(This week, PR News editors Phil Hall and Aaron Jenkins question Washington's inability to speak to the Islamic world.)
PHIL: This is a troubling PR story with geo-political ramifications: A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) observes some 30% of the public
diplomacy specialists based at U.S. embassies within the Islamic world do not speak the local languages. Put politics aside for a moment and think about that statistic. How can
our government successfully maintain an ongoing PR effort to win friends and influence people in some of the most volatile corners of the world if the people on the frontlines of
that mission can't even communicate with their target audiences?
AARON: Any hiccup in the country's tenuous PR with the Islamic world is potentially destructive. But, in the administration's defense, public diplomacy has taken a
nosedive since the end of the Cold War. To counter Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent pen-pal assailing on Bush, the president has placed greater emphasis on the role
of his media advisor Karen Hughes as undersecretary for public diplomacy, while U.S. government radio broadcasting has been beefed up. Nevertheless, 30% is a glaring figure.
PHIL: The key to a winning PR effort is consistency in communications, but that is absent here. For example, the White House wants to promote democracy in the Islamic
world, yet it lavishes praise and diplomatic recognition on the Libyan dictatorship. What kind of a PR message is this sending to its intended target audience? When words and
deeds are out of sync, no amount of hard-hitting PR will save the day.
AARON: I'd like to make an addendum on what to keep out of this PR push: A whip of religion. The crux of the communications challenge may be from our own doing, as
absolutist rhetoric has been hurled at the Islamic world. Trumpeting we're the country with God on our side only cleaves and further infuriates the people some thought would
"greet us as liberators." When the drum of "good versus evil" is consistently beaten, why wouldn't anyone think this translates to United States as good and everyone else is bad?
When many in the Islamic world see Western-style democracy entrenched in ideology, wouldn't it be more diplomatic to implement secular PR?
PHIL: Insh'allah!