FreeMediaOnline.org and Free Media Online Blog November 8, 2008, San Francisco – Henry Loomis, who died Nov. 2 in Jacksonville, Fla., at age 89, was director of the Voice of America (VOA) during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. During his tenure from 1958 to 1965, the VOA Charter was written, and technical facilities and programming for every part of the world were expanded. The VOA Charter, which protects the independence and integrity of VOA programming, was signed into law in 1976 by President Gerald Ford.
Loomis, a strong defender of independent journalism at the Voice of America, resigned in protest as VOA director in 1965 after the Johnson White House demanded that VOA keep quiet about American planes flying over Laos. He later served as president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting during the Nixon administration.
As VOA director, Loomis was in firm control of the station’s strategic planning. In the 1990s, much of the authority of the VOA director had been transferred to the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which eliminated the VOA Arabic radio service and earlier this year shut down VOA radio broadcasts to Russia shortly before the Russian military attack on Georgia. The BBG also had plans to reduce or terminate VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet, Uzbekistan, China, Georgia, Ukraine, and a number of other countries. Due to protests from Dalai Lama, Tibetan monks, members of Congress, and press freedom organizations, the BBG was forced to suspend some of these cuts, but VOA radio broadcasts to Russia remain off the air.
Many Voice of America employees, who have been marginalized and demoralized by the BBG’s actions, remember Henry Loomis as a relentless and effective defender of VOA’s independence and journalistic mission. He is also credited with persuading Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb, to spare the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto from a nuclear attack. Loomis, a physicist by training, had studied Japanese history and art at Harvard. During World War II, he enlisted in the navy and served as a radar officer. Before being named Voice of America director in 1958, Loomis worked for the CIA and the Pentagon. After he retired, Loomis continued to speak out in support of funding and independence for Voice of America broadcasters.
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online BlogThe Federalist Commentary, November 5, 2008, San Francisco – This commentary by one of our regular contributors offer a useful perspective on the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors and its policies that led to the closing of many Voice of America radio broadcasting services, including radio broadcasts to Russia.
The BBG strategy clearly abandons the have-nots. In doing so, the BBG dismisses what we have already learned; namely, that trouble often begins in places that are “off the radar screen” and the ability of peoples in these circumstances to wage war, rebellion or terrorism. The consequences of this lesson should have been learned by the BBG on September 11, 2001. Clearly, it has not. The Federalist
Reverse Propagation
The great American showman PT Barnum is said to have made the statement that there’s a sucker born every moment. One is left to wonder who the sucker is in the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) strategic plan. This creation of staffers serving the BBG posits an all-or nothing Internet strategy in which the Internet would be the sole source for all BBG programs…audio, video and text. The BBG would eventually abandon almost all direct broadcasts by radio and television. While this would result in large savings in production and transmission costs, it would pass those costs onto the potential listener or viewer of BBG media
The BBG and the staff proponents of this plan have an “inside the Beltway” myopic view of the rest of the world. That view is high-tech driven where one has virtually instantaneous access to all forms of media. Not only does one have the access, the population set also has the per capita income (or consumer debt limitations) to purchase and maintain state-of-the-art technology.
Well beyond the Beltway, international audiences are less well situated. With a world population numbering in the billions, per capita income levels vary, the ability to purchase the technology that the BBG would require of its audience is limited as would be reliable infrastructure sources of power and energy required to operate and pay for the necessary equipment.
The BBG plan also dismisses any notion of electronic countermeasures to interfere with its Internet-driven product, measures in the 21st century that replicate, in effect, the radio jamming of the 20th century.
The BBG is in the formative stages of implementing this strategy. It has deliberately abandoned radio and television audiences in Russia. The decision to do so was made prior to the Russian invasion of Georgia and remains in place to this day.
An examination of the consequences of this plan is in order:
First, the BBG is no longer a serious international broadcaster. It is abandoning mass media audiences in favor of an elitist plan, reliant solely upon people of means to purchase the necessary technology and support (a personal computer with Internet broadband access and a reliable source of power). The question then becomes whether or not the societal elites have an interest in the message that the BBG is offering. The follow-on question is what interest do the societal elites in the target area have with regard to the general socio-political issues in the target area? The divisions between have and have-not in many countries are stark. What interest would the societal elites have in “sharing the wealth,” so to speak?
Second, in adopting this plan, the BBG is committing the Congress and the American taxpayer to a plan that will take decades to reach its optimum potential. This is also assuming a best case scenario, uninterrupted by war, social upheaval or natural disasters. Large segments of the world’s population live well below the poverty level. These populations struggle with ineffective or failed government infrastructures and most contend with a daily struggle over basic necessities…food, clothing, shelter, energy and potable water supplies. Where does the high-tech BBG PC and Internet-driven technology fit in? The answer is that it doesn’t…in the immediate and indeterminate future.
