A Radio Free Asia (RFA) press release shows how surrogate broadcasting, which International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) top executives believe should be merged into one single program under IBB’s global control, plays an important role in countries without free media that cannot be duplicated by any other government or commercial media outlet.

Freedom of the Press 2013 report shows deterioration of freedom of the press in most of the countries and regions to which IBB executives wanted to end or reduce Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts as well as programs from surrogate broadcasters such as RFA and Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

They include China, Tibet, Russia, Chechnya (ancestral homeland of the Boston bombings suspects), and Kazakhstan (country of origin of two other suspects in the Boston bombings investigation). These proposed and actual program reductions are believed to be a result of  the five-year strategic plan developed by IBB executives who want to merge programs and limit the independence of surrogate broadcasters. Members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), who have the ultimate authority over U.S. international broadcasting, have prevented some of the IBB proposed programming cuts, as did members of Congress who are unhappy with the IBB bureaucracy.

Radio Free Asia has been one of the best managed BBG media entities. BBG members have, however, initiated reforms at RFE/RL and are trying to reform the International Broadcasting Bureau whose top leadership is believed to be responsible for most of the problems in U.S. international broadcasting.

Archive Photo, Sept. 2012. (l to r) BBG Governor Michael Meehan, Aung San Suu Kyi, BBG Governors Victor Ashe and Susan McCue at RFA in Washington, DC.

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RFA Press Release

Radio Free Asia Responds To Freedom Of The Press Findings

WASHINGTON – Radio Free Asia (RFA) President Libby Liu today responded to the findings of Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press 2013 report, which designated all six RFA broadcast countries – China, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea – as “not free” while citing some recent improvements in Burma.

“Sadly, there are no surprises here,” Liu said. “Especially troubling in this year’s survey is the noticeable decline in Hong Kong’s media environment, which may be interpreted as a distressing indicator of things to come. It is also clear that Cambodia is approaching a free speech crisis, with its legal system used as an effective tool of repression of independent journalists and dissenting voices. Burma’s recent progress in media and political reforms offers fragile hope – but only time can tell if those changes stay permanent.”

Freedom House’s survey found that despite general improvement of media freedoms in Asia, trends in the vast majority of RFA countries have worsened. Cambodia, which declined in its ranking, saw an increase of journalists behind bars, including independent radio station owner Mam Sonando, who was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 20 years in prison (he was later released), and the first murder of a reporter since 2008. Burma’s dissolution of its censorship body and release of imprisoned bloggers and journalists led to it receiving the largest numerical improvement in score worldwide.

In China, the report observes the growing use of microblogs in sharing uncensored news among citizens, but also notes a crackdown on newspaper journalists and editors, as well as bloggers, especially during the November Party leadership transition. Hong Kong received a worse score than last year due to “growing government restrictions on journalists’ access to information and several violent and technical attacks against reporters, websites, and media entities” there. North Korea remains at the bottom of the list, tied this year with Turkmenistan. The report comes out just two days before World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

RFA’s mission is to provide accurate and timely domestic news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press. Guided by the core principles of freedom of expression and opinion, RFA serves its listeners by providing information critical for informed decision-making. Radio Free Asia has nine language services delivering content online and via the airwaves and satellite television into its six target countries (China, North Korea, Burma, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia).

Dennis Mulhaupt

A Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) member Dennis Mulhaupt has informed the White House that he is resigning from the bipartisan board in charge of U.S. international broadcasting. If the BBG’s absentee Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton continues to be a no show at future board meetings, the BBG will no longer have a quorum and cannot function as an effective oversight body for the agency’s executive staff, which has been consistently rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) surveys as worst managers in the federal government. The fear is that without a quorum and with a reduced number of board members, the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) Director Richard Lobo and his staff will increase their bureaucratic stranglehold over the agency. Everything must be done to prevent it.

Despite real risks still on the horizon, there are some good signs that the Broadcasting Board of Governors is finally moving in the right direction. The three most active BBG members, Ambassador Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan, have formed an alliance to reform the agency, starting with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where they had put in Kevin Klose as the acting president. But they are encountering strong resistance from IBB Director Lobo and his deputies. They need every kind of support from the Administration and the Congress.

In his letter to President Obama, Mulhaupt wrote:

“Over my tenure I, along with some of my board colleagues, have consistently advocated for necessary and far-reaching reform of the governance structure and organization of U. S. international broadcasting (USIB). My belief in the importance and need for these reforms has only grown stronger the longer I have served. I hope that the administration and Congress will address soon the urgent issues facing USIB and the BBG, the components of which do such vital work advancing freedom and human rights in many countries throughout the world.”

But according to sources, Dennis Mulhaupt was not strongly supportive of the reforms initiated by his colleagues and was considered to be a close ally of former RFE/RL president Steven Korn, whom the board replaced with Kevin Klose after Radio Liberty in Russia has lost its reputation and much of its online and radio audience. The Korn experiment, supported by Mulhaupt and most IBB executives, was presented by them as a prelude to “far-reaching reform of the governance structure and organization of U. S. international broadcasting.” It ended in a complete disaster. The only thing Mulhaupt was right about was in saying that only “some of his board colleagues” supported him as he supported Korn and his experiment. In the end, even that support evaporated.

The State Department was embarrassed by what happened to Radio Liberty in Russia and did not like it. The ex officio BBG member, Secretary of State John Kerry, is represented at board meetings by Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine who is believed to be supportive of reform efforts initiated after the fiasco of the RFE/RL-Korn experiment, but she has an important full time job that keeps her busy. She did provide input on RFE/RL, but it still leaves Ashe, McCue and Meehan to keep an eye on the bureaucracy that constantly tries to push their own agenda, ignore members’ requests for accurate and timely information and frustrate their wishes, several well-informed sources told BBG Watch.

It is a matter of public record that BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton has not participated in any board or committee meetings since January 2013 and, according to sources, has not been heard from much for over three months. He managed to issue a statement Tuesday on Dennis Mulhaupt’s departure:

“Dennis Mulhaupt has been tireless and selfless in his service to the BBG. He passionately believes in the mission of U.S. international broadcasting, has approached his role with the utmost integrity, and has earned widespread respect in Washington, Prague and beyond. We will miss him greatly as a colleague on the Board, but would welcome his continued contribution to our work.”

Lynton was right that Mulhaupt has worked hard until almost the very end of his tenure, but as the chair of the RFE/RL board and a supporter of Steven Korn, he bears a lot of responsibility for what happened in Prague and in Moscow, where dozens of experienced Radio Liberty journalists were arbitrarily fired to the delight of President Putin. As for Lynton, it is not known whether he will show up for the BBG board meeting scheduled for April 10-11 or participate in it by phone. Since five members are needed to have a quorum, the BBG may not be able to hold a formal board meeting if Lynton is again absent. The board also did not have a formal meeting in February due to uncertainty whether he would attend. He did not. He also had missed some of the earlier board meetings, left meetings early and was seen texting on his phone while his colleagues were having a discussion.

An accomplished entertainment media industry figure, Lynton has a busy job as CEO of Sony Entertainment, Inc. Sony Entertainment does business in Russia, where the BBG is charged with encouraging media freedom. Having access to doing business in Russia and supporting journalism that may annoy President Putin are not mutually compatible activities.

Like Mulhaupt, Lynton was also a strong supporter of former RFE/RL president Steven Korn, whom he called “a seasoned media executive” even as the crisis at Radio Liberty in Russia kept growing and the station became an enemy of the human rights community. The IBB executive staff failed to alert Lynton and other BBG members to problems with RFE/RL. After several months of protests and negative media publicity, BBG members finally took action, prompted mainly by Ambassador Ashe. They read reports on BBG Watch and received protest letters from leading Russian human rights activists and anti-Putin politicians, including a powerful plea for action from this year’s Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lyudmila Alexeeva and a strong statement from Mikhail Gorbachev.

Shortly before leaving her job as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, an ex officio BBG member, called U.S. international broadcasting agency “defunct.”

If it were not for Ambassador Ashe, Susan McCue, Michael Meehan, and Under Secretary Sonenshine, the IBB executive staff would have had nearly complete control over the agency, with support from Lynton, Mulhaupt and Enders Wimbush, a Republican member who had resigned earlier. Mulhaupt was also a Republican member. His departure leaves Ashe as the only Republican member on the BBG board, but fortunately he works well with Democratic members, McCue and Meehan, and with Under Secretary Sonenshine. IBB executives hoped that they would force Ashe’s resignation. They failed.

Toward the end, Mulhaupt may have realized that his support for Steven Korn was a problem and he tried to repair the damage, but he ultimately decided that leaving the BBG was a better option. To his credit, unlike Lynton, Wimbush and Dana Perino, another BBG member (Republican) who had resigned earlier, Mulhaupt had a nearly perfect attendance record at BBG meetings. Ashe is now the only BBG member with a perfect attendance record. McCue, Meehan and Sonenshine also have a good attendance record. Like Ashe, they also question the IBB staff and demand answers and action. This annoys IBB bureaucrats who are not used to this kind of scrutiny.

As a form of retaliation, while the crisis at RFE/RL kept growing, the IBB staff engaged in a behind-the-scenes smear campaign, directed primarily against Ashe, but also against Meehan and McCue, by feeding false information to OIG inspectors. They had miscalculated because the BBG employee union, AFGE Local 1812, and everybody else strongly defended Ashe and other BBG members. It would fair to say that while Lynton and Mulhaupt made some serious mistakes for which they should be held responsible, they are among many victims of the IBB executive staff’s phenomenal failure, as is the entire agency.

With Lynton becoming disengaged and Mulhaupt also withdrawing, Ashe, McCue and Meehan united, started the reform process at RFE/RL, and put a stop to some of the most egregious IBB bureaucratic excesses. These included wasteful international travel and executive bonuses that on top of general mismanagement resulted in record low employee morale, worst than at nearly all other federal agencies. But with Lynton, who either defends IBB staff or is absent and with Mulhaupt sitting on the fence and now leaving, the IBB staff is launching a counter-offensive, sources told BBG Watch. It will be up to the three BBG members and Under Secretary Sonenshine to make sure that this bureaucratic coup does not succeed. It will not be an easy task.

Director Lobo was told by BBG members that he cannot furlough any employees and that he cannot approve any more $8,000 bonuses for his top aides. But his deputies are using sequestration as an excuse to reduce or eliminate programs they do not like, including radio transmissions to Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. They are not as brazen as they were before, when they had proposed cutting broadcasts to China and Tibet and were told by members of Congress essentially that they have lost their minds, but they nevertheless are retaliating in their usual bureaucratic fashion.

The bottom line is that there are now only three BBG members who are working full time to save the agency from its own bureaucracy. They have support from Under Secretary Sonenshine and presumably Secretary Kerry. For the first time in many years, the bureaucrats are on the defensive as most of their supporters on the BBG board have now left. Kevin Klose is cleaning house at RFE/RL. For the first time in years, there is a chance that public interest can become more important at the BBG than the interests of the self-perpetuating and program-destroying IBB bureaucrats.

Members of Congress and other important stakeholders are beginning to realize that the problem was not the BBG board itself, but its individual members who did not take their public duties seriously or who had conflicts of interest. There is also a growing realization that the problem is indeed the BBG bureaucracy at the International Broadcasting Bureau.

If anything, the RFE/RL crisis showed that the bipartisan BBG board can do what it was designed to do, to protect the integrity of U.S. international broadcasting in a crisis situation. Had BBG members been more carefully chosen and had greater international and public service experience, they could have responded to the RFE/RL crisis and the IBB bureaucracy excesses earlier and with better results. Eventually, they did.

It was, however, a very close call. To secure a better future for U.S. international broadcasting, Michael Lynton should resign, also to save his own professional reputation, as should disengaged IBB Director Richard Lobo and his Deputy Director Jeff Trimble who has been in charge as the BBG failed to increase its global audience since 2008 despite increasing budgets. Jeff Shell, who impressed a lot of people with his openness and a desire to reach out to various groups, should be confirmed by the Senate as the new BBG Chairman if no conflicts of interest are found with his private sector job and if he can devote enough time to his public duties.

President Obama needs to nominate several new BBG members, most of the vacancies are for Republicans, and the Senate needs to confirm them. They should not be primarily private industry executives like Korn and Lynton, but individuals with broad international/foreign policy experience, significant public service accomplishments and/or human rights advocacy background.

The Soviet-style five year strategic plan developed by the discredited IBB staff needs to be discarded and a new mission-focused plan developed. Fired Radio Liberty journalists must be returned to their jobs. Ambassador Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan should be reappointed by President Obama to insure that the reforms they initiated continue, the IBB executive staff is brought under control, its failed top managers transferred out, and its bureaucracy greatly reduced, with saved resources redistributed to various program-producing media entities.

We hope that Ashe, McCue, Meehan and Sonenshine will not be discouraged by bureaucratic resistance and will all agree to continue to serve. They deserve thanks for saving U.S. international broadcasting from a bureaucratic disaster but their job is far from finished.

Independence of surrogate broadcasters and the Voice of America needs to be re-confirmed and they need to return to their original missions. If these steps are taken, U.S. international broadcasting can once again serve its important media freedom role which is so essential for the defense of human rights and for advancing democracy and U.S. national security interests around the world. Soft power through U.S. international broadcasting is the most cost-efficient investment in enhancing America’s security and in helping other nations build democracy. But to succeed, it also needs more funding and more attention from the Administration, the Congress, and the American people. Fortunately, U.S. international broadcasting always had bipartisan support. Everything must be done to make it stronger.

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BBG Press Release

Dennis Mulhaupt Leaves the BBG Board
April 9, 2013

Dennis Mulhaupt
Washington, DC – BBG Board member Dennis Mulhaupt today informed the White House and his colleagues that he is leaving the Board.

Mulhaupt had been serving as alternate presiding governor, chair of the BBG Governance Committee and chair of the board of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

“Dennis Mulhaupt has been tireless and selfless in his service to the BBG,” said the Board’s presiding governor, Michael Lynton. “He passionately believes in the mission of U.S. international broadcasting, has approached his role with the utmost integrity, and has earned widespread respect in Washington, Prague and beyond. We will miss him greatly as a colleague on the Board, but would welcome his continued contribution to our work.”

Mulhaupt is the founder and managing director of Commonwealth Partners, Inc., a firm that provides advisory services to philanthropic institutions and families. He began his career working in an investment bank in London and subsequently established the West Coast international political and economic risk advisory department at a major U.S. financial services company.

After 15 years in various corporate roles, he turned full-time to the non-profit sector. Before founding Commonwealth Partners, he served as executive vice president at KCET in Los Angeles, the West Coast flagship public broadcaster. Other roles in higher education administration have included positions as Vice President at Claremont McKenna College; Associate Vice President at Stanford University; and Senior Associate Dean in the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences at the University of Southern California, where he also taught undergraduate courses in international relations.

Like his fellow appointed governors, Mulhaupt was appointed to the board on July 2, 2010 to a term expiring on August 13, 2011. By law, any member whose term has expired may serve until a successor has been appointed and qualified. His departure leaves the Board with five members, including Secretary of State John Kerry, who serves as an ex-officio member.

Here is the letter that Mulhaupt sent to President Barack Obama:

April 9, 2013

The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I write to submit my resignation from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) effective today.

Over my tenure I, along with some of my board colleagues, have consistently advocated for necessary and far-reaching reform of the governance structure and organization of U. S. international broadcasting (USIB). My belief in the importance and need for these reforms has only grown stronger the longer I have served. I hope that the administration and Congress will address soon the urgent issues facing USIB and the BBG, the components of which do such vital work advancing freedom and human rights in many countries throughout the world.

I am beyond grateful for having been given the opportunity to serve our country through my role on the BBG. In addition, I want to express my thanks to you and Senator McConnell for your confidence in indicating to me I would be re-nominated for an additional term.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the thousands of men and women of USIB throughout the world who do such important and all too often dangerous work in support of a free press in more than 60 countries around the world.

I am honored to have served with them.

Respectfully,

Dennis Mulhaupt

“That is why we call yet again on Congress to exercise its overview functions to get to the bottom of what is truly happening in U.S. international broadcasting and intervene to sweep clean the Agency’s discredited executive leadership.

Our Agency needs many more managers of the caliber of Kevin Klose to return the Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and other entities to the right path.” — American Federation of Government Employees, AFGE Local 1812, the union representing Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) employees.

AFGE Local 1812, the union representing Broadcasting Board of Governors employees, has called for the replacement of “the Agency’s discredited executive leadership,” which is centered largely within the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), but also includes some senior managers at the Voice of America (VOA), the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) and at some of BBG’s grantee surrogate broadcasters.

AFGE Local 1812 does not represent employees working for the grantee broadcasters, but it has welcomed the appointment of Kevin Klose as RFE/RL’s acting president who has been selected by the BBG to restore Radio Liberty’s reputation in Russia.

Members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors are also hearing from more and more outside experts that replacing the IBB’s discredited senior executive team is the only way to save the “defunct” and “dysfunctional” agency — to use Hillary Clinton’s words — from even further decline and to improve abysmal employee morale, which is the lowest among all federal agencies of similar size.

But, as AFGE Local 1812 points out, “since coming out, yet again, near the bottom in the OPM Human Capital survey in 2012, the Agency’s executive management has continued to pursue its destructive policies.”

Failed executives are being protected by IBB Director Richard Lobo. Some who have retired are being immediately rehired as highly-paid consultants. At the same time — despite getting larger and larger budgets each year and cutting more and more programs and programming positions while growing their own bureaucracy — the executive leadership at IBB has not managed to increase BBG’s global audience since 2008.

CONCERNED BUT NOT SURPRISED

by AFGE Local 1812

We at AFGE Local 1812 are concerned, but not surprised, that since coming out, yet again, near the bottom in the OPM Human Capital survey in 2012, the Agency’s executive management has continued to pursue its destructive policies.

We refer to the quasi-destruction of the Russian service at Radio Liberty, followed by an OIG report on the Agency, which was used primarily as a hatchet job on Broadcasting Board of Governors members, and one in particular whose dignity and honesty have been a credit to the BBG.

