Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XXX, Public Diplomacy

39. Information Memorandum From the Assistant Director, Motion Pictures and Television Service, United States Information Agency (Scott) to the Director (Reinhardt)¹

Washington, April 19, 1977

SUBJECT

• IMV and USIA—A Response to Your Invitation For Comment and Observations

During the staff meeting of March 30th,² you invited element heads to contribute information not previously submitted that relates to the drafting of a reorganization plan or responds to other concerns and issues presented. The paper presented herewith provides commentary and supporting information on IMV’s usefulness to more effective implementation of public diplomacy.

I would like to take advantage of your invitation to suggest ways in which our activities might relate more effectively to those of other elements within USIA, to new developments within IMV that have changed its operating style significantly, and some suggestions for other innovations within USIA structures that could be useful to IMV and, we believe, to other Agency elements as well.

I. THE ROLE OF IMV

It need hardly be argued that the channel of communication represented by films, broadcast and closed circuit television represents one of our most significant means of approaching foreign audiences. No one can seriously argue that we can do an effective job as an Agency without well-developed capabilities in these media. No one would seriously argue that our media can do the job alone.

As will be described below, IMV activities have become increasingly drawn into close conformity with those of other elements, particularly with those of the field posts. That this has been realized has resulted from the efforts of many individuals, most of them within IMV itself. By stating this fact so bluntly, we do not wish to claim any undue credit for ourselves or to overlook the contributions of others. We mean only to dramatize a condition that you have already recognized and commented upon: that the Agency lacks a vital intellectual center, a program heart in which the activities of its various elements are fully orchestrated. IOP has made a laudable effort to collect information on field program plans and to bring elements together to coordinate responses to these requests. But in practice these meetings have provided only the most general guidance for IMV, and real production planning has been the result of bilateral contacts between IMV and the posts rather than the multilateral orchestration that is still lacking.

If, as you indicated on March 30, we are headed toward a more centralized effort at coordinating program planning, IMV can be counted on to support those efforts fully. We hope, however, that any such effort will distinguish carefully between the requirements of program direction and program implementation. Neither IMV nor any other supporting service of the Agency should claim a right to determine its own program goals. Those should be set at the highest level of the Agency. We do, however, want to continue to be able to make available to the Agency and to the achievement of its objectives our own collective professional experience with our medium—to be able to have a leading voice in determining when a film is needed or when our contribution is better made by a VTR; when a project calls for cooperation with a foreign TV station rather than be undertaken by the Agency alone; when a subject is fit for audio-visual treatment, or when it is best left to the print or other media. And we want to continue to be a source of ideas for programming innovation.

These are not minor questions. In fact, they are the source of much of the continuing and, perhaps, unavoidable friction between the consuming and producing elements of the Agency—the friction that arises when those who are specialists in a program area suspect that “technicians” are attempting to frustrate their program purposes and when those who are specialists in a creative medium fear that “dilettantes” are trying to impose their personal tastes and judgment on production decisions.

In our view, the greatest single need faced by this Agency is breaking down this mutual suspicion. We have had the stimulating experience of working closely with individual posts, Areas and other elements on tangible cooperative undertakings where each recognized and welcomed the contribution of the other. If the Agency is to function as a unified, effective whole, these experiences must be made general. They must become the rule, rather than the exception.

II. RECENT DIRECTIONS IN IMV OPERATIONS

A number of significant changes have affected IMV operations in recent years which, we believe, should be kept in mind when and if a changed relationship of this element to the rest of the Agency is considered.

A. Recognition of Field Pre-eminence

During recent years, IMV has made a concerted effort to improve performance in support of field activities. We have recognized that USIA/USIS represents a global communication system and that all team members must be mutually supportive toward the accomplishment of perceived Agency objectives. IMV recently designed, coordinated and implemented a very substantial reorganization of personnel and functional alignments specifically to enhance the quality and delivery of services to the field, to provide better liaison with areas and to infuse professional foreign service experience and guidance throughout key areas of IMV affecting responsiveness to field requirements.