This strategy deliberately abandons existing and inexpensive technologies that are affordable even among struggling populations. Radio continues to be a viable medium serving mass audiences. Unlike the BBG, most serious international broadcasters maintain their radio broadcasts while using the Internet as a complement where access is available. These broadcasters have not executed a wholesale abandonment of known audiences and proven technologies as part of their integrated international broadcasting strategies.
Some historians and economists believe that the next world war will be fought between the Northern and Southern hemispheres…in short, a struggle between the haves and the have-nots. The BBG strategy clearly abandons the have-nots. In doing so, the BBG dismisses what we have already learned; namely, that trouble often begins in places that are “off the radar screen” and the ability of peoples in these circumstances to wage war, rebellion or terrorism. The consequences of this lesson should have been learned by the BBG on September 11, 2001. Clearly, it has not.
If there is one thing that is obvious from the BBG strategic plan it is this: it provides long-term career job security for its proponents on the BBG staff. In each successive budget cycle, one can be certain that the BBG will make a case for more taxpayer funds to justify and support this strategic debacle. The question then becomes whether or not the Congress will exercise proper oversight of BBG activities or succumb to yet another manifestation of “inside the Beltway” myopia. Lack of oversight has put us in the circumstances that we are in today, with a BBG that is out of step with international geopolitical realities and intentionally silencing itself to known audiences.
FreeMediaOnline.org and Free Media Online Blog November 5, 2008, San Francisco – The worldwide press freedom organization, Reporters Without Borders, has sent a letter to President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev appealing to him to intervene after the National Broadcasting Council announced it planned to take three foreign radios stations off the FM band by 2009. They are the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA).
Reporters Without Borders said in its November 3rd letter that it was “dismayed” by these “shocking statements” by the council’s chairman, Nushirvan Magerramli, announcing the bans on October 31st.
Reporters Without Borders believes that if the Azeri government carries out its threat, BBC, RFE/RL, and VOA will continue to broadcast on short wave. The organization pointed out that these international broadcasters ”would be able to broadcast on short wave as happened during the Soviet era. It would only have the effect of lowering the quality of reception for listeners,” but the radios would not disappear, Reporters Without Borders said in its statement.
Voice of America journalists and media freedom organizations are concerned, however, that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan body which oversees VOA and RFE/RL, will use the excuse of the crackdown on FM rebroadcasting in Azerbaijan to shut down the production in Washington of all VOA Azeri radio programs.
There is a precedent for such an action on the part of the BBG, which now has six members split between Democrats and Republicans. The former BBG chairman James K. Glassman, a Republican who is now the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, had justified the recent termination of VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts by claiming that Mr. Putin’s campaign of closing down VOA FM affiliates made all VOA radio vernacular language broadcasting to Russia ineffective, including short wave radio. For various political and bureaucratic reasons, most other Republican members and all Democrats serving on the BBG have supported Glassman’s position. This view has been widely rejected, however, by members of Congress of both parties, foreign policy experts, and media freedom organizations.
FreeMediaOnline.org, a media freedom nonprofit based in San Francisco, had reported that several BBG members and the BBG staff led by its executive director Jeff Trimble, a former acting president of RFE/RL, have been working behind the scenes to divert money from Voice of America broadcasts to Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine to fund the scandal-ridden Alhurra television for the Middle East and to strengthen Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasting to Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. In cutting VOA Russian radio Trimble was said to have received support from the Senate staff of the vice-president elect Joe Biden. RFE/RL is a semi-private entity incorporated in Delaware and based in Prague, the Czech Republic. It has a large bureau in Moscow whose employees according to reports are subject to pressure and intimidation from the Russian secret police. Voice of America is based in Washington, D.C. and most of its employees work in the United States. BBG member Ted Kaufman is a former chief of staff to Senator Biden.
Despite warnings from Congress and human rights organizations, the BBG terminated VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia and also wanted to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine. VOA employees are concerned that the BBG staff will respond the same way to the most recent crisis in Azerbaijan.
The BBG has temporarily suspended its plans to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine but VOA radio programs to Russia have not resumed as they were before the Russian invasion to Georgia. The BBG staff had also prevented VOA from producing Russian-language radio programs for the web, but relented after strong criticism from Congress and media freedom organizations. Last month a half-hour radio program was placed on the VOA Russian-language website as a Monday-through-Friday broadcast.
Former BBG Chairman James K. Glassman, now Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs, supports termination of Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia.