We refer to the fawning interview of VOA Director David Ensor, arranged with Tom Fox, a vice-president at the Partnership for Public Service, at the same time that the PPS was launching a supposedly unbiased process to identify the reasons for the abysmal morale in the Agency and the best ways to improve it.

We also note the continued attempts by Agency executives to re-hire their former clique members as consultants as soon as they retire, regardless of the interim period of two years that should transpire under government regulations before such re-hiring should take place.
Furthermore, we refer to Agency executives’ continued defiance of the law, through their refusals to comply with legally-binding FLRA decisions. Such as the the decision upholding a federal arbitrator’s decision that the RIFed employees at OCB should be reinstated. Some of those employees are now facing eviction from their homes instead of being back to work as ordered because of the Agency’s feckless legal maneuvers.

In other words, it’s business as usual for the executive staff. The only positive step we noticed was the BBG’s nomination of Kevin Klose, to the position of acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) who is entrusted with repairing the catastrophic damage inflicted on Radio Liberty Russian by former head Steven Korn and his clique. Although, we are still waiting to see any significant results from his appointment such as hiring back the journalists who were fired.

That is why we call yet again on Congress to exercise its overview functions to get to the bottom of what is truly happening in U.S. international broadcasting and intervene to sweep clean the Agency’s discredited executive leadership.

Our Agency needs many more managers of the caliber of Kevin Klose to return the Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and other entities to the right path.

Broadcasting Board of Governors FY 2013 Budget Request

The Washington bureaucrats in charge of U.S. international broadcasting (USIB) have not increased their audience in the Middle East or globally since 2008 despite getting larger budgets each year to accomplish their mission of informing the world about America and countering censorship in closed societies — a critical US national security objective.

Their weekly global audience was 175 million in 2008, as it is today, even though the world’s population, which now stands at over 7 billion, has grown by about 300 million during that time, with especially high rates of population growth in some of the countries of the Muslim world. Every day, the number of people in the world increases by about 200,000.

The number of people with access to the Internet has also grown tremendously in the last 5 years.

But audience numbers are not even the worst of the story. Even assuming that because of the tremendous growth of competition on the Internet, USIB cannot reach the same large audience it had several years ago, nothing can excuse IBB bureaucrats’ proposals to eliminate critical radio and television broadcasts to countries which are ruled by some of the most authoritarian and repressive regimes and/or are  strategically important  for the US–countries like Russia, China and Tibet.

Also inexcusable is the push from IBB bureaucrats, strategic planners and dubious audience research experts to force surrogate broadcasters and VOA to adopt “fluff journalism” and “local placement” that requires political self-censorship as a strategy to expand the audience. “Fluff journalism” has very little to do with USIB mission, but IBB bureaucrats have become desperate as they see their strategic plan failing in every respect.  By securing cooperation of inexperienced Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty executives, they have already managed to destroy Radio Liberty’s effectiveness and reputation in Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, the last two countries with mostly Muslim population.

Despite these spectacular failures, in the FY 2013 budget request, IBB’s share of the BBG budget was 36.5% or $262.8 million. The Voice of America (VOA), which alone generates a 134 million weekly audience, received only 26.3% of the BBG budget, and one of the surrogate broadcasters, Radio Free Asia (RFA), just 5% of the overall USIB budget.

Their next goal is to merge VOA and surrogate broadcasters as much as possible and place them all under their control by making a completely false claim that the differences between VOA and surrogate broadcasters are minimal and that  there is duplication that needs to be eliminated.

What happened?

Surrogate broadcasters and the Voice of America could not expand their audiences because they were literally forced to accept self-defeating strategies developed by BBG bureaucrats working for the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB). The IBB bureaucracy has devised a plan to eliminate radio and television broadcasts at VOA and surrogate broadcasters by making false claims that U.S. international broadcasting could be competitive in many countries through the Internet.

But while digital expansion was badly needed, the IBB had no idea how to implement it in trying to reach closed societies. They lack local expertise and commitment to serving underprivileged and repressed societies, but they more than compensate for it by their desire to maintain and expand their power, control and budgets. So while they kept eliminating more and more direct radio and television broadcasts, they wasted the money on expanding their own bureaucracy without producing any lasting audience gains and making it difficult for surrogate broadcasters and VOA to do their jobs within their own specific areas of expertise.

Today the IBB has the largest budget within the Broadcasting Board of Governors agency even though IBB does not produce a single program with any kind of audience.

One of our occasional contributors, a BBG employee who uses the pen name of Jane Doe, has sent us her commentary on the new plans of IBB bureaucracy to try to excuse their failure of the last five years by expanding their central control over surrogate broadcasters and the Voice of America.

US stands to lose ability to connect with citizens in closed societies if bureaucrats have their way

by Jane Doe

Many things are happening on the third floor of the Cohen building in Washington, DC, the headquarters of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting (USIB). Some were mentioned in the BBG open session on Friday— some not. A wise, thoughtful and knowledgeable friend observed to me:

“There is an attempt to neutralize surrogate broadcasters. (Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) It is led by the central BBG bureaucracy — the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) — which wants control of all broadcasting. The administration may want the same thing for slightly different reasons. Without the deep commitment and expert specialization of surrogate broadcasters, U.S. international broadcasting will lose much of its meaning and effectiveness.”

Not only is this true, the real tragedy is that the ball is already rolling.

The IBB is sacrificing every principle for which Congress created surrogate broadcasters. These Washington bureaucrats launched an assault on surrogate broadcasters in order to preserve their bureaucratic way of life. On the 3rd floor of the Cohen Building, they do not think about the families of the immolators being dragged into jail or the children separated from their parents.They are obsessed with devising ever more questionable means by which they can be the boss of all things broadcasting. They are not deeply analyzing every nuance of the lives of the people the surrogates serve. They are making sweeping “strategies” and planning “innovation” for the minions to implement.

The BBG external relations people don’t seem to understand the mission, not madness, of the USIB structure. Mass distribution of documents such as the BBG annual report lead with the IBB. How’s that working out? Reputation on the rise or on the decline?

That is because everyone on the 3rd floor of the Cohen building thinks everyone in international broadcasting works for the IBB. Not so.

No one has ever heard of the IBB–they shouldn’t–and they never will–because the IBB does not do the mission critical work. The broadcast entities do.

IBB is the support structure. IBB supports the broadcasters. At least it did when Congress created it. The IBB did this job splendidly until the tragic loss of George Moore, the last great IBB director who understood the mission of surrogate broadcasters and the Voice of America as well as the limits of his mandate. Under Moore, it WAS the support structure. Once the BBG gave all its delegable duties to the IBB Director AND all of their support staff – the IBB became a behemoth regime within the Broadcasting Board of Governors searching for territory to dominate.

Surrogate journalists do not work for IBB.

Surrogates work for people suffering in closed societies. Surrogate staff eat, drink and sleep for people they don’t even know but for whom they gladly give their waking hours to love.

The surrogate broadcasters are the only game in town for people in closed societies to get the local news their governments desperately want to keep from them. Even the other international broadcasters concede and support US surrogate work.

In closed societies communications form over decades around thought leaders by word of mouth. Learning to trust a credible far flung news source is a learned behavior. One that USIB entities have spent their existence cultivating. The surrogates and the repressive regimes who do everything they can to shut them down understand that no sustainable transition to a free society can be achieved without indigenous free press, free speech and free association (in many cases virtual).

The spin doctors and “strategists” at the BBG need to take a fresh look at how well their current strategy is working to serve the United States, their listeners and not just themselves. By neutering the surrogates and pushing everyone, including the Voice of America (VOA), underneath the banner of the BBG, they have successfully become the pariah of Washington.

By acquiescing to the short-sighted policies of the administration, the US stands to lose its long-fought for unique ability to connect with citizens in closed societies and it’s enviable ability to set discussion agendas for governments that are decidedly NOT the friends of the US.

As with the Radio Liberty debacle, Putin could not have done a better job silencing brave voices. The shame is that the US is doing the work for totalitarian regimes everywhere. Imagine how much money these regimes will save when they no longer need to censor or jam US surrogate broadcasters?

Yay team!”

I thought it worth sending on. We can’t let the third floor ruin USIB.

Jane

BBG Organizational Chart shows 16 offices under IBB, BBG's bureaucracy center

Broadcasting Board of Governors - Information War Lost: (Yet Another) Silver Bullet Placebo

by The Federalist

As reported by BBG Watch, it is anticipated that the Obama administration’s FY2014 budget will include language for the creation of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the Broadcasting Board of Governors/International Broadcasting Bureau (BBG/IBB).

This is something concocted by the IBB executive staff – you know, the people who have presided over the systematic destruction of US Government international broadcasting and in the process making the agency “the worst organization in the Federal Government” and one of the worst places to work in the Federal Government, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employee viewpoint official surveys.

What is the intent of the senior IBB staff here?

Answer: the intent is not to fix a failed agency with a failed mission.  The intent is to preserve the IBB status quo, to proceed with business as usual and to complete the removal of the United States Government from any effective strategic international broadcast communication with the rest of the world.

This is yet another typical Washington blunder – trying to legislate a fix for an agency that is systemically in disarray, largely due to actions precipitated by the IBB senior executive staff.

Across the board, the agency is shedding audience like water off a duck.  We’ve said this before and it bears repeating.

Why?

Because the consequence is that the United States no longer speaks with an authoritative voice with world publics.  It doesn’t speak with an authoritative voice because that voice cannot be heard or seen.  The agency’s audiences are plummeting.  They could be as little as 175 million – out of a world population of 7-BILLION. It is still the same as it was in 2008, despite larger budgets and continuing growth of the world’s population.  That is not making much headway in the court of global public opinion, so to speak.

And here is another thing: a trend once started is very hard to reverse.  This trend has some horsepower behind it.  And for this agency, the window of opportunity to reverse the trend, if not closed entirely, is barely cracked open.

(Another disturbing trend, the agency makes more news for failing than it does for succeeding, which in turn gives more impetus to the trend.)

That laundry list of failing is almost universal:

A “flim flam, Soviet-style strategic plan” that has been almost universally debunked except on the Third Floor of the Cohen Building and which has resulted in the agency going low on the radar of international broadcasting.

Voice of America (VOA): Its Central Newsroom characterized as “schizophrenic,” struggles to put hard news out to global publics in an organized fashion, being whipsawed by its managers between headline news, breaking and developing news, costly and time-consuming (an ultimately untimely) video production, failures of its Dalet operating system.  And if that isn’t bad enough, slashing away at the VOA radio broadcasts by former CNN managers with a video-centric world view.  And lest we forget: bottom dwellers in the annual Federal employee survey making the agency the worst place to work in the Federal Government.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL): The current front-runner in dysfunction via the intentional demolition of its Russian Service and some other serious gaffes in program content by its Kazakh Service

Radio Sawa/Alhurra TV: Please don’t say that you still believe in that “Arab Spring” nonsense.  This expensive operation has little or no resonance with Arab/Muslim publics.  Just look at the direction of the countries going through revolutions across the Middle East – away from secular Western democratic principles and more toward Islamic fundamentalism.

US Government international broadcasting didn’t get to this sorry state of affairs overnight.  It got to where it is through the persistent efforts of an embedded, arrogant and self-serving IBB executive staff.

And we’ve seen the lengths to which this cabal will go to in order to protect themselves and their interests.  Just have a look at a tainted, biased and opinionated Office of Inspector General (OIG) report on the BBG – delivered lock, stock and barrel by the apparatchiks of the IBB staff and regurgitated by the OIG.

It behooves the upper reaches of the government – both in the executive and legislative branches – to break with denying reality.  The reality of the situation is that the IBB is a rogue operation that doesn’t follow orders from the Board.  That is called insubordination – at this level, it is gross insubordination, ample justification for removal from the Federal Service for cause.

Anything this rogue operation puts its stamp of approval on is highly suspect – and that leads us directly to a discussion of a “Chief Executive Officer.”

We believe that a “Chief Executive Officer” will have little or no impact on the dismal state of affairs inside the Cohen Building.  The agency already has an Executive Director.  That position and that individual haven’t made the agency’s fate better.  It has seen the situation deteriorate dramatically.

You can call a person an “executive director.”  You can call a person a “chief executive officer.”  It doesn’t matter.  They are only words on a piece of paper.  They do not address the underlying problems this agency has.

It is a no-win situation for whoever would be posted to such a position.  This person is not going to be a miracle worker.  The person may be more like a mortician presiding over the final chapter of this agency’s history.

Consider this:

If the CEO comes from within the ranks of the current senior IBB staff, that indicates endorsement of “business as usual.”  We already know what that is.  As part of the “flim flam Soviet-style strategic plan,” the IBB seeks to develop a posture that is more “corporate” in nature.

Corporate as in Enron.

Former Secretary of State Clinton made that clear on two occasions immediately before and after she exited the office.  When you hear words like dysfunctional and defunct, you’re being given a clear picture as to how far gone the agency is – gone far enough to be abolished.  Most regrettable as that would be, the situation leans more (heavily) in that direction than in rehabilitating the agency’s effectiveness.

If the CEO comes from outside the ranks of the current senior IBB staff, the person would need a constitution of steel to deal with the IBB cabal whose group behavior is intent upon destroying anyone who stands in the way of what we see as one of the largest cases of failure, cover-up and waste of American taxpayer money inside the United States Government. Please talk with BBG Governor Ambassador Victor Ashe who takes his job as a public official seriously.  Send him an email.  He’ll tell you what it’s been like.  In fact, he doesn’t need to.  People who know the situation well didn’t waste any time taking a stand with Ambassador Ashe in support of his efforts on behalf of the agency, its mission, its working staff and U.S. taxpayers.

And keep in mind, this isn’t the only time these disreputable individuals have gone after a member of the BBG or other senior staff.  There’s a history.  A good part of it documented and preserved.

If a CEO is selected by the BBG and is in effect the chief of staff of the BBG, there may be a chance to corral the wildlife of the senior IBB staff.  However, that person should be prepared for a battle on his/her hands.  Putting the CEO under the Board and not part of the IBB gives leverage and altitude over the IBB staff.  And that person needs every possible advantage.

However, the main issue remains: that person needs a constitution of steel to take on the senior IBB staff.  They are not good people.  They are not nice people.  They are not misunderstood people.

They are the “self-interested, power-hungry, revengeful bureaucrats.”

The Federalist

February 2013

BBG Organizational Chart shows 16 offices under IBB, BBG's bureaucracy center.

Sources told BBG Watch that President Obama’s FY2014 budget proposal is likely to call for a single government information czar, a CEO appointed by the federal agency Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to oversee all U.S. international broadcasting (USIB) operations, including the so-called surrogate broadcasters: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Middle East broadcasting Networks (MBN).

The position of the presidentially-appointed and Senate confirmed director of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), currently held by Richard Lobo, is expected to be abolished, sources told BBG Watch. IBB has been rated in OPM employee surveys as having the worst managers in the entire federal government. Its OPM management rating has gotten worse under Director Lobo. He has not been effective in carrying out the Board’s directives and some BBG members contribute to the problem by failing to attend board meetings and do not provide sufficient direction and oversight, sources told BBG Watch. The Board does not have a chief of staff who could monitor the work of the IBB executive staff.

A single CEO with authority over the Voice of America (VOA), the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) and the surrogate broadcasters would be in conflict with the current U.S. legislation placing surrogate broadcasters only under the authority of the BBG Board and providing them with considerable administrative and programming autonomy. The current legislation would have to be modified to allow the CEO to manage surrogate broadcasters.

It is not clear what will happen to the single CEO proposal for USIB if Congress, as in previous years, does not pass the President’s FY2014 budget.

The proposal for a single CEO is strongly favored by the agency’s executive staff, centered at the International Broadcasting Bureau, which wants greater central control over surrogate broadcasters and all other USIB operations.

Surrogate broadcasters enjoyed historically a high level of autonomy and independence with the support of Congress. Their role was to serve as a substitute for domestic media in countries practicing censorship and to provide local journalists, political leaders, and intellectuals with a media outlet to counter government censorship and propaganda. Washington-based Voice of America’s role was to serve as a source of both international and major country and region-specific news, but also to provide information about the United States and U.S. policies, especially as they relate to specific countries to which VOA directs its programs.

Supporters of a single CEO also favor combining programming content from VOA and surrogate broadcasters and want to distribute it both abroad and in the United States. Their recent efforts to impose a central programming plan at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, with the support of former RFE/RL president Steven Korn, have resulted in strong protests from leading Russian democratic leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeeva. The protests against the firing of dozens of experienced journalists and programming changes de-emphasizing human rights reporting have led to Steven Korn’s resignation and the appointment of Kevin Klose as the new acting RFE/RL chief executive.

Critics fear that a single CEO who is not subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate may try to undermine surrogate broadcasting and continue to expand central bureaucracy at the expense of foreign-language programming in support of media freedom and human rights.

One former U.S. international broadcasting executive told BBG Watch that a large single bureaucracy in Washington in charge of surrogate broadcasters would be “a disaster for specialized surrogate programs to countries without free media but a bonanza for former government officials, consultants, and contractors looking for jobs that don’t require expert knowledge of foreign languages and cultures.”

“Radio Liberty’s implosion in Russia should be a warning of what happens when Washington bureaucrats tell managers with no knowledge of surrogate broadcasting what to do.” A former executive added that the Voice of America will be in an equal danger of losing its identity and effectiveness.

“Congress should never allow any administration to appoint an information czar without subjecting that person to a confirmation process, especially since the Broadcasting Board of Governors can now place its news and information programs on media outlets in the United States,” a former government executive said.

The current IBB bureaucracy has already been actively pursuing the strategy of eliminating programs and increasing their own ranks for several years. The BBG’s organizational chart shows 16 non-programming offices under the International Bureau, some of them created recently while foreign-languages programs and programming jobs were being eliminated by IBB executive staff. Also, despite efforts by IBB’s strategic planners, program evaluators and marketing specialists to push broadcasters to move from hard-hitting political journalism to supposedly more popular soft features for the web and social media, BBG’s global reach has remained stagnant at 175 million since 2008, even with increased budget allocations.

