This is Democracy – Episode 295: Broadcasting Democracy

2025-04-08_this-is-democracy_broadcasting-democracy_master
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[00:00:22] Zachary Suri: This is Democracy,

[00:00:29] Intro Outro: a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:45] Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

This week we are going to talk about the role of radio communications during the Cold War and our contemporary, uh, international space, the ways in which radio communications from the United States, broadcasting information, news, updates on the world, and tracking events around the world the way that has been so central to American policy and intellectual development over the.

The last half century and the challenges that we face today challenges to the continued use of radios, the continued broadcasting of information, and the spread of factual objective or near objective news in a world so filled with misinformation and disinformation. We are joined by a good friend.

Leading scholar and quite frankly, I think the best person in the world to talk about this topic. Uh, Dr. Mark Pomar. Mark is a senior fellow at the Clement Center for National Security at the University of Texas, and he has written extensively on this issue and worked extensively on this issue. Mark, thank you so much for being with us.

Well, I’m just delighted to be here. Mark, uh, has had such a, a central role in our topic today. After teaching Russian studies at the University of Vermont for seven years, he joined, uh, radio Free Europe, radio Liberty, and he was director of their Russian service in Munich, as well as director of the Soviet Division of Voice of America, and the executive director of the Board for International Broadcasting, which was a federal agency.

Overseeing Radio free Europe and Radio Liberty from 1994 to 2008. He was the senior executive and president of IRE, which was one of the largest, uh, nonprofit organizations funding research in Russia and research about Russia. Uh, I was one of many recipients of IRX funding, so it was instrumental in my own research.

Uh, and from 2008 to 2017, he was the founding CEO and president of the US Russia Foundation, which was a private US f. Foundation that supported educational programs, exchanges, and most importantly, uh, bringing knowledge across boundaries between these societies. Um, for all of you listening today, I encourage you also to read Mark’s most recent book, which is really fantastic.

It’s very readable. It’s based on state-of-the-art research and it tells the story of Cold War Radio. That’s the title. It’s a wonderful title, cold War Radio. The Russian broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty published in 2022 and available at every major bookstore, right Mark.

It’s certainly is actually available audio books as well. Fantastic. So before we get into our discussion of the role of these important institutions and the role of broadcasting information during the Cold War and in the decades after the Cold War and its importance today, we have of course, our scene setting poem for Mr.

Zachary Siry. Uh, Zachary, what’s the title of your poem today?

[00:03:50] Zachary Suri: Radio Liberty.

[00:03:52] Jeremi Suri: I think that’s an appropriate title, don’t you? Yes. Let’s hear it.

[00:03:57] Zachary Suri: Where the road ends, the line of trucks stops, and the barbed wire blooms like boganville. You can still pick up the signal, you can still hear the voices whispering into the cold night.

You can when the night is still walking by the fence. Hear them on the other side, listening on the borderline, someone is speaking in rhythms of red, white, blue, and America. And they are saying something simple. Perhaps it is true. This is freedom. What’s your poem about Zachary? My poem is about, um, the sort of power of radio, uh, and of listening to the voices of Americans and, and American reporters and journalists and all these American supported programs, um, across.

The many sort of political social boundaries that separate our world in particular, it’s a sort of imagining of what it might be like today if one were able to in Russia or in somewhere in one of the sort of totalitarian countries of Eastern Europe to listen to, uh, sort of American radio program, sort of like right on the border.

Uh, and how it’s a sort of like bastion or breath of, um, one world in another.

[00:05:16] Jeremi Suri: Yes,

[00:05:17] Dr. Mark Pomar: yes. Mark, what do you think? Well, I am very, very, uh, impressed by the poem, and I think you’ve captured one of the most important symbols, and that is the crossing of the barbed wire, uh, that the radios were really created to do, to break down that iron curtain that Churchill so properly said had descended.

And I will tell you an interesting story that. It kind of actualizes your poem if I can. When the Cold War ended 1989 when, uh, Hungary was among the first to really bring down the barbed wire, they gave all of us a piece of the barbed wire embedded in a kind of plastic that you could put on your, uh, bookshelf.

Memorializing the fact that the radios had helped bring down the barbed wire, the actual barbed wire itself. And I have that at home and I will happily bring it and show it to you. Wow. And it’s from Hungary given to all of us as a personal gift.

[00:06:22] Jeremi Suri: Wow. Wow. Mark, take us back to the founding of these organizations.

