Clinton says image of U.S. gets distorted

Even as it seeks to influence events in Libya and the rest of theMiddle East, the United States is losing the crucial war for worldopinion, its message distorted by popular culture and drowned out byArab-language news media, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clintonsaid Wednesday.

So warped is the U.S. image in many parts of the world that somepeople regard the United States as a land of bikini-clad women andprofessional wrestlers, said Clinton, whose State Department isincreasingly using Twitter and other social media as a way ofgetting out unfiltered messages in the Middle East and other partsof the developing world.

"We are in an information war, and we're losing that war," thenation's top diplomat said in testimony before the Senate ForeignRelations Committee.

Clinton's stark portrayal of America's public-relations deficitcame during questioning by senators about the Obama administration's$47 billion 2012 budget request for diplomacy and development.

The committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.),asked Clinton whether she would press for a more assertive role forthe Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent agency thatsupervises Voice of America, Radio Liberty and other U.S.-fundedinternational broadcasters.

"This is still a great force of diplomacy, to get our messageacross," Lugar said.

In her response, Clinton lamented the decline of the network ofbroadcast outlets that reached hundreds of millions of listeners incommunist countries during the Cold War. After the Berlin Wall fell,dollars and transmitters were dramatically cut, and "unfortunatelywe are paying a big price for it," Clinton said.

Since then, Arabic-language cable channels are filling the gap inthe Middle East, shaping popular views of the United States held bymillions of Arab-speakers, including many of those who are taking tothe streets in Middle Eastern capitals, Clinton said. New English-language broadcasts by the Chinese and even the Russians are hittingthe airwaves, and meanwhile "we're cutting back. The BBC is cuttingback," she said.

While Hollywood movies and television are pervasive around theworld, they mostly serve to worsen the distortion, Clinton said. Sherecalled meeting an Afghan general whose impressions of Americanshad been informed entirely by popular TV shows such as "Baywatch"and pro wrestling.

"The only thing he thought about Americans was that all the menwrestled and the women walked around in bikinis," she said.

To counter the trend, State Department officials recently havebegun investing heavily in social media, launching Twitter sites inArabic and Farsi. The push comes amid White House efforts to elevateInternet freedom as a core policy, actively opposing efforts tolimit Internet access in the Middle East and elsewhere. StateDepartment officials are working on plans to spend $30 million onInternet freedom projects.

But while social networking sites are important, U.S. officialsmust continue to find ways to communicate using traditional media,Clinton said.

"Most people still get their news from TV and radio," she said.

Clinton also warned that the United States is losing the race forglobal influence in other arenas as China forges economic and energyties with more nations. She cited China's efforts to push ExxonMobilaside for rights to a $15 billion natural gas project in Papua NewGuinea.

"China is in there every day in every way, trying to figure outhow it's going to come in behind us, come in under us," Clintonsaid.

She said proposed cuts in aid and diplomacy will furtherundermine U.S. efforts to keep American firms competitive in thedeveloping world.