Lawmakers fault bad public relations for anti-American feeling overseas

By CAROLYN SKORNECK The Associated Press 10/10/01 5:31 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawmakers struggled Wednesday to comprehend the animosity of anti-American demonstrators around the globe and to come up with a plan to do something about it.

"Why is it that from the streets of Jakarta in Indonesia to Pakistan to scores of other countries, the white venom of hate is oozing in a singularly ugly and sickening fashion," Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said Wednesday at a hearing on public diplomacy. Those are "two nations that we have helped enormously since they gained independence."

The answer, he said, is bad P.R.

That seems odd to Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill, chairman of the International Relations Committee: "How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has such trouble promoting a positive image of itself overseas?"

There are no quick fixes, Hyde said as he called for a major effort to win the hearts and minds of regular people around the world. Public diplomacy now comes in the form of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe as well as Internet sites, embassy outreach and educational and cultural exchanges.

But people overseas are not getting -- or are not convinced by -- the message that America is a friend that values freedom, democracy, civil liberties and justice, lawmakers said.

That's because they are subjected to "a daily barrage of vituperative misinformation and vicious hate," Lantos said. "We are losing the battle of the airwaves."

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said it's more than bad public relations.

"There are some major policy decisions America has made that have not made us any friends," he said, singling out past U.S. support in Indonesia of a "less than democratic and honest regime."

Lawmakers and administration officials said the key is to aim at youngsters who may be more open to new ideas.

"It's the battle for the 11-year-old mind," said Beers, who plans to use her background as chairman of two of the top-10 worldwide advertising agencies -- J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather -- to sell the message.

An emotional punch is essential, she said. If a falling building is seen as just a building, the message is lost. If one focuses on the orphans left behind, the people still grieving, the message gets through.

"We have to be students of what these fanatics claim and debunk them, point by point," said Beers.

To help sell the story, Beers said, her office may try to run advertising on Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based, Arab television station that has earned a reputation in the Middle East for independence.

It is known in America mainly as the station that aired a videotape of Osama bin Laden after the United States began bombing Afghanistan on Sunday, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair has also appeared on it, trying to reach a Mideast audience.

Lawmakers criticized VOA for using reporters considered pro-Taliban and for airing Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, for 12 seconds as part of the reaction to Bush's Sept. 20 speech to Congress.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., said members of Southern California's large Afghan population call VOA the "voice of the Taliban." He wants to create a Radio Free Afghanistan, using the same people who persuaded Afghans to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Marc Nathanson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversees VOA, said the Mullar Omar report was one of two since Sept. 11 that should have been handled differently.

The second quoted an Egyptian exile in London without revealing he was linked to the Islamic Group, one of Egypt's most violent terrorist organizations, and was under a death sentence in Egypt, Nathanson said.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001