Uh, voice of America, I think is the oldest of them. Maybe tell us a little bit about that and then how radio free Europe and Radio Liberty grew out of that, or how they emerged as well. Sure.

[00:06:38] Dr. Mark Pomar: Well, you know, in the 1930s, by the 1930s. Every country had an external broadcaster, big or small, whether it was radio Moscow, whether it was radio France, whether it was Nazi Germany, whether it was Radio Canada.

Everyone had a broadcaster except the United States. And advisors came to President Roosevelt and said, you know, we, we need to set something up. And he hesitated because there’s actually pressure from private broadcasters who wanted to dominate the, uh, short wave broadcasting. Um. You know, space. But once World War II started, once United States was attacked in Pearl Harbor, those plans were actualized very quickly.

And of course, VOA was brought in as part of the war effort to tell our story. And I think what’s very important to keep in mind is the first words of VOA spoken in German, uh, were we will tell you the news whether it’s good. Or whether it’s bad, you will hear factual information. Something along those lines.

Very nicely done. And what. Distinguished, VOA, uh, was precisely that it would talk about military losses, which was then considered quite unheard of. It was really, I mean, we could go on and on about VOA in the early days, but it was really headed by a wonderful American playwright called Robert Sherwood, who was one of.

Uh, Roosevelt speech writers. Actually, I think the author of the Arsenal of Democracy. I think that’s right, that Roosevelt did. I believe Sherwood was the one who wrote that, and he really molded VOA into a liberal. Broadcaster in a very, very, and so we’re skipping a little bit ahead, but VOA was very much attacked by McCarthy under McCarthyism as harboring all these dangerous Europeans and foreigners with all kinds of potentially leftist views and so forth.

But there’s some wonderful stories about VOA at the beginning. Yule Brynner, the actor, Yule Brynner worked for for VOA. Wow. So did many of the correspondents who then went on to work for CBS and NBC, they got their start at VOA during the war. So I think the story of VOA really needs to be known much more.

[00:09:03] Jeremi Suri: Yes, yes. And. And how did it provide that, shall we say, more objective reporting at a time of war when there must have been a lot of pressure to tell only one side of the story.

[00:09:15] Dr. Mark Pomar: Well, it got itself into a certain amount of trouble because it sometimes broadcast things that. Neither the Roosevelt administration nor certainly, uh, the military wanted to have on the air.

So there was always tension. And by the way, that tension continued, uh, all the way through VO a’s history. That what it would put out was not always what either the White House. Or the Pentagon or whatever other entity wanted to be on the

[00:09:40] Jeremi Suri: air. And, and why was it allowed to do that? As you say, it was attacked.

Voice of America was at times by McCarthy. It was attacked in the late sixties, sometimes by Richard Nixon and others. But yet it, it survived at least until recently. How did it survive? Providing news that was not always in the interest of government. Even though it was funded by government,

[00:09:59] Dr. Mark Pomar: it had bipartisan support for the most part.

In Congress, which was very important. And also in the mid 1970s, um, president Ford signed sort of the charter and the law that embodied the fact that the VOA was the. Voice of the American nation, not of the administration. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s very important to emphasize. So that, of course every administration had its time in the sun, as it were.

And they would, their views would be presented. But the law incorporated. What they called responsible discussion of those policies, and that would mean that other voices would be presented so that when the president gave the State of the Union, the party out of power would always have its voice.

Reflected in VOA broadcast about the state of the Union that was embedded when Watergate, and this is very important when Watergate broke, and I know this from many Soviet listeners who were very, very much impressed by this VOA, covered the Watergate, no differently than did any of the interesting, uh, news organizations and to listeners at that time in the Soviet Union.

To see the VOA broadcasting about the president and the scandal and what was going on. No differently having their correspondent on Capitol Hill following the testimony.

[00:11:30] Jeremi Suri: Yeah,

[00:11:31] Dr. Mark Pomar: and I can skip ahead the two impeachment trials that took place. In the first Trump administration were covered by VOA and Russia, and I happened to sit and listen to them in my, uh, home.

Uh, and they broadcast the testimony, the hearings, the voting. It was presented absolutely straight. Uh, even though at that time, uh, Trump was in the White House. So I think this is a tradition that goes way back. Uh, it has been supported at critical times. I’ll give you another very vivid example of VOA.

