RADIO MARTI BROADCASTS SOFT-SELL PROPAGANDA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302440032-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 31, 2012
• Sequence Number: 32
• Publication Date: June 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/01: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302440032-7
ART I C12 APPEARED
ON PAGE A-120 ,
WASHINGTON POST
3 June 1985
Radio Marti Broadcasts
:Soft-Sell Propaganda
U.S. Uncertain of Programs' Cuban Impact
By John M. Goshko
Washington Poet Suit Writer
Two weeks after its debut, Radio
Marti, the Reagan administration's
controversial broadcasting service
to Cuba, appears to be evolving into
7. a surprisingly soft-sell propaganda
operation with heavy doses of Span-
'? ish-accented news and music.
U.S. officials in Washington say
" they have no idea yet how the sta-
t? ion is going over in Cuba, although
it apparently can be heard without
serious interference on the island.
But they say they have rave re-
views from the Cuban-American
community in the United States and
from others who applaud a program
, schedule that is clearly unfriendly
w to President Fidel Castro but lacks
? strident rhetoric.
r In the view of U.S. officials, Ra-
dio Marti will have to log a lot more
^ air time before any judgments can
? be made about whether it is effec-
tive in appealing to the Cuban peo-
- pie over the heads of Castro's state-
controlled media.
But, in its short time on the air,
the fledgling service has projected a
different personality from what
both its partisans and its critics had
expected.
.7 A sampling of its editorials and
commentaries indicates that strin-
gent efforts are being made to en-
? sure the accuracy and impartiality
? of its news reports and to delineate
them from editorial comment.
? Similarly, its commentators
Speak in tones- far softer than the
acid-etched attacks on Castro that
; can be heard regularly on the half-
dozen or so Spanish-language com-
mercial radio stations that serve
Miami-area Cuban exiles.
Instead, the Radio Marti edito-
rials are Spanish translations of
Voice of America editorials. In re-
cent days, they have dealt with such
topics as the superiority of free en-
terprise over state controls in help-
ing Third World countries to
achieve prosperity, explanations of
U.S. policy on arms control and hu-
mak,rights, and criticism of the So-
viet.Union's suppression of orga-
nized religion.
...he, commentaries, done on a
rotating basis by people known in
the Spanish-speaking world for ex-
pertise in certain areas, deal more
directly with Cuban affairs. The
subjects covered on i typical day
might involve shortcomings of the
Cuban economy or the continued
large-scale Cuban military presence
in Angola.
But, - while the commentator
might argue that thousands of
young Cubans are dying in a conflict
that should not be Cuba's concern,
he seeks to make his point through
logic and facts rather than rhetor-"
ical broadsides.
In short, Radio Marti seems to be
staking out a middle-road position
among the various foreign-language
broadcasting operations with which
the U.S. government is . directly or
indirectly involved.
It has more punch and bite than
the generally bland offerings of the
Voice of America, where the em-
phasis is on presenting an upbeat
picture of the United States. But so
far it also has avoided the frequent-
ly strident and polemical approach
of Radio Liberty, which broadcasts
to the Soviet Union, and Radio Free
Europe, which aims at the commu-
nist bloc countries of Eastern Eu-
rope.
That is because Radio Marti was
created as a "hybrid" or "amalgam"
of the two extremes.
The administration's original
concept of Radio Marti in 1981 wa
- that ii would be a "surrogate broad-
casting service", such as Radio Free
Europe and Radio Liberty.
These operations, established
covertly by the Central Intelligence
Agency in the 1950s and now
funded openly by the U.S. govern-
ment, are intended to provide peo-
ple in communist societies with in-
formation that they cannot obtain
from their state-controlled domes-
tic media.
Since Radio Marti was intended
to fulfill the same function for Cuba,
the administration initially wanted
to put it under the control of the
Board for International Broadcast-
ing, a presidentially appointed in-
dependent organization that over-
sees Radio Free Europe and Radio
Liberty.
That plan encountered strong
opposition from congressional liber-
als fearful that extremist elements
in the Cuban exile community
would gain control of Radio Marti.
To get the enabling legislation and
funding from Congress, the admin-
istration had to compromise and put
Radio Marti under the Voice of
America, the broadcasting arm of.
the U.S. Information' Agency.
Although Congress did grant Ra-
dio Marti some special leeway, the
idea was that Voice of America su-
pervision would provide more safe-
guards against ideological excesses.
Some of Radio Marti's original
partisans expressed concern that
this arrangement would result, as
one put it, "in an operation that is
neither fish nor fowl and that is so
bland and innocuous as to have no
impact." _
However, that argument was dis-
puted by VOA director-designate
Gene Pell, who said in an interview,
"The reactions we've heard in this
country to the first few days of
broadcasting have been almost uni-
formly laudatory.
"That includes the reaction from
the Cuban-American community,
which recognizes that stridency has
no place in what we're trying to do
and would be counterproductive in
the long run?
The operating format worked out
under Pell's direction for Radio
Marti's 14 hours of daily broadcast-
ing makes liberal use of techniques
that the Voice of America and sur-
rogate operations such as Radio
Free Europe have found effective in
attracting listeners.
iodine*
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/01: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302440032-7
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/01: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302440032-7
Efforts are being made to appeal
to different age groups with pro-
grams devoted to popular music,
personal service features and
sports. There is even a soap opera,
a popular type of program in Latin
America.
However, the backbone of Radio
Marti's broadcasts is an emphasis
on news. Pell, who has had a long
career in commercial radio and tele-
vision news, said he takes particular
pride in "the accuracy, content and
balance of our news report."
The news programs, which rely
heavily on material supplied by the
Voice of America's worldwide
news-gathering resources, have a
professional gloss that compares
favorably with the programming of
commercial stations throughout
Latin America. The emphasis is on
"hard news" coverage of daily
events around the world. Samplings
of its content over several days
showed no signs of slanting or at-
tempts to inject editorial comment.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302440032-7