Q/A with PNN Director Ramin Asgard

PAYAM: Tell our readers about your work with PNN and VOA. 

 

Ramin Asgard: I came to PNN in February of 2011 with the sense that our most effective communication tool with the people inside of Iran, as a country is Voice of America, Persian or Persian News Network .From the very start I thought that we could do so much -- that we have this huge potential. People were working very hard and we had some very good successes, and I’ve been looking to build on it, to build on the scope of quality, bring in some great talent, to make our programming more relevant to the people inside Iran and outside of Iran in the Diaspora. Overall, upgrade the level of commitment and excitement around Voice of America, Persian or Persian News Network. I think we made some progress. We still have a long way to go, but I am very excited about what we have done and I am honored to have the opportunity to work on this very important program and initiative of communicating with Iran.

 

Payam: You had previously worked as a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department and as an Advisor to General Petraeus.  How has that work lent itself to your work at VOA?

 

RA: Because of our lack of diplomatic trade and commercial ties with Iran, what the Voice of America and to some extent Radio Farda represents is the accumulation  of all the different issues that come up in the United States and communicating these ideas and values to the Iranian people. This was something I did effectively, from the State Department side as a Foreign Service Officer.  With my service as a Political Advisor, I got a very broad scope of how the U.S. government works as a whole and realized that there are many very simple things that we can do for Voice of America, Persian to be able to have a more effective role in the process of getting the right news and information to Iran. All of the experiences I have, I felt has prepared me for the work I have done at Voice of America. I have not been a journalist, but I have been a Public Affairs officer for several years and have done Public Diplomacy throughout my career and the work is very similar to the work of journalists. I think that the experiences that I have had may be a little bit different from some of the folks that have been in the role before, but I think they have contributed to a very holistic and so far effective approach.

 

Payam: What makes PNN important for Iranian Americans? 

 

RA: While the Iranian American audience is not our target audience, because we are not allowed to broadcast our programming to American audiences, the Iranian American community cares very much about the communication the United States has with Iran. Iranian Americans make up most of our guests, a lot of our staff, a lot of our senior management and much of the on-air talent that you see. They contribute in many, many ways. One of the ways that the Iranian American community gets involved is that they have a passionate interest in Voice of America and how well it communicates with Iran. As tax payers they want to see that we live up to our full potential and I feel very strongly about that. As an Iranian American myself, I think that Voice of America coming from Washington and other places through remote communications  is sort of a bridge between America, and in this case also, the Iranian American community and Iran. The Iranian American community has an important voice in that communication.

 

Payam: What direction is PNN heading, in terms of its programming and mission?

 

RA: The overall direction that we are heading is that we want to make our programming relevant to our audience primarily in Iran. We want to make our programming based on truth, not in any way propaganda. Our view is that propaganda is not what the people in Iran want to hear. They get a full diet of propaganda already. We are in the news business. We want to make our news programming and information programming somewhat entertaining, so that in a crowded media market place we have impact. But we are not looking to take a certain advocacy position on any given issue. We want to have a full consideration, which is part of our mandate that the people of Iran can see. We have an idea that we want to represent truth and that we want to represent what is relevant to the Iranian audience. We aim our programming accordingly.  We also believe that we should spend some time talking primarily about the future and not debating about what happened in the past. The past is in the past, no matter how much we debate it; it’s not going to change. That doesn’t mean we ignore it, but we want to emphasize the future. If people have an opinion about Iran and where it should go, we want to hear them. But we want to hear them take a responsible position on the future of Iran, not rehashing past issues that have already been gone over so many times over the last decades. We want to be future oriented; we want to be truth oriented. We want to be relevant to our audience and we want to be relatively engaging and entertaining so that people want to watch the programming. Finally, we want to make sure we have high quality in our program as much as possible and that we have programming that is diverse and interesting. I’ve had success, but again we have a long way to go, but we’ve made visible progress and we look forward to making more.

 

 

Payam: What are some of the new programs you're launching?

 

RA: Some of the new programs we are launching are going to be up and out by the end of this year, hopefully sooner rather than later. We would like to focus some programs on reaching out to the population inside of Iran, with programming that has to do a little bit more with what is actually going on in America. Not necessarily in Washington, but what everyday life is like for every day Americans. Some of the issues that they may not hear or see in any kind of texture or detail, we want to do a program that focuses on that. We also look to do some programming that is investigative in nature, where we look into key issues at depth. We would also like to do programming that features an exploration of Iranian culture and history throughout the full expanse of the Iranian cultural space. Right now, with all of these programs, we are assembling the teams for them and beginning the early episodes. We also have many more programming ideas available for streaming and as soon as we have a little bit more of a finalized version, I would be happy to follow up and talk about those programming developments with your readership.