We have sought to draw all of our activities more closely into the framework of post programs and into the interest range of post audiences. The efforts include:

1. Preserving, against a growing tide of production requests coming from other elements of the Agency and from other governmental departments, a capacity to respond to direct post requests for VTRs, news coverage support and, more recently, even one-country films. We have done this by setting aside a quota of VTRs that will be reserved for the posts, so that our work in support of ICS, IPT, the Department of Commerce and others does not crowd out our first objective—providing audio-visual support for post programs as expressed in direct requests from the posts themselves.

2. Pioneering, with IOA, an effort to obtain, in manageable form, regular reports of usage and assessment of IMV products, in an effort to judge our output by its utility to the field. We will seek the endorsement of the Director, in a separate paper,³ of this program, so that these purposes may be achieved.

3. We have held program review meetings with all individual areas, involving Area Directors, their deputies and staffs, with our own senior and operating staff, to discuss and refine our support for Area and post programs. These meetings have been mutually enlightening.

4. We have invited visiting PAO’s to IMV to discuss our programs and their problems, and have exposed members of our staff who had rarely had the opportunity in the past to the presentation by a PAO of his problems, media evaluation, and other operating realities.

5. We have undertaken a new effort to work very closely with the Inspection Staff, alerting them to current projects at posts on the inspection schedule, and giving them questions we want answered about our effectiveness and usefulness to the post. We meet following each inspection as well, and have found these procedures particularly useful in promoting interchange between ourselves and the posts.

6. We have sent IMV representatives to help the posts in both technical and programming projects, and have tried to ensure that any overseas travel by members of the IMV staff is planned on a project basis, so that it yields concrete program development information.

B. Support of Foreign Policy Objectives

The recent increase in the value of audio-visual products in policy support derives from the observation that a lop-sided amount of past film and VTR production had been addressed to other than the political-security themes. To enable us to address this shortfall, we have developed several new program mechanisms:

1. Press Conference, USA. This program has been operated effectively by VOA for years, and permits a Meet The Press⁴ format to be adapted to foreign policy needs by inviting guests and panelists who have our overseas audiences primarily in mind. We have worked out an arrangement with VOA to conduct Press Conference, USA in our television studios up to 15 times each year. This arrangement provides a vehicle for major governmental policy spokesmen to reach overseas audiences by radio and television, both broadcast and closed circuit, in a highly persuasive way. Undersecretary Habib (then Assistant Secretary for East Asia), faced an outstanding panel just before the fall of Saigon⁵ to explain, in a VTR widely circulated and discussed, the consequences for U.S. policy in Asia. Ambassador Elliot Richardson has been scheduled to appear on the program just before the resumption of Law of the Sea talks in May of 1977.

2. In a related effort, we have developed, with IOP, a category of Critical Policy VTRs which permits Washington to override the RMS system on carefully selected occasions—when an immediate foreign policy objective must be served by rapid dispatch of a product to the field without first exchanging cables requesting and receiving confirmation of post orders. This power is used sparingly, only four times since its development, but permitted Undersecretary Sisco to come into our studios on short notice and communicate world-wide details of Secretary Kissinger’s Middle East disengagement program in 1975,⁶ and permitted then Assistant Secretary Habib to discuss publicly details of the U.S. position on the UN vote on Korea which was the subject of a separate cabled instruction to all Embassies.⁷

3. Potentially our most far-reaching effort has been the establishment of a category of films called Special Report, in which we are attempting to involve policy directors in related agencies to join with us in defining, on film, the essential ingredients in a current U.S. policy objective. Our first attempt in this format has just been completed. The film Toward A Law of the Sea was developed, scripted, and reviewed by a joint team of IMV and LOS Task Force officers. It received a final review at a special screening held in Geneva for Ambassador Richardson, who appears in the film which is now on its way to posts in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Portuguese. Production time from contract to shipment was approximately nine weeks. Using the Law of the Sea film as a working example of what can be done in this regard, we have held a screening at the State Department for representatives from the Department, ACDA and ERDA who are working on nuclear non-proliferation policy. We have proposed to them a formation of a working group to develop a concept paper for a Special Report on non-proliferation, and will work closely with this group on the successful completion of the product once the concept has been approved by the agencies concerned. We have in mind the development, in this mode, of greater appreciation on the part of policy shapers of the role that a carefully crafted film may play in the overall orchestration of efforts to explain and gain support for current U.S. policy objectives.

