International broadcasters: Waves in the web

Western state-backed news outfits are struggling to keep their influence in the developing worldAS A child growing up in Afghanistan, Saad Mohseni watched his father listening to the BBC World Service and Voice of America: they were almost the only way of obtaining reliable domestic, let alone foreign news. No longer. Last month Mr Mohseni launched a satellite news channel broadcasting round the clock in Dari and Pashto. He hopes to distribute it on terrestrial television soon. Such upstarts are one reason Western governments are losing their voices in the places where they most want to be heard. The cold war was the state-backed broadcasters’ heyday, with big budgets for propaganda wars about the virtues and vices of capitalism and communism. Powerful short-wave transmissions required costly kit; getting hold of the frequencies required international arm-twisting. It was a game for big and rich countries only. Peter Horrocks, head of BBC Global News, recalls “a comfortable world”. ...