Mr O’Connell states that “Radio Farda operates under RFE/RL’s Professional Code, which mandates that its broadcasts should promote tolerance and not advocate secessionism.”
I am unclear about his logic. A broadcaster need not endorse the views of the people it interviews. If it is Radio Farda’s and VOA’s view that broadcasting “secessionist” viewpoints is tantamount to an endorsement, then the broadcasting of voices supportive of the Iranian government – as alleged by the Iran Steering Group – is surely an endorsement of the Iranian regime!
I would like the Broadcasting Board of Governors to indicate whether, during the Soviet era, RFE/RL refused to broadcast the opinions of “secessionists” from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. I don’t honestly know, but if it did broadcast the voices of such figures then it was, according to Mr O’Connell’s logic, supporting secessionism from the Soviet Union (which was no bad thing, in my mind). The Chinese government certainly thinks that VOA’s Tibet service is supporting secessionist groups (again, no bad thing). So, really, the broadcasting of secessionist voices elsewhere in the world is allowed by RFE/RL and VOA services, just not in their Persian services.
I put it to the BBG that it is censoring minority groups on its Iran service and this has nothing to do with any charter or code of conduct. The groups that Abdian and Ghaderi represent are not secessionist, although certain factions may portray them as such. They are prominent in the communities they represent. How often are they heard in VOA broadcasts? We have to ask ourselves whether the censorship on VOA Persian Service and Radio Farda is designed to appease the Iranian regime.
Another question we have to ask ourselves is whether the BBG believes that the US interests are represented by a certain faction of the Iranian regime or the opposition and that this is the reason why minority voices are marginalised by its services. If so, the American tax-payers and their representatives must decide on the efficacy of such an arrangement and whether this has anything to do with the promotion of a plural democracy in Iran. If they decide it isn’t, then funding for the BBG’s broadcasting services to Iran should be cut and the money spent elsewhere, where it could make a real difference to the Iranian people and, by extension, global security.