This BBG Watch commentary on the “21st Century Vision for U.S. Global Media” paper by A. Ross Johnson and Gene Parta was written by Ted Lipien, a former acting Voice of America associate director and former BBG regional marketing director who is now associated with the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB-cusib.org), an independent, nonpartisan NGO supporting media freedom worldwide.

Beware of Central Bureaucracy for USIB

by Ted Lipien

INTRODUCTION

There is much wrong with this paper, “21st Century Vision for U.S. Global Media,” by Mr. A. Ross Johnson and Mr. Gene Parta, although many of the observations and some of the ideas they presents are correct. They have correctly described some current problems facing U.S. international broadcasters, evolving audience habits and technological changes in media delivery around the world. I have a great deal of respect for both authors and their enormous contribution to U.S. international broadcasting over many decades. But I must sadly conclude that the overall solution they offer–centralization of USIB–is unworkable, dangerous and, also in my opinion, potentially extremely wasteful for U.S. taxpayers who would have to foot the bill for the central U.S. global media bureaucracy they propose.

I’m not surprised that these two very well-informed and well-meaning experts, formerly associated for decades with surrogate broadcasting, want to see a private U.S. global media organization. But they fail to answer the question how such an organization would be justified to Congress and American taxpayers and who on the outside would oversee how it is managed? The key question, however, is whom this central private institution would represent to foreign audiences? The United States? A private corporation? Its board of directors? Foreign journalists working for it abroad? We simply don’t know, and the two experts don’t tell us because neither they nor, more importantly, foreign audiences would be able to tell.

These key political questions need to be answered first, even before one looks at how a central U.S. international broadcasting bureaucracy would function and whether it would be able to produce better results and save money for U.S. taxpayers. I have no doubt that it would not do either and that the plan, if implemented, would produce even more brand confusion and ultimately less effectiveness, especially for the Voice of America, but for surrogate broadcasters as well. But the worst result would be the creation of a stifling central self-perpetuating bureaucracy accountable to no one, a bureaucracy–not unlike the current one but much larger and more powerful–that would continue to eliminate programs and programming jobs and expand its own ranks. If anyone thinks that the Jonhson and Parta plan is the answer to the current bureaucratic mess at USIB, they should think twice. It will make it far worse and there will be no one to stop it.

[aside]

Wilson Center Events

Roundtable Discussion on the Future of U.S. Global Media

February 12, 2013 // 3:30pm — 5:00pm

EVENT CO-SPONSORS:
Cold War International History Project

[/aside]

SURROGATES AND VOA: NEEDED, COMPLEMENTARY, NOT DUPLICATIVE

At least the current USIB set-up, far from perfect and in need of major reforms, still maintains some accountability and some difference between the Voice of America and surrogate broadcasters, although the status of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks is not at all clear, as it should be for the critical audience in the Muslim world. VOA still reports on behalf of the United States and helps to win understanding and hopefully support for U.S. policies and values. Surrogate broadcasters (foreign nationals) are still supported by American taxpayers because their independent reporting promotes free media and democracy in hostile and undemocratic nations, and thus enhances U.S. national security and economic wellbeing in the long-run. The authors claim that the dual mission is no longer necessary. Concerned members of Congress, human rights organizations, journalists working for USIB and foreign audiences in oppressed nations all disagree with this idea. It is, however, highly favored mostly by those who have little or no connection to the production of programs or the countries where these programs are most needed.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), the new Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, like many other members of Congress, is well aware of the differences between surrogate broadcasting and the VOA mission. As a senior member of the Committee, he has pushed for expanded and more effective international broadcasting. He authored both the Radio Free Asia Act of 1997, which significantly boosted broadcasting activities to China, North Korea, and other Asian countries with repressive governments; and the Radio Free Afghanistan Act of 2001, which now brings a voice of liberty, tolerance, and democracy to a region that was once dominated by the Taliban-run hate radio. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta argue that surrogate broadcasting has become largely outdated and VOA’s mission should be incorporated into a unified, global programming stream. Both ideas are misguided, both in terms of U.S. domestic politics and in practical terms of serving international audiences.

The two missions are different but complementary, but the authors and other critics wrongly describe them as duplicative. They are not. The two missions, both extremely important, cannot and should not be combined. If they are combined then Voice of America is no longer Voice of America and surrogate broadcasters are no longer surrogate broadcasters. The question then arises what are they and to whom are they accountable?

NEW TECHNOLOGY: COLD WAR OR INFORMATION WAR

The authors claim that in the 21st century and because of new technology, this question does not matter anymore. They are absolutely wrong. Brand identity remains extremely important, even more important for dealing with current threats to U.S. security and democracy around the world than in the 20th century. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton does not agree with the authors when she talks about the U.S. losing the information war and the U.S. not doing what it did effectively during the Cold War.

To discredit the current division between VOA and surrogate broadcasters, the authors make repeated references to the Cold War. Being in almost daily contact with many USIB journalists, I find it strange because many of them were not even born during the Cold War. They all know and use new media technologies, they know their audience, and if not interfered with by Washington planners, they know what to do without looking to any Cold War models.

Yes, the Cold War is over, but the war of ideas in many parts of the world is not. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta think that it is and that surrogate media can be replaced by a privatized U.S. global media conglomerate. “The two-pronged Cold War communications strategy of ‘telling America’s story’ (VOA) and providing a ‘surrogate free press focused on domestic issues’ (RFE and RL) is no longer relevant in the new international media environment,” Johnson and Parta wrote.

They, first of all, mischaracterized the true role of VOA, which was never only “telling America’s story,” and they mischaracterized the true role of surrogate broadcasters, which was also much broader. They are wrong that the need for surrogate broadcasters is gone, just as they are wrong about the special role for VOA. Former Secretary of State Clinton would agree.

There is nothing wrong with VOA doing some surrogate reporting and surrogate broadcasters doing some reporting from the United States (This is where some necessary duplication occurs.) as long as each is doing this from its own perspective, in its own name, for its own mission. Combining the two undermines brand-names and destroys program identity and effectiveness, which may be one of the problems with Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television in the Middle East. They lack a clear identity, which Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta think is no longer all that important in a new global world. On the contrary, because of so many competing sources of information, a clear identity is very important. For U.S.-funded broadcasters, there are only very few brand/identity/programming choices that can be made, but they must be made and made clear to the audience. They may, of course, be different for various parts of the world and even for individual countries. But they must be clear and clearly communicated.

The discredited BBG strategic plan and the Johnson-Parta plan try to blur these choices and push a single, global information strategy that will appeal to no one. Bureaucrats love anything generic and global that they can identify with and understand and to hire more people like themselves, they hate anything that requires specialized knowledge and cultural sensitivity. I am not accusing Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta of lacking expert knowledge or cultural sensitivity, far from it, but their plan will facilitate the growth of bureaucracy and the hiring of employees who, unlike the two experts, have little professional connection to understanding and serving disenfranchised foreign audiences. This has already happened at the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ (BBG) International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) and at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) under pressure from IBB. The Johnson-Parta plan with its emphasis on centralization would make it even worse. I have seen it happen and it will happen again unless USIB is protected by the BBG board or Congress from international media professionals’ worst enemy, the ever growing bureaucracy. It does not matter whether it is government or corporate bureaucracy.

The latter may be even worse for a publicly-funded institution that is supposed to serve an important public U.S. national security mission. If we are in an information war, as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says we are, do we really want to put journalists fighting this war at the mercy of corporate bureaucrats? It would be almost the same as privatizing the U.S. Army. Granted, as a journalistic organization, USIB must be independent, but it does not mean that it must be completely private. At the very least, it needs a public, bipartisan board appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, as it has now. But the board must be firmly in charge of the bureaucracy, not the other way around, as it is now. The best solution for that is to de-bureaucratize, whereas the Johnson-Parta plan offers the opposite–creation of a new, large central bureaucracy

BBG PLAN AND JOHNSON-PARTA PLAN ARE ALMOST IDENTICAL

It is indeed very arrogant and naive for bureaucrats sitting in Washington to think that news is the same news for everyone and that everyone has latest media gadgets and wants the same thing–generic global news. They have not experienced life under oppressive regimes and yet these central bureaucrats working for the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ International Broadcasting Bureau have already achieved much of what Johnson and Parta propose. They have already blurred the difference between VOA and surrogate broadcasters. They continue to marginalize the voice of journalists and experts at the Voice of America and the surrogate broadcasters by imposing on them their central ideas and plans. Seeing images of semi-naked women on RFE/RL websites and stories of romantic online adventures of American university professors suggests that centralization and globalization of content has already taken place and the results are not encouraging. (This was happening before Kevin Klose took over from Steven Korn.) VOA has not yet sunk that low, but it will if the same central IBB planners have their way.

It is important to keep in mind that the current IBB-produced five-year central plan is almost identical to the Johnson and Parta plan. This is exactly what would continue to happen under their centralization plan, although I’m sure they don’t think it would. It is inevitable. The only explanation I can think of for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta introducing their plan is that, in their view, anything would be better than the current BBG arrangement. I am not at all sure that they are right even on that point. At least there is now a political, bipartisan board which sometimes checks on its bureaucrats. This would be much more difficult to do under the Johnson-Parta plan, which envisions only a private broad.

ADVANTAGES OF SMALLER MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS

I’m surprised that these two experts who saw first-hand how a small, autonomous organization like RFE/RL became successful because of its previous relative independence, sharp mission-focus and expert staff are now advocating for a large, central bureaucracy, albeit private. This sudden love affair with central planning, central bureaucracy and perhaps even a central message is to say the least puzzling considering the history of RFE/RL and its successful opposition to such bureaucratic concepts promoted by ministries of propaganda in the Soviet Union and the rest of the Soviet Block. Granted, there are multiple sources of information now as the paper points out, but disinformation and propaganda from multiple sources offer an even greater challenge and require even more media specialization and expert knowledge.

It’s obvious that these experts, who, I suspect, have never worked directly for IBB or BBG, don’t really fully appreciate how large bureaucracies operate and expand for their own sake at the expense of programs, journalists, and area experts. By the way, the same process has happened in recent years at RFE/RL, although still to a smaller degree than at IBB/BBG. All of these organizations I was able to observe first-hand over many years.

The number of RFE/RL vice-presidents has grown from one to five and the number of non-programmers, consultants, program evaluators, technical specialists, advisors and administrators has multiplied. Authority and independence of service directors, once very extensive, has been diminished to almost nothing. These absolutely critical for the mission country experts and journalists are now at about the fifth or sixth level on the organizational chart. They were once some of the most important figures in U.S.-funded surrogate broadcasting who reported directly to RFE and RL directors. They now have to do what non-journalists who have never studied any of these countries tell them to do.

IBB PLANNERS ROLE IN RADIO LIBERTY CRISIS

But problems at RFE/RL are not the worst part. While the latest crisis and destruction of Radio Liberty’s reputation and effectiveness in Russia are being blamed on two or three former and some still employed RFE/RL managers, those of us who have followed these developments know very well that they were in fact implementing the central strategic plan devised in Washington by central bureaucrats who are neither experts on the RFE/RL broadcast area, with perhaps one exception, nor are they terribly astute. Granted, RFE/RL managers who were implementing this central plan were even less astute and less sensitive to local political cultures and values than even their IBB colleagues and enforcers of a global USIB vision.

Thus, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta don’t have to look very far how their central U.S. international broadcasting private corporation might work. The plan they propose is already being largely implemented at RFE/RL, and we all saw what happened with Radio Liberty in Russia in the last few months.

There have been protests from Russian democratic leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev, former Russian prime minister, former deputy prime minister and many other opposition figures. How ironic is it that Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lyudmila Alekseyeva felt compelled to expose human rights abuses by RFE/RL bosses? Yet, they were behaving and acting perfectly in line with bureaucratic commands and corporate culture of the IBB bureaucracy which already functions like a central private NGO bureaucracy. Even as Radio Liberty in Russia was disintegrating before our very own eyes, some IBB managers were trying to convince BBG members to publicly endorse discredited RFE/RL managers. Most BBG members wisely refused and later took action to remedy the situation.

PROBLEMS WITH PRIVATE CORPORATE CULTURE AT USIB

I am sure that Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta are as appalled at what happened at RFE/RL as I am. But why did it happen? Just ask rank and file BBG-employed journalists and contractors in Washington and they will confirm that the corporate culture imposed upon RFE/RL is the same as at the Voice of America, the IBB and the BBG. Nearly half of VOA employees are poorly paid and terribly exploited private contractors who can be dismissed at a moment’s notice. IBB managers, some of whom worked before for private Grantees, take great pride in how they are able to run a federal agency more and more like a private corporation. They don’t have any reason to feel proud. Foreign-born RFE/RL employees also have very few rights and face daily discrimination because of their national origin. None of these private sector management practices make USIB any better, they make it far worse. Central BBG structure in Washington and RFE/RL in Prague already operate largely as one private, extremely badly managed NGO. There is now almost no difference between the two. The Johnson and Parta centralization plan would make the current situation permanent and worse throughout USIB.

The point is that there is not much difference between a large central government bureaucracy and a large central NGO bureaucracy dependent solely on government largesse and working from a central plan developed by bureaucrats who treat journalists as second class citizens, don’t consult them and see them as expendable labor force. A private, U.S. taxpayer-funded corporation may be even more dangerous because it will have less public scrutiny, less transparency and less accountability. As dysfunctional as the BBG has become–largely because it allowed the IBB bureaucracy to operate without any supervision–it did at least correct the bureaucracy’s outrages at RFE/RL or the bureaucrats’ incredible plan to end VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet of all places in the name of “reducing duplication.” Regardless of what reforms are implemented, U.S. international broadcasting will always need an engaged, presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed public oversight board. To keep the bureaucrats in line, the chairman and co-chairman should have full-time positions to keep a close eye on how public funds are spent and what results are achieved.

JOHNSON-PARTA PLAN AND VOICE OF AMERICA

The two experts also, in my opinion, don’t understand at all the role of the Voice of America, having never worked there and not having worked extensively with media outlets abroad which are using VOA content. I have done both, and I have worked from the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague from 1995 to 2003 as a marketing manager on behalf of both VOA and RFE/RL. I can attest that VOA’s special status in Washington was what sold its programs. An NGO VOA would be no different from CNN International, Fox News and other American media outlets available internationally. VOA’s power has always been its association with the United States in the eyes of the audience. While the VOA Charter protects its editorial independence, VOA will not be taken seriously or be effective if it is privately-run and/or combined with other private but publicly funded U.S. global media outlets.

With all the other private U.S. international broadcasters out there already, VOA will never become like the BBC. It is just not part of the U.S. broadcasting tradition, there is not enough money to create another CNN-like VOA, it would duplicate CNN, and it would compete with it, and not very successfully. Nor is it possible now to create one single U.S. international broadcasting brand-name combining VOA and other U.S.-funded media. It would be so generic that it would be meaningless. BBG, Global News Network are names that mean very little to international audiences and will continue to mean very little no matter what kind of centralization plans are proposed. U.S. international broadcasting never had a global audience, but it had many separate local and regional audiences, mostly in foreign-language programming. The Johnson-Parta paper suggests in its title that there is “U.S. global media.” There may be if you count CNN. But even VOA English programs are able to attract a significant audience in only some parts of the world. U.S. international broadcasting was always targeting specific audiences in their native languages for specific reasons. USIB will never be like CNN or the BBC.

The bottom line is, you can’t combine the Voice of America with surrogate broadcasters because they are two completely different animals. One can have a discussion as to whether surrogate broadcasting or other surrogate programming is needed to some countries or not. (Why, for example, is RFE/RL still broadcasting in the Balkans? To avoid another U.S. military intervention? May be VOA would be now enough in that region.) But if the United States wants to communicate directly and effectively with the world on behalf of the American people, it can’t be done through surrogate media outlets or private media outlets.

That’s why I have always argued for keeping VOA and surrogate/private broadcasters separate. I want to be clear on one point. Despite my longtime former association with VOA, I am a big admirer and supporter of surrogate broadcasting. I absolutely agree that surrogate/private broadcasters were/are/can be extremely effective, in some cases much more effective than VOA for nations in crisis and those ruled by oppressive and authoritarian governments. That is because VOA cannot engage in the type of locally-anchored confrontational journalism that the expert surrogate media can and should do, especially if it operates from areas close to their audience. That’s where surrogate broadcasters have a clear advantage and that’s why they are still needed for countries like China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea and some countries in the Middle East. Their effectiveness is also not measured only by audience numbers because surrogate programming appeals primarily to the most oppressed and the most politically-minded individuals and groups whose activism empowered by information and commentary can bring these nations closer to democracy.

What VOA does best is not only to present the United States to foreign audiences but also to offer an American perspective on events in other countries in a highly authoritative and credible manner. It is incompressible for me, for example, that there is no longer a VOA Arabic service.

The two experts do not really answer the question how projecting America’s message to the world would work in a private corporation because it would not work without a separate Voice of America having a special status that is different from the other private U.S.-funded broadcasters, as it is now even under the current imperfect USIB structure.

CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY INCOMPATIBLE WITH EFFECTIVE USIB

But the greatest flaw of the Johnson and Parta plan is the assumption that a large central private bureaucracy would somehow result in U.S. international broadcasting being better managed and more effective. Having been associated with the success of autonomous administration and programming at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and perhaps having some experience in dealing with the International Broadcasting Bureau and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta should be avoiding the idea of a central bureaucracy, either government of private, like a plague.

I don’t doubt that they are well meaning and see their plan as a cure for government bureaucracy, but I’m afraid that they grossly underestimate its power having not been as close to it as I was. Unless, of course, they think that IBB, BBG, and RFE/RL bureaucracy would magically disappear if a new NGO superstructure is created. Not only it will not disappear, it will take it over and expand its hold on RFE/RL and other surrogates. Take it from someone who knows these entities, their history, their leadership, and how they operate. Don’t expect anything different and perhaps worse under the Johnson-Parta plan than what USIB already is.

