Mass Communication Talk

Another major battle for the hearts and minds of people during the Cold War was fought in the Third World, where countries were emerging from centuries of subjugation under European colonial powers. The Soviet Union had recognized that, since the nature of the anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa was largely anti-Western, the political situation was ripe for promoting communism. The West, on the other hand, was interested in continuing to control raw materials and develop potential markets for Western products. Radio was seen as a crucial medium, given the low levels of literacy among most of the population of the developing countries. In addition, the nascent media in the newly independent countries in Asia and Africa were almost always state-controlled and thus less able to compete with foreign media, with their higher credibility and technological superiority.
The Middle East was a particular target for Western broadcasters, given its geo-strategic importance as the source of the world’s largest supply of oil. It is no coincidence that the Arabic Service, created in 1938, was the first foreign-language section of the BBC’s Empire Service, to be followed by the Persian service in 1940. The French, British and American broadcasters dominated the airwaves in the Arab world, while the Arabic service of Kol Israel (the Voice of Israel) also played a key propaganda role in the Middle East. Western support for the conservative Arab countries and the feudal order they perpetuated was also reflected in the treatment of Arab radical nationalism in Western broadcasting.
The British Government used a Cyprus-based British commercial broadcaster Sharq-al Adna to broadcast ‘Voice of Britain’ anti-Egyptian propaganda, however, ‘with little effect’ (Walker, 1992: 75). To counter this, Egyptian President Gamaal Nasser used the radio to promote the idea of pan-Arabism. The Cairo-based ‘Voice of the Arabs,’ was an international service, which in the 1950s and 1960s became the ‘pulpit of revolution’, notably in the leftist revolution in Iraq in 1958.
Pan-Arab sentiment also helped the Palestinian ‘liberation radios’ which regularly and often clandestinely broadcast from PLO offices in Cairo, Beirut, Algiers, Baghdad and Tripoli, moving position to avoid Israeli attacks. These radios played an important role in keeping the Palestinian struggle alive. In Algeria the Voice of Algeria, the radio station of the Front National de Liberation (FNL) played an important role in the national war of liberation against the French colonial authorities. In the words of Frantz Fanon, the radio ‘created out of nothing, brought the nation to life and endowed every citizen with a new status, telling him so explicitly’ (Fanon, 1970: 80, italics in the original).
In Asia, in addition to direct broadcasts from the USA, VOA operated from Japan, Thailand (where the Voice of Free Asia was part of VOA) and Sri Lanka. Following the Chinese revolution in 1949, US priority was to stop the expansion of communism into other parts of Asia. In 1951, the CIA funded the Manila-based Radio Free Asia, notable for its anti-communist stridency. It was later replaced by Radio of Free Asia which continued until 1966 (Taylor, 1997: 43).
During the Vietnam War, US propaganda reached new heights (Chandler, 1981; Hallin, 1986). The Joint US Public Office became the delegated authority for all propaganda activities, the chief aims of which were to undermine the support for communists and to keep the support of the South Vietnamese. These messages were conveyed mainly through dropping leaflets and broadcasting from low flying aircraft. It is estimated that during the seven years it operated in Vietnam, the USIA, supported by the armed forces, dropped nearly 50 billion leaflets – nearly ‘1,500 for every person in both parts of the country’ (Chandler, 1981: 3). Radio played a crucial role in the psychological warfare. The CIA also ran Voice of the Patriotic Militiamen’s Front in South Vietnam and two anti-Sukarno operations in Indonesia – Voice of Free Indonesia and Radio Sulawesi.
In Latin America, an area that the USA has traditionally regarded as its sphere of influence, US media propaganda has been intense, especially since the communist revolution in Cuba in 1959 led by Fidel Castro. During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President John Kennedy’launched a virulent anti-Castro propaganda campaign with his Alianza para el Progreso programme, in what was, in the words of the former Director of VOA, George Allen, one of ‘the largest concentrations of propaganda effort unleashed against an individual since Stalin tried to purge Tito in 1948’ (quoted in Hale, 1975: 101). Unable to dislodge Castro from power and concerned that his success might promote anti-US sentiments in other parts of Latin America, the US Government resorted to using propaganda, notably with the introduction in 1983 of Radio Marti and later, in 1990, of TV Marti, which Cuba considered an hostile act, violating its sovereignty (Alexandre, 1993).
Given its limited geo-strategic importance in international relations Africa remained a low priority area for Cold War propaganda. However, as large areas of the continent were parts of the British Empire, the BBC had been broadcasting to Africa since 1940. In later years, the main broadcasting languages were English, French, Hausa, Portuguese and Swahili.
In the 1970s, VOA broadcast to Africa in English, French and Swahili, primarily to what were known locally as ‘wa-benzi’ (Mercedes-Benz owners, the African elite). Though Radio Moscow broadcast in several African languages – usually a translation of anti-imperialist material – its effectiveness was limited given the lack of communication infrastructure in many African countries. The Soviet Union invested in transmitters and training courses in the Cameroon while the Chinese supported broadcasting in Zambia and Tanzania. Under the socialist government of President Julius Nyerere, Radio Tanzania became the nerve centre of liberation movements in southern Africa and played an important role in the anti-apartheid struggle. However, socialist radio stations were no match for the powerful transmitters of Western broadcasters, such as those for BBC from Ascension Island and for VOA from Monrovia.
Broadcast propaganda was also used in areas where the Cold War was often very hot, such as Angola, where US and South Africa-backed UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) rebels used their own radio station – The Voice of the Resistance of the Black Cockerel – which began broadcasting from South Africa in 1979 and was installed in Angola under the CIA’s covert aid programme (Windrich, 1992).
Although developing countries were initially receptive to the Soviet message of freedom from colonialism, in the 1950s and 1960s, the economic power of the West and the dependency on colonial ties, coupled with the increasing influence of modernizing elites, meant that attraction for communism was waning. As major developing countries, such as India, Indonesia and Egypt, opted for Non-Alignment – a movement founded in 1961 among developing countries which claimed to eschew Cold War bloc politics, joining neither Western nor Eastern alliance – a new perspective on international communication began to emerge. Looking beyond the Cold War bipolarity, the Non-Aligned countries demanded that international communication issues be seen in terms of North-South rather than East-West categories.