Film, Radio and TV - 21 |
InternationalShortwave
More than once, this programming has changed the course of world events. Some countries have been so afraid of the information in these shortwave programs that they have spent billions of dollars to jam (electronically block it out) the broadcasts. North Americans, who typically focus only on the AM and FM radio bands and the Internet, know little about these "battles in the ethers." Even so, a large percentage of the world's population depends on international shortwave for their information. Even so, ham radio operators are frequently called into service during disasters to relay critical information. Ham radio operators are often the first to tell the world about disasters and medical emergencies. Although these operators use shortwave frequencies, in this module we'll focus on the high-powered, mass media-type, transmitters operated by governments, corporations, and private agencies. |
What Is International Shortwave? |
During the "cold war" you could clearly receive stations from the two Communist nations that were broadcasting more hours of shortwave programming than any other country: Russia and China.
broadcasts in dozens of languages (listed below) from dozens of high-powered transmitters around the world.| Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Bosnian, Brazilian, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Burmese Central Africa, Chinese, Creole, Croatian, Czech, Dari, English to Africa, Estonian | Farsi, French, Georgian, Greek, Hausa, Hindi Horn of Africa, Hungarian, Indonesian, Khmer, Korean, Kurdish, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, | Pashto, Polish, Portuguese to Africa, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek. |
From the beginning, there has been an effort to insulate the Voice of America from political pressures. Its news content and balance is carefully evaluated. It was felt that this was the only way that it could maintain credibility around the world.
Even so, it's alleged that political pressures have influenced content. In 2004, after a number of rival government-sponsored international broadcast services were started that could bypass this scrutiny, VOA staff members threatened to strike. They felt that if pro-government bias was detected in government-sponsored international broadcast services that the credibility of all U.S. international broadcasting would suffer.
The audio sample links previously provided above are through the Internet, which generally provides a much better sound than an actual shortwave broadcast. 
This segment from Radio New Zealand International was taken off the air. It is available directly from this site and provides a more realistic shortwave listening experience.
Religious Shortwave Broadcasts
Many
other shortwave broadcasters are religious. These are typically evangelical and
fundamentalist in nature, and supported by listener contributions. Some of the
radio evangelists listed in the previous chapter can also be heard on shortwave.
The largest religious shortwave broadcaster is Vatican Radio, which programs in 40 different languages, makes use of two hundred journalists from 61 countries, and broadcasts into five continents. Pope Pius XI commissioned the inventor of radio, Guglielmo Marconi, to set up the Vatican radio system north of Rome more than 70 years ago.
Shortwave Jamming Efforts
As we've noted, some countries fear a free flow of information. And, from the perspective of controlling beliefs through controlling information, their fears are justified.
The BBC and the VOA have broken major stories that were embarrassing to political dictatorships before their government agencies could prepare a version for their own broadcasts that was more acceptable to the leadership — although not necessarily true.
But, once one truth is out, it's difficult to convince people of "another truth," especially from a government suspected of not being totally truthful to start with.
Although it has been illegal for people in Communist and totalitarian regimes to listen to outside newscasts, many people in these countries have defied these bans, especially in the rural areas that are difficult for the government to monitor. Scores of people in these countries have had shortwave radios hidden under beds, under floorboards, and behind walls.
Work slowdowns and drops in morale and productivity have come on the heels of major embarrassing revelations broadcast by such "free world" stations as VOA and the BBC. Defectors from these countries have verified that many of their people relied on these outside newscasts to find out what was really going on in the world.
With shortwave signals literally dropping down from the sky, it's difficult to block them out; but billions of dollars have been spent trying.
Jamming, or using transmitters on the same frequency, broadcasting such things as recordings of seagulls squawking, heavy machinery running, or just shrill annoying tones, have been common approaches in trying to obliterate outside newscasts and information. Less obvious is just broadcasting "throwaway" programs on the same frequency. (Generally, both programs become unintelligible.)
During the cold war the Soviet Union reportedly had 200 transmitting sites throughout Russia using more than 600,000,000 watts of power to jam the transmitters of Radio Free Europe (RFE) the VOA, the BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, KOL Israel, and Radio Tirana. Additional jamming transmitters were operated by other nations throughout the former Warsaw Pact.
According to estimates made by the BBC, almost a billion dollars was spent each year by Russia alone in trying to jam outside broadcasts. The amount of money and effort that went into trying to (not always successfully) block out foreign news and information speaks to the fear that some regimes have about a free flow of information.
Most of the countries that used to jam outside broadcasts have stopped. The focus has now shifted to trying to block materials from the Internet.
For many years the USSR invested heavily in jamming newscasts. However, once the iron curtain came down, an era of freedom in information (freedom of the press) followed. However, by 2007, the leadership was again starting to curtail press freedoms in that block of countries.
Shortwave broadcasts don't have to rely on the huge antenna arrays pictured above. Lower-power transmitters on boats or in guerrilla hideouts (that regularly shift their locations) are sometimes used to try to destabilize governments. In fact, governments have fallen after shortwave and standard AM, medium wave broadcasts to citizens have been used to coordinate uprisings.
During World War II, both sides regularly used secret shortwave transmitters, typically with coded messages, to get reports from, and issue orders to, compatriots behind enemy lines. The broadcast of certain music selections at certain times would be used to communicate information to spies. (Today, secret messages are often imbedded into Internet music and photo files in a process called steganography.)
Even in the United States there has been fear of clandestine short-wave broadcasts to enemies.
In one case during World War II a desert cave
outside of Landers, California where a hermit was living was blown up by
law enforcement officials (with him in it!) when it was assumed that the radio antenna he was using to get nearby stations in his remote location was some sort of a short-wave transmitter.
His radio (more knowledgeable people later determined) was only a basic AM radio receiver, and he was just a simple man who felt a need to get away from his former turbulent city life.
Although telephone, Internet, and satellite signals can be cut or monitored in a nation — and often are — shortwave signals are far more difficult to monitor and control. It's unfortunate that North Americans typically know so little about this powerful international medium.
Now, of course, this no longer includes you!
In the next module we'll look at commercial radio programming.|
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