has been the target of similar, though somewhat more muted, criticism from the respective communist regimes. Although the countries of Eastern Europe have enjoyed considerably more freedom than the Soviet Union and the media have been more open, the prevailing attitude toward RFE on the part of the regimes has been consistently hostile. RFE's broadcasts to Eastern European countries have been jammed regularly except for Romania and Hungary, which ceased jamming in 1963 and 1964, respectively. In recent years, the Polish regime has been especially virulent in its attacks on RFE, linking it with the rise and flourishing of the Solidarity trade union movement.
What's the threat?
Many questions naturally spring to mind: Why this consistently negative attitude toward RFE and RL? Are the programs really so frightening to the regimes? How can truthful and accurate information be so threatening to relatively stable and well-entrenched regimes? How is it that now, at a time of self-proclaimed glasnost, the jamming of RFE/RL programs continues unabated? Indeed, why were several jammers previously aimed at the Voice of America (VOA) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) recently redirected at RFE/RL?
The reasons for strident Soviet and Eastern European rhetoric (and its concomitant jamming) stem from the mission and programming of RFE and RL. Of great concern to the regimes is, above all, the very conception of the two radio broadcasters. The language services are surrogate "home" media whose purpose is to provide in-depth, accurate, and comprehensive news about the internal affairs of their respective countries. Unlike VOA, BBC, Deutsche Welle, and other major international broadcasters, RFE/RL seek to identify with the interests of their listeners and concentrate predominantly on domestic matters
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