Those may be listening who are older, may recall that, uh. President Reagan made a, um, quite a blunder in 1984 when he thought that the microphone that he was testing his voice was dead, but it actually turned out to be a live microphone. And he said, I’ve just canceled the Soviet Union. We’re about to be begin bombing in an hour.

That made news everywhere in the United States. It did. I remember, and we broadcasted in Russian on VOA. Just like everybody else. And I know that because the, the director I was then the head of the USSR division at VOA and my news chief called me up at home and says, what do we do? I mean, this is, I mean, in Russian to the Soviet Union.

And I said, you know, we have to do it. It’s the law. I did call the director of VOA to. Inform him that this was, and he says, absolutely, this is what we need to do. Now, don’t play it a hundred times necessarily, but it has to go on the air.

[00:13:16] Jeremi Suri: Yes,

[00:13:16] Dr. Mark Pomar: yes,

[00:13:17] Zachary Suri: Zachary. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like, uh, people abroad, uh, and particularly in Europe, have a, a very strong impression of, of American, uh, media.

Like, uh, radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. But could you explain for our American audience that maybe doesn’t have the same sense of its importance, what Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe Ha and Voice of America have meant for people in these countries?

[00:13:44] Dr. Mark Pomar: Yes, thank you. Uh, I think that. The creation of of VOA was to really be the voice throughout the world of US society of music, of culture, of politics and so forth.

Radio Free Europe has a different, uh, sort of charge. It was really created. I. With the start of the Cold War, interwoven with the Cold War as part of our effort to confront the Soviet Union, and it was addressed and its origins really start, and it’s very important to understand this with the millions of people from Eastern Central Europe, Soviet Union who fled to the West during and after World War ii, they were living in displaced persons camps throughout.

Sort of the American sector in Germany and George Kennon, who was really instrumental in creating both RFE and RL and others as well. But he was more instrumental and said, you know, these are people we could put to use, they are eager to do something. They have a lot of connections. Some in the case of Czechoslovakia and Poland had been in the governments before the uh, and in the Baltic states before.

Uh, world War ii, and so RFE started first as, uh, a voice of Poland outside of Poland. So the idea being that you’re in Munich, Germany, but you’re creating a Polish broadcaster as if you were sitting in downtown Warsaw. And the same would be true for Czechoslovakia, for Hungary, for Bulgaria, for Romania.

That was the beginning of RA radio for Europe. That same model was used three years later to create radio liberty for the Soviet Union. And very important to note, not just in Russian, but in the different mm-hmm. Languages of the Soviet Union. You know, I like to remind my British friends that, you know.

The BBC only broadcast in Russian, whereas R-F-E-R-L or rl, in this case, radio Liberty Broadcast. In Ukrainian. In Estonian. In Latvian. In Lithuanian. In Georgian. Amazing. Armenian, amazing. Kazakh. Tatar bge. You know, I’ll tell you, I was in Kaza, which is the capital of of of Tatarstan. This was obviously in the nineties, and I was introduced at this very important gathering that I had worked at Radio Liberty.

And this man comes up to me and he says, my parents listen to Tatar bge. We didn’t even know that Americans knew we existed. Wow. Let alone to be able to broadcast in that language. That’s quite a story, and I think. And, and by the way, that has a whole, very important tie to the whole decolonizing of the Soviet Union because what Radio Liberty did in particular was, gave Ukrainians a voice be of Russians, a voice, Georgians, Armenians, uh, that they would not have at a time when there was ratification throughout the Soviet Union.

Sure they kept alive a voice that otherwise would’ve been muffled

[00:16:47] Jeremi Suri: in, in some ways, they became a substitute radio station for societies that couldn’t have their own radio station.

[00:16:52] Dr. Mark Pomar: Exactly. They were used the term surrogate, which I kind of has a, a, a harsh tone to me, but it was called surrogate radio. Uh, and the idea being again, that you were presenting a lineup of news as if you were in that city.

By the way, let me give you an example from yesterday. Now we’re jumping ahead. We’re jumping ahead. I grant you, but Radio Liberty, VOA have all been closed. There’s no money coming in. Radio Liberty and RFE broadcasters are, they’re in Prague and there’s a good story as to why they’re in Prague, which we should get to.

And they’re working for free and they’re putting out only a website. There’s no, nothing other than a website. And I looked at their news. Yeah, and their news is what you would expect. News to be in Moscow, uh, I mean in free, in, in a free or Moscow free. So they were reporting on the Ukraine war, so they had, who was arrested for protesting the Ukrainian war in Russia, but they also had a whole thing on Alexander Ovechkin, uh, winning that, that was one of the lead stories.