The corporate culture of RFE/RL and that of the International Broadcasting Bureau are now very similar. Both have been corrupted by bureaucracy. Their culture would become the culture of any central, non-governmental bureaucracy proposed by the two experts. Keep in mind that this is also the strategic plan of IBB bureaucrats, whom BBG employees, most of them journalists, have rated consistently in the Office of Personnel Management surveys as being absolutely the worst managers in the federal government. Would anyone want to be associated with their plan for U.S. international broadcasting? Yet their plan and the plan proposed by Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta are almost identical.

[easychart type="vertbar" height="500" width="500" title="BBG Global Audience - No Progress Since 2008" groupnames="Global Audience in Millions" valuenames="2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012" group1values="140, 140, 155, 175, 171, 165, 187, 175"]

*BBG admits that it overestimated its global audience in 2011.

BBG’s unduplicated weekly audience (radio, TV, Internet) in 2012 was the same as in 2008 – 175 million. No progress since 2008*

BBG’s budget increased from $668 million in 2008 to $767 million in 2012. BBG spends about $100 million more in 2012 than in 2008 to reach the same audience.

The total world population has increased by about 300 million between 2008 and 2012 and now stands at about 7 billion.

The IBB bureaucracy has grown tremendously in the last several years, eliminated many programs and programming jobs at VOA and the surrogate broadcasters, has been getting larger and larger budgets from Congress almost each year–and yet BBG’s global audience has remained stagnant at about 175 million since 2008. It has not grown for several years despite increased spending by the bureaucrats–on themselves. Beware of what Washington bureaucrats want.

ALTERNATIVE REFORMS AND SOLUTIONS

Some program duplication between surrogate broadcasters and the Voice of America is unavoidable and necessary for attracting and keeping an audience, but it is the differences in missions that the U.S. Congress envisioned and created, and which are and will continue to be important.

If surrogate programming is no longer needed for some countries, the BBG board should terminate it and allocate the money to other services.

I have no major objections to combining all surrogate broadcasters into one administrative unit to achieve savings or to moving them to the National Endowment for Democracy or some other well-established and well-run NGO rather than creating a new one to be taken over by current IBB bureaucrats and an army of private consultants and contractors. Because the current establishment that made USIB dysfunctional wants this plan so badly, supporters of USIB and U.S. taxpayers should be extremely concerned and cautious.

I believe the Voice of America needs to maintain its special role and its independence. It should operate totally separately from the surrogate broadcasters, more completely on its own than even now, without interference from the IBB bureaucracy if any of it remains.

The International Broadcasting Bureau, the bureaucratic center within the BBG, should be abolished. It is nothing more than an overgrown central bureaucracy that is stifling U.S. international broadcasting and is largely responsible for BBG’s dysfunction. Most of its functions should be divided between surrogate broadcasters and VOA and the minimal rest kept directly within the BBG.

The BBG should be a very small, efficient, non-bureaucratic board rather than an full-blown agency, providing general oversight and perhaps some central technical support services, the less the better.

The bureaucracy of RFE/RL needs to be drastically reduced. Other surrogate broadcasters may also need some administrative reforms. I am not as familiar with them as I am with RFE/RL.

Congress should continue to provide separate budget allocations for surrogate broadcasters and for VOA. This will always be necessary because there will always be a strong push for centralization to transfer more resources and control from programs to bureaucrats who have proven themselves again and again to be incapable of running any kind of centrally-managed media organization, private or public.

Congress was right in creating both VOA and surrogate broadcasters. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta do not offer any proof that anything has changed except for program delivery technology, abundance of media sources, and perhaps the level of political and media suppression in some countries. If anything, this calls for less centralization and more specialization rather than more centralization and less specialization. I can understand and support Mr. Johnson’s and Mr. Parta’s desire to get more resources for U.S. international broadcasting, but the plan they have proposed would diminish rather than enhance effectiveness and would waste U.S. taxpayers’ money. I do not believe for a moment that if centralization leads to elimination of some redundant positions–and even that is not certain–many new ones will be soon created and the money will go not to programmers and programs but to more bureaucrats and consultants. I have seen this happen again and again within USIB, especially under the more recent, more private sector-oriented management model.

Having spent several decades working for international broadcasting in many positions as a journalist, manager, and marketing specialist and having observed the United States Information Agency (USIA), VOA, RFE/RL, IBB and BBG, I have learned that bigger has never been better for USIB, international audiences, and U.S. public diplomacy. Smaller, autonomous and specialized media organizations function and perform much better than those directed by a central bureaucracy, which USIB has already become. So instead of centralization envisioned by Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parta, I propose de-centralization and de-bureacratization, a strong and independent Voice of America, surrogate broadcasters where needed, and an engaged bipartisan BBG board providing strong oversight and insisting on accountability to Congress and American taxpayers.

Beware of a central, powerful bureaucracy of any kind for U.S. international broadcasting and be highly skeptical of claims that such a bureaucracy can deliver a large global audience.

February 7, 2013

CUSIB Statement on Recent BBG Developments

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org) has released the following statement in response to recent developments at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting extends our best wishes to Secretary of State John Kerry who has become the newest Member of the BBG. We trust that Secretary Kerry will remain mindful of the following concerns raised by outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Council on Foreign Relations, January 31, 2013, when she stated:

“We have basically abdicated in my view, the broadcast media.  I have tried and will continue from the outside to convince Congress and the others.  If we don’t have an up-to-date, modern, effective Broadcasting Board of Governors, we shouldn’t have one at all.”

CUSIB is hopeful that Secretary Kerry’s insight as a former Member of the U.S. Senate will help to reduce the central BBG bureaucracy that has grown beyond all measure at the expense of programming, reform the bureaucracy’s nerve center, the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), and provide the more agile, unbureaucratic BBG with new executive leadership and sufficient funding for its important media freedom mission.

We have warned repeatedly that a bigger central bureaucracy envisioned in the controversial strategic plan does not make a better and more efficient media organization. CUSIB is absolutely convinced that smaller and autonomous news and information/broadcasting units focused on their assigned regions and run by specialists can do a much better job of communicating with the world using traditional and new technologies, and at a much lower cost to American taxpayers, than a consolidated central media behemoth run by bureaucrats. Targeted programs and specialization are key ingredients of success in international broadcasting. They are not found in large bureaucracies.

We are also looking to Secretary Kerry’s leadership in returning to Radio Liberty experienced journalists who had been dismissed by the previous management of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Many, including this year’s Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lyudmila Alekseyeva, have called for their reinstatement. She and others have also called for RFE/RL’s return to what the new Acting President and CEO Kevin Klose calls “fact-based, quality, reliable, independent, verifiable journalism.”

CUSIB hopes that Kevin Klose and the BBG will settle overseas lawsuits brought against Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty by its discriminated foreign employees in Prague, an Armenian citizen Anna Karapetian, who is the mother of three minor children, and a Croatian national, Snjezana Pelivan. Their lawsuits in the Czech Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, respectively, are a result of using communist era laws to discriminate against foreign employees and deprive them of basic Czech labor law protections. These practices have been widely condemned by human rights leaders in the Czech Republic and in countries to which RFE/RL directs its programs.

In response to the January 2013 Report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), CUSIB remains determined to defend surrogate broadcasters and the Voice of America (VOA) at the same time. Both were clearly designed by Congress for very good reasons.

Surrogate broadcasters have a special role to play as an alternative to suppressed internal media and they can’t do the job of the Voice of America. By the same token, Congress created surrogate broadcasters because VOA cannot do their job. The Congress is right.

The GAO report does not authorize the International Broadcasting Bureau, an entity within the BBG, or the BBG, to change the Congressional intent to have both VOA and surrogate broadcasters. The GAO report simply says to keep an eye on uncensored news services to some countries, which in the opinion of Congress and in our view still need them both.

CUSIB remains ardently opposed to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) January 2013 Report attacking the authority of the BBG and the tremendous efforts of BBG Governor Ambassador Victor Ashe who has made the agency relevant by insisting upon its adherence to its mission and good management. CUSIB supports the BBG employee union’s strong defense of Ambassador Ashe’s campaign to improve working conditions, employee morale and managerial accountability. We support the request by AFGE Local 1812 for a Congressional investigation to be conducted “to determine who was involved in this misuse of the Office of Inspector General and to prevent this from ever happening again.”

CUSIB congratulates BBG Governors Victor Ashe, Susan McCue, Michael Lynton, Michael Meehan and Dennis Mulhaupt, as well as Under Secretary Tara Sonenshine, for their recent efforts for better management and greater transparency, and we extend our best wishes to Kevin Klose as he serves as Acting President and CEO at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

For further information, please contact:


Ann Noonan, co-founder and Executive Director

Tel. 646-251-6069

Ted Lipien, co-founder and Director

Tel. 415-793-1642


You may also email us at: contact@cusib.org.

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) is a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization working to strengthen free flow of uncensored news from the United States to countries with restricted and developing media environments.

With the publication of this FoxNews.com article, “Clinton pushes for more broadcasting of pro-US message, raising questions about agency’s mission,” we are starting a new discussion on the future of U.S. international broadcasting and the federal agency in charge of these broadcasts, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

The most important thing is to know what exactly Secretary Clinton said in her Congressional testimony and to realize that she was not clear or very specific on at least one point. She made several significant comments, which we will highlight after presenting her full statement.

SECRETARY CLINTON: “And finally, we need to do a better job conveying a counter-narrative to the extremist Jihadist narrative. You know, I’ve said this to this Committee before — a lot of new members on it — you know, we have abdicated the broadcasting arena. You know, yes, we have private stations: CNN, Fox, NBC, all of that. They are out there, they convey information, but we’re not doing what we did during the Cold War. Our Broadcasting Board of Governors is practically defunct in terms of its capacity to be able to tell a message around the world. So we’re abdicating the ideological arena, and we need to get back into it. We have the best values. We have the best narrative. Most people in the world just want to have a good decent life that is supported by a good decent job and raise their families and we’re letting the Jihadist narrative fill a void. We have to get in there and compete and we can do it successfully.”

The most important points are:

1. We have abdicated the broadcasting arena.

5. We’re abdicating the ideological arena, and we need to get back into it.

In a Congressional testimony last year, Secretary Clinton also made these points:

1. We are in an information war. And we are losing that war.

4. So even though we’re pushing online, we can’t forget TV and radio.

Some of these points are quite clear, others are not. Secretary Clinton believes that most people get their news from TV and radio and that while online expansion is important, TV and radio must not be neglected.

This point is quite clear, but BBG’s central strategic planners do not agree with her.

We can also assume from the “information war,” “abdicating ideological arena,” and “the U.S. not doing what it did during the Cold War” comments that Secretary Clinton believes in U.S. international broadcasting that in addition to news also includes analyses and commentaries and carries an ideological message of some kind.

BBG’s central strategic planners do not agree with her on that point either.

They prefer global English-language originated news programs because they lack foreign language skills and specialized knowledge of foreign cultures to make it possible for them to evaluate more complex programs that include analyses, commentaries, or even political satire. Coming from the U.S. journalistic tradition, they don’t appreciate biting commentary. Having never experienced repression, they don’t see much need for commentaries and ideas. They see it as propaganda.

BBG’s central strategic planners have also been pushing instead “fluff journalism” that is better done online and does not require a lot of specialized knowledge of foreign cultures.

“Fluff journalism” is more tolerated by repressive regimes and therefore easier to market. It helps to increase audience size through local placement. Many of BBG’s central planners, managers, and consultants come from U.S. commercial media. Easy to place programs is something they understand.

BBG executives also find it much easier to produce and control what they are familiar with. Their numbers have been growing while foreign language programs and specialists who produce them are disappearing from U.S. international broadcasting at an alarming rate.

“We have abdicated the broadcasting arena” point is also quite clear. BBG’s central strategic planners have been slashing broadcasts and promoting Internet-based programming.

Secretary of State, however, was not specific what she meant by her “BBG is practically defunct in terms of its capacity to be able to tell a message around the world” comment. It’s clear that she thinks that the BBG is not delivering a message. What is not clear is what she believes is causing this:

1. Waste and mismanagement.

5. All of the above.

Contrary to the Foxnews.com report, BBG members do not disagree with Secretary Clinton’s statement, although many of their senior staffers and strategic planners do disagree with her on most of the points she made.

It is the senior staff that argues that if the BBG is “defunct” or “dysfunctional,” it is not because of them, but because the Board did not implement their plans previously agreed to by most BBG members. They want more authority for themselves and less interference from Board members who disagree with them.

Secretary Clinton is an ex officio BBG member. It is not likely she would be criticizing her own role in overseeing U.S. international broadcasting. It’s more likely she does not like how the agency is managed by the senior executive staff who reports to the BBG’s International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) headed by Richard Lobo, another presidential appointee.

She may not agree with the strategic plan that the executive staff is pushing. She may be in favor of stronger and independent surrogate broadcasting, which the executive staff wants to bring under central control.

She may be opposed to cuts in broadcasting pushed through by IBB executives. She may have been appalled by waste and mismanagement and by the public diplomacy crisis created in Russia by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty executives who lacked journalistic, political and cultural sensitivity.

She may want more funding for U.S. international broadcasting.

Unlike Secretary Clinton, most Secretaries of State have treated the Broadcasting Board of Governors as an orphan. No Secrretary has ever attended a BBG Board meeting of which they are a member or attended any meeting for BBG grantee broadcasters like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty or Radio Free Asia. It would make a big statement if future Secretary Kerry actually attended just one meeting or attended a couple of times a year.

Secretary Clinton did meet twice with the Board in her office in scripted sessions, but at least she met other BBG members. She deserves credit for that, as does the Board for asking. Both meetings were requested by the BBG.

Under Secretaries who attend BBG and grantee meetings have varied in their interest. The current Under Secretary of State Tara Sonenshine is good when she is there, which is about 70% of the time for the grantees and 90% for the BBG Board. Her attendance and participation should be rated as the best of the last four Under Secretaries by far.

However in the two and a half years the current Board has been there since June 30, 2010, there have been four different representatives from the State Department. McHale and Sonenshine had the longest association with the Board. There were two others during the interim between McHale and Sonenshine. Again this is not anyone’s fault, as McHale resigned and confirmation for Sonenshine took months.

The Board needs an engaged Secretary of State and this is one of many challenges facing Secretary-to-be Kerry.

We present here our additional commentaries and those we received from outside experts and contributors. Please check this post for additional interesting comments which we will post as we receive them.

The bottom line is that the BBG’s International Broadcasting Bureau executive staff wants more centralization, less specialization, more global programming, less broadcasting, more online content, “fluff journalism” and more central control over surrogate broadcasting, and definitely less ideological content. It is all part of the BBG’s five-year strategic plan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants something different, but she is, of course, on her way out. It would be interesting to see what Secretary-to-be John Kerry wants from U.S. international broadcasting. We suspect it will not be different from what Secretary Clinton wants. They are both politicians who understand U.S. domestic and foreign public opinion. The BBG executive staffers do not.

BBG Watch

Secretary Clinton also said that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting of which she is an ex officio member, “is practically defunct in terms of its capacity to be able to tell a message around the world.”

In an earlier Congressional testimony, Secretary Clinton said, “We are in an information war. And we are losing that war.”

Did she mean that the BBG does not have enough money, is mismanaged, or both?

Probably both.

In terms of mismanagement, what Secretary Clinton may have been referring to are not just members of the BBG Board, on which she also serves ex officio, but primarily the management team, now led by the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) Director Richard Lobo, a presidential appointee.

This group of Washington bureaucrats has been reducing U.S. international broadcasting to many parts of the world for many years — although not to the Middle East. They have been moving resources from radio and television broadcasting to Internet-based programming, which has to compete with millions of news websites and blogs around the world.

There is nothing wrong with expanding and enhancing online presence, but in most cases it should not be done at the expense of broadcasting. Finding the right balance requires having an outstanding management team that values the expertise of journalists from various nations working for the BBG and knows how to use it in a joint effort to build and expand audiences.

The IBB management team, however, has been pushing the plan of raiding and eliminating broadcasting services despite objections from Secretary Clinton, some of the other BBG members, BBG’s own journalists, and many outside experts. The team has been rated in the Office of Personnel Management employee viewpoint surveys as having the worst managers in the entire Federal Government.

In fairness to some of them, however, some of BBG’s previous and even a few current members also have favored the plan of reducing broadcasts and substituting them with Internet-only program delivery. One IBB senior staffer told BBG Watch that many of the staff decisions had been forced upon them by various BBG boards.

Inside and outside critics charge that it is necessary and possible to keep and expand broadcasting while supplementing it with successful online programming at a much lower cost and without destroying broadcasting.

IBB senior executives argue that they can’t do it with existing resources. Yet, they keep expanding their own bureaucracy. Their solution to creating new non-programming jobs for themselves and their associates has been to propose terminating Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts to countries such as Russia, China, and Tibet and to fire journalists and experts in foreign languages and cultures.

The BBG/IBB team succeeded in ending VOA broadcasting to Russia in 2008 despite opposition in Congress, but pressure from Congress and media freedom NGOs prevented IBB executives from carrying out their plan to end VOA radio and television broadcasts to China in 2011 and VOA radio to Tibet in 2012. They have not managed to increase audience size for the last few years despite being granted increasing budgets and giving themselves large outstanding performance bonuses.

Their latest plan, which BBG members are now questioning, was to replace much of Radio Liberty broadcasting to Russia with softer online journalism, which the Kremlin may find easier to tolerate. According to media reports, the BBG asked for the resignation of RFE/RL president Steven Korn who had proposed this plan. He denies that he has been fired.

The Russian government has severely limited in-country broadcasting of U.S. government-funded news and information programs from Radio Liberty, but options for satellite radio and television, cross-border medium wave (AM) broadcasts, online broadcasts of audio and video, YouTube video, UStream, Google Hangout, Facebook and other social media venues still exist.

