Posted on 12/13/2005 8:57:11 PM PST by F14 Pilot
Washington Prism – Babak Yektafar
It was strange watching Brian Lamb, the founder of C-SPAN, on TV at a party in mid-town Tehran last month. Stranger yet, was the number of people at that party who were familiar with him, and his call-in show, Washington Journal. After talking to a few people at that party, and later on at another gathering, I came to realize that Brian Lamb, the pride of Lafayette, Indiana, actually has a small and rather cultish following in Iran. C-SPAN is carried via World Net satellite network, which among other programs, carries programming by the US government’s Voice of America (VOA) into Iran, and VOA’s logo runs continuously on the screen during transmission hours, regardless of what program is being broadcast on that channel. This gives the impression that both C-SPAN and PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer, which is also broadcast in its entirety on the same channel, are sponsored by the White House.
Although there is no precise or reliable data on the number of households in Iran which receive and watch satellite TV (the practice is still officially illegal in the country,) it is impossible to escape the imposing clutter of satellite dishes in the country’s urban landscape. The closest thing to C-SPAN in the Islamic Republic of Iran is the occasional radio broadcast of the Iranian parliament (Majlis) on the state run network. If the legislative debate or the arguments among the legislators gets out of control (i.e. interesting) it is expected that the authorities will stop the transmission, as they have done on numerous occasions in the past.
Having worked at C-SPAN for 6 rewarding years, I took it upon myself to educate my new found friends about the network, its origins, its mission, and Brian Lamb. They were surprised that the network is non-governmental as well as non-profit and that the call-in show was celebrating its 25th anniversary. But most of all, they wanted to know about Brian Lamb.
“I love his voice,” a middle aged distant relative confided in me at the party, “and he does have a wonderful smile. Very sincere!” An engineer I met at another party told me,
”most of the time, I don’t know what he is talking about, but he seems to be in control of the proceedings.” He then went ahead to tell me that his relatives turned him on to the “gentleman with the gravely voice” who talks to the American people. “Why is he so angry?” another lady asked me.
I tried to explain that Brian has his own distinctive style of interviewing. He is precise and he asks questions others will not even think of asking. A favorite description of his interviewing style was published a couple of years ago, and it suggested that if Brian Lamb had the chance to interview Jesus, he would ask, “It’s said that you fed the multitudes with loaves and fish. What kind of fish was that? How many people does it take to make up a multitude?” This probably would not have been the best example for my Muslim audience, so I told them about the time when in the heat of the Iraq war, as a reporter was talking to him on the phone describing the desperation and anguish of the Iraqis, Brian asked him if he was aware of the unemployment rate in Iraq! When main-stream media reported continuously of death and destruction in Baghdad and Fallujah, Brian Lamb wanted to know how you get from Baghdad to Fullujah. The Devil is in the details, they say, and Brian Lamb is a master exorcist.
Recently, I had a chance to talk with him on the telephone about Washington Journal, C-SPAN model for the Middle East and the impact of his network on the political discourse of this country.
Washington Prism: Was there a time when you thought that the call-in format not working?
Brian Lamb: No. I never had any expectations other than that this was a platform, an opportunity for people in this country for their voices to be heard. It was never scientific, it was never meant to be, there was no cause and effect. It was just a place where they could come and where they would not be toyed with. It is a platform where the host has something in mind and would direct the callers in a certain direction.
WP: How much do your callers bring into the national political dialogue?
BL: I have no idea because we don’t track their input and whether their input results directly on the decisions that are made. All I know is that a number of people in politics watch it and I am sure that there are examples where they heard something on our call-in show and did something about it.
But again, that is not our motive, nor our mission. I hear all the time, and early on during the call-in show, how the country is doing. I can hear the depth of bitterness or joy about a particular politician or a particular subject matter. You hear it here first before you hear it anywhere else because the public doesn’t think about how it is going to position itself, politicians do. This war in Iraq, for example, has been a divisive issue from the beginning for a substantial number of people and we actually heard it here first because even before the war started and as the national debate was going on, the media outlets had a one track mind by bringing military analysts to cover various methods of warfare and in some ways they were promoting the war. The voice of the dissenters was not heard anywhere but here, because every other call on our show was a dissenter.
WP: Will a C-SPAN model work in the Middle East? Do you see it as a possible way of promoting democracy?
BL: I am not sure what the C-SPAN model for the Middle East, about the Middle East or even world democracy will do. The trick with C-SPAN is that it is not of the government. It is for and by the people, and an independent business which gets no money from the government, and decides what we are going to show the audience based on a formula of balance. Not a perfect balance, but balance.
And people who work at C-SPAN have no motive to bring about a change to this system. We have a motive to put a mirror in front of the world system and let the public decide for themselves.
That kind of a model, for the Middle East, run by someone not affiliated to a regime, in the Middle East would be a terrific thing, but it is really hard to get there. You have to figure out some way to fund it, and one of the problems you have is that if you have someone who comes along and says that he is going to fund it, because he is a multi-billionaire, and it doesn’t cost that much to do, then that person’s motive will always be suspect. C-SPAN is only as good as the trust the public watching it has in it.
WP: What are your favorite types of calls/guests?
BL: As for calls, I like someone who can shed some light on the subject. Something we are not hearing anywhere else. Someone who has a personal experience on a particular subject, not the B.S. you get from people who are posturing. Someone who is well read, or the opposite, someone who is not well read and is just a citizen reacting. Someone that would make you say,” did you hear that call? There was someone who was just instinctively reacting to a particular problem and shedding some insight into it.
I don’t have a great deal of expectation when I sit out there with the callers. I just know that I never sat out there on any day, when I have not learned something about where this incredibly diverse country is coming from.
As for my favorite guest, someone who will teach me something.
www.c-span.org
CSPAN RePing!
Now you see it , now you don't. lol
“It’s said that you fed the multitudes with loaves and fish. What kind of fish was that? How many people does it take to make up a multitude?”
LoL
Sounds like a cross-examination.
He always sounds like that. Lol.
"Are you married?". Where'd you meet your wife?". "How many children do you have?" How old are they?"
lol
Change the order of those questions and you have a textbook cross-examination. I'm absolutely serious.
Cable-Sponsored Public Access Network
What I want to know is how and why did the cable TV industry ever agree to fund this Jewel of American Discourse!!
Did BL bring this to being on his own?
C-SPAN is such a gold mine of information...of the presidents, the legislature, the courts, the founding documents, daily call-in polling of public sentiment of the most meticulously balanced public opinion and commentary.....and then there is the weekend programing with the authors and interviews......outstanding, superlative, unprecedented, and as unbiased coverage of current events and culture as one could possibly imagine!
Free to the masses....paid for by the evil media machine for the benefit of all; courtesy of....
.....Brian Lamb.
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