Persian News Network defends mullahs' interests, not America's--TIMMERMAN: VOA's duplicitous broadcasts

TIMMERMAN: VOA's duplicitous broadcasts

Persian News Network defends mullahs' interests, not America's

By Kenneth R. Timmerman

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The Washington Times

8:01 p.m., Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Illustration: Radio by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

With every passing day, Iran is getting closer to the bomb. Just how close, nobody who can talk about such things will say. But the United States has a moral imperative to exhaust every possible means of shutting down Iran's nuclear weapons program before we or our allies decide military action has become unavoidable.
Until now, the United States has not used the vast broadcasting tools at its disposal to promote real change in Iran. Massive budget increases for the Voice of America's Persian News Network (PNN) since 2006 have quadrupled the number of broadcasting employees without enhancing the quality of the programs they produce or the audience they reach.
Worse, when it comes to influencing behavior, or even just promoting a culture of democratic values, we are getting no bang for our bucks. In many cases, PNN's programming actually has made things worse by making the United States appear a feckless power, uninterested in the struggle of the Iranian people for freedom.
A few of the most notorious examples:
c Amateur cell-phone video of the murder of Neda Agha-soltan, a 26-year-old woman who was shot to death during a post-election demonstration on June 20, 2009, went viral in minutes and stirred international outrage over the regime's brutality. PNN waited three days to air the video.
c At the peak of the post-election protests last year, PNN editors told reporters to cover nonpolitical subjects instead of interviewing dissidents, arguing it was not PNN's job to give the dissidents airtime.
c During the U.N. General Assembly in September, Voice of America (VOA) broadcast a documentary on the satirical film "Borat" instead of carrying live coverage of President Obama's address as in previous years or debunking the outrageous statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who later said the United States was the perpetrator and not the victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The result of PNN's dereliction of duty became clear when Mr. Obama recently chose the BBC's Persian service - not VOA - for his first-ever interview on a Persian television network beaming into Iran. The White House knew what VOA editors refuse to acknowledge: Despite all the millions in U.S. taxpayer investment, PNN has lost audience and is no longer considered a "trusted source" of news by many Iranians.
PNN has been plagued with mismanagement, corruption and nepotism, as chronicled in numerous lawsuits against VOA management by PNN employees and government reports. A March 2009 State Department inspector general's audit faulted PNN's management for failing to exercise proper editorial control over content and allowing themselves to be manipulated by subordinates with a pro-regime agenda.
"Lacking the language of the programs they oversee, as well as a background in Iranian affairs, executive producers must rely on their managing editor to approve the shows' content and resolve differences of opinion among staff," the State Department audit found.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/16/voas-duplicitous-broadcasts/
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