When Karl Rove announced his departure, it rekindled memories I had with my former boss Ken Tomlinson’s relationship with Rove.  I asked Tomlinson to write about Rove’s interest in international broadcasting.  This is the result.

By Ken Tomlinson

Of all the subjects that Karl Rove really understands it will surprise many that international broadcasting is on the list.

“Is it surrogate broadcasting?”  That’s the question Rove always asks when assessing international broadcasting — and in the end that question should provide the standard for what we do.

The concept of surrogate broadcasting is deceptively simple.  Through solid research and reporting, surrogate broadcasting provides totalitarian and authoritarian societies information they would enjoy if their countries had a free press.

It’s not propaganda, dear to the hearts of so many émigré activists.  It’s not a call to arms to resist tyranny associated with Radio Free Europe’s broadcasts that may have played a role in sparking the ‘56 Hungarian Revolution.

Nor is it public diplomacy promoting the policies of the United States government, though this is an absolutely valid responsibility of a vital State Department component.  We don’t need to spend the resources required for surrogate broadcasting for societies that already enjoy a free press.

Surrogate broadcasting gives the people of Iran, for example, what they would enjoy if they could have the Iranian equivalent of the best of Fox News and MSNBC and CNN with the Weekly Standard and the New Republic thrown in.  Vital to its effectiveness is that the broadcasts must retain the ring of freedom associated with the kind of journalism that conveys information so that the people can make their own decisions.

Critics might find it difficult to associate a political master like Rove with such a idealistic concept of truth, but his roots are pure.   Rove’s knowledge is drawn from his service on the old U.S. Board for International Broadcasting where in the 1980s Steve Forbes and Lane Kirkland worked like brothers for a revitalized Radio Free Europe — an exercise that leaders like Poland’s Lech Walesa and Czechoslovakia’s Vaclav Havel believe was critical to winning the Cold War.   (I too served on this board.)

Forbes, the quintessential advocate of unfettered capitalism, and Kirkland, whose AFL-CIO stood for working men and women, were absolutely joined at the hip when it came to what Cold War broadcasting should be doing.

The key was not advocacy of U.S. policies.   It was providing the forbidden fruit of truth to information-deprived societies.  We couldn’t resemble the dogma of Soviet state radio.   The forbidden fruit was free and open debate and reporting events in such a way that truth, not advocacy, was the bottom line.

It may be hard for Washington to conceive of Rove, the political master, being dedicated to truth above determinism.   But just as Truman and Vandenburg found unity at the water’s edge, Forbes and Kirkland forged a partnership that freed RFE/RL of the traditional partisan conflicts that so often had interfered with the quality of its work in the past —- and would haunt its successors at the Broadcasting Board of Governors in the future.

But Rove understood that the RFE/RL of the 1980s worked because it reflected the standards of surrogate broadcasting.   Maybe one day this concept of international broadcasting might work again.

There is a personal footnote to all of this, When Rove informed me that I would be the new chairman of the BBG, he advised that I should best leave the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.   The BBG work, he understood, was too important to be intertwined with the natural political conflicts of domestic public broadcasting.

I felt I could not turn my back on those responsible for President Clinton appointing me to the CPB board.   I ignored Rove’s advice.

That would turn out to be the worst mistake of my life.

Tomlinson, the former editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest, recently left the chairmanship of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Here’s the latest from the presidential campaign trail, as reported in today’s Washington Post:

A debate moment that might have quickly come and gone has erupted into the sharpest battle of the Democratic nominating contest, with Sen. Barack Obama yesterday comparing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position on meeting with the leaders of hostile states to the adamant refusal of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

“You’ll have to ask Senator Clinton what differentiates her position from theirs,” Obama challenged reporters on a conference call, stoking a fire ignited four days earlier when both were asked how they would approach countries such as North Korea and Iran if elected president.

Actually, preconditions are neither Bush nor Cheney policy. They’re Clinton’s — Bill Clinton’s.

A 1998 Asia Week piece about former Tiananmen Square protest leader Wang Dan:

Wang was by far the most prominent veteran of Tiananmen in prison, but not the only one. Human Rights In China (HRIC) recently published a list of 158 people from Beijing alone who remain incarcerated in connection with their activities during those fateful spring days nine years ago. The group is providing U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with a list of names in preparation for her trip to China to lay the groundwork for President Bill Clinton’s planned state visit in late June and early July. Wang’s release is believed to have been an American precondition for the summit, although both sides deny it.

Good policy then, good policy now.

Seems that Fidel Castro is getting a giddy pat on the back and atta-boy from the United Nations.

Cuba has solved crippling energy shortages that plagued the island as recently as 2004 without sacrificing a long-term commitment to promoting environmentally friendly fuels, the head of the U.N. Environment Program said Wednesday. …

“Cuba a few years ago was facing a real energy crisis, 16 hours of … electricity cuts and therefore a realization that the economy was going to collapse under this system,” said [Achim] Steiner, in Havana for a conference on the environment and development.

“In terms of a short term response, it is quite remarkable how Cuba, under its economic conditions, managed to solve that crisis,” he said.

