Hady Amr. The Need to Communicate: How to Improve U.S. Public Diplomacy with the Islamic World, Analysis Paper #6, The Brookings Institution, January 2004. This 66-page report looks at deficiencies and opportunities in U.S. public diplomacy. Its findings and recommendations track other recent reports on public diplomacy.
John Brown.Is the High Noon Over: Reflections on the Declining Influence of American Popular Culture. Brown, a retired Foreign Service Officer and Public Diplomacy Council member, reflects on the reasons American popular culture is losing its global influence. He is editor of a daily “Public Diplomacy Press Review” available on request at:johnhbrown30@hotmail.com.
Bill Clinton. Closing Address at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, Doha, Qatar, January 12, 2004. The former President talks about economic, technological, and cultural interdependence and offers observations on mutual understanding, improved capacity for self-criticism, identification of common interests, and ending the habit of demonizing those who are different. (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)
Stephen P. Cohen. Statement to the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations. February 10, 2004. The President of the Middle East Peace and Development Institute and a member of the “Djerejian Advisory Group” looks at the need for both media and intensive exchange programs with emphasis on young people in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
David Dadge.Casualty of War: The Bush Administration’s Assault on a Free Press, Prometheus Books, 2004. Dadge, editor at The International Press Institute, examines goverrnment-press relations from the perspective of challenges to press freedom. Contains accounts of VOA’s relations with the State Department, VOA’s Wei Jingsheng and Mullah Omar broadcasts, U.S. government relations with Al Jazeera, Hill & Knowlton’s Citizens for a Free Kuwait campaign, and the Defense Department’s short-lived Office of Strategic Influence.
Amy Hawthorne. Middle Eastern Democracy: Is Civil Society the Answer? Democracy and Rule of Law Project, Carnegie Endowment, March 2004. Carnegie Associate Hawthorne calls for clearer understanding of civil society in Arab countries, effective ways to help civil society organizations contribute to democratic change, and awareness of the limits of U.S. influence in seeking to transform the Middle East into a zone of liberal democracies.
House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations. Hearing on Public Diplomacy in the Middle East, February 10, 2004. Online statements by Subcommittee Chair Christopher Shays; Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy & Public Affairs Margaret Tutwiler; Broadcasting Board of Governors Chair Kenneth Tomlinson; Harold Pachios, member and former Chair, U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy; Jess T. Ford, Director, International Affairs and Trade, U.S. General Accounting Office; David Morey, President and CEO, DMG, Inc.; Stephen P. Cohen, President, Institute for Middle East Peace and Development; and Stephen C. Johnson, The Heritage Foundation.
A.T.Kearny. a href=”http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2493” rel=”nofollow” class=”external exitstitial”>Foreign Policy Globalization Index.Foreign Policy, March/April, 2004, pp. 54-69. This fourth annual ranking of political, economic, personal, and technological factors in 62 countries finds that as the world economy slowed, Internet growth in poor countries and increased cross-border travel deepened global links. Ireland, Singapore, and Switzerland lead the combined category list. A surge in Internet access in developing countries is narrowing the digital divide. Internet use in the Middle East, the least connected region, grew by 116%. Worldwide, mobile phones per capita moved ahead of telephone lines for the first time. The U.S. ranked first in number of secure servers and Internet hosts per capita. The index finds women tend to be better off in more globally integrated countries.
Chris Mooney. “The Editorial Pages and the Case for War,” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2004, pp. 28-34. Mooney looks at how editorial support for Secretary of State Powell’s UN speech on February 5, 2003 in six major U.S. newspapers helped frame the case for war in Iraq: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal. His analysis examines the strength of the combined power of elite media and the administration’s messages to shape public opinion and whether leading news organizations set the bar too low in reaching judgment on a preemptive war.