Several current BBG members have been trying to revive U.S. international broadcasting but are meeting with strong opposition from the IBB executive staff. IBB senior staffers are believed to be behind attempts to besmirch the reputation of Ambassador Victor Ashe and Michael Meehan, two BBG members who are the strongest supporters of broadcasting. The senior executive staffs attacks on Board members and their authority made it into the Office of the Inspector General report on the BBG, which the BBG employee union condemned as a “hatchet job” and came to Ashe’s defense as a champion of improving employee morale and exposing waste.

Another current BBG member Susan McCue has taken a lead in efforts to reform the International Broadcasting Bureau bureaucracy and the management of BBG’s surrogate broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Jeff Shell, President Obama’s nominee to be the next BBG chairman, may have his own ideas on how to reform the BBG/IBB bureaucracy if he is confirmed by the Senate.

In an earlier Congressional testimony in March 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

 

“So we are in an information war. And we are losing that war. I’ll be very blunt in my assessment. Al-Jazeera is winning. The Chinese have opened up a global English-language and multi-language television network. The Russians have opened up an English-language network. I’ve seen it in a few countries, and it’s quite instructive.”

 

Secretary Clinton also said in her testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on March 2, 2011 that international broadcasting remains important in addition to efforts to expand online presence.

“Because most people still get their news from TV and radio. So even though we’re pushing online, we can’t forget TV and radio.”

Secretary Clinton’s testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, March 2, 2011.

Although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not elaborate on specific reasons behind her latest statements in Congress this week that the U.S. has abdicated the international broadcasting arena and that the Broadcasting Board of Governors is “defunct,” the BBG would definitely need additional funding to expand radio and television broadcasting, even if it managed to get rid of some of its unproductive bureaucratic infrastructure.

Such funding could also pay for more cross-border broadcasting, satellite delivery, and local rebroadcasting where local program placement that can greatly expand audience reach is possible without compromising the integrity of the news content due to pressures from foreign governments and station owners.

 

 

Jonathan Marks

jonathanmarks.com

Submitted on 2013/01/26 at 12:50 pm

I have a different interpretation of what Hilary Clinton is saying. I think she means that USIB hasn’t adapted to a more effective way of sharing America’s ideas and ideals with an important audience that is increasingly persuaded by America’s foes. If the Taliban had started a shortwave radio station, instead of using Youtube or selected TV stations, the world would be a lot safer today.

The challenge facing international broadcasters is that audience habits are changing. There are only around 8 countries in the world where shortwave broadcasting still makes economic sense as a way of sharing ideas with a significant audience. For the rest, and that includes China and Russia, the way to reach opinion formers has to be a hybrid mix of TV and web/mobile platforms.

VOA and RFE/RL/RFA have a proud radio legacy with linear audio storytelling. But its now in a context that is not easy to share with others. USIB hasn’t found the format/platform combination that attracts significant audiences in these countries. So although its still easy to shout across the border, if the audience isn’t on that platform, audiences only spiral downward.

The challenge is that many of these global broadcast systems were designed when oil was 50 dollars a barrel. The problem with international radio is that the audience research is only ever about numbers. I have never seen a discussion of how the audience trends could be used to make more effective, inclusive discussions in target countries. BBG meetings have always focussed on distribution arguments, with various stations justifying a new campaign or programme often by the number of reactions. I would use the word defunct.

Various experiments have been tried by USIB with “new media”, like VOACongoStory. From the outside, they look to have failed to create a sustained discussion. 10 people ‘talking about it” on the Facebook, and a couple of hundred views for the majority of videos on the site. Yet, successes like Parazit are quietly forgotten when, for what ever reason, the creative team disbands. Parazit had 17 million visits a month in its heyday.

But when new media experiments fail, the tendency is to resort to the analogue shortwave radio with the idea that this tried and tested medium has simply been neglected, understaffed or misunderstood. No. It’s gone away. It’s not coming back because no-one knows it is there – and the levels of interference from computers and light bulbs in most cities means the reception is awful. And people in radio (in general) don’t understand video storytelling.

Commercial stations are set up to deliver audiences to advertisers. When the audience is far away and scattered that becomes an expensive proposition to prove they are really there. Commercial international radio worked until the early 1990′s (SLBC, Radio Luxembourg). But they’re history. Commercial international TV has always been a tiny niche. It’s cheap TV, talking heads for the most part. Thank goodness US taxpayers don’t have to fund it. But they are funding VOA, Radio Marti, RFE, RFA, Al Hurra, etc. No-one dares to do the calculation of what you could do with half the funding produced by one coherent, independent entity.

America has some of the finest stories to share with the world. I find brilliant, worldclass stories on TED.com, FORA.TV, and some of the YouTube and Vimeo channels. I enjoy the discussions I have with those who write, create or produce these productions. My problem with USIB is that they are still in the shouting business. And the audience they are trying to persuade ignores people who shout.

BBG Watch

usgbroadcasts.com/bbgwatch

Submitted on 2013/01/27 at 2:08 am

Journalists write but sometimes they don’t read, or they repeat inaccurately what other people have said.

We don’t disagree with Mr. Marks on anything he proposes, with the one exception of his idea of a centralized USG-funded media entity, but where did he read that Mrs. Clinton meant something else than what she actually said? Or where did he come up with the idea that when we say “broadcasting,” we must be retrograde supporters of nothing but shortwave radio? Did he even read our commentary? We did not mention “shortwave” even once, and here Mr. Marks is obsessing about shortwave, which is not the solution we propose, although it may be part of it to some areas of the world. Ours is a comprehensive, multimedia solution, not unlike the one Mr. Marks seems to favor but with some different institutional arrangements, which we believe are more suitable for the United States.

When we say “broadcasting,” and we assume when Mrs. Clinton says “broadcasting,” we both mean a serious journalistic enterprise, using radio, television, satellite television, and online broadcasting, accompanied by an extensive online and social media presence. She also talked about not abdicating the ideological arena, something Mr. Marks may have not noticed, but which confirms our understanding of what the American political system wants and is willing to pay for. Mrs. Clinton’s comments reflect that political understanding.

There is absolutely no disagreement between us and Mr. Marks on using digital media other than his failure to read carefully our commentary and his eagerness to put words in Mrs. Clinton’s mouth. Mrs. Clinton clearly said that while social media is important, we should not forget about “broadcasting.” We said the same thing. Mr. Marks is arguing against an argument that no one has made.

We do disagree, however, with Mr. Mark’s “one coherent, independent entity” idea because it will not work in the United States.

Mr. Marks is no doubt sincerely convinced of the benefits of his idea, but he may not know enough about U.S. international broadcasting history, U.S. broadcasting tradition, U.S. broadcasting legislation, and current BBG efforts to implement a solution similar to what he is proposing.

Let us explain.

Mrs. Clinton pointed out that there is already CNN and other commercial American media outlets broadcasting internationally, which limits the role of the Voice of America or any other central entity, because U.S. legislation does not allow VOA to compete with commercial broadcasters.

The reason for establishing Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Alhurra was to allow for independence, specialization and effectiveness within the American government and political context that “one coherent” entity like the Voice of America could not provide. The U.S. Congress, which understands how the U.S. government and political process work here, saw it clearly when it established the so-called surrogate broadcasters to operate alongside VOA.

What makes Mr. Marks think that what was not possible or desirable before would suddenly work in the United States if only “one coherent, independent entity” were created?

We can claim that we are much closer to U.S. international broadcasting that Mr. Marks has been. Centralization and bureaucratization of U.S. international broadcasting now is much advanced than it was even several years ago, and the results have not been good, as noted by Mrs. Clinton.

If one, even bigger central bureaucracy were to operate U.S. international broadcasting, it would be an even greater disaster. Centralization is not the solution here because it would inevitably lead to more bureaucratization and less specialization. In international broadcasting, specialization and targeting an audience are critical, especially under the U.S. model. The U.S. never had one global audience like the BBC has. It always had many separate foreign audiences, even for its English-language programs, as in Africa.

Despite of this, there has been an ongoing aggressive attempt at centralization and central planning by BBG bureaucrats. Mrs. Clinton called the BBG defunct. But the BBG executive staff has already been doing exactly what Mr. Marks is proposing. They have been pushing for centralization and managed to achieve some of their goals, but they did not increase the global audience for the last several years despite large increases in their central budget.

We assume that perhaps Mr. Marks may not be familiar enough with the U.S. federal government bureaucracy or independent (public) bureaucracies that rely on U.S. government grants. USIB is not the BBC or Radio Netherlands and it will never be such because the United States is politically different from Europe. The U.S. Congress plays a key role and has a lot to say about U.S. international broadcasting. And it is a good thing, because central bureaucracies in America don’t work well, especially for U.S. international broadcasting in foreign languages.

In moving toward the “one coherent entity” model, BBG bureaucrats eliminated many foreign language programs, especially at the Voice of America, and limited or tried to limit program delivery options for others. Specialists, journalists and broadcasters have been fired en masse and replaced with program advisors, program evaluators, program coordinators, and other non-programmers, consultants and contractors. BBG executives did not revive “Parazit,” a successful satire TV show to Iran, but are instead wasting money on far less successful ventures. Here we fully agree with Mr. Marks. They don’t know what they’re doing and what combination of media and program delivery to use. We agree with Mr. Marks that they are wasting U.S. taxpayers money, but we do not agree with him on one of his solutions — centralization of U.S. international broadcasting.

So rather than giving these bureaucrats even more power under a “one coherent entity” model, we favor a completely decentralized model, where foreign language broadcasters specialize in what they do best, and Voice of America does its own thing. BBG should be a very small non-bureaucratic support agency. The money currently wasted there should be allocated to various broadcasters. They should be evaluated on the results they get and reformed if necessary.

It’s also important to keep in mind that audience size is not always the only measure of effectiveness, especially in countries that severely limit program distribution options. The idea that one central plan, one central bureaucracy, one central program can actually change anything for the better in this respect is pure fiction, unless central planners decide that “fluff journalism” is better because it does not annoy authoritarian governments and allows for local program distribution (always much more effective in getting a large audience), which otherwise these governments would not allow. But “fluff journalism” including American “fluff journalism” is already allowed in countries like China and Russia and would simply compete there with programs from U.S. commercial broadcasters like National Geographic and others.

What centralization would do is to take resources from successful specialized programs and put them in the hands of bureaucrats. They in turn will hire more program consultants and when the money runs out fire more journalists and broadcasters. BBG bureaucrats have been doing it already for many years.

Rather than to centralize, USIB should decentralize and utilize all programming and media delivery option that work for individual countries and regions. Regional specialists know far better what works and doesn’t work than central bureaucrats. They also know far more about digital media in their countries and know how to use it.

Anonymous

All of this discussion is quite interesting. Here is the bottom line: in recent years we have seen the CNNization of VOA and USIB structure, pushed along by a group of former CNN people, in some cases castoffs from that and other networks, who thought they would be able to turn the BBG broadcasters into one, or many CNN’s. One problem — the money just isn’t there. It won’t be there either, because of the decisions the White House, Congress, federal government agencies, and people will have to make on deficit reduction. Big questions need to be asked. Does the United States really need an agency that for years has been shown to be the most mis-managed entity in the federal bureaucracy? Where is the evidence that its operations have really helped turn back anti-Americanism in the Muslim world and the other remaining areas BBG directs its programming to? Many Americans would, at this point, ask the hard question — why are we continuing to spend $700 million a year on this, billions over a multi-year period, when programming and Internet material already exists, and is expanding, from non-government entities?

Keith Perron

http://www.pcjmedia.com

Since the Berlin wall came done in 1989, most international broadcasters started asking the question: What do we do now?

From what I have seen after living for many years in Asia and the Pacific broadcasters gave up to quickly on shortwave. While it’s nice to talk about new digital platforms, but from my experience these platforms are not fool-proof. Every time while I was in China and asked to meet some broadcasters who had come to China to meet their audience it was the same thing over and over. They only went to the major centers like Beijing of Shanghai. These were never a big audience for international broadcasters and only account for less 20% of the 1.3 billion population.

If you travel outside these areas finding people with radio that have the HF bands and people that listen it very easy. The idea of cutting Chinese on shortwave to China is just as stupid as cutting shortwave to the Soviet Union would have been.

Shortwave as a broadcast platform has not gone away. Yes, I agree it has changed in parts of the world. But even the Australians still use shortwave to reach parts of Australia.

The problem, I strongly believe, is that the medium is not understood. Many time over the past 6 years I have sent out invitations to management of some stations to come with me to China for 6 months and they will see for themselves. But you know what, they are not interested. I would never invite them if I knew there was a chance I would be wrong. But I know I am 100% right.

There are some among international broadcasters who would rather do away with shortwave because they don’t understand it or the audience. And they only see the urban audience which is connected by the internet.

Back in March last year I spent an afternoon to visit a friend who works for VOA Music Mix. While we were in the studio I was introduced to (won’t say name) whose job was to digitize all content from VOA. While we were hanging out in the studio, he got into a debate with my friend after he said he wanted to cut shortwave to India. His show has a large amount of mail from India that comes from those who listen on shortwave. Way more than to those who listen online, which is tiny. But this guy from what I could tell never went to these places like India.

Jonathan mentioned that TV, web and mobile platforms would better suit China and Russia. Now I can’t speak for Russia, but for China it does not work. TV, how would people see it? From the web? It will be blocked. Mobile? Same applies. It will be blocked.

If international broadcasters want to know who listens to shortwave in China, they need to go in and find out for themselves. But then there is the problem that they will be accompanied by officials, so when you talk to people they won’t be very open. Just as it was in the USSR.

If shortwave had no audience in China, the Chinese would not bother jamming RFA, VOA and others. They jam these broadcasts because they know people are listening.

On the very popular WEIBO blog in China (if you speak Chinese and know what to look for) you will find thousands of posts that include frequencies, times and things to do to get around jamming. You need to look for it because the people that posts these need to use language that will get around the censors so the posts are not taken down.

When I was in Tibet in 2006 and 2007 I was taken to meet a monk who had hand written copies of VOA, RFA and VOT programs schedules. I asked him where he got them. He responded they are circulated through underground channels. I have met many people who today make copies of broadcasts and dub the tapes and pass them around. You won’t find this in Beijing or Shanghai. In Cuba you will find the same. In North Korea you will also find the same. These are just a few examples.

From 2001 to 2007 I lived in China gathering this kind of data. But every time I spoke to international broadcasters and wanted to give them this data that took me years to put together from traveling around China, they just were not interested. I think the reason they don’t understand it is because they don’t know what shortwave is.

All they do is see it as a technology that goes back 100 years. As I have said many times before. If shortwave have been invented in the last 10 years, governments would be excited about it. While the Internet and other technologies have the gate keeper effect, shortwave does not. Even with jamming, shortwave does and still get through and people listen.

Some of those who live in the digital world then use the argument sound quality is bad. This is also incorrect. If it’s engineered right, it can have excellent sound. When people want information and content they will do anything even listen through the static.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

A staff run amok

So, it’s been a while since I’ve chimed in here but you’ve been doing a fabulous job on the whole RFE/RL Steve Korn mess.  Your relentless reports have helped save Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty!  Great job on that.

Now–the OIG report.

 Apparently facts are no longer of any interest to an investigation.  “Perceptions” are all that matters. This report reeks of a staff run amok and  gullible, lazy investigators. All confidence in any OIG investigation has been lost.  The “one governor” has been treated with the utmost disrespect by the staff from the beginning of his selfless service  trying to “fix the BBG”.  The staff has been openly hostile and rude to him–just take a look at the early open meetings when he was still trying to work with them. At least two of the other governors were complicit in allowing the staff to treat a Board member in this way. Those two governors, by the way were openly hostile to others–mostly women.  That  single governor has tried to help fix the “worst place in the government to work”. He has remedied a situation where contractors were required to wait sometimes 6 months to get paid. He was the first to question the Gallup contract.  He was the first to point out the problems with the Deloitte contract.  He was the first to point out the problem with the Board delegating all their duties to the IBB Director as the IBB Director did not report to the Board. He is the only lawyer on the Board and was able to identify issues that were being glossed over by the deputy general counsel or where the “counsel” was obviously lacking.  He has listened to complaints that have festered for years. Mostly, he has been genuinely interested in the mission and helping those responsible for the mission get what they needed. He is a true asset to International Broadcasting as well as a true gentleman!

 Since this was not always what the staff wanted, the witch hunt was launched! The OIG complied.

 The staff would like to remind the Board that the staff will be there long after the Board is gone.

 Just a perception.

The union sees the current proposal of a CEO who would not be accountable to Congress as a power grab on the part of the BBG’s International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) senior executives who are accused by rank and file employees and outside critics of making the agency dysfunctional. IBB executives have been rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) surveys as the worst managers in the Federal Government.

The union and most rank and file employees believe that the IBB senior staff has brought the BBG to the brink of disaster by ignoring the Board and the agency’s employees. The union also believes that the Board shares the blame for keeping the worst Federal Government managers in charge of U.S. international broadcasting.

The union also comes to the defense of BBG member Ambassador Victor Ashe, whom they describe as “the only member who really cares enough about how this place operates that he reaches out to employees directly. He actually communicates with the unions to find out what we believe are the problems that have lead to the BBG being identified as the ‘worse place in government to work.’”

It is widely believed that IBB executives were responsible for feeding their own negative opinions about Ambassador Ashe to OIG inspectors because he tried to hold senior managers responsible for their mistakes and highlighted examples of waste and mismanagement.

An Argument Against a CEO

by American Federation of Government Employees, Local 1812

The latest report from the State Department’s Office of Inspector General paints an extremely dark and gloomy picture of the part-time Broadcasting Board of Governors by calling it “dysfunctional.”
AFGE Local 1812 called the report a “Hatchet Job” because it singles out and impugns the integrity and dedication of Board Member Victor Ashe. He is probably the only member who really cares enough about how this place operates that he reaches out to employees directly. He actually communicates with the unions to find out what we believe are the problems that have lead to the BBG being identified as the “worse place in government to work.”

The Washington Post (Al Kamen and Joe Davidson) ran with the story along with the Daily News in New York, Radio World and BBG Watch among others.