However, the audio of the VOA radio program for the Internet has not been updated for nearly a week. The day after the U.S. presidential elections it still featured a number of reports on pre-election campaign and polls. At the urgings of the former BBG chairman James Glassman and the BBG staff, the VOA Russian service is now producing short video clips for placement on its website and blogs. It is now difficult to find on the Russian-language VOA website any in-depth analysis or even a summary of President-elect Obama’s views on Mr. Putin’s and Mr. Medvedev’s Russia and U.S.-Russian relations. There are, however, plenty of short video reports, which include brief and superficial interviews with individual American voters giving their overall impressions of the two candidates. In one of them, the service featured a young African-American voter who was a McCain supporter without explaining that the African-American community was overwhelmingly supporting Senator Obama. Glassman, an enthusiast of web contests and other short-format for-web-video, is perhaps best known for co-writing the book Dow 36,000, published in 1999, which predicted that the stock market was greatly undervalued and would at least triple within a few years.
The production of serious analysis of U.S. politics and foreign policy had largely ended with the termination of VOA Russian radio broadcasts in late July. Critics of the BBG strategy as pursued by Glassman and Trimble have argued that it has dangerously undermined the U.S. ability to communicate with audiences in Russia and in the former Soviet republics on serious political issues. FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien has called on the BBG to restore VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, to expand political reporting, and to refrain from any cuts in VOA and RFE/RL radio programs to Georgia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan.
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online BlogQuoVadis Commentary, October 31, 2008, San Francisco – Free Media Online Blog welcomes a new guest contributor who provides a unique perspective on U.S. international broadcasting and public diplomacy. We invite your comments.
The Great Pumpkin — A Halloween Look At U.S. Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting
QuoVadis
It’s Halloween time when shadowy figures and grotesque ghosts and goblins roam the land. Fast on the heels of All Hallow’s Eve come the U.S. presidential elections.
If, as the polls indicate, Senator Biden becomes our next vice-president, election eve, particularly for international broadcasters yet employed by the U.S. government, could conjure up some mighty frightening figures and events from the past.
Although known more for his verbal gaffes, Senator Biden has a foreign policy gaffe or two in his portfolio, most prominently, responsibility for the dissolution of the U.S. Information Agency in the late ’90’s and the “reorganization” of international broadcasting after the Cold War with the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act. Thanks to the Senator’s efforts, USIA, the driving force of U.S. global communications was thrust into the mother of all bureaucracies: the U.S. State Department which experts agree has stymied our public diplomacy efforts for the past decade. With the dissolution of USIA came the unfortunate “reorganization” of international broadcasting where a comfy collection of bipartisan political appointees known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) was given the awesome responsibility of directing our country’s international broadcasting.
This was not a one-man band endeavor. Senator Biden had the necessary support in this “reform and restructuring” from then-Secretary of State Albright, the Clinton administration and unfortunately, Republican Senator Jesse Helms.
With a few exceptions, most of the Board appointees over the past decade have only had a scant, superficial knowledge of international affairs or global broadcasting and yet, were given the reins of directing a most important function of U.S. public diplomacy. Their record is dismal. Under the direction of this botch-prone Board, international broadcasting has suffered dramatic reversals and cuts, leaving in its wake a plummeting of U.S. prestige throughout the world, even in those countries historically supportive of America throughout the years.
For participation on the Board, Senator Biden championed a leading contributor to his past presidential campaigns, a millionaire media mogul, Norman Pattiz from California, the owner of Westwood One. After his appointment by President Clinton, this self-styled “visionary” extraordinaire took Washington and the BBG by storm.
First, Pattiz took over programming to the Middle East cauldron. Corey Pein of the Columbia Journalism Review writes that “the real tragedy is that the VOA Arabic Service was destroyed by Norman Pattiz of Westwood One. It is bizarre that the response of the US government to 9/11 was to fire the VOA broadcasters and dismantle the Service.” Substituting credible and professional programming by a seasoned staff with a 24/7 mindless and fruitless pop music format, Pattiz erased a loyal audience of movers and shakers in the Arab world instead trying to attract teeny-bopper fans with vacuous pop artists. News and commentary took a back seat and millions of information-starved listeners in the Arab world were left high and dry.
Armed with questionable polls and statistics, Pattiz paraded to Capitol Hill, convincing the Congress and surprisingly, the Bush administration to fund his broadcasting experiments which included expanding into a fruitless Arabic TV effort with Alhurra and then 24/7 pop format programming to Iran. To his credit, in 2002, Senator Jesse Helms expressed regrets over the changes in U.S. international broadcasting when he commented on Persian programming in a Wall Street Journal column: “It’s difficult to believe that the Bush administration has agreed to support this shift from a proven program of serious policy discussion to a teeny-bopper music-based format. It will likely insult the cultural sensitivities of Iranians as well as their intelligence. Meanwhile, a brave professor sits in a jail cell awaiting execution, students plot protests and the regime struggles to hold the line against the will of the people. And the U.S. will be spinning Britney Spears discs?”
