• U.S.

The Administration: Telling the World

4 minute read
TIME

In Southeast Asia, ferryboat operators accept dog-eared copies of a magazine called Free World in lieu of money. In Laos, wandering minstrels roam through villages to sing the sad story of how the Communists would ruin the country if they took over. In the new African nations of Somalia and Togo, legislators are lining up for English classes. Around the world, 2,700 newspapers in 86 countries with a total circulation of 100 million are carrying a comic strip named Visit to America, which relates the adventures of a young Asian journeying about the U.S.

The magazine, the minstrels, the English classes and the comic strips are all part of the complex and far-flung activities of the United States Information Agency. An independent organization, the USIA publishes 72 magazines and 20 newspapers, produces hundreds of movies and TV shows, operates 176 libraries in 80 countries. Best-known unit of the USIA is the Voice of America, which has 32 radio transmitters in the U.S. and another 55 abroad, beams programs in 37 languages from Arabic to Urdu. Gagging the Voice with 2,500 jamming stations annually costs the Communists more than the entire USIA will spend this fiscal year — $111,500,000.

With Candor. When President Kenne dy made his nuclear testing announcement a fortnight ago, the USIA played a major role in the Administration’s campaign to head off foreign criticism by explaining the reasons for the decision. The Voice of America beamed the speech live over its entire network, followed up with two rebroadcasts and a series of explanatory newscasts. Films and video tapes of the speech were flown to 101 nations. Last week USIA posts abroad were analyzing foreign reaction to Kennedy’s speech and reporting it milder than even the bland and brief censure directed against the Soviet Union for breaking the test ban moratorium last year.

In the past, the USIA has tried to peddle so many points about the U.S.

that the result was often confusion. But last year the agency decided to concentrate on a few main themes. Among them : the U.S. will not abandon West Berlin; the U.S. wants a workable nuclear test ban; an effective U.N. is indispensable to the security of small nations.

To build up its credibility with its worldwide audience, the Voice reports the bad news along with the good, does its best to show how the U.S. is moving to improve itself. “Prejudice exists in the U.S.,” one broadcast said candidly, then went on to outline the nation’s progress in winning civil rights for Negroes. When Astronaut John Glenn went aloft last month, his entire flight was broadcast live in English on the VOA network by announcers who were fully prepared to keep right on reporting the news if disaster struck.

Dodging the Knives. The man at the head of the USIA is Edward Roscoe Murrow, 53, who left a $200,000-a-year job with CBS a year ago to tell the world about democracy for a salary of $21,000. Murrow is the first USIA director to sit in regularly on top meetings of the Kennedy Administration; he at tends the sessions of the National Security Council and the thrice-weekly staff meet ings held by Secretary of State Dean Rusk. “I have no illusions about being Secretary of State.” says Murrow. “I just want a chance to be heard in the area where we have to operate.” Murrow has shaken up the bureaucracy of the agency, recruited a flock of bright young men as his assistants, beefed up coverage in Africa and Latin America. Attracted by Murrow’s reforms, job applicants are running 50% ahead of the period before he took over.

This week Murrow and his top aides will trek up to Capitol Hill and argue that the agency’s budget should be in creased by 12% to $125 million for the fiscal year beginning July. Murrow wants to step up the Voice’s current program ming of 730 hours a week around the world to compete with Russia’s 1,067. He wants to distribute more cheap editions of U.S. books abroad. He wants to send more labor advisers and students over seas. (“The best kind of communication,” intones Murrow, “is still face to face.”) In the past, Congress has slashed pro posed USIA budgets, and this year the long knives are out again. Murrow’s big gest selling job may have to be done right at home on Capitol Hill.

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