1. Radio Atlantico del Sur was set up to broadcast British government propaganda on the Falklands dispute to Argentina (and Latin America as a whole), undermining the balanced and objective output from the BBC's Latin American service.
Reality: RAdS's sole target audience was members of the Argentine forces in the Falklands. It had no interest in broadcasting to Argentine civilians or anyone else in Latin America, or in competing with the BBC's Spanish-language output.
2. Radio Atlantico del Sur tried to persuade its listeners to accept the British case for sovereignty over the islands.
Reality: RAdS went out of its way to avoid discussing the sovereignty question, regarding it as potentially counter productive. Similarly, it sought to avoid being seen to undermine Argentine troops' loyalty to their flag.
3. Radio Atlantico del Sur was set up by Margaret Thatcher or her supporters as a measure to counteract the BBC, which they felt was not projecting Britain's views strongly enough.
Reality: It's unlikely that Thatcher was aware of the plan to set up RAdS until it was well advanced. One of Thatcher's closest supporters, her press secretary Bernard Ingham, was aware of the plan, strongly opposed it and tried to stop the project. The plan was also opposed by Lord Belstead, who had been appointed by Thatcher as a Foreign Office minister shortly after the invasion of the Falklands.
Effects on the BBC
4. By depriving the BBC of the use of a transmitter on Ascension Island, Radio Atlantico del Sur weakened the signals that carried the BBC's Spanish-language broadcasts to Latin America.
Reality: No transmissions by the BBC Latin American service were affected in any way at any time. During RAdS's evening broadcasts, two transmitters on Ascension Island carried BBC services in Spanish and Portuguese (the same number of transmitters as before). The BBC Latin American service was not on the air at the time of RAdS's morning broadcasts. Some listeners in Latin America to one frequency (of many) carrying the BBC World Service in English might have noticed a reduction in signal strength for three hours a day because of RAdS's broadcasts.
5. Radio Atlantico del Sur poached a BBC frequency.
Reality: Neither of RAdS's frequencies (9700 and 9710 kHz) were used by the BBC at the time or had been used in the immediate preceding years. They were chosen (after discussions with BBC frequency managers) because they were close to an Argentine channel (9690 kHz).
6. The BBC wholeheartedly opposed the existence of Radio Atlantico del Sur.
Reality: The BBC's assistant director-general, Alan Protheroe, supported RAdS from early in its planning stage and discreetly arranged for its planners to receive BBC technical advice. Protheroe's boss, Director-General Ian Trethowan, took a more neutral line, but resisted pressure from RAdS's opponents in the Foreign Office to come out publicly against the project. While Protheroe and Trethowan kept a public silence, a campaign against the project was led by the managing director of BBC external broadcasting, Douglas Muggeridge, an ambitious man new to his post, who misunderstood RAdS's purpose. His protests were given coverage by anti-government newspapers in Britain. No other senior BBC official appears to have spoken publicly about the issue one way or another. Meanwhile, backroom BBC staff in London and Ascension helped to get RAdS on the air.
Necessary secrecy
7. Radio Atlantico del Sur was staffed by amateurish civil servants from the MoD.
Reality: The majority of RAdS's staff were members of the British armed forces, including some of Latin American heritage, or civilians hired from outside the MoD for their professional skills as broadcasters, engineers, journalists or linguists.
8. Radio Atlantico del Sur's staff kept silent after the war out of embarrassment over their "amateurish" activities.
Reality: RAdS's staff operated under conditions of strict secrecy during the war, and were told to maintain such secrecy afterwards. This was mainly to protect the identities of those members of staff who had Argentine family connections. More than 30 years later, once some of the secrecy concerns had eased, RAdS's civilian manager Neil ffrench-Blake published his memoirs in which he stoutly defended the station against its critics and made clear his pride in what it had achieved.
9. Argentine troops made fun of Radio Atlantico del Sur's broadcasts.
Reality: There is no authoritative published research on opinion about RAdS among its target audience. A range of views has been expressed by other Argentines who heard the broadcasts or who have studied its output since.
10. Radio Atlantico del Sur was a failure.
Reality: In the confusion of a war, it can be hard to attribute degrees of success or failure to individual actions or projects. But to quote Neil ffrench-Blake: "The Argentinians did surrender, didn't they?"
© 2018. Material may be reproduced if attributed to Chris Greenway and any original source.
No comments:
Post a Comment