David Morey. Statement to the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations. February 10, 2004. Morey, a co-chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on Public Diplomacy and Public Diplomacy Council member, discusses the Council’s report, “insurgent communications” in today’s communications environment, and ways to leverage private sector support for government public diplomacy.
George Packer, ed.The Fight is for Democracy: Winning the War of Ideas in America and the World, HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. Packer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, edits this collection of nine views on America’s democratic ideals and the importance of ideas in the war against terrorism. Includes essays by Paul Berman, Todd Gitlin, Michael Tomasky, William Finnegan, Susie Linfield, Laura Secor, Vijay Seshadri, Kanan Makiya, and Jeff Madrick. (Courtesy of Donna Oglesby)
The Pew Research Center.A Global Gap,February 24, 2004. Pew finds older Americans and West Europeans are more likely to have reservations about globalization, to feel their culture is superior, and to support immigration restrictions. This generation gap is less pronounced in Eastern Europe and virtually non-existent in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Majorities in all regions agree on the importance of children learning English. Majorities in the U.S. and the United Kingdom support children learning languages other than English.
Adam Clayton Powell, III. Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 26, 2004. Powell, Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Southern California’s Public Diplomacy Center and Public Diplomacy Council member, discusses independent media, civil society and transparency in emerging democracies.
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Hearing on Public Diplomacy and International Free Press. February 26, 2004. Online statements by Senators Richard Lugar, Chairman; Joseph Biden, Ranking Member; Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy & Public Affairs Margaret Tutwiler; Gene Mater, The Freedom Forum; Adam Clayton Powell III, Visiting Professor, University of Southern California; and Kurt A. Wimmer, Covington & Burling.
John F. Stack. “Hard Times for Hard News: A Clinical Look at U.S. Foreign Coverage,” World Policy Journal, Winter, 2003/04, pp. 12-21. Stack, a former Time Magazine deputy managing editor and recent biographer of James Reston, examines trends in television, print, and web-based coverage of foreign news.
Philip Taylor. Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda, Third Edition, Manchester University Press, 2004. University of Leeds Professor of Communications Philip Taylor has revised and expanded his well known text on the history of political communication to include a new preface, new chapters on the 1991 Gulf War, information age conflict after the Cold War, and the terrorist attacks of September 11, and bibliographical essay.
Philip Taylor’s Website. Professor Taylor also manages a comprehensive international communications website, a rich source of articles, papers, lectures, slides, and other materials on propaganda, military-media relations, public diplomacy, psychological operations, information warfare and information operations. His frequently updated collection has been reorganized and has a new look.
Daya Thussu and Des Freeman, eds. War and the Media: Reporting Conflict 24/7, Sage Publications, 2003. The editors bring together 19 contributions from scholars and war journalists from three continents offering critical perspectives on the media’s treatment of war. Articles discuss humanitarian interventions, high-tech warfare, Al Jazeera, psychological operations in Afghanistan, the impact of round-the-clock news coverage, the “war on terrorism,” and changing cultures of journalism.
Lester Thurow. Fortune Favors the Bold, HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. MIT economist Lester Thurow’s latest examination of globalization’s challenges includes two discussions relevant to public diplomacy: (1) a brief analysis of a decline in the export of American TV programming and the U.S. as an importer and modifier of culture and a “re-exporter of a new global culture,” and (2) the case for Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs) in business and government.
U.S. General Accounting Office.U.S. International Broadcasting: Enhanced Measure of Local Media Conditions Would Facilitate Decisions to Terminate Language Services, Report to the Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, February 2004. GAO’s third report on public diplomacy in the past year looks at the BBG’s criteria for developing broadcast language priorities.
U.S. General Accounting Office. U.S. Public Diplomacy: State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors Expand Efforts in the Middle East but Face Significant Challenges, Statement of Jess T. Ford, Director of International Affairs and Trade, U.S. General Accounting Office, February 10, 2004. GAO’s testimony before the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations updates findings and recommendations in GAO’s 2003 reports on U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting.