We are engaged in an information war. During the Cold War, we did a great job in getting America’s message out. After the Berlin Wall fell we said, okay, fine, enough of that. We’ve done it. We’re done. And unfortunately, we are paying a big price for it.
And our private media cannot fill that gap. In fact, our private media, particularly cultural programming, often works at counterpurposes to what we truly are as Americans and what our values are.
I remember having an Afghan general tell me that the only thing he thought about Americans is that all the men wrestled and the women walked around in bikinis. Because the only TV he ever saw was Baywatch and World Wide Wrestling. So we are in an information war. And we are losing that war. I’ll be very blunt in my assessment. Al-Jazeera is winning.
The Chinese have opened up a global English-language and multi-language television network. The Russians have opened up an English-language network. I’ve seen it in a few countries, and it’s quite instructive. We are cutting back. The BBC is cutting back.
So here’s what we are trying to do. In the State Department, we have pushed very hard on new media. So we have an Arabic Twitter feed. We have a Farsi Twitter feed. I have this group of young techno-experts who are out there engaging on websites and we’re putting all of our young Arabic-speaking diplomats out, so that they are talking about our values.
Walter is working hard with his Board to try to transform the broadcasting efforts. Because most people still get their news from TV and radio. So even though we’re pushing online, we can’t forget TV and radio. And so I look — I would look very much towards your cooperation, to try to figure out how we get back in the game on this. Because I hate ceding what we are most expert in to anybody else.
Hillary Clinton: The US is losing “an information war”
by the Daily Conversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1p-E2xmpjA
Hillary Clinton declares international information war
RT
http://rt.com/news/information-war-media-us/
The US is losing the global information war, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared while appearing before a congressional committee to ask for extra funds to spread US propaganda through new media.
Clinton said existing private channels are not good enough to handle the job, naming as rivals Al Jazeera, China’s CCTV and RT – which she watches, she added.
Clinton was defending her department’s budget in front of the House’s Committee on Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.
Clinton said the US should step up its propaganda effort and get back “in the game” of doing “what we do best.”
“During the Cold War we did a great job in getting America’s message out. After the Berlin Wall fell we said, ‘Okay, fine, enough of that, we are done,’ and unfortunately we are paying a big price for it,” she said. “Our private media cannot fill that gap.”
“We are in an information war and we are losing that war. Al Jazeera is winning, the Chinese have opened a global multi-language television network, the Russians have opened up an English-language network. I’ve seen it in a few countries, and it is quite instructive,” she stated.
Things have changed a lot since the days when Western media outlets, including BBC and CNN, had a monopoly on the coverage of world news. More and more viewers across the world tune into various foreign media to get a fresh take on events.
It is all in the numbers. For instance, RT’s presence on YouTube is a real hit: almost 300 million views, when CNN International is struggling to reach 3 million.
RT’s constantly growing audience is an indication that the days of media monopoly are over and that people are demanding more multi-polar thinking.
One of the latest examples is Al Jazeera’s coverage of the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, which by most accounts outshone the US media’s presentation of events.
Not everyone, however, is happy with the wider variety of media options. The head of the federal agency that manages the US’s government-run international broadcasting has basically called all those foreign media enemies.
Last year Walter Isaacson, who heads the federal agency that manages the US’s government-run international broadcasting, including the Voice of America, warned against the influence of foreign media.
“We can’t allow ourselves to be out-communicated by our enemies,” he said, in a now-infamous pitch to get his agency more funding. He did, however, later backtrack on his statement, saying that he was misunderstood.
Journalist and filmmaker Danny Schechter says the US can no longer maintain a monopoly on information.
“The United States feels defensive in part because it can no longer monopolize not only the terms of authority in these countries, but also the terms of the debate,” he said. “There is other information out there. There are other points of view and those points of view are profoundly damaging to a country that believes that its point of view is the only point of view.”
Shawn Powers, from the Center for International Media Education, agrees that the US is fighting an information war, but says that Hillary Clinton is overplaying the “losing” aspect of the US information campaign for political reasons.
“She is trying to defend the extravagant State Department budget, which I agree with, but I think she is doing that in the face of tremendous political pressure to cut funding for things like broadcasting that seem to be repetitive with private news enterprises,” he said. “What we saw yesterday was her making some strong arguments on why we still need to invest in international media, and broadcasting in particular.”
Journalism professor Christopher Chambers believes that the likes of stations like RT are a threat to Washington primarily because of the corporatization of media in the US.
“Basically you have news and entertainment in the United States that has merged and is serving one of maybe three or four giant corporations, and all they are concerned about is not gathering news, not reporting news, but commentary on the news – punditry, if you will – and the entertainment slant on the news,” he said.
“The more sensationalistic they can be, the more they can deliver a demographic to their sponsors, that is all they care about,” he added. “They don’t care about getting the facts, they don’t care about having people on the ground to get the real story. So you have a lot of inaccurate reporting, you have a lot of incomplete reporting, but it serves the corporate purpose because all they are really geared up for is making money.”
Hillary Clinton
https://kushima38.kagoyacloud.com/?p=6367
(sk)
「私たちは情報戦争を戦っています。そして私たちはその戦争に負けつつあります。この現実は素直に認めざるを得ません。
アルジャジーラは勝っています。中国は英語をはじめ多言語のテレビ･ネットワークを開設しました。ロシアも英語のテレビ･ネットワークを開設しました。複数の国が似たようなことをしています。そういう状況を理解しなければなりません。
私たちは後退し、ＢＢＣも後退しています。5年前にはBBCやCNNなどの米英のテレビ･ネットワークが世界のニュース報道をほぼ独占していました。でも今では、状況は大きく変わってしまったのです。
より多くの人々が、情報を得るために外国メディアを利用するようになっています。 。。。」
このスピーチの後、国務省や国防省の情報戦争の予算が増えたことを考えれば、ヒラリー･クリントンはすごいと言わざるをえない。
このスピーチは誇張だという人もいるけれど、情報による戦闘はもはや兵器による戦闘の補助的な手段ではないという認識に立てば、そして情報戦争の現実の厳しさを見れば、決して誇張とは言えない。
どんなに良いブリーフィングを受けてもヒラリー･クリントンに今の情報戦争の実態を理解することはできないだろうけれど、そしてヒラリー･クリントンが情報戦争の例として挙げたものが良い例だとは思わないけれど、ヒラリー･クリントンがこれだけのスピーチをしたということはアメリカという国にとって幸せなことだったのだと思う。