When your Union officers go to Capitol Hill and point out these problems to lawmakers who have the power and authority to do something, we get very similar responses. “Yes, we would like to fix the problem, but where do we begin?”

The OIG thinks the solution is to create a full-time CEO who would run the day-to-day operations of the dysfunctional BBG.

AFGE Local 1812 thinks not! In the private sector, a good CEO produces a well-run organization and is responsible to a Board of Directors and can be removed. If the BBG had a CEO to run everything, that person would probably, on paper, be accountable to the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The BBG (a board that, as the Washington Post’s Davidson has written, is beyond hope) has seemingly acted as nothing more than a rubber stamp for the senior management officials here and would therefore more than likely give them through the CEO free rein to do as they please without having a Board to prevent some of the most egregious mistakes. In addition the CEO would no doubt end up being one of the senior management officials or someone they prefer.

The title also smacks of the desire to privatize the entire operation allowing it to function without any Congressional oversight. We do agree that a part-time Board simply cannot run this organization. Someone needs to have the authority to make final decisions and also needs to be here on a fulltime basis.

What this operation really needs is an Agency Director, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate as well as a change in the law that created this monster: the International Broadcasting Act of 1994. Ostensibly, that law created a fire-wall that was meant to prevent government (particularly the State Department) interference in the mission of the BBG and the Voice of America so that the broadcasts could remain journalistically sound. However, the senior executive staff has used this provision to justify ignoring congressional inquiries. A Director would be accountable to Congress, the overseer of the taxpayer’s money, in open hearings where tough questions should be asked and management would be required to answer honestly under oath.

We have seen many letters from the BBG to members of Congress which say, in effect, you are sticking your nose in our business and that’s a violation of the separation of powers. We are part of the executive branch and you are part of the legislative branch. The BBG hides behind the law ostensibly because they fear that Congress might interfere with the editorial integrity of the professional staff – the grunts – who work tirelessly to produce its world caliber product. What they use as a shield is really an excuse to do as they please and destroy what has been a credible source of information since World War II.

Why shouldn’t Congress keep a close watch on this $725 million conglomeration of organizations (VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Network)? Because, we know from listening to a few upper, mid and lower-level managers, the BBG is scared to death of having to admit they are unable to manage effectively.
Change the law and bring U.S. International Broadcasting under the watchful and, we would hope, critical eye of lawmakers. Demand that an Agency Director go before the Senate for confirmation hearings and allow Congress to hold periodic hearings to determine if the Agency Director is doing his/her job by making sure that the Agency entities perform according to their various Charters.

The power of the purse can be a mighty powerful incentive to keep the operations it oversees from running amuck.

One glaring example of a debacle that may have been averted with the proper oversight is the recent situation that occurred at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty when the now former head of that grantee fired en-masse the Russian staff in Moscow for no journalistically plausible reason. There is speculation that it was done in order to please Russian President Putin. The same type of speculation followed the attempted elimination of the VOA Chinese broadcasts to China immediately after the Chinese premier visited Washington, D.C. Some employees worry that the broadcasts are being used as pawns in some sort of foreign policy political game.

The problems are not with the employees but with the various agendas including those among the senior executive staff who, through budget allocations, have forced the in-fighting among VOA/ OCB -the federal entities – and the surrogates.

VOA has 75 percent of the audience of all U.S. International Broadcasting but gets only 25 percent of the total BBG budget. The grantees look at the big, fat pile of money and want more at the expense of VOA. Yet, they don’t produce the results.

VOA must report where it spends its money to Congress and must notify Congress when it plans on making changes in programming or operations. The surrogates take the money and run and give little explanation of how they spend it.

It’s no wonder lawmakers are so confused. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok) has called this place “The most worthless organization in the federal government.”

Something is terribly wrong with this picture and we urge Congress, in the strongest possible terms, to gain some control over this “dysfunctional” organization.

As representatives of nearly 900 employees at VOA, the Greenville, N.C. Relay Station and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, we think this is the best solution.

BBG's Bruce Sherman, Director, Office of Strategy and Development, speaking to empty chairs

Broadcasting Board of Governors Information War Lost: A Thousand Words in a Picture
by The Federalist

(We are also reminded of a Rod Stewart album from years ago, “Every Picture Tells a Story.”  This is the story we see in this picture.)

Once again, the Broadcasting Board of Governors/International Broadcasting Bureau (BBG/IBB) provides us with another gift.

Below is a BBG/IBB press release dated November 8, 2012: “In Zimbabwe, Satellite Dishes Are Widespread And New Media Are Growing Rapidly.”

Please note the photo accompanying the press release.  It plays an important role in this commentary.

Pictured are two unidentified women and Bruce Sherman of the IBB, the point man for the agency’s “flim flam strategic plan.”

Mr. Sherman doesn’t make the picture.  What does is a row of empty chairs across the front of the room for one of Mr. Sherman’s well known PowerPoint presentations, the accompaniment to his monologue narrative.

One of the first rules of press release pictures: never show a room with empty chairs.  It conveys an impression:

Lack of interest.

Apparently, there isn’t a whole lot of interest in the subject matter: “In Zimbabwe, Satellite Dishes Are Widespread And New Media Are Growing Rapidly.”

Second rule of press releases: timing.  What are Americans interested in right now?  The answer is pretty simple: the recent national election, the possibility of a whole lot of serious economic repercussions arising from a potential government budget sequestration, the destruction brought to the northeast United States from Hurricane Sandy.  They’re not much interested in the BBG/IBB’s latest press release, something disconnected from the daily realities confronting American citizens.

But there are things which we need to make note of:

BBG/IBB Research

This presentation by Mr. Sherman is in conjunction with the Gallup polling organization.  You will note that the BBG/IBB let a contract for $50 million dollars spread out over 5 years at $10-million dollars a pop annually.  People wonder what this contract is supposed to produce.  This press release is one answer.

Let’s be clear, we aren’t picking an issue with the Gallup organization.  It is doing polling research as directed by the BBG/IBB.  It’s easy money for Gallup.

But it is a waste of American taxpayer dollars.

What we see in this BBG/IBB-directed research has little to do with US Government strategic communications, the national or the public interest.  It has more to do with the self-interest of the IBB.  Perhaps the more appropriate term is the self-preservation of IBB bureaucrats.  Their Soviet-style five-year flim flam strategic plan has left US Government international broadcasting in ruins.  As we see it, in order to divert attention from the fiascos it has perpetrated upon the American taxpayer, the IBB is now engaged in diversionary tactics in subject matter that has little global strategic value.

While the BBG/IBB is dallying in the obtuse, there are much more serious issues afoot around the world; and the BBG/IBB has marginalized the US Government’s ability to communicate with global publics on those issues.

Free-Fall off the Strategic Communications Cliff

The United States Government is no longer a major player in strategic international broadcasting.  This press release makes that clear.

While the BBG/IBB is dabbling in the subject of this press release, here are things that are going on of significant importance:

In Russia, the Putin government is preparing to take on the United States over the US strategic missile defense deployment.  The Putin government sees the US Government as weak.  It has scored a major victory in the realm of strategic communications by watching Steve Korn, the president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) destroy its robust Russian Service of Radio Liberty.  It has long ago seen the demise of the Voice of America (VOA) Russian Service.  Skillful chess players as the Russians are, they are now moving more powerful pieces into play to deal with the United States and protect Russian interests.  One can see Vladimir Putin, the iconic Russian leader and former KGB agent with that ironic half-smile (or smirk).  He gets it.  He knows what Korn and the BBG/IBB have done.  He has the initiative and he won’t surrender it easily or cheaply.

In China, the Party Congress is electing its next decade of leadership.  Of course, the BBG/IBB has systematically destroyed its radio broadcasts to China.  The BBG/IBB thinks the Internet will save the day!  However, the Chinese have successfully neutralized the BBG/IBB on this score by effectively blocking BBG/IBB websites and establishing its own Internet infrastructure.

(Note: The November 9, 2012 online edition of Foreign Policy Magazine reports that there are self-immolations taking place in Tibet as the Chinese Communist Party holds its Party Congress to elect new leadership.)

The Middle East

How are you “Arab Springers” doing?  Here’s how:

Libya is on the cusp of being a failed state with well-armed militias running around the country, who by the way refer to themselves as “revolutionaries,” and “liberators;”

In Egypt recently, one of those angry, almost all-male crowds in Tahrir Square raped another Western female journalist, this one from France;

In Lebanon, a top intelligence officer was assassinated, some believe by Hezbollah;

In the widening civil war in Syria, Israel has responded to mortar fire from Syria twice this past weekend with its own counter-battery fire, once as a warning but the second time onto dedicated targets.

In Iran, always those pesky Iranians.  Guess what they did this past week?  Iranian military aircraft fired on a US drone (they have already captured/recovered one virtually intact).  The United States claims that the drone fired upon was in international airspace.  Well, maybe.  But the fact is the Iranians just rearranged the chessboard in the Persian Gulf.  They’ve upped the ante.  They’re taking what opportunities present themselves to study US tactics in evading Iranian aircraft and in turn refining their attack techniques against unarmed drones.  If the Iranians get good at it, the US might have to consider arming the drones with air-to-air missiles.

And lest we forget, there is the Iranian Cyber Army waiting in the wings with whatever they are planning as the next demonstration of their capabilities in cyber-warfare against the BBG/IBB and other US cyber targets.

That Warm and Fuzzy Feeling

If you are an intelligence analyst for any of the Big Three mentioned above, as well as others, looking at this press release has to make you feel good.

Very, very good.

While the BBG/IBB is off in a wilderness of its own making, you can feel very good knowing that their escapades belie a deeper meaning.  The United States is no longer a major player in international communications with global publics.  You have routed the United States on this front.  The Russians have the top YouTube news site with “Russia Today.”  The Chinese have state-of-the-art news bureaus in Washington and New York (the Washington one looking down – literally and figuratively – from its vantage point in DC’s Chinatown across the National Mall to the Cohen Building).  The Iranians are making inroads with Spanish-language broadcasts to Latin America.  Life is good!  The self-serving careerists of the IBB are like putty to be molded, manipulated, formed,

And flattened.

Best of all, your countermeasures blocking satellite programs and controlling the Internet seem to be working very well.  You are continuing to expand, refine and improve upon your capabilities.

You know that the BBG/IBB is foolish, inept and stupid.

These are good times.  The technologies of today favor those with a bold vision and the ability to defeat those – like the BBG/IBB – who require an open media environment, rather than the controlled one at your disposal.  Plus, you have the discipline, resolve and resources to get the job done.

Ignorance is Bliss!

The BBG/IBB likes to talk about the proliferation of new technologies.

But wait!

Cited in the press release as countries where this new technology is taking off are places like Iran, Burma, Indonesia and Tibet.

Excuse me?!?

None of these countries are what one would consider media free-for-alls.  Iran jams satellites carrying foreign news broadcasts including those of the BBG/IBB.  Burma is still ruled by a military junta which can clamp down on the press, foreign and domestic, at any time.  Tibet – you’ve got to be kidding.  The Chinese have tight control over media there and elsewhere in its territories. And Indonesia has laws on the books prohibiting the dissemination of foreign news broadcasts.

In short, in the examples the BBG/IBB cites these countries now or at any future moment interdict these new technologies when and if they believe their national interests are jeopardized.  This is the inherent vulnerability of these new technologies.  They are wholly dependent upon a favorable in-country political climate that is willing to be receptive to IBB programs.  If you don’t direct broadcast, you lose.

Plus, the presence of these new technologies does not mean that most people want BBG/IBB content.  Domestic content is often, if not normally, the first choice, for obvious reasons.  It pays to know what’s going on in your own backyard, as opposed to what comes to you from the la-la land of the Cohen Building.

IBB Pickpockets

No doubt the IBB wants to sell to the Congress the idea of funding new initiatives that it dreams up.  On that subject,

Congress needs to be clear that the IBB has undermined the effectiveness of US Government international broadcasting by cutting programs and becoming reliant upon technologies that are vulnerable.

More than that, the United States faces serious economic challenges.  Money is needed elsewhere for important domestic priorities, including the disaster delivered on the northeast United States by Hurricane Sandy.

The BBG/IBB has not made a compelling case that its handling of US Government international broadcasting is effective and is worthy of continued funding.

It is time for the Congress to stop treating US Government international broadcasting as a billion dollar write-off of American taxpayer dollars.

Either fix it or close it (transfer its functions to another agency with real management).

The proof is in the picture – a press conference to an empty room, on a topic that no one is interested in, with no resonance or value to the American taxpayer.

This is what the BBG/IBB is all about.

The Federalist

November 2012

###

In Zimbabwe, Satellite Dishes Are Widespread And New Media Are Growing Rapidly

In Zimbabwe, Satellite Dishes Are Widespread And New Media Are Growing Rapidly

Bruce Sherman, Director, Office of Strategy and Development, BBG

Word of mouth and radio remain the primary sources of receiving news and information in Zimbabwe, but satellite ownership and the use of mobile devices to access the Internet are growing rapidly, according to new data issued by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and Gallup.

“Even youth are still turning to radio to get the news on a regular basis,” said Jenna Levy, Consulting Specialist, Gallup, “though they are more likely also to use new media.”

About 6 in 10 Zimbabweans say they have a working radio in their home (59.8%), and half have a working television (47.2%). Mobile phones, by far the most popular platform for accessing the Internet in Zimbabwe, are even more prevalent, with 75.6% reporting that they have a mobile phone in their household. In urban areas, mobile penetration approaches 100%.

Read the Research Brief
View the Presentation

“The notion that Zimbabwe is a radio-only market is outdated,” said Sonja Gloeckle, Africa Research Analyst, International Broadcasting Bureau, adding that “new media helps us reach out directly to people in Zimbabwe”

For the past several years, Zimbabwe has been a leader in Sub-Saharan Africa for satellite dish ownership, and this trend has further intensified. About two-thirds of Zimbabwean television owners say their TVs receive its signal via an individual satellite dish (65.8%) or shared satellite dish (2.0%), while a similar percentage (68.2%) use an antenna. TV has become a key means of reaching urban Zimbabweans, with nearly half watching television at 8 p.m. and just 7 percent listen to the radio at that time.

Past-week Internet use has more than doubled in the past year, standing now at 22 percent, and 9 in 10 regular Internet users go online through a mobile phone. Three quarters of regular Internet users name Facebook among their top three websites for news and information.

More than 8 in 10 of Zimbabweans who have their own mobile phones or have access to one (85.1%) say they used their phone to send an SMS/text message in the last week. Approximately one in four users accessed the Internet (25.6%), accessed Facebook or other social media (24.3%) or listened to the radio (24.1%) on their phones.

The BBG’s global audience research program is conducted in partnership with Gallup. The data on Zimbabwe, like that on Iran, Tibet, Burma, Nigeria and Indonesia released earlier this year, shows how communications technologies are evolving even as traditional broadcasts in TV and radio continue to play a significant role in news distribution. This research informs the current and future operations of the agency’s broadcasts in 59 languages to more than 100 countries.

BBG Watch has learned that two Broadcasting Board of Governors members, interim presiding governor Michael Lynton and Governor Dennis Mulhaupt, as well as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine (not a BBG member but representing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) have advised the BBG staff that they will not be able to attend the BBG open meeting previously scheduled for November 15.

Their absence prevents having a quorum and therefore this month’s BBG open meeting most likely will be cancelled.

This would be already a second BBG open meeting cancelled this year because some board members are too busy to attend. The BBG meeting scheduled for July did not take place as not enough governors were able to participate.

Sources told BBG Watch that Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Corporation of America and Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, may be working in Japan and does not have time to attend the meeting, even though the date for it was set nearly a year ago. Lynton’s participation in BBG meetings has be spotty and he has been seen during BBG meetings looking at and texting on his cell phone for long periods of time.

Among the current BBG members, only Victor Ashe and Dennis Mulhaupt have had so far a perfect attendance record. We do not know what prevents Mulhaupt from attending this time.

Tara Sonenshine, who had attended previous meetings, missed the last BBG meeting in October, during which Ambassador Ashe criticized the mass firing of Radio Liberty journalists in Moscow and expressed lack of confidence in RFE/RL president Steven Korn. At that meeting, Lynton defended Korn, but his statement of endorsement of Korn on behalf of the board was later removed from the BBG website at Ashe’s insistence.

Sources told BBG Watch that Sonenshine had planned to attend the last meeting but could not after its timing was changed at the last moment at Lynton’s request to allow him to participate in an event at the White House.

Some observers speculate that due to a number of crises, including the Moscow firings controversy and yet another dismal rating for the agency’s executives in the latest OPM Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, some BBG members want to avoid having televised open meetings during which Ashe is likely to ask difficult questions.

Ashe has been highly critical of the BBG executive staff and the unwillingness on the part of most board members to deal with mismanagement and other issues. The lack of engagement on the part of many BBG members allows the worst-rated managers in the entire federal government to run the agency without much supervision or oversight from the board. Their direct supervisor, the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) director Richard Lobo, has defended their record by claiming that rank-and-file BBG employees do not understand the meaning of the word “leadership” and may blame problems with their lower-level managers on the IBB director, his top aides and even BBG members.

BBG Watch has learned that a previously announced closed meeting of the BBG Governance Committee will take place by telephone tomorrow (Thursday). Governors Ashe, Mulhaupt and Susan McCue are expected to participate but Michael Lynton may not.

The official announcement posted on the BBG website says that the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ Governance Committee telephonic meeting on Thursday, November 8, 2012 “will consider the IBB Director’s plan for the creation of an agency Chief Executive Officer.” The announcement points out that the meeting is not open to the public. Governor Ashe and outside critics object a proposal that a CEO should not be subject to a confirmation by the U.S. Senate. They fear that this would further weaken congressional oversight.

BBG Watch has also learned that the Strategy and Budget Committee, which has only two members, Ashe and Michael Meehan, will meet later this month as it will have a quorum. The committee is likely to further investigate the firing by RFE/RL president Steven Korn of Radio Liberty journalists, which many critics, including leading Russian human rights activists and opposition political leaders, have condemned as illegal and amoral.