C. Specialized Audience Requirements

A further significant characteristic of current IMV output deserves special mention—the extent to which the collection now includes material suitable for presentation to carefully selected professional and intellectual audiences. Although IMV still considers television and theatrical exposure of our products to mass audiences an important and useful part of its function, it also gives high priority to provide posts material suitable for exposure to primary audiences.

The new emphasis on VTR has, to a great extent, fulfilled this need with its versatility, comparatively low cost, and suitability for a precise matching of participants to audiences. The “expert to expert” mode is used often and well by posts in all areas.

But there is no avoiding the realization that film is of great interest to even the most elite of audiences, and the Agency will deprive itself of important access to these groups if it cannot develop material on film worthy of their attention. We have sought to do so in a variety of ways.

Probably our most conscious effort to reach elite audiences is in Reflections, a new series of hour-long films in which Americans of eminence and achievement are asked to sum up their lives and works through the device of an illustrated monologue. Two productions have been completed in this series, Margaret Mead, and Samuel Eliot Morison, the latter completed just before the great historian’s death.⁸ Three others are in the early stages of production, Leonard Bernstein, Buckminster Fuller, and George Meany. Once a number of these films has been completed on a representative collection of outstanding American scholars, writers, humanists and statesmen, we foresee that they may form the basis of an American studies program at a Center or a University. To insure maximum usefulness, we also plan to produce half-hour versions of these films to enhance their use with a broader range of audiences and, in some countries, on television. We have supplied small brochures, including selected bibliographies with the Mead and Morison films, and intend to continue the practice.

Our Century 3 series, although addressed to a broader audience than Reflections, also reflects our determination to supply posts with films they can present not only to television stations, but in direct projection to invited primary audiences. It is a thoughtful examination of the ways in which science and technology are likely to affect our lives over the next century—our food supply, our cities, even our concepts of life and death. Our productions in the arts—Nik: An Experience in Sight and Sound, with the Nikolais Dance Group, Jose Limon, and our two-part examination of the accomplishment of black artists in America for use in Afro-American history programs—The Legacy and The Inheritors—also demonstrate a conscious effort to reach our key audiences on the terms of their special interests.

Finally, we have greatly expanded and improved our acquired film program in recent years and, through its activities, have been able to bring into the program some of the finest documentary and dramatic works being produced in America today. We expect David Wolper’s six-part dramatization of Sandburg’s Lincoln,⁹ starring Hal Holbrook, to be of virtually permanent significance for the field and there is no finer example of the achievements of the American theater available on film than the American Film Theater’s production of The Iceman Cometh.¹⁰ Acquired documentaries such as The Puritan Experience, U.S. Art: The Gift of Ourselves, The Right to Believe and The Will To Be Free played important roles in our effort to communicate the significance of the Bicentennial commemoration to the class, as well as to the mass.

D. Flexibility of Delivery Systems

Finally, the most significant and far-reaching of all recent developments in the Agency’s audio-visual operations is the use IMV has made of new opportunities afforded by technology to shape the means of delivery of our product to the nature of the intended program use.

It can no longer be said that the Voice of America differs from other elements of the Agency in that it alone can directly address foreign audiences through its own communications network. Although IMV-originated satellite telecasts use foreign networks for the last few kilometers in the delivery chain, many networks have carried our material live and unedited, so as to make the recent experience of IMV comparable to that of VOA. Furthermore, although we intend no invidious comparisons, even our colleagues at the Voice may acknowledge that our exposure to a foreign national audience watching its own national network is far greater, when it occurs, than the exposure VOA anticipates in most parts of the world. Such was the case recently when six Latin American networks carried the entire 23-minutes of President Carter’s OAS address¹¹ live, just as it was transmitted from IMV facilities. Such was also the case with many of the 17 networks which carried our special inaugural satellite feeds in January, or the Bicentennial feeds to 37 countries in July.¹²

In addition to the phenomenon of satellite transmission, the revolution in programming wrought by videotapes is impressive. Perhaps the most ambitious use ever made of videotapes was the result of our decision to offer the presidential debates of the campaign of 1976¹³ to all posts, in English, Spanish and French, and to deliver them by the fastest means available. By commercial air, by pouch, in the luggage of traveling Ambassadors and airline vice-presidents, and by any other means developed by the ingenuity of the posts and our operations staff, more than 100 copies of each debate were sent out. Some arrived and were shown at European posts the morning after the debate occurred. Posts reported that the VTRs of the debates gave them access to the highest levels of government and media.