Those who writhed under the Pattiz regime at VOA, managers and rank-and-file alike, bid him no fond farewells in 2005 when he finally walked out the door, considering him the person who almost singlehandedly destroyed U.S. international broadcasting. Yet his legacy continues as the BBG has retained Pattiz’s flawed Middle East broadcasting concoctions, dissolving other critical VOA language services to do so even when Congress explicitly forbade the elimination of essential VOA language services in its funding legislation. The latest BBG gaffe is mind-boggling: in July 2008, the Board closed the VOA Russian Service on the eve of Russia’s invasion of the Republic of Georgia.
Will Norman Pattiz be returning to Washington and to his political colleagues on the BBG after the inauguration perhaps as Chairman of the woebegone Board? Or will Pattiz be given an even higher position in the new administration where he can wreak even more damage?
FreeMediaOnline.org and Free Media Online Blog October 22, 2008, San Francisco – Voice of America (VOA) has taken a small step to restore radio broadcasts to Russia which were terminated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) shortly before the Russian military attack on Georgia. Responding to criticism from Congress and media freedom organizations, the BBG staff has allowed VOA to start producing a 30 min. radio news program in Russian for online placement. The new program, “Panorama,” is described on the VOA Russian website as a daily broadcast but it has not been updated within the last 24 hours and its future remains unclear. The BBG staff was reported to have gone into great lengths to prevent VOA from engaging in serious radio production and reporting for Russian-speaking audiences.
Of the six BBG members, only political radio host Blanquita Cullum was said to have opposed VOA radio cuts to countries with limited free media. Critics of the BBG argue that VOA is more likely to attract an audience in Russia with substantive political news content for radio and the Internet than with the current BBG-favored formula of entertainment programming, video blogs and online contests.
VOA Russian service journalists continue to be underemployed and are still being forced by the BBG staff to produce mostly noncontroversial short video clips and text for the Internet.
The new radio program has some political news content but it is a far cry from the longer-format news radio and political call-in shows which the Russian service was producing before the BBG pulled the plug on VOA news radio operations for Russia.
FreeMediaOnline.org has learned that the BBG may also be under pressure from some elements within the Bush Administration to restore VOA Russian radio programs to what they were before the Russian attack on Georgia. The BBG had also taken steps, some of which were later temporarily suspended, to eliminate VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia, Ukraine, and India.
James K. Glassman, Author of Dow 36,000, Former BBG Chairman Responsible of Cutting Voice of America Broadcasts to Russia and Current Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy
One of the strongest supporters of cutting VOA radio has been the BBG’s most recent chairman, James K. Glassman, who is now the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. An enthusiast of the Internet and web contests, Glassman is perhaps best known for co-writing the book Dow 36,000, published in 1999, which predicted that the stock market was greatly undervalued and would at least triple within a few years. On December 11, 2007 Glassman was nominated by President George W. Bush to replace Karen Hughes as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
A critic of Glassman’s approach to international broadcasting and public diplomacy wrote for the Free Media Online Blog that “the latest manifestation of the endless reservoir of fantasy is a video contest on the subject of democracy in which the State Department is soliciting amateur video entries worldwide. It doesn’t matter that this subject gets broad treatment on such video websites as YouTube. But then again, originality has become one of the casualties in the fool’s paradise of mediocrity in the U.S. public diplomacy bureaucracy,” claims a critic of Glassman’s record as the former BBG chairman.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors stopped Voice of America Russian radio on July 26, just 12 days before Russia launched its military attack on Georgia. A weekly VOA Russian TV program was terminated in September. Despite protests from Congress and human rights organizations, the BBG still prevents VOA from producing any regularly scheduled Russian-language radio and TV programming. Videos shown here are for Web only. Emails demanding immediate resumption of VOA Russian broadcasts can be sent to the BBG executive director Jeff Trimble: jtrimble@ibb.gov.
FreeMediaOnline.org and Free Media Online Blog November 8, 2008, San Francisco – Henry Loomis, who died Nov. 2 in Jacksonville, Fla., at age 89, was director of the Voice of America (VOA) during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. During his tenure from 1958 to 1965, the VOA Charter was written, and technical facilities and programming for every part of the world were expanded. The VOA Charter, which protects the independence and integrity of VOA programming, was signed into law in 1976 by President Gerald Ford.