RFE/RL executives used guards to prevent journalists from entering their news bureau in Moscow and from saying good bye to their radio and online audience of many years. Highly experienced and skilled radio and Internet professionals are being replaced with friends and associates of the new Russian Service director Masha Gessen, many of whom lack political reporting and multimedia skills.

How long until the Governors at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) realize the damage that has been done by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) management and the staff at the BBG and its International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)? It is a good question, but not the one I would posit. Instead I would ask whether the damage being done to Radio Liberty (Radio Svoboda), long considered the flagship of RFE/RL, intentional?

No one who is observing what is going on in Moscow can believe what has happened is going to improve the quality of news coming out of the Moscow Bureau, so why was it done?

If you read Anastasia Kirilenko’s blog (young Radio Liberty investigative reporter who resigned in protest a few days ago), you will see that the current focus of journalism instituted by Masha Gessen (new Russian Service director appointed by RFE/RL president Steve Korn) is to avoid controversy, and report on so called “normal” events. What is the value of these types of stories to Radio Liberty’s audience (or American taxpayers)? The answer is there is no value.

There are dozens of other news outlets already reporting on these and other similar topics. “Normal” stories are safe, noncontroversial and easy to write. They are also easy to ignore, since they have been done before. An entire website dedicated to such news will not attract new audience, it will in fact lose whatever audience is left after many respected journalists were fired last month. Why then the change?

The only answer I can come up with is that this is what the BBG/IBB actually wants. Ever since the new Board of Directors came into power in 2010, there has been heavy pressure to consolidate the various news organizations under a lone umbrella of international broadcasting.

The grand vision was to have the Voice of America (VOA), RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia (RFA), Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) and Radio and TV Marti – Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) under one central command.

Further to this, they were going to create GNN, Global News Network (or as I have heard others disdainfully call it, Generic News Network). This GNN would create news out of Washington D.C., which would then be translated and disseminated to the entire world. Thus, the audiences in Beijing, Cairo, Moscow and Havana would all receive the same stories, just in their local languages.

Think of the cost savings (I’m being ironic), which could lead to higher salaries and bonuses if the BBG/IBB could make redundant a majority of journalists around the world.

If this business model sounds familiar, it should. CNN International has been following it for years, and I do not believe it’s a coincidence that a number of former CNN staffers enjoy positions as top managers, employees, contractors and consultants within the sphere of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, also known as U.S. international broadcasting (USIB).

This brings us back to the current debacle that is RFE/RL in Moscow. It is my belief that RFE/RL president Steve Korn is acting with the blessings of Messrs. Richard Lobo, Jeff Trimble and Bruce Sherman to destroy the credibility of journalism generated by independent surrogate broadcasting entities (grantees) within the BBG.

What better way to justify going to “big picture” — internationally generated news — than to show that the news generated by these independent surrogate broadcasters did not attract a large audience?

No, I do not have any smoking gun to connect the dots of my theory, but given the evidence at hand, it appears sound.

If the above is not correct, then the only other answer I see is that Steve Korn, Julia Ragona and the rest of RFE/RL management are out of their depth and should seek the counsel of qualified individuals before Radio Liberty’s relevance is lost to history.

Broadcasting Board of Governors – Just How Bad It Is, And How Much Worse It Will Be, Part One

by The Federalist

If the press releases by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) were Christmas presents, we’d have a closet full – stacked floor to ceiling.

These guys are the perfect combination of arrogance and incompetence – a combination that has led to a failed agency with a failed mission.

Let’s consider the latest press release from the BBG’s Public Affairs Office (the Office of Propaganda, as we like to call it) dated October 11, 2012: “BBG Condemns Jamming, Intimidation as Threats to Media Freedom.”

Part One of this commentary addresses the fiasco perpetrated by the BBG regarding the Russian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) – Radio Liberty (Radio Svoboda).

The BBG has neutered US Government international broadcasting to Russia. This started in 2008 when the BBG ended Voice of America (VOA) Russian Service radio broadcasts, right before the Russians invaded the Republic of Georgia.

Now, in 2012, the BBG has totally eviscerated its Radio Liberty Russian Service Moscow bureau staff, firing about 40 employees (five of them resigned on their own in protest against the brutal treatment of their colleagues) at the bureau and, according to sources, another 17 being lined up for similar treatment at the RFE/RL facilities in Prague.

As part of its disinformation campaign regarding this fiasco, the BBG is saying that it offered these employees a “buyout.” Baloney. This was no buyout. They were fired. They were given a choice between a cash severance payment or to be fired with nothing – if they wanted to fight the dismissals in Russian court. This is standard operating procedure by the BBG and its International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) senior staff. Legal and administrative law proceedings can take a long time and cost a lot of money. Consider the recent decision by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) regarding the illegal reduction-in-force (RIF) at Radio/TV Marti and the landmark Hartman court decision in a class action lawsuit against the agency which cost the American taxpayers half a BILLION dollars.

These RFE/RL fired employees exercised the only rational decision available to them under the circumstances and with no notice.

The agency has used the term “buyout” because that is the impression it wants to sell to Members of Congress and others. In the Federal Government, “buyouts” have been used most often as an incentive to get employees to voluntarily retire from the Federal Service. The tactic used at RFE/RL with its Russian Service employees was under conditions best described as brutal, coercive and under duress.

BBG Federal employees take note: don’t think you’re safe and secure back there in the Cohen Building. These guys want to de-Federalize you and rob you of civil service rights and protections. They would be more than happy to use tactics on you similar to those used against the RFE/RL employees.

In place of these RFE/RL employees will be newer and fewer employees – but costing as much in salary and benefits as the more numerous employees being let go! That blows any “efficiency” argument by the BBG/IBB right out of the water.

In addition, the Moscow bureau will be headed by an individual known in Russia for being something of a media gadfly. In short, the chief will be the story rather than a nose-to-the-grindstone journalist or manager. She is also well known for interviews that put her at odds with the traditional values of Russian culture and the Russian Orthodox Church.

These are not the ingredients that augur well for a successful RFE/RL presence in Russia.

Add to that, the Russian government has taken steps to put in place more effective controls over news media in Russia. On top of that RFE/RL has lost its AM radio station/frequency/license in Moscow.

How is this looking so far?

But wait, there’s more!

The BBG is talking about new facilities in Moscow. So the questions are:

Who owns the building?

Who are the other tenants in the building?

If the bureau will contract out technical services, who owns the company providing those services?

Are new employees subject to security clearances to be working for an agency of the US Government?

Our sources tell us that the building may be partly owned or at least occupied by Vladimir Posner, a well known Russian media figure with ties to the government – and back in the old days he was the chief Soviet propaganda master appearing on American TV.

We know the Russians very well. You can be assured that the Russian security services will keep the RFE/RL Moscow bureau on a short leash, using various tactics at their disposal to make sure the new staff does not go “off the script” as determined by the Russian government. The journalists who were highly respected by the democratic opposition have shown that they have the courage to criticize the Kremlin and expose human rights abuses and corruption are gone.

And there’s even more!

As the BBG press release states:

“(Presiding Board Member Michael) Lynton spoke at length of recent Russian legislative steps that have imposed restrictions on freedom of expression, including a law that is forcing RFE/RL programs off of the organization’s last AM affiliate in Moscow. He noted, “This board strongly objects to the tightening stranglehold on the free flow of information taking place today in Russia.” Lynton reiterated Governors’ support for Steve Korn’s leadership of RFE/RL in its efforts throughout the region.”

What?!?

The agency just got clocked by the Russian government and these guys added to the fiasco by hammering their own employees in the RFE/RL Moscow bureau!!!

Lynton admits to getting clocked and then turns around and says the equivalent of, “You’re doing a great job, Stevie!”

Our editors report this ringing endorsement has been removed. It’s not on the website anymore. But it is the press release of record that was send out to the entire world. To the best of our knowledge, no one has not been advised that the endorsement of Mr. Korn had been revised or the statement removed.

This is yet another perfect example of the hypocrisy of the BBG.

Our sources tell us that Mr. Korn, the RFE/RL president, is saying this will all blow over.

More baloney.

With all the negatives surrounding the decision regarding the RFE/RL Russian Service Moscow bureau: the firings, the new service chief, the protests from well known Russian opposition figures — former President Gorbachev, former Prime Minister Kasyanov, former Deputy Prime Minister Nemtsov, legendary human rights leader Lyudmila Alexeeva — and their opposition political parties and organizations, what Korn is doing is poking the Russian public in the eye every day with the mere existence of the “new” bureau. It has become a monument to stupidity and a reminder to people that the agency being co-opted by the Russian government.

And you can take it to the house: the Russian public won’t forget, especially when the BBG blows off criticisms of its actions with dismissive statements.

You can take the “L” out of RFE/RL and just label it: dead-on-arrival.

We have to say it:

US Government international broadcasting is in the hands of the wrong kind of people. On any level, the only things they do consistently well are enable and facilitate (a) the failure of US Government international broadcasting and (b) effective countermeasures by those opposed to the agency’s mission.

Whose side are these guys on?

Regimes large and small that want nothing of US Government international broadcasting, websites and the like are following a very successful playbook in how to defeat the US Government in its outreach programs.

This leads to the question:

Why are we spending close to a billion dollars a year to subsidize a brain-dead, failed mission led by venal, self-aggrandizing officials who only care about the size of their annual bonuses on top of their six-figure salaries?

This is commonly referred to as:

Waste, fraud and abuse.

Forget the trash talk from the BBG about “supporting freedom and democracy.”

Actions by the BBG would appear to indicate that they may well be the purveyors of intimidation and threat to media freedom.

The Federalist
October 2012

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS RADIO LIBERTY

Once upon a time, the main news program on Soviet TV was called “Vremia” – “Time”. It was a source of inspiration.

One of the changes approved a few years ago by Radio Free Europe – Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) managers was the renaming of several Russian Service broadcasts: “Liberty Live” became “Liberty Time”. Soviet “Vremia” was reborn, if only in a name.

“49 Minutes of Jazz”, one of the most popular programs of Radio Liberty, was first cancelled, then when they realized they had made a mistake and restored it, it was renamed into “Jazz Time.” “Vremia” won again.

Other programs were called “Politics Time”, “Guests’ Time”, “Time and the World”, “Time Limits”. One of the few exceptions was “The media hour”, instead of “Media Time”.

This frivolous exercise was called “revamping”, which was preceded by the termination of few broadcasters including one former Russian Service director.

It wasn’t a big change, and they didn’t destroy much either.

Now they did.

The newly appointed Russian Service director Masha Gessen, who is scheduled to start work on October 1, promised that she will stick with Radio Liberty’s tradition of objective journalism.

There is much more than aseptic journalism in Radio Liberty’s tradition.

Masha Gessen says she had nothing to do with the recent purge of dozens of Radio Liberty’s journalists and broadcasters in its Moscow bureau. But she has already made mistakes. She accused another opposition journalist of slander. Slander is a serious accusation and criminal offense in Putin’s Russia.

RFE/RL has two components: Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Radio Svoboda). No Russian listener, no Russian Service broadcaster would ever confuse or combine the name Radio Liberty with Radio Free Europe. Gessen did, and keeps speaking about RFE, which suggests that she knows little about what the name Radio Svoboda and the broadcasting tradition of its Russian Service signifies.

Once upon a time, members of the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), a commission established in the United States to oversee Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, knew what their broadcasters and managers were doing. BIB members were all well known Americans.

When a BIB member wanted to be informed about a particular subject dealing with the Soviet Union, he would consult directly the real expert, usually a broadcaster or a researcher of the RFE/RL Research Department. He did not go to the president or directors of RL or RFE.

After the BIB, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) stepped in.

There was an expert on Russian politics inside of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service, probably the best in all of Russia. His name is Mikhail Sokolov. He argues that it was possible for Radio Liberty to maintain broadcasting in Russia. If he says so, then he is probably right.

RFE/RL bureaucrats never consulted him. They fired him.

There was an expert on Russian media working for the Russian Service, probably the best and most respected in Russia. Her name is Anna Kachkaeva. In her capacity as the Dean of the Media Communications School of the Moscow Higher School of Economics (HSE), she helped the Broadcasting Board of Governors organize a seminar for Russian journalists on the role of social media in covering ethnic migration issues.

Anna Kachkaeva is now gone. Resigned in protest. Unwilling to tolerate the sight of security guards keeping fired employees from entering the RFE/RL building in Moscow.

They fired Vladimir Abarbanel, who for many years moderated a program about and from the regions of the Russian Federation and coordinated the work of regional correspondents. Already during the previous “revamping” they decided that broadcasting to the regions was not essential. “Let’s concentrate on Moscow,” they said. Now they are giving away broadcasting to Moscow altogether.

Many other valuable journalists and contributors are gone or have been terminated.

Once upon a time, RFE/RL cared deeply about human rights. Essential rights and liberties: freedom of speech and assembly, the right to inform, the right to a fair public trial, the right to dissent without fear intimidation, freedom from torture, etc. etc… freedom from discriminatory treatment based on race, religion, politics, gender or sexual orientation. Welcome Masha Gessen.

She does fight for the right of unisex couples to marry and the right of homosexuals to be free from discrimination and be able to adopt and educate children in a still very traditional and conservative society that we have in Russia. Her reported dual Russian and U.S. citizenship and her recent semi-private meeting with President Putin, whom she criticizes and humanizes at the same time, may offer some protection.

But what happened to dozens of journalists who at a great risk to their safety fought for years against censorship and defended the most essential rights and liberties?

They were suddenly summoned from their homes with a call from a receptionist and fired by RFE/RL managers in the offices of an international law firm in Moscow. No good byes, no thank yous.

One RFE/RL American executive who fired them disagreed. They were given generous severance pay, she said. It’s easy to destroy.

“We thank those who have made Radio Svoboda possible in the past. Please join us on our journey into the future,” RFE/RL President Steven Korn said after the firings.

Who in Russia from among professional colleagues of the fired journalists who happens to share their deep commitment to human rights and human dignity will now want to work for Radio Liberty, Ms. Gessen, Mr. Korn and his Vice President of Content, Distribution, and Marketing Julia Ragona?

We live in times of economic crisis. The American taxpayer wants to know how his/her money is being spent. The experts are gone. The bureaucrats are still there and the bureaucratic apparatus continues to expand.

Viktor Shenderovich, a popular Russian satirist, and (now former) Russian Service contributor, says now that the KGB and the FSB altogether did not manage to do as much harm to the prestige of America in Russia and the reputation of Radio Svoboda as did RFE/RL bureaucrats with apparent approval of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Mario Corti, a former Russian Service director, said the same in an interview with Free Media Online a few years ago:

“Those among the old KGB and the new FSB , who see the U.S. as an enemy rather than a valuable and generous partner of Russia, could only be enormously happy with such leaders in charge of U.S. international broadcasting as the current U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive team. They have no reason to worry or need to do anything themselves to undermine U.S.-funded broadcasts; it is being done for them by these American government officials who are now trying hard to hide their mistakes from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the American public.”

A commentary by The Federalist

“The integrity of any organization depends on the character and honesty of its employees and especially its leaders.”

(From a John F. Hein article on the  FedSmith.com website, August 23, 2012)

The U.S. Congress and the White House would be well served to heed the words of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) who not too long ago labeled the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)  and its executives in the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) as “the most worthless organization in the Federal Government.”

It was true then and the situation is worse now.

By far, the example of the worst of the worst inside the Cohen Building, the BBG headquarters in Washington, DC,  is  how these BBG/IBB executives have managed the agency’s Farsi language Persian News Network (PNN) which broadcasts to Iran.  See “Staffers: Voice Of America Left Lawmakers in The Dark About Loss Of Prominent Show ‘Parazit’” by Elizabeth Flock – Washington Whispers, U.S. News & World Report.

The service is a hotbed of controversy, division and rivalries.  Service chiefs come in and go out the door on a regular basis: some go elsewhere in the Federal Government, some to retirement and some to other assignments in the agency (either to get away from the service or to escape some imbroglio they got caught up in).  Employees and contractors reflect the conflicted nature of the larger Iranian-American community.  Some support the former monarchy.  Some support an aggressive US posture toward the existing regime.  Some want a more accommodating stance with Tehran.

Not long ago, a popular PNN television anchor  was taken off-the-air and detailed to the agency’s Worldwide English operation ostensibly to develop an interview program.

But more recently, Iranian websites such as  Iranian.com  and  VOAPNNWatchdog.com  reported that the much-ballyhooed PNN satire program “Parazit” and one of the program’s co-hosts have gone “missing-in-action.”

Because of the factionalism that is part of the day-to-day politics in the Iranian community, we read the materials on these sites with care.  But, they do merit attention, especially when juxtaposed with actions by the agency’s senior officials.  In this case, the websites were on to something.

We already know that the  IBB bureaucrats do not believe in transparency.  We know that they will go to extraordinary lengths to block information and threaten employees and political appointees alike with reprisals for releasing information out to the general public that would cause them great difficulty in protecting their self-interest and bonus-mongering.  Thus, it becomes necessary for external outlets, like but not limited to BBG Watch, to get information out to the general public and Members of Congress because:

The American people are being ripped off by these Cohen Building executives.  They are protecting themselves from getting a deserved boot out the door for being the perpetrators of a failed agency mission.

Thus, we learn that:

The PNN program “Parazit” has been off the air for months even though the agency has tried to concoct the notion that it is still part of the regular PNN program schedule.

One of the program hosts is nowhere to be found in the PNN programming, absent for reasons not being publicly discussed.

The agency relocated “Parazit” to the agency’s New York City bureau, with unknown costs to the American taxpayer connected with set construction, equipment purchases and the like – and now, no “Parazit.”

And the topper:

We learn that senior agency officials “neglected” (our word) to inform members of the BBG as to what has been going on for the past eight months.

Supposedly, the BBG has a “PNN subcommittee.”  Where was it on this?