 

Payam: How can our readers get involved?

 

RA: One of the ways they can get involved is to follow what Voice of America, Persian does on-line. They can share their opinions on programming direction and content scope with us. We are always looking for talented individuals in the areas of television, production, television editing, and on-air talent. It is extremely helpful, but not absolutely essential, depending on the particular position, that they have very strong Persian language skills. The other thing that they can do to help us is that they can realize we are doing everything we can to make ourselves as effective as possible. We realize that we are not perfect; we realize there is a long way to go before we live up to our full potential. But the fact that we are working towards something that they can take confidence and comfort in -- that their tax dollars are being well spent and if they have concerns or issues with what is going on, they can feel comfortable sharing that with us and engaging in dialogue.  I’m open to discuss with the Iranian American community and the broader American community what is going on at Voice of America, Persian because I know a lot of people care much about it. But rather than speculate about various things that may or may not be decided upon or editorial positions or other matters that have to do with us, that they begin a dialogue with us. I see this interview as one of the ways that we can begin this dialogue and I look forward to serve as a sounding board for the views of the Iranian American community when it comes to communicating with the people in Iran. So please share your ideas, share your suggestions, but I ask very much that they be as constructive as possible because we are all doing our best to do something productive and make the most out of this opportunity we have to communicate with Iran and we realize there are many, many challenges ahead of us, but we look to the Iranian American community to be positive and constructive in what they propose and suggest as ways of improving.  When we do have something they like, it doesn’t have to always be criticism or some sort of an issue they may have with the decision, they may once in a while consider having some sort of positive view point that they like to express. That is a lot to ask the Iranian American community, but they are a big community and they are very good at communicating with us. We’d like to improve the access, so I will be doing more engagement with them and your publication is one of the first that we’ve talked to because we value the role you play in bringing the ideas and dialogue forward in the community and we think it is one of the most important things that we can do to have an on- going dialogue with the Iranian community and I look forward to it. 

 

PAYAM: Hillary Clinton was recently interviewed on Parazit.  How did that go?

 

RA: I thought it was a very good exchange, I was proud of Kambiz (Hosseini). His questions were very well thought out, and they represented direct questions. There were an accumulation of questions, in fact, several thousand questions, and the questions generally coalesce around key themes. The questions that he asked were the questions that the people inside Iran and also the Diaspora wanted to know from the Secretary. In a way, we are performing a very valuable service for them. I think Kambiz conducted the interview very well, I think Secretary Clinton was extremely open and frank and forthcoming in the way she presented the information. I thought that the exchange between them was very natural and healthy. And I think that this is the kind of thing we look to continue with senior officials in the United States government and not just government officials but key figures in the United States, in business, academia, the professions, and the technology field. We want the best perceptive on what is going on in the United States and not just policy, but also key developments to reach the Iranian people. With the Secretary’s interview I thought her raising the issue of the Iranian governments comprehensive isolation of its people from communicating with the outside world and with the outside world communicating with them was an extremely important point, one that has a direct impact on what we do at Voice of America and has a direct impact on many, many other forms of communication, all the way from print publication to satellite television broadcasts and everything in between, including a very comprehensive monitoring, filtering, and persecution of online activism type campaign by the Iranian government. The main thing that we are looking to communicate with the “Electronic Curtain” message that the Secretary mentioned is that the Iranian people deserve to be a part of the world. Cutting them off and isolating them is not natural and will lead to the society stagnating as it has with any society that has tried to cut off its population from the world, so that they can have political control. We hope for the best that this ends and that the Iranian people get to be connected to the rest of the world because they are a vibrant civilization which the world owes a great deal to and can benefit a great deal from. It is a tragedy that one of the world’s leading civilizations is cut off from the rest of the world and the ideological, intellectual, and cultural activities of the rest of the world barely creeps into Iran and all the vibrancy of Iran barely gets out because of this very unfortunate situation of the Electronic Curtain. I look forward, in whatever venue, to discuss the Electronic Curtain and how the Voice of America and the United States government feels about it and how we look to address it and our mission to communicate with the people of Iran, no matter how many obstacles are put in our way. I was very pleased with the interview. I think it’s one of many to come with key political, economic, cultural, and intellectual figures within the United States for the Iranian people to hear from and interact with. This was as interactive as we can have it under the circumstance that we face. We were very honored by the interview and how the Parazit team came together and did a terrific job. 

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