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Equal Time for Hitler?

Equal Time for Hitler?

Author: William Safire
Publication: The New york Times
Date: September 20, 2001

WASHINGTON -- The primary source of information for  the average Afghan is the radio, often a transistor  made 30 years ago. The 20 transmitting towers of the  Taliban's Radio Shariat (meaning "Islamic law") are  spewing out hatred of America all the time.

Why is there no Radio Free Afghanistan broadcasting  the truth about the consequences of harboring the  headquarters of terrorism?

Why are Afghans not told that their rulers' decision  to hide Osama bin Laden is the direct cause of the  withdrawal of U.N. relief and the starvation that  they now face?

Why are the voices of revered, mainstream Muslim  clerics not broadcast denouncing the perversion of  Islam by the terrorists, and reminding the faithful  that murder by suicide will lead not to heaven but  to eternal damnation?

Before a single bomb is dropped on a suspected  training camp, the U.S. should be doing what it  knows best how to do: using psychological warfare  to weaken the grip of the terrorists on the local  population.

We are failing to make life more difficult for the  terrorists in their caves because the Bush war planners  have not thought of it yet. The chairman of the  Broadcasting Board of Governors, overseer of our several  official overseas broadcasters, is an amiable Gore fund- raiser long awaiting replacement. The Voice of America  leadership is even more vacant.

Which U.S. government broadcaster should be charged with  stirring anger among Afghans at rulers eager to bring  further devastation to their country? That mission of  countering Radio Shariat's propaganda should go to RFE/ RL, the "radio free" outfit experienced in acting as a  surrogate free press in repressive nations like Iran,  Iraq and China.

But evenhanded journalists at the V.O.A., backed by  political holdovers on the Broadcasting Board, don't  want those hard-sell types invading their turf. The  V.O.A. broadcasts to Afghanistan with fine impartiality  in the Dari, Pashto, Urdu and Arabic languages, and  yesterday stepped up its time on the air; RFE/RL  broadcasts only in Turkmen and Uzbek, understood in  Afghanistan's north, where our problem is not.

In the squabble over a measly $15 million in expansion  money, here is why the V.O.A. is the wrong voice in  this area in wartime:

On the day after the twin towers catastrophe, a V.O.A.  reporter in London broadcast an account of two  interviews. One was with a cleric who "warns that no  accusations against Islamists or Arab groups should be  made before knowing the full truth." This was "balanced"  by an interview with Yasir al Serri, identified only as  "a leader of Egypt's largest Islamist group, the Gama'a  Islamiyya, which has worked to overthrow the Egyptian  government."

Listeners were not informed that this terrorist group  killed 58 foreign tourists and 4 Egyptians four years  ago. The reporter said that al Serri "warns that  retaliation by Washington will only lead to more  violence. He lays the blame for the unprecedented  assault on the U.S. financial and military policy in  the Middle East."

Stung by criticism of this broadcast, Andre de Nesnera,  the V.O.A.'s news director, admitted that the extremist  was improperly identified, but argued that for the  agency to remain "a credible news organization," such  interviews with terrorists "will be part of our  balanced, accurate, objective and comprehensive  reporting, providing our listeners with both sides of  the story."

After a call from Jesse Helms's office protesting  "equal time for Hitler," the bureaucrat warming the  vacant V.O.A. director's seat issued a belated  guideline that "we will not give a platform to  terrorists or extremist groups."

The nation is on a kind of war footing. Even in  peacetime, news credibility does not flow from  splitting the moral difference between good and evil.  In the climate of today's undeclared war, private  media in democracies are free to take either or  neither side, but U.S. taxpayer-supported broadcasting  is supposed to be on our side.

That's why we need an American signal in Afghanistan's  five languages with a clear, truthful message: Bin  Laden and his gang are the cause of present and future  misery, and the suicides who murder innocents are  eternally punished by Allah.

And for the Pentagon's choosers of "targets of value":  consider, in the first strike, the score of towers and  mobile transmitters of Radio Shariat.
 


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