Listen Up!

Video courtesy of the Washington Post.

File this under Less Than Shocking: Today's Washington Post reports that an Iraqi television show that empowers citizens to share their concerns about life in Baghdad is popular. The program, called Baghdadia and the People, invites Iraqis to contribute to the public discourse.

As Ali Jumaa, an unemployed man, waited his turn to speak, he explained the appeal of Suheil's show. "This is the people's voice to the government," he said. "He goes everywhere and they see the suffering, not like others who try to pretend everything is fine."

The idea that Iraqis -- or anyone, for that matter -- would appreciate having an opportunity to address their leaders and help shape the narrative of their day-to-day lives, is hardly surprising. What is surprising is how little U.S. public diplomacy does to contribute to initiatives like this, particularly in the realm of broadcasting.

I co-wrote a paper last year discussing this lacuna in U.S. public broadcasting efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. While some aspects of U.S. engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan are collaborative, U.S. radio broadcasts are often not. As the almost exclusive generator of messages in this context, the United States reinforces existing power dynamics, treating radio audiences, for the most part, as passive recipients of information and not co-creators.

Over the past two decades, new Arab media sources have created an environment in which the public has greater agency in framing and interpreting the news. Programs like Baghdadia and the People and the analytical offerings of Al Jazeera and its imitators create a space for people to frame issues in the public sphere. The United States has been trying to navigate this environment in the post-9/11 world with broadcasts that more closely resembled the unreliable state media programs of the mid-twentieth century than their more popular, populist successors.

It's a shame, really, because there is clearly still a need for bottom-up broadcasting in Iraq.

I Talk to the Trees...

Over at Salon, Joe Conason writes on the failure of Al Hurra to engage Arab audiences.

Despite a title that promises to explain why Al Hurra has failed, Conason neglects to provide concrete hypotheses, simply noting that his panel at the Arab Media Forum "never reached unanimity on the successes and shortcomings of the Qatar-based international news channel--or of Al-Jazeera English, its sister operation," although "there was broad agreement that the U.S.-branded Al-Hurra has been a very costly mistake."

While U.S. broadcasting has been celebrated as a successful public diplomacy tool in the past, most notably for its contributions during the Cold War, modern broadcasting is indeed a costly enterprise, and in an increasingly competitive information market, many broadcasting operations are struggling to keep up.

Like Conason, I recognize that there are many reasons for the poor performance of U.S. broadcasters like Al Hurra and Radio Sawa, but I'll focus on one specifically here, namely that broadcasters tend to regard the legitimacy of foreign audiences as an extension of their perceived ability to promote U.S. policy goals.

Arab audiences are frequently treated as objects to receive messages, as opposed to independent agents capable of shaping and responding to ideas. This style of broadcasting reinforces existing power dynamics and attitudes, and it's hardly surprising that it's failed to capture a large percentage of the market.