Sure. Passing

[00:18:00] Jeremi Suri: Wayne Gretzky for goals. Yes,

[00:18:01] Dr. Mark Pomar: yes. They had a piece. Very straightforward. Totally objective on the latest Trump discussions with, uh, Eddie, uh, uh, over tariffs. They had, in other words, they had a lineup of things that a Russian would want to see. And that’s really the, the core of it. And why are they in Prague?

They are in Prague. It’s an interesting story to, to start with in 1990. 2 93 with the Clinton administration coming into power, there was a lot of discussion of do we need the radios in general because the Cold Wars ended and life is wonderful and who needs this very important tool of the Cold War? And the Clinton administration was quite ready to, to zero them out.

And it was Vaslav Haval and Lek Lenza who really pleaded with. Clinton that we need these radios for a while. That’s so

[00:18:59] Jeremi Suri: interesting. That’s so interesting. And Hovel

[00:19:01] Dr. Mark Pomar: said, here is a gift to the American people, a building in downtown Prague to commemorate sort of your contribution to our freedom. We’re giving it to the Americans for free.

That won the day. And by the way, I can say that the bipartisan support led by Senator Joseph Biden. By the way, Biden was critical in bringing together the Republicans and the Democrats to, uh, support the continuation of the, uh, radios. But with the proviso that as countries graduated to free media, those services would close.

So the Polish service closed. The Czech service closed in time, the Romanians, Estonians Latvians, and it was idea behind it was that through analyzing and understanding the evolution of that, when those countries no longer needed an outside domestic voice. Then of course that would be the end of it.

While they needed it, R-F-E-R-L would continue to provide that. That was the understanding, and that’s the way it has always been. Develop.

[00:20:16] Jeremi Suri: And just to clarify for our listeners, uh, as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, were doing their work in various places. Voice of America continues to broadcast at this time everywhere.

Basically It

[00:20:28] Dr. Mark Pomar: does, but to, in the case of the Russians, they put together something called Current Time, which is a joint sort of radio because the budgets were cut so much that. To sort of capitalize each side did part of the program. I see. So you had a current time in Russia where the Prague office would tap into much more of what was happening in Europe, what was happening in Russia, and by the way, from 1991 to 2022, radio Liberty had an office in Moscow.

A functioning news bureau, doing interviews, running a normal news bureau. As you would expect it, of course, was closed with the war against Ukraine, but for, but the coverage of course, continued. The war in Ukraine was one of the big, big stories for, for the radios that you both in. Ukrainian and in Russia.

[00:21:26] Jeremi Suri: So it’s, it’s quite clear, and you’ve certainly described this in great detail in your book, the ways in which, uh, the radios, radio free, Europe Radio, Liberty and Voice of America provided information to people and information starved societies, places where they were restricted in their own media for what they could cover.

How many people listen to it as a kind of samist dot, as a kind of secret way of getting around their own sensor? Zachary refers to this in his poem. After the Cold War. When the radios continued to operate in different form in Russia, in uh, Kazakhstan and various places like that and continue to be used in new places.

Uh, as I understand it, there was a radio, Cambodia, radio free Marti for

[00:22:10] Dr. Mark Pomar: Cuba. Right. And also for Iran. I think one of the things that. That we have, uh, have to note is that the young people of Iran are listening to radio for Europe, radio Liberty in Farsi. That’s so interesting. That’s a very, very important part.

[00:22:25] Jeremi Suri: And that’s my question. How do we measure their effect after the Cold War? How would you describe their influence? Well,

[00:22:32] Dr. Mark Pomar: you could always do surveys. Of course, surveys became open, and as we did surveys in general, you could see that the listenership was greater than we had anticipated during the Cold War when you couldn’t do surveys.

I think as nowadays all media is niche media. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, there’s very little that is gigantic in, in, um, covering, but Radio Liberty, just to take that as an example, since I know it better, has always appealed to a certain. Urban educated listener because a lot of what Radio Liberty put on would be programs on history, religion, culture, uh, arts, music.

Uh, so it, it sort of. Was oriented toward, uh, toward a urban, educated listener. But you mentioned something, Jeremy, that I think is very important to stress and that, and, and Zachary mentions that in course in his poem, and that is the sort of human rights dimension. Yes. Yes. And I wanna come back to that because Please.