With the videotape added to our satellite and film capabilities, IMV is now able to address audiences ranging in size from the millions who see a prime-time satellite feed or major series like Vision and Science Report, to the handfuls who see VTRs produced for a single use at a single post to achieve a single objective.

III. AREAS OF INNOVATION

Clearly, many of the changes which could improve IMV operations will require Agency-wide, in some cases government-wide, decisions. Here are a few examples of what we have in mind:

A. Initiatives Toward Outreach

In his March 8th letter to you, Chairman Hobart Lewis of our Commission stresses the need for closer ties between USIA and other appropriate offices and agencies of the government.¹⁴ IMV has recently explored and developed mutual opportunities with several other agencies and totally supports the need to formalize and regularize these and other similar relationships.

The U.S. Government does not have so many internationally trained multi-media communicators that it can afford to permit its operations to remain fragmented and non-coordinated, especially in program design and planning areas. Whatever goes to overseas audiences from any source affects the image of America in the public diplomacy environment. The government’s information outreach where it affects foreign policy, overseas attitudes or the elimination of distorted views of U.S. purposes should be brought into a cohesive, modernized and more effective system.

Our services and facilities have been made available to the State Department, A. I. D., The Office of Telecommunications Policy, Commerce, FAA, NASA, and many others. We have developed ties with industrial and academic groups and with professional organizations like the Motion Picture Association of America. The professional services provided to OTP alone in support of the critical World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC ’79)¹⁵ is representative of the need for USIA recognition as an indispensable national resource. All of these initiatives have had a direct relationship to the public diplomacy mission but usually the agency requesting assistance is not aware of how best to solve an important communication problem.

The most dramatic case in point was AID’s approach to us for assistance in carrying out a multi-million dollar effort to demonstrate the use of high-technology communications in development. During the period in which the ATS–6 satellite was being moved from its stationary orbit over India, where it had been used for the SITE experiment,¹⁶ to its new orbit over Latin America, AID proposed to transmit several hours of special programs to high level audiences in up to 70 countries via transportable ground stations leap-frogged to each participating country by NASA. We were of decisive assistance in shaping the content of these programs, but we had to stand off at some distance because of distinctions between our mission and AID’s.

One consequence of the experience was our own feeling that it might be time to re-think somewhat the absolute taboo on “nation-building” the Agency has lived with for some time. Our own operations are a powerful stimulus to technology transfer, with the AID demonstration the most dramatic such illustration. But even post VTR operations have stimulated host nations to begin their own. Is it taboo for us to encourage institutions we work with abroad, universities and governments, to develop closed-circuit operations compatible with our own so that we can lend them videotape software? Is it possible for us to be too squeamish in circumstances where helping a host government provides new opportunities for the use of new technology to encourage new forms of dialogue?

B. Management Information

If the Agency is to have a true “intellectual center,” it must also have a more comprehensive system of reporting than has ever existed, and a more modern means of storing, analyzing and making that information available to all who need it. We have already made note of our own efforts in cooperation with IOA to develop usage reports on IMV products. Obviously, we will continue to fall short of true professionalism until we have a comprehensive picture of what happens in the field to the flow of products from Washington. We believe this can be done without increasing field paperwork. In fact, by using modern data reporting systems, paperwork can be simplified. Our own data cards have replaced a cumbersome and time-consuming film report.

Program usage, media data and other information relevant to inter-cultural communications should be managed in a central part of the Agency, staffed by career professionals, some of whom would provide critical continuity and serve as an information resource to those who direct programs.

C. Research and Development—USIA/IMV

There is not at present a formalized R & D program within USIA, at home or abroad. Each element is permitted to innovate or experiment with programming techniques and, to a degree, with its own related advancing technologies as they recognize an opportunity or are motivated to innovate. However, all elements could benefit from an exchange of information on experimental programming, and should regularly be made aware of new technology or new applications of existing technologies.