So, how’d they pull off this electrical miracle? Here’s one method:

Fidel Castro appeared on television nearly daily to explain improvements in excruciating detail …

Ah, good for the long-suffering Cubans. Nothing like a solid four-hour excruciating rant from the President of the Council of State to rally the faihtful. It does, though, make you wonder if Cuba’s electrical grid would further benefit from Castro not being on TV at all during these energy-conscious days.

And since he’s enamored with delivery of broadcast news, here’s something else President Castro might consider: Stop jamming Radio and TV Marti. Cuba wastes an enormous amount of electricity jamming the free flow of information from the U.S. Imagine if instead of blocking news they’d use their precious resource to power air conditioning, refrigerators, and other things that actually help the Cuban people. Maybe one of these days the United Nations might even suggest it.

We’re not sure how old this is, but we happened to stumble over this at about.com’s great Political Humor site and thought it deserved plugging.

Angelina Jolie’s nomination to the Council on Foreign Relations has been formally accepted by the think tank’s board of directors.

That’s so pleasing.  Our foreign policy will be in capable hands with an actress who once said this after visiting Cambodia: “I’ve eaten cockroaches, bee larvae and crickets. You can get them with peanuts inside or with guts.  I like them, they’re really meaty and high in protein.”

From today’s State Department press briefing on Darfur, with Andrew Natsios, Special Envoy to Sudan:

QUESTION: Yeah. Who do you have in mind that’s going to enforce this? The French?
MR. NATSIOS: Well, there’s no mechanism in the actual resolution. I haven’t read the text of it. You don’t put in UN resolutions who’s going to enforce it. You simply allow member-states to enforce it.
QUESTION: Exactly. So you know, who’s going to do that?
MR. NATSIOS: I mean, we’ll have to have those conversations if the sanctions resolution –
QUESTION: But if there isn’t anybody that has any — African air forces are not exactly the — you know, the best there are at enforcing these kinds of things.
MR. NATSIOS: I understand that.
QUESTION: The French have a big –
MR. NATSIOS: We’re going to get the resolution force through — the resolution document through first.
QUESTION: So there has been no thinking about who might –
MR. NATSIOS: There’s been a lot of thinking, but I’m not going to discuss it here in front of all of you.
QUESTION: Okay. Well.
MR. NATSIOS: Okay.
QUESTION: Good luck, then.

Jimmy Carter calls President Bush’s international relations “the worst in history.”

The White House fires back, calling Carter “increasingly irrelevant.”

Perhaps.  But as you can see in this photo of an Amman bookshop window display featuring Jimmy Carter’s new book and Adolf Hitler’s old book, some still find the former president sufficiently relevant.

A rare chance to praise Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) for this tidbit we found in Dana Milbank’s story today:

As it happens, nonsense was on prominent display at both ends of the Capitol yesterday. The day began with a hearing of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee investigating a singular case of government dysfunction: how the administration had allowed al-Hurra, a U.S.-funded Middle Eastern television station, to promote Holocaust deniers and anti-Israel campaigns. “Why are American taxpayer dollars used to spread the hate, lies and propaganda of these nuts, when our goal was to counter them?” asked the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.).

Nuts is probably the best description you can say in Congress.  Axis of evil-doing nuts.

The New York Sun runs this editorial on Alhurra, America’s Middle East satellite news network run by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (where I used to work):

Among Alhurra’s blunders has been a broadcast of Hezbollah’s leading ideologist of anti-Jewish terror, Sheik Nasrallah. Alhurra kept him on the air — live, no less — for more than an hour, a stunt that some members of Congress recently charged, in a letter to Secretary Rice, violated a written policy. The congressmen quoted a report in the Wall Street Journal that quoted Sheik Nasrallah, five minutes into his rant on Alhurrah, as saying “the only place where bullets should be is the chest of the enemies of Lebanon: the Israeli enemy.” The congressmen also cited a bizarre broadcast that gave credence to Iran’s Holocaust denial conference. This has lead to calls in the Congress and in the press (particularly eloquently in dispatches by Joel Mowbray issued by the Wall Street Journal) for greater oversight.

The Holocaust denial conference mention is particularly noteworthy.  Some examples of what Alhurra broadcast:

• Anchor: “Iranian foreign minister Manushaher Muttaki said that his country’s intent is not to deny or prove this issue (the Holocaust).”
• Mohamed Abou Jihad, Hamas’ representative in Tehran: ““It is obvious that only part of the story is told regarding what happened during WWII.”
• Reporer: “Even if opinions have differed about how true the Holocaust is, particularly that some denied its occurrence.”
• David Duke: “Thanks to President Ahmedinejad, experts from all around the world were able to gather here in order to discuss this incident and exchange views about it.”

This may represent the worst lapse in editorial judgment ever for America’s international broadcasting efforts.

From the Financial Times:

Nicolas Sarkozy is planning to appoint one of his most moderate allies as France’s prime minister in an attempt to win support for the contentious labour reforms he has said are essential to the country’s economic future.

The president-elect will name François Fillon, the mastermind of his election victory and former education minister, as prime minister after assuming the presidency. Mr Fillon is seen by the left as one of the “least detested” members of Mr Sarkozy’s team.

“Least detested.”  Doesn’t leave much room to “mature in office” by migrating left.