There’s a, there’s a great book, I’m giving a plug for Benjamin Nathan’s book on, um, the Soviet Human Rights Movement. It’s a wonderful book and. Uh, what. He describes is what I would call the virtuous circle, and by that I mean human rights activists in their small Moscow apartments would put together petitions, pleas, they would have accounts of who had been arrested.

Western correspondence would either broad, either broadcast or write about that in the in the west, or more often bring the documents, the s self-published documents. Out of the Soviet Union, they would go to Radio Liberty, V-O-A-B-B-C, and they would be rebroadcast back into the country. So what was being discussed in a Moscow apartment all of a sudden was available throughout the entire country, which would then stipulate others in different republics to respond.

Sure. And when arrests were made, when people were incarcerated, that information no longer was. Was able to go broadly. OV was known primarily because he was on Radio Liberty one way or another every day. Right. So it’s Andre ov the great Soviet scientist. And dissident actually.

[00:24:58] Jeremi Suri: Yeah.

[00:24:58] Dr. Mark Pomar: So I mean, it was that virtuous circle.

Now I will also say that and, and this is something I’m working on another book, then I have a whole. Sort of chapter on that part is the important role that Radio Liberty did for the Jewish immigration? Yes. Yes. It was instrumental in sort of, uh, what was then called Refuseniks. Jews had wanted to immigrate to Israel or the West.

They were denied the, the immigration visa, which you needed, but they also were fired from work, so they were in this no man’s land in, in the Soviet Union. And that story is very much part of. The Radio Liberty broadcast.

[00:25:35] Jeremi Suri: That’s fantastic. I mean, so in, in essence, the radios are providing a distribution network Exactly.

For things that you couldn’t distribute in these closed societies.

[00:25:43] Zachary Suri: Zachary, what is the state of, um, radio Free Europe, uh, radio Liberty and Voice of America today? I know they’re increasingly under threat. Uh, what does that look like? Um, what are they able to do now? What are they not able to do?

[00:25:57] Dr. Mark Pomar: I would say the tragedy is they’ve been shuttered.

Uh, if you go on the VOA website as I did this morning, um, the last entry is March 15th. There is nothing after March 15th. It is dead. People are either placed on leave, many have been fired. There is no VOA today, first time since 1942, since first time, since 1942. Uh, in the case of Radio Liberty, they won an injunction in court, a temporary restraining order with the judge saying that they should be able to receive their funding.

They have not received it, as my understanding is today’s news that I looked at was done by people doing it for free. In other words, right. Dedicated,

[00:26:48] Jeremi Suri: what you saw on the, that you described a few

[00:26:49] Dr. Mark Pomar: minutes ago. Yeah, so it’s, it’s, that’s it. We don’t have a voice. We have basically today disarmed for nothing.

We have, uh, mind you VOA combined VOA, radio free Europe Radio, Liberty Radio free Asia, middle East, broadcasters, there’s several entities to this. B basically have about 400 median weekly. Viewers, listeners, 400 million. A lot in Africa, a lot in Asia, Latin America. That’s gone. We have left the entire global information space to China, to Russia in the Middle East to Iran.

[00:27:32] Jeremi Suri: I. That’s it. There was a really interesting article in the New York Times a day or two ago, I’m sure you saw it, mark, and I’m sure Zachary saw it as well, um, about the country of Cambodia Exactly. And how, uh, uh, the radios from the US were basically the only source of news. And with those gone now, local journalists have, have no, no way to operate.

Uh, we were not only providing information, we were providing a space for journalists to operate in a society that otherwise would not allow them to do that. Um, and it’s, it’s really quite extraordinary. Why, mark, do you think there has been this attack of this magnitude on the radios as you referred to earlier?

It’s not the first time. Joseph McCarthy attacked the radios, and as, as I referred to Richard Nixon and others attacked them at times, why now this degree of effort to close these entities, which mind you are, are pennies in the national budget. There’s no real savings. Why? I like to say

[00:28:30] Dr. Mark Pomar: that the entire budget of.

All the radios and they’re not really radios, they’re media platforms. Yeah. ’cause they do podcasts, they do websites and so forth. The media platform, the entire of everybody is about a quarter of the University of Texas, Austin budget.

[00:28:46] Jeremi Suri: Wow.

[00:28:47] Dr. Mark Pomar: They are under $1 billion for everything.

