Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Oct. 10, 2002

WASHINGTON – The federal government is broadcasting Britney Spears and foul-mouthed rapper Eminem to ultratraditional Arab countries. Critics believe this is giving the U.S. a black eye in a part of the world that already believes Western culture is degenerate.

"We are becoming a caricature of ourselves,” says veteran Reagan administration official Faith Whittlesey.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees Voice of America, says the music beamed to Arab nations by its Radio Sawa is "light rock.”

"Oh, no. It is rap music,” Whittlesey insisted to NewsMax.com. A former ambassador to Switzerland, she noted: "Music is an important part of cultural diplomacy. What are they going to say when they see the lyrics of some of this [Radio Sawa] music?”

BBG Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, who only recently assumed his position, says light rock, not rap, is the accurate description of the music featured on Radio Sawa.

"You know, Britney Spears does the lead commercials for Pepsi,” the BBG chairman told NewsMax.com. "She’s very mainstream. Now I don’t claim to be an authority on this music. But I do know this thing has been a real success.”

Here's an excerpt from the song "Boys," from the 2001 album "Britney":

'Our Own Little Nasty World'

Let's [sic] turn this dance floor into our own little nasty world. (yeah)
Boys
Sometimes a girl just needs one (you know I need you)
Boys
To love her and to hold (I just want you to touch me)
Boys
When a girl is with one (mm mmm) Boys
Then she's in control (yeah)

United Press International reported Sept. 24 that in addition to Spears, Radio Sawa also broadcasts Eminem to Arabs, "instead of the public policy and news programming for which VOA has been known in past years."

Here's an excerpt from a typical little ditty titled "My Dad's Gone Crazy," from the 2002 CD "The Eminem Show," with expletives deleted:

what do I gotta do to get through to you, to show you there ain't nothin' I can't take this chainsaw to?
F-----' brains, brawn and brass b----, I cut 'em off, and got 'em pickled and bronzed in a glass jar inside of a hall
with my framed autographed sunglasses with Elton John's name on my drag wall, I'm out the closet, I've been lyin' my a-- off
All this time me and Dre been f-----' with hats off (S--- it, Marshall).
back off
before I push this m----------' button and blast off and launch one at these Russians and that's all
blow every f-----' thing except Afghanistan on the map off.

'Good All-American Stuff'

"We do not go with sexually explicit lyrics,” Tomlinson insisted. "We do not go with the hard-core rap stuff. This is mainstream popular music. Not acid rock. Not grunge rock. This is good all-American stuff.”

Tomlinson quotes his son, a graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, as saying, "Tell the oldsters to chill out because her music [Britney Spears'] represents the sounds of freedom.”

But is pop music, even if Britney and Eminem have been sanitized for overseas consumption, the mission of VOA? Some inside the operation are skeptical.

"Even if they [Radio Sawa] do put on relatively innocuous Britney Spears lyrics, there’s no way they can put her on the air without reminding people of her well-known image as a highly sexualized teen,” opined a knowledgeable critic who spoke to NewsMax on condition of anonymity. "There’s no way you put her on the air without putting her image on the air.”

Such programming may indeed attract a larger listening audience of young Arab men (as Tomlinson says in fact has happened), this observer added, "but it’s not going to get us more friends in the Middle East.” The NewsMax source added: "I like light rock. I’m no prude.”

NewsMax.com has asked BBG for a playlist for the music on Radio Sawa.

Much of the credit for Radio Sawa’s format is laid at the doorstep of BBG board member Norman Pattiz, a highly successful commercial broadcaster. He is founder and chairman of Westwood One, which advertises itself as "America’s largest radio network.” NewsMax has examined his biography and found it to be impressive, as are the biographies of the other BBG members.

However, there is the question as to whether the entertainment culture of which he is a prominent part is a good fit for America’s broadcasts to other nations, especially among traditional Muslims.

Those who have spent any time in mainstream commercial broadcasting in the last two or three decades know that much of the industry is driven by consultants who have been telling broadcast executives that if they want the same high ratings for their news programs that they have with entertainment fare, they are going to have to jazz up their news output and make it more entertaining.

Viewers may have noticed that the once-serious nightly news broadcasts on network television have morphed into soft "news you can use” features sometimes ridiculed by news professionals as something on the order of, "Next on Nightly News: Is Your Doctor Psychic?”

Inside network newsrooms in Washington, the Clinton scandals were often downplayed. The rationale or excuse for this was that nobody cares; the listeners and viewers just want news that affects their personal lives.

That dictum, combined with the simple fact that the mainstream media liked Clinton, is widely credited for the perception that, although he was impeached, he got away with the pardon scandals, selling the nation out to China, the file scandal, Whitewater, intelligence failures and other elements in the long parade of outrages and law-breaking of his scandal-plagued administration.

That in turn has led to the observation that if you’re going to infuse news and information programs with elements of the pop culture, why should it have been a surprise that the nation ends up with a president who spin-doctors his way through eight years of scandal and high approval ratings?

Listeners may note that while there has been a proliferation of radio stations over the years, the news content has shrunk. Except for all-news or news/talk stations, news is either downplayed or not featured at all. Even some all-news outlets have replaced hard news with more soft feature stories.

The ratings-driven pressure has encouraged radio news reporters to tell even the most important stories in 35 seconds or less. All of this adds up to a "dumbing down” that results in listeners and viewers who can’t name the vice president of the United States or who can’t say in which century the Civil War was fought.

The view that pop entertainment is what sells apparently has affected VOA’s approach to the rest of the world.

Tomlinson says that Pattiz has spent much of his own money "to support this broadcast,” and that "there is absolutely no way that his involvement in international broadcasting is benefiting his commercial interests.”

Further, the BBG chairman adds Pattiz is "no more powerful on this board than [former AFL-CIO president] Lane Kirkland was” on the old U.S. Board for International broadcasting in the Reagan years.

Pattiz was once quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying it was MTV, the teenybopper channel, that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Incidentally, even the old-time print media have jazzed up their coverage. The New York Times, supposedly the "newspaper of record,” considered Britney Spears to be relevant enough to warrant a front-page story last Sunday.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Media Bias

Middle East

Editor's note:
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