The NYT goes Page One, Big Lead with piece on the U.S.'s propaganda efforts abroad. Read all about the military's astoundingly brainless propaganda planting, which suprise surprise, extended to Afghanistan. But I wonder if the Times is fairly portraying another "public diplomacy" effort:
The United States Agency for International Development also masks its role at times. AID finances about 30 radio stations in Afghanistan, but keeps that from listeners. The agency has distributed tens of thousands of iPod-like audio devices in Iraq and Afghanistan that play prepackaged civic messages, but it does so through a contractor that promises "there is no U.S. footprint."
Is what USAID is doing at all analogous to the Pentagon/Linclon Group's habit of planting stories? Is USAID paying for play? Is it involved in the production of stories? Is it directly funding the stations? Or is say handing money to a respected non-governmental organization, with the organization operating as a sort of firewall, making choices about which news organizations to fund? In something like the 70th paragraph we learn that that is how it seems to be done:
Similarly, AID does not locally disclose that dozens of Afghanistan radio stations get its support, through grants to a London-based nonprofit group, Internews. (AID discloses its support in public documents in Washington, most of which can be found globally on the Internet.)
Internews has scads of deep-pocket funders. The U.N., the E.U., even George Soros, who doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd hand money to a USAID front-group? Now, perhaps the Afghan media program was funded "specially" or exclusively by USAID? The Times doesn't say. What it does have is quote from USAID official suggesting a sorta loyalty test for funding Afghan radio stations:
Recipients are required to adhere to standards. If a news organization produced "a daily drumbeat of criticism of the American military, it would become an issue," said James Kunder, an AID assistant administrator. He added that in combat zones, the issue of disclosure was a balancing act between security and assuring credibility.
Kunder seems to be talking about a theoretical. So how exactly are the funding decisions made and who gets to make them?* I'd bet five bucks--OK, ten!--that the answer would make USAID look better and the NYT worse. (After all, if the answer helped the NYT's case of USAID shenanigans, don't you think the Times would have included that in the story?)
I'm not saying USAID's hands are clean here. They should operate transparently. The fact that they are less than above-board sometimes is a shonda. But if what they're doing is funding non-partisan efforts like voter education and not playing favorites with funding media organizations, then, contrary to the Times' suggestions, USAID is in a whole different league than the Pentagon and its pay-for-play ways.
*I have actually taken the odd step of emailing in an effort to figure it out. Answers soon!
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