[00:28:50] Jeremi Suri: Wow. Uh,

[00:28:51] Dr. Mark Pomar: so we are talking about literally pennies in terms of the US uh, uh, US budget.

Why they’ve been attacked is of course, part of a much bigger question as to why. The Trump administration is closing the Wilson Center. Why it’s closing other institutions, so it’s part of a broad attack on well bipartisan national institutions. I think, and in the case of the, uh, radios, I call them the radios, but really the media, uh, I think their whole premise is that they are nonpartisan or they are bipartisan, but preferably nonpartisan.

And I think that is something that this administration, which is a topic that gets us onto other issues, is really. Not accepting and

[00:29:39] Jeremi Suri: trying to destroy. So you don’t think they’re opposed to the media platforms? They’re opposed to media platforms that aren’t their media platforms.

[00:29:47] Dr. Mark Pomar: Exactly. And but rather than trying to change it, they just want to close it.

[00:29:54] Jeremi Suri: Yeah. That’s, that’s the surprising thing to me, that they don’t do what most authoritarians do, which is stack the existing institutions. I mean, you’re, you’re a scholar of Russia as I am. This has been the great achievement of Vladimir Putin, which is to take existing institutions. Yeah. And populate them with, with his cronies.

[00:30:12] Dr. Mark Pomar: But that’s a lot of work and that would also, in the case of Voice of America, which is embedded in law to present all sides, you would run into essentially violating. I think that closing it is, is denying. It’s, it’s the Voice of America belongs to all of us. Yes. B, B, C. It’s like B, B, C and I, I oftentimes told Americans, go on the website, listen to VOA.

It’s your,

[00:30:41] Jeremi Suri: yeah.

[00:30:41] Dr. Mark Pomar: It’s your station. Yeah. Uh, you should take pride in it. Uh, and it belongs to all of us. And I think to close it down is, is not just a tragedy, it’s a crime. It’s, it’s a. Type of treason to deny our presence in the global information space.

[00:30:58] Jeremi Suri: Hmm. Zachary are are young people, uh, especially those like you who care about politics, but also are interested in the media.

Uh, you are a journalist yourself, Zachary, writing for the Yale Daily News, uh, and involved obviously with this podcast and elsewhere. Do young people who are in this space, do they pay attention to this? Is this an important issue today for, for your generation?

[00:31:22] Zachary Suri: Um, I think so. I, I, I, I do think that certainly the question of media bias and, uh, what are important sort of reliable sources of, of news matters, but I also think that so many young people aren’t aware of this history of the important role of VOA and RFE and all of the, um, sort of important American media outlets around the world.

And I think the challenge is to inform people about all the important work that’s being done in all the holes that are being left Now, I. Uh, in media coverage, uh, around the world.

[00:31:53] Dr. Mark Pomar: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’ve oftentimes, partly because during the short wave radio broadcast years, of course, VOA was very hard to listen to in the United States, and it was not intended for Americans.

It was intended overseas. Of course, once technology took over and you could watch it, listen to it, I really encouraged people to do it because it’s calm, it’s normal. The surveys I have seen of media. Uh, fact-based very close to the center. VOA always came out. Yeah. Pretty much next to ap. I mean, those were sort of the

[00:32:31] Jeremi Suri: Right, the associated press.

Yeah. No, I, I, I’ve done probably hundreds of interviews with, uh, VOA reporters and I always found them actually very middle of the road, very attentive to facts, over opinions, actually. Yeah. Um. Mark we always like to close, uh, with, uh, a question about how this history that, that you’ve elucidated so well for us today, how this history, uh, can help us to think about actions we take today.

What can we do to make this history not just. Part of our knowledge base, but part of our citizenship, part of what we do on a day-to-day basis For those of our listeners who care about, um, having, uh, a, a, an, an open fact-based broadcasting of news to the world and see that as one of the roles of a democracy, especially a large democracy like ours, what can they do to help bring that back or protect that or promote that at a time when it’s under attack?

[00:33:28] Dr. Mark Pomar: Well, I think first of all, supporting and knowing about these entities, media entities, and they’re much more than just R-F-E-R-L and VOA. It also is radio free Asia. It’s also Middle East Broadcasting, middle East, broadcasting being extremely important. Given what’s going on in the Middle East, you definitely want to have a, an American, you know, presence there rather than Al Jazeera and others.

