Page 87 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

76 Communication, Commerce and Power

rallying point through which more general North-South information
and communication disparities were addressed. It was the develop-
ment of DBS as an issue, rather than any concrete plan to apply it,
that made direct broadcasting a significant foreign policy concern for
US officials. The emerging economic importance of information-
based activities and the growing reliance of US-based corporations
on transnational communications both came into conflict with LDC
demands for a New World Information and Communication Order
(NWICO). The DBS issue in the context of US structural capacities
thus became the site of a larger political-economic conflict. De-
veloping countries effectively made use of one-nation-one-vote UN
agencies - some of which, ironically, in 1945 the United States had
promoted as organizations through which American post-war inter-
ests could be mediated and legitimized.

4.1 US PROPAGANDA BROADCASTING

Propaganda broadcasting has been a component of US foreign policy
since the end of the 1930s. Institutionalized after the Second World
War, American state efforts to influence foreign opinions and per-
spectives have been tolerated by US mass-media interests largely
because the former has operated with the goal of either supporting
the latter's commercial aspirations or because state agencies only
operated in areas where private sector opportunities for profit were
negligible. 2
Shortwave radio broadcasts sponsored by the American state -
whether presenting the 'official' foreign policy of the United States
through, for example, the Voice of America (VoA), or seeking to roll
back communism through the more overtly propagandistic Radio
Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) services - have been
operating since 1945 to support general and specific foreign policy
objectives. The ambitions of these radio services have been restrained
for more than just commercial reasons. Department of State officials,
for instance, have consistently resisted mass propaganda activities due
to their potentially negative impact on both the work of American
diplomats and the problems that these official information services
could have on foreign interpretations of US policy. Historically,
3
some members of Congress have considered shortwave radio services
to be the indirect servants of the executive branch. This perspective
4
has been based largely on the President's constitutional supremacy in