I attended a talk today by Andrew Green at the National Endowment for Democracy on US media assistance strategies.  Something about the talk bothered me, although I could not put my finger on it until the very end.  It then hit me: the talk was all about policies, but we never discussed their overall objective.  Talking about media development policies without discussing their goals strikes me as potentially dangerous for two reasons.

First, while media development is a standard part of D&G programs, it is not restricted to this sector.  For example, governments can very effectively use the media to broadcast public service programs in many sectors, such as in education and health, and US Government aid projects deliver this kind of assistance.  However, these governments can also use the same technologies for more nefarious purposes, such as broadcasting government propaganda.  To what extent should the US Government provide non-democratic governments with the means to enhance their capacity to use the media if they can use the tools to subvert democratic development?

Second, the talk took a worrying turn, at least for me, when we began to discuss dissemination of programs that could help people in authoritarian regimes get around internet censorship.  While this may seem innocuous on the surface, it troubles me slightly.  To see this, twist the question a bit.  Wouldn’t the US Government by angry if the governments China, Iran, or Russia installed software in the US that would block people in the US from accessing certain websites?  I think it would and I know I would find it a transgression of our sovereignty.  If the Government of China wants to block certain websites, should US D&G assistance attempt to subvert this?  It seems like a sound question.  I can see two objections to this argument, but neither stands as far as I am concerned.  One, the US Government employed these types of programs (although in a much more low-tech way) during the Cold War.  However, US policy, as far as I understand, does not seek to overthrow the current regimes in China, Iran, and Russia, unlike our policies towards the Soviet Union.  Two, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA) already broadcast to many of these countries (often against the wishes of their governments), so dissemination of software to circumvent internet censorship continues existing policy.  While this may be true, it doesn’t answer the question.  It seems reasonable to ask whether US Government D&G policies that explicitly advocate breaking the laws of other sovereign countries are a good idea, but perhaps I lack imagination.