The National Journal reports:
In October 2004, The Washington Post reported that a State Department inspector general's draft report that was highly critical of Radio Sawa, and was originally intended for release in August 2004, had been delayed indefinitely. A later version of the draft, dated November 2004 and recently obtained by National Journal, shows how the report was edited to mitigate or entirely remove some of its most critical assertions. Officials familiar with the IG investigation that spawned the report say there was intense political pressure to make the report more palatable. Still, the edited draft cites "a lack of uniform quality control" over reporting and hiring standards at the station and questions the station's "ability to move the needle of public opinion."
The draft was never finalized or released, and officials say it was shelved in December 2004 after an outside auditor raised questions about the report's quality. BBG board member Norman Pattiz, the radio tycoon and Democratic donor credited with getting Sawa and Al Hurra off the ground, told National Journal that the IG report was "replete with factual inaccuracies" and was canceled only after the IG realized that "releasing the report would make them look silly."
While BBG Chairman Ken Tomlinson, a Republican, and Pattiz pushed hard against the report, insiders say it was State Department acting Inspector General Cameron Hume who decided not to release it.
But Hume did more than kill the report: In February 2005, he dismantled the Office of International Broadcasting Oversight, where the report originated, and scattered its employees among other offices. IG officials say this merely restructured the office to match those of other government inspectors general, but some familiar with the old office lament the change and say the IG "lost a valuable tool." Regardless, scrapping the International Broadcasting Oversight Office eliminated the only federal entity outside the BBG specifically charged with reviewing U.S. international broadcasting.
Al-Hurra and Radio Sawa: the untouchables.
If this were an ordinary government agency, one actually accountable for its performance, here's someone with a pretty good idea of how they might actually be evaluated, and move us past the frustrating arguments about audience share:
Bruce Gregory, former executive director of the State Department's bipartisan Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, suggests that resources might be better employed in finding out if Radio Sawa and Al Hurra newscasts have become the subject of debate in universities, at cafes, and on the streets of Arab countries. " 'Has the news on Sawa and Al Hurra become part of the public discourse?' is the question we should be asking," he said.
Here's another idea I've been floating around: why not mandate that the BBG release all of its audience survey data publicly? Not press releases, not carefully selected studies which show positive progress, but all of it: the raw data, the good, the bad and the ugly. This should not be interpreted as an anti-BBG suggestion: good news would be far more credible if independent observers could see the entire range of information and make honest evaluations of it on its merits. Remember: every single one of those audience surveys was paid for with taxpayer money. And there's always the Freedom of Information Act...
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