Uh, I think supporting it, but. In a broader sense, I am encouraging people and I’m actually writing another book to encourage even more people to study the radios as part of American and world history. Mm-hmm. It is so rich in terms of. Scholarship. Mm-hmm. It so invites people to look and examine how we function.

Good or bad mistakes, or no mistakes, but really it’s part of it. Fortunately, the Hoover Institution has the entire R-F-E-R-L archive, which would take several lifetimes to go through, but it’s there. It’s available, it’s open. The Open Society Archives in Budapest have. Tens and tens of thousands of broadcasts that you can dial up from your home and listen to in whatever language you happen to know.

So I think it’s there to be studied there, to be incorporated into our understanding. I. Of world history, American history, and that may lead to a greater appreciation for what has been done and what needs to be done.

[00:34:59] Jeremi Suri: Yes. I mean, what, what always inspires me? I’ve spent time, as you know, mark, uh, originally in the archive when it was in Budapest, before it was moved to the Hoover Institution.

I’ve worked in it at Hoover, and I’ve listened to many of the broadcasts, especially from key moments in the Cold War. It’s inspiring, I think to hear, particularly for radio for Europe and Radio Liberty, the various emigres. Covering news in their society, bringing, uh, a passion and a commitment to it, and innovating new ways to tell the stories of what’s happening in their society.

And I think for young journalists like Zachary and so many of our listeners, there’s a lot we can learn from this. And there’s a lot we can do. Even within the constraints we face to try to tell those stories and use the stories of the past to help inspire us to tell the stories. Today, we were talking about this earlier, mark, you and I before we came on, uh, about what’s really happening in Ukraine, for example.

Yeah.

[00:35:55] Dr. Mark Pomar: Very important. And the radio’s covered. The war so extensively. I would always look at them every day as part of my daily sort of check on what’s happening in the world because they covered the front, they covered, and of course, U Ukrainians would be able to in Russia and explain very easily what they were doing.

So I got it fresh from the, from the front. So I think it’s very important. But looking ahead, I think right now. It’s saving institutions because they are disappearing right before our eyes, along with many other institutions. But they are among the, the victims of, of this. Administration.

[00:36:31] Jeremi Suri: So that’s a, uh, call to action definitely.

And I think it’s a call, call to action, not based on politics. Uh, what I respect so much about what you do, mark, uh, I really do respect this, is that you try to tell the story of the radios in a way that is historical and fact-based. You’re not trying to promote one policy or another. You’re promoting the most essential element of democracy, which is the fair distribution of information so people can make better decisions.

You want an informed citizenry in the us. And in Russia and in Ukraine and elsewhere. And, um, the United States has played a crucial role, as you’ve shown and discussed today, over about 80 years. Uh, encouraging and promoting and supporting the spread of real information, fact-based information to audiences that were information deprived.

And if we get out of that business today, democracy is poor, poorer, at home and poor. Absolutely broad. Absolutely. So all of us need to stand up for this. I think.

[00:37:27] Dr. Mark Pomar: Yes. And I think, uh, coming back to Zachary’s poem, it is freedom. It is the ability to express your views. And one of the things that I’ve emphasized in my work on the radios is that it values the individual freedom of every individual, the right to be.

Express your views. The right to explore, the right to, to uh, have a say in your, in your country’s governance.

[00:37:52] Jeremi Suri: Zachary, I think, ’cause we’re closing on that note, this might be one of those special episodes where we read your poem a second time. Could you close us out with your poem, Zachary? Sure.

[00:38:03] Zachary Suri: With the road ends, the line of truck stops and the barbed wire blooms like Bia.

You can still pick up the signal, you can still hear the voices whispering into the cold night. You can when the night is still walking by the fence, hear them on the other side, listening on the borderline. Someone is speaking in rhythms of red, white, blue, and America, and they are saying something simple.

Perhaps it is true. This is freedom. Hmm.

[00:38:31] Jeremi Suri: Zachary, thank you for that moving poem that I think encapsulates so much of Mark’s lifetime of work and contributions and the role of international broadcasting. Mark Pomar, thank you so much for joining us. I encourage our listeners to learn more about Mark and his work, especially reading his book, cold War Radio.

And, uh, I wanna thank most of all our loyal listeners and subscribers to our substack for joining us for this episode. Of this is Democracy.

[00:39:08] Zachary Suri: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio

[00:39:12] Intro Outro: and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Kini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this is Democracy on Apple Podcasts. Spotify and YouTube.

See you next time.