America on the Radio II


November 24, 2001


BOB GARFIELD: Confusion about VOA's wartime role is complicated by its charter which mandates three separate missions, some more journalistically pure than others. This sometimes perplexing combination of responsibilities is in the hands of a staff of experienced journalists headed by VOA director Robert Reilly. He joins us now. Mr. Reilly, is it frustrating for you to be criticized on the one hand for being, I don't know, sinister propagandists and then on the other hand all of a sudden for being apologists for terrorists. Do you get up in the morning sometimes going I just can't win for losing?

ROBERT REILLY: Well you see it's a false dichotomy. What anyone needs to do who, who sees those as the only two alternatives is to read the, the charter by which VOA is guided by law, and it's in those three parts -- to present accurate, comprehensive news; to responsibly represent the U.S. policies; and 3, a projection of significant trends in American life and thought. Those are the respects in which we're the Voice of America.

BOB GARFIELD:The Voice of America is not new to this-- this situation since September 11th. Nonetheless we've come to discover that Islamisists have been promulgating a particularly hateful form of anti-Americanism throughout the intersecting Arab and Muslim worlds. Does Voice of America have to bear some responsibility for that -- that it hasn't done a better job of counteracting this vitriol?

ROBERT REILLY: I'm happy to say that prior to the events of September 11th, our board of governors advanced a massive initiative for broadcasting to the Middle East Islamic and Arab world to gain a much larger audience for the United States and a much larger venue through which we could explain our, our point of view. One would wish it had been funded earlier, but-- in my own visits to Capitol Hill I am consistently hearing forget the constraints of the past; give us a persuasive case on what you need to do your job.

BOB GARFIELD: In other words if you're asking somebody to subsidize your tourniquet purchase it's best to show up hemorrhaging.

ROBERT REILLY:I see what you mean -- that's it's dramatized the situation and it's unfortunate that they had to come to, to people's attention in this, this awful way, but-- it appears that we've learned something from that and that this most powerful tool of U.S. public diplomacy - of, of being able to speak to the people's of other countries directly is now going to be taken seriously in a way that it hasn't been since the height of the Cold War.

BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well thank you very much.

ROBERT REILLY: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Robert Reilly is director of Voice of America in Washington, DC.