Public Diplomacy in the Middle East: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back        by Nancy Snow

Originally published 2/13/04 at OdwyerPR.com, the online daily newspaper of record for the public relations industry

The House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations took up the cause of words as weapons in its Feb. 10 hearing on public diplomacy in the Middle East. 

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) kicked off the session by arguing that U.S. public diplomacy should be focused largely on “persuading Iraqis and their neighbors we are there as liberators, not occupiers, and the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam.  That’s the truth and they need to know it,” he said.

The Congressman was followed by a number of experts in the field, including Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) chair Kenneth Tomlinson.  Noting that U.S. international broadcasting had declined by 40 percent after the Cold War and before Sept. 11, he said that “our competitive edge in the Middle East is our dedication to truth, and free and open debate, and we will stand out like a beacon of light in a media market dominated by sensationalism and distortion.” 

No word yet as to what Janet Jackson and Viacom might have had to say about their own beacons. 

Must Counter `Hate-speak'

BBG board member Norman Pattiz said U.S. media in the Middle East were “very unpopular” and have a daunting task to combat “hate-speak” that distorts the picture of the United States in the region. 

The Arab “street” gets its counterpart picture of the American street in a media landscape dominated by journalistic self-censorship, government censorship, and incitement to violence. 

The BBG is prioritizing satellite television, including the about-to-be-launched Middle East Television Network (METN) to become the future’s new medium and the most important political phenomenon to nonmilitary U.S. Government-led international broadcasting, what shortwave radio was to the past.     

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Margaret Tutwiler said that public diplomacy’s focus must remain in “those areas of the world where there has been a deterioration of the view of our nation,” primarily in the Arab and Muslim world. 

While the U.S. Government needs to listen more to foreign audiences, particularly on the ground through PD personnel overseas, Tutwiler said that U.S. policy advocacy is still a priority in public diplomacy. 

While the audience for such advocacy is traditionally elites and government officials, she noted that outreach must extend to non-elites and nongovernmental officials.  “We only have to look at the outreach activities of many U.S. corporations to see the value of being present and engaged in neighborhoods that we in government have for too long neglected.” 

She recommended expanding international exchanges and noted that one-quarter of FY 2004 funding for exchanges will go to South Asia and the Middle East regions with a shift toward a younger target audience, including exchanges of high school students. 

Tutwiler, like many other speakers, emphasized the need to focus on the bottom line in constantly asking, “Is this activity or program still effective in today’s world?  If it is, we should keep it.  If it is judged to no longer contribute, then we should let it go.  Developing effective mechanisms for evaluating program impact and effectiveness is a priority.”

Adopt Private Sector PR Techniques

And where might those measures come from?  That's where the private sector comes in... Jess Ford, part of an audit team of public diplomacy activities at State and the BBG said that earlier recommendations that State use improved performance measures have led to some limited pre- and post-testing of program participants but that an overall integrated interagency strategy that links outcomes to goals is still non-existent.

State continues to rely on anecdotal measures of effectiveness, including counting the number of speeches given by the ambassador or the number of articles placed in host-country media (something that USIA/State was doing during my tenure in the early to mid-90s). 

Ford said that “during our audit work, we learned that private sector public relations efforts and political campaigns use sophisticated strategies to integrate complex communication efforts involving multiple players…many of the strategic tools that such firms employ are relevant to State’s situation.”

Meanwhile, the BBG continues to make audience size in priority markets its key performance measure, mostly Middle East markets linked to the war on terrorism.  In its own audit, Ford said that the BBG strategic plan “did not include a single goal or related program objective designed to gauge progress toward increasing audience size, even though its strategy focuses on the need to reach large audiences in priority markets.” 

Ironically, the post-9/11 tenure of the previous undersecretary Charlotte Beers (October 2001 through March 2003) offered insufficient policy guidance in public diplomacy efforts to the field public affairs officers.  Ford reported that one public affairs officer in Morocco said “so little information had been provided from Washington on State’s post-September 11 public diplomacy strategy that he had to rely on newspaper articles and guesswork to formulate his in-country public diplomacy plans.”   

Overall, this winter session on U.S. public diplomacy efforts in the Middle East indicates that the U.S. had yet to gain full traction--either regionally or strategically--mostly due to shifting priorities from the top and lack of coordination across all agencies involved. 

The private sector, while acknowledged as able to provide the most effective strategic measures, continues to seem like a side show to the main attraction, America’s credibility problem worldwide and the all-eyes-on main tents of Iraq and Afghanistan where that credibility is tested everyday. 

Nancy Snow is a former USIA/State Department official in the government's Presidential Management Intern (PMI) Program.  She is Senior Research Fellow at USC's Center on Public Diplomacy and Asst. Professor of Communications at California State University, Fullerton.