In today’s column, Bob Novak writes this about Newt Gingrich:

He depicts failed efforts to broadcast the truth to Iran and North Korea. The problem is that Gingrich has played fast and loose with facts, understating the actual U.S. effort.  Gingrich ignored a personal correction from Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and continued the misrepresentation. … Unfounded accusations about U.S. international broadcasts point to a longtime carelessness with facts.

The fact of the matter, as Novak points out, is that America actually has a robust and expanding satellite TV news broadcasting operation to Iran (I used to work for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees America’s nonmilitary international broadcasting.)

Is it having an impact?  Tomlinson wrote this in the Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2006:

Small satellite dishes are proliferating in Iran and there are strong indications that VOA’s nightly programming is becoming a staple for large numbers of Iranians. Telephone polling (which tends to undercount audiences living under repressive regimes) show that better than one-in-five adult television viewers say they regularly watch VOA’s satellite television programs.   As was the case with RFE/RL and VOA in the Cold War, it is important that our broadcasts are provocative — and credible. Intense journalistic supervision is critical to achieving this goal. Truth does not lie half way between the views of Washington and Tehran. But talk and debate programs give Iranians a taste of freedom — and enlightenment.

This is precisely the model that worked during the Cold War — broadcasting the truth to repressed people.  Ultimately, the furture of Iran is up to the people of Iran.  But with the mullahs oeprating four 24/7 satellite channels of their own, beaming throughout the region, America’s efforts should be applauded by leaders like Newt Gingrich.