In recent history some of the initial resistance, confusion or abuses of fielding the ½” VTR system and expensive hardware could have been avoided with a more orderly approach to testing various sub-systems, acquiring proto-type program feed-back and recommending a phased-in program as Agency capability to handle the new systems and to program new formats developed. The advent of industrial versions of video-disc equipment, and the current AID plans for developing regional satellite systems and software centers on three continents in the wake of the AIDSAT (ATS–6) demonstrations are only two of many state-of-the-art developments that indicate the Agency’s need for a focussed program on new technology applications.

IMV has recently initiated several exploratory test programs to develop new approaches to information delivery overseas. The Frank Capra multi-media cooperative program, coordinating USIA, area, post and host country governmental and industrial involvement as an audio visual form of technology transfer and the cooperative program with IEU, IMV and Athens to test what might be accomplished in a single country program, are but two examples.

The time may be near when a consortium of U.S. based agencies and private interests could share the support of a satellite-based information system capable of providing a “real-time pouch” service and other related applications. We were recently praised by the Egyptian government for delivering an “Issues and Answers”¹⁷ tape for their use in only ten days. It could have been there in ten minutes.

IV. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY—A DEFINITION

In presenting these thoughts, we have been aware of the widely felt need for agreement on a new statement of mission for the Agency that reflects current realities, and changing requirements. In the absence of a recently formalized mission statement, we have developed one of our own which seems to come close to reflecting the current operating assumptions of many dedicated Agency employees:

To encourage among the nations of the world, by overt means and in public forums, a better understanding of the policy goals of the United States Government, and of the social, intellectual and cultural forces contributing to the formation of those goals.

1. Source: National Archives, RG 306, Office of the Director, Executive Secretariat, Secretariat Staff, Subject Files, 1973–1978, Entry P–116, 1977: Reorganization Folder 3. No classification marking. In an April 22 note, Reinhardt thanked Scott for his “thoughtful memo” and added: “I share your view that the visual media—films, VTRs, television—can make a significant impact on our audiences and that they are an essential part of our overall USIA efforts.” (Ibid.)
2. See Document 30.
3. Not found and not further identified.
4. Reference is to the NBC News political affairs program.
5. April 1975.
6. For details of Kissinger’s disengagement proposals between Egypt and Israel, see Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. XXVI, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1974–1976.
7. Reference is presumably to telegram 220773 to all diplomatic posts, September 6, 1976. In it, the Department provided guidance for consultations on upcoming issues likely to be discussed at the 31st UN General Assembly, including “forthcoming debate on Korea.” The telegram is printed in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. E–14, Part I, Documents on the United Nations, 1973–1976, Document 49.
8. Morison died in 1976.
9. Reference is to American author Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln biographies entitled Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. The program, starring Holbrook, aired on American television in 1976.
10. Reference is to the 1939 play by American playwright Eugene O’Neill.
11. See footnote 2, Document 38.
12. 1976.
13. The debates between Ford and Carter took place in Philadelphia on September 23, in San Francisco on October 6, and in Williamsburg, Virginia, on October 22.
14. In a March 8 letter to Reinhardt, Lewis, reporting on the most recent U.S. Advisory Commission on Information meeting, stated: “We discovered once again as we discussed our upcoming Report to Congress that solutions to USIA’s problems must take into account the complexities of the atmosphere—domestic and international—in which USIA operates. This means that USIA must work in a larger context which includes close ties to the appropriate offices of the White House, including the President, especially the NSC and the State Department and the other major departments and agencies of Government, e.g. Treasury, Commerce, Defense, Agriculture, Labor, NASA, HEW and the new energy agency.” (National Archives, RG 306, USIA Historical Collection, Office of the Director, Biographic Files Relating to USIA Directors and Other Senior Officials, 1953–2000, Entry A–1 1069, Box 23, John E. Reinhardt, Speeches, 1977–1978)
15. Scheduled to take place in Geneva, beginning in September 1979. Documentation on WARC–79 is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. XXV, Global Issues; United Nations.
16. Experimental satellite communications project in India, designed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
17. Reference is to the ABC News political affairs program.