Was the subcommittee “OTL” (“out to lunch,” in essence, not aware of what was going on, and if not, why not)?  Or, knowing how the IBB likes to avoid bad news, did someone from the IBB executive director down through the IBB and VOA executive staffing pattern make the decision to keep a lid on the situation, in essence engage in a cover-up?  Was it a group decision?

This stuff never stops because:

It is the worst organization in the Federal Government – run by the worst managers in the Federal Government.

Keep in mind that the BBG/IBB and its Office of Propaganda (the agency’s Public Affairs Office) made a big deal out of an award that was given the “Parazit” program and kept issuing press release after press release implying that the program was very much on the air long after it ceased to exist. It looks awkward at best when one of your showpiece programs disappears into the BBG/IBB “Bermuda Triangle.”

Another thing – did the IBB apparatchiks somehow think that no one in the Iranian community here or back in the homeland would notice “Parazit” doing its disappearing act?

The regime back in Tehran has got to be feeling mighty good that “Parazit” delivered some kind of self-inflicted wound to take it off the air.  Not only that, the regime in Tehran must be feeling even better that the alleged supporters of “freedom and democracy” (the BBG/IBB senior executives) have been engaged in a body of lies and deceit about the non-existing  program.

The agency did attempt to clone a Parazit-like program, but  it doesn’t seem to have generated the same resonance as the original.

And, in the category of “Just Being Plain Stupid:”

We note the concocted PNN idea called “Weapons of Mouse Destruction.”  We understand that this is a parody on the term “weapons of mass destruction.”  There’s really not much that’s funny about the latter.  However, we do understand that the core subject has to do with freedom of expression.  The approach to a legitimate issue was clearly bungled.  You can read previous BBG Watch posts on this subject.  There are many more substantive ways to get at the issue of freedom of expression, whether artistic, political or in terms of other lifestyle choices.  This “idea” doesn’t elevate itself to that level.  Not surprisingly, it has fizzled.  Another nose-dive for PNN.  Was this an intentional diversion to take the focus off the missing “Parazit” program?

Whose Side Are These Guys On?

And there’s more…

There is a certain sentiment among Iranian expatriates in the West and dissidents in Iran that PNN is “the Voice of Tehran.”  Once again, the ideological divide among the PNN staff seems to be making its way into PNN programs.

Why is this bad?

The most obvious answer is that it does not serve U.S. interests very well to be seen as cowed by or a toady for the Iranian regime.  But there is a deeper, much more substantive issue.  Following the mass and bloody demonstrations in Iran a couple of years ago, the opposition movement appears to have developed a sense that the West cannot be relied upon for support.  The opposition movement is still there, but there has been noticeable pullback on overt action.  In short, the opposition has learned the hard way to be skeptical of Washington, including programming from PNN.

And, aside from the Kool-Aid pronouncements from the agency’s Office of Propaganda, no one in Iran seems to be putting much value into the BBG/IBB hypocrisy of “supporting freedom and democracy”  after learning of their plans — some executed and some blocked in bipartisan actions by Congress — to end or reduce many broadcasts to Russia, China, Tibet and other countries without free media. The agency has done a superlative job of taking itself out of the credibility department.

The Iranian opposition need not be taking risks on behalf of the hypocrites on the Third Floor of the Cohen Building.

The Department of Broken Careers

By the way, the agency has put out not one but two vacancy announcements – for a top management position in PNN.  One announcement is for non-citizen candidates, the other for American citizens.  Please note: from a mission performance standpoint, there is no one who is survivable in that position.  If you’re interested in having a black mark on your career resume, this job has got to be high on the list: the job will get you, BBG/IBB will use you as a scapegoat for when things go bad (just about all the time), and if that isn’t enough, the Iranian community will rip you to shreds for being a toady for one faction or another for any decision not to someone’s liking.

We Know Senior Agency Officials Very Well  

We know the mindset they operate from, patterns to their behavior.  Withholding pertinent information relating to a VOA program, from the agency’s bipartisan presidential appointees, for a period of many months, is a conscious, willful and premeditated act of gross misconduct, consistent with protecting their agenda, their bonuses.

It is nowhere near enough for members of the BBG to be “appalled” by the actions of the officials involved in this cover-up.  They should be outraged and prepared to act.  There has to be a full investigation preferably and exclusively by individuals without ties to the agency.  It is wholly unacceptable for the BBG to take a pass on its accountability and oversight responsibilities to sit back and do nothing.  To all appearances, the actions of these officials were a deliberate effort to undermine the BBG authority and responsibility.  It goes a long way to show just how little respect the IBB types have for the bi-partisan board.

The American people are entitled to know who was involved and the extent of their involvement in this incident.  We should expect that those involved be held accountable – up to and including removal from the Federal Service for cause, if the facts make the case in this matter.

And consider this –

This is no trivial matter.  The officials involved in this cover-up made a conscious decision to embrace behavior putting lies and deceit ahead of transparency and truthfulness.  They have lied to the members of the BBG; they have lied to the American taxpayer and the Congress which provides funding for its programs.  They have intentionally deceived the intended audience.  They have put their agenda ahead of the national and public interest.  They have betrayed a public trust.  To outward appearances, they have done so with malice aforethought.

This is amoral behavior at its worst from inside a Federal agency.

If you think this agency has any reservoir of credibility left, you’re dreaming.

If you are someone who subscribes to the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, here is a perfect example of what these agency officials will do – misinformation, disinformation, misrepresentations to the American public.  It’s all here and these guys are exposed.

And keep in mind that these people want one of their own to be an agency “Chief Executive Officer.”  This would be a mockery of effective accountability and oversight because – there is no effective accountability and oversight existent in this agency with these guys in charge.

If no action is taken, there is no value to the national and public interest in the operations of the BBG/IBB.

Trust no one and believe nothing from the Third Floor of the Cohen Building.

Why We Take This Incident Very Seriously

Some time ago, we wrote a piece on “Six Minutes to Armageddon,” a reference to the time it takes an Iranian ballistic missile to reach Israel.  We’ve got news for you:

The situation is worse now than when it was when we wrote the piece.

The general consensus is that the Israelis are ready to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.  It could come in a matter of weeks.  Both the Israelis and the Iranians have been escalating their rhetoric.  It isn’t hollow rhetoric.  These guys are not playing paintball.  They’re playing for real and the rhetoric is in line with what is at stake for both parties.  Things are rolling with a full head of steam.  There isn’t much room for a graceful backing-off.  And the rhetoric is becoming in equal doses more frequent and more resolute.

Here’s more bad news:

In addition to its long-range ordnance, the Iranians have been working diligently on developing their short and intermediate range missiles.  The Iranians know that US military assets in the Persian Gulf could pose a potential threat.  These missiles could be intended for our armed forces in the region.

There used to be a saying in US military circles during the Cold War that if a US warship were to be sunk in an engagement with the Soviets, it would go down with half its ammunition still on board.  A Soviet ship would go down with its powder magazines empty.  In other words, the Soviets would let go with everything they had on the first shot knowing that there might not be a second opportunity.

The Iranians may have the same idea.  And if they do and do not believe in a gradated use of their ordnance, things could get very bad, very quickly, for everybody in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

Some people on this side of the Atlantic Ocean may not have a realistic appreciation of the Israeli dilemma.  The Israelis are surrounded on all sides – by the Mediterranean Sea on their western coastline and a whole lot of unsettled, hostile and roiled-in-revolutionary-politics Arab neighbors north, east and south.  The Israelis don’t have the luxury of a lot of options or in making an error in judgment regarding threats to their existence.  If a threat is deemed credible, the first priority is to protect their population.  Even as this is being written, the Israelis are issuing gas masks and taking defensive measures to harden schools and hospitals against attack.

On top of that, there is the additional threat by Iranian clients – Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants – with their own supplies of rockets for use in any engagement with the Israelis, on their own or in conjunction with Iran.

Without question, the Israelis have run through computer war game simulations of the different scenarios they are likely to encounter with the Iranians.  They most likely run these simulations in real time.  They likely know the numbers – including casualty figures – if they make the right move or the wrong one.

The Iranians are not stupid either.  More than likely, they have run their own simulations examining the results of scenarios seen from their perspective.

In short, for either party there is nothing to be gained by making a wrong decision.  This is a potential conflict that has mutually assured destruction (“MAD,” usually thought of in the context of mutual deterrent, though not in this case) written all over it, with either conventional or nuclear weapons in the mix.

And you can best believe that if the Israelis and Iranians engage in hostilities, the Iranian Cyber Army will be ready to act to take out all BBG/VOA Internet operations.  They’ve done it before and only the flim flam artists in the Cohen Building would believe that they couldn’t or wouldn’t do it again.  They’ve had plenty of time to refine their techniques since their last attack.

Something else that weaves its way in a subtext to all this is that the Iranians also see themselves as fulfilling their historic manifest destiny – and that includes establishing hegemony over their Arab neighbors.  In short, whether it is admitted publicly or not, a whole lot of people in the region, not just the Israelis, have very big worries concerning an Iran with nuclear capability.

Without question, the Iranians monitor PNN programs, as they do all U.S. Government actions.  In a situation with this degree of volatility, it is dangerous to send mixed, confused or otherwise irrational signals to the Iranians which would lead them to conclude that this is an optimum moment to take this situation to the tipping point between rhetoric and actual hostilities.  The actions of the BBG/IBB with regard to its PNN programming can have the effect of creating the perception that the U.S. Government is out of focus.

Put this all together and you have more than enough reason to lose sleep at night, with the Broadcasting Board of Governors and its International Broadcasting Bureau (BBG/IBB) making its contribution to the nightmare.

The Federalist

August 2012

In a devastating expose of mismanagement at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and its flagship broadcaster the Voice of America (VOA), AFGE Local 1812, the union representing BBG’s government employees has accused the agency’s top management of deceiving the American public and the U.S. Congress and playing into the hands of America’s enemies abroad.

The article titled “A Voice of Gimmicks,” posted on the AFGE Local 1812 website, lists some of the BBG management’s decisions in recent years that have damaged taxpayer-supported U.S. international broadcasting operations:

“The elimination of the VOA Arabic service, to the immense benefit of Al-Jazeera.”

“The elimination of the Russia radio broadcasts, to the immense benefit of autocratic Russia.”

“The near-elimination of Mandarin and Cantonese broadcasts, to the immense benefit of communist China.”

The article also points out that many of the new media sites launched by BBG managers and promoted as a substitute for radio and television broadcasts have hardly any followers. Some of the new media BBG contractors employed by the BBG take in more than $400,000 a year and, in addition, spend tens of thousands of dollars traveling around the world at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. To pay these contractors, BBG executives eliminate broadcasts, downsize language services, and lay off dozens of broadcasters and journalists. Some of the new media products developed by the BBG new media team have literally only a few visitors or followers and generate practically no comments.

The article notes that the BBG management team, which includes government executives at the Voice of America and the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), has been rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) as the worst in the entire federal government. BBG Watch is reporting that despite this record, BBG, IBB and VOA managers have given themselves large bonuses in 2011, some as high as $10,000. Many of these bonuses were higher than in 2010 and included a large bonus for a top-level executive with anger management issues who has publicly embarrassed the agency. These bonuses were approved by IBB director Richard Lobo. The ultimate control over the agency rests with the bipartisan BBG board which currently has seven members.

###

It used to be that the Voice of America was one of the most reliable source of news in the world. Around the clock, it would, as provided by its Charter, “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” VOA news were supposed to be “accurate, objective, and comprehensive.” 

Today, thanks to middle managers whose goal has been to turn VOA into a “worldwide CNN”, the Voice is but a shadow of itself and pretty much an amalgam of gimmicks.

Gimmickson web sites that seek to use a dizzying amount of new technologies, but can’t be updated in a timely fashion for lack of staff. Hence a disgraceful coverage of the recent Olympic games, with US medals announced well after most other media organizations. 

Gimmickson web technologies such as Facebook or Twitter, where some services report having no more than a dozen or two dozen followers, again because while the technologies are pushed, there are no staffers to maintain them.

Gimmicks because the BBG pretends to maintain language services while eviscerating them to the point where they have become meaningless, a mere shadow of their former selves.

Gimmicksbecause while the VOA’s Cohen building is littered with advice about civility, management’s treatment of rank and file has been so vile that the Agency is rated among the worst in government.

Gimmicks because management actually makes decisions months before going through the public motion of consulting staffers. 

Gimmicksbecause while pretending to listen to Congress, management charges ahead with disastrous changes, regardless of the long list of failures in the past 10 years. Shall we name a few:

1. The elimination of the VOA Arabic service, to the immense benefit of Al-Jazeera.
2. The elimination of the Russia radio broadcasts, to the immense benefit of autocratic Russia.
3. The near-elimination of Mandarin and Cantonese broadcasts, to the immense benefit of communist China.
4. The near-elimination of worldwide English, to the benefit of the BBC, CNN and RFI.

These are but a few examples of the utterly disastrous policies maniacally followed by the Agency these past 10 years, at the expense of U.S. taxpayers who know that the VOA Charter stands, and that it is being violated on a daily basis.

We ask: when will Congress put an end to the “experiment” and save what’s left of the Voice of America?

Isn’t time for an audit of monies spent on new technologies these past 10 years, and an honest accounting of what they paid for and what they achieved, if anything?

Today, anyone going on Yahoo news or Google news – not to mention the BBC or RFI – can access news that are better presented and more up to date than anything the VOA can place on its web site. For the simple reason that the Agency has sought to pursue too many new technologies on a radio budget. In the end, as we predicted, the VOA has lost a large chunk of what used to be one of the largest radio audiences in the world, and has traded it for a web audience that can only diminish, since content cannot be sustained.

“Voice of America (VOA) Worldwide English radio, which, at one time broadcast live 24 hours a day to the world in 1999, will be reduced to providing 1.5 hours of live programming a day.”

This commentary from a journalist employed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) explains how BBG executives have for years defied the will of Congress and provided misleading information to both BBG members and Congressional staffers. Most of their FY2013 budget recommendations were rejected on Capitol Hill by both Republicans and Democrats. These same BBG executives, who report to the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) director Richard Lobo, are now presenting BBG members with their budget recommendations for FY2014. BBG members will meet in a few days in a closed session to review these proposals, which — in a usual manner — have been secretly put together by BBG executives without any wider internal debate or outside review.

Congress Speaks But Nobody Listens at the Broadcasting Board of Governors

To The Broadcasting Board of Governors:

What part of the mandate from Congress don’t you understand?  

Language contained from the House Appropriations Committee and its counterpart in the Senate – language that has been adopted by both Chambers – disagrees with many of the misguided decisions that have been made in the last 12 months to reduce broadcasting operations in many language services at the Voice of America (VOA).  

Yet the bean counters and anti-radio factions in upper-level management continue to ignore the will of Congress and whittle away at radio because “It’s too old fashioned” and nobody listens and “besides we do the Internet and Social Media because it’s cool (not because it has an audience).”

We focus on the latest results of this misguided thinking which came Thursday (8/09/12) during a staff meeting of what’s left of the once proud – now highly demoralized – English radio operation.   Beginning after the nominating conventions, but before the election in November, Crossroads Asia, a 25 minute live news program to East Asia (in the morning our time), will go silent and will be replaced by feature programs that have yet to be determined.  One of them, still in the planning stages we are told, is “China’s Got Talent.”  How about “Dancing with the Supreme Leader” or “The Real Housewives of Beijing?”

As it is, Crossroads Asia is now broadcast live, recorded and played back in the two following hours (13 and 14 UTC).  
This is indicative of how management is coming up with unique ways to justify their own jobs:  do whatever it takes even when it makes no sense.  Breaking news?  Up-to-date information?  Information that will draw in listeners?  Who cares, they will tell you, but at least we can tell Congress we haven’t cut broadcast hours.

What’s happening to International Edition – a long-form program examining relevant WORLDWIDE news – is even worse.  Because of a severe staff shortage, beginning in July, IE lost its half-hour live program.  It was replaced by a replay of an International Edition program recorded seven hours earlier.  More tragic is that the recorded program is then replayed in the two following hours.  By the time the cycle is over, listeners (if we still had any) were given a half hour of nine hour old material.  Breaking news?  Up-to-date information?  Information that will draw in listeners?  Who cares, they will tell you, but at least we can tell Congress we haven’t cut broadcast hours.

And this isn’t the first time management has tried to pull a fast one on Congress.  Look at the Mandarin Service that was slated to be shuttered in FY 2013.  Instead of doing live programs to inform listeners, one program is now done live and then replayed 18 hours later. Breaking news?  Up-to-date information?  Information that will draw in listeners?  Who cares, they will tell you, but at least we can tell Congress we haven’t cut broadcast hours.

There is no more Middle East Edition, a half hour program dedicated to news about that region.  It went silent months ago. International Edition to the Middle East (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria et al) is now live for a single half hour.  It too is replayed two hours later.  Breaking news?  Up-to-date information?  Information that will draw in listeners?  Who cares, they will tell you, but at least we can tell Congress we haven’t cut broadcast hours.

The only live English radio program that will survive this Draconian shell game is Daybreak Asia, a half-hour live program in the evening (our time) – targeted to China primarily – and International Edition.  Both of these, we should point out are recorded and played back two hours later.  Breaking news?  Up-to-date information?  Information that will draw in listeners?  Who cares, they will tell you, but at least we can tell Congress we haven’t cut broadcast hours.

Now that the decisions have apparently been made to gut English radio by stealth, we remind management of the language contained in a directive from the House:  “The Committee recommendation continues a requirement that the BBG notify the Committees on Appropriation within 15 days of any determination by the Board that any of its broadcast entities were found to be in violation of the principles, standards, or journalist code of ethics.”   Ethics?  Who cares, but at least we can tell Congress we know how to find it in the dictionary.
  
The language from the Senate Appropriations Committee is also straightforward.  “The Committee is concerned that BBG’s broadcast priorities do not fully align with U.S. foreign policy priorities.  For example, the fiscal year 2013 budget request reduces broadcasting to Asia at the same time the Secretary of State has called for expanding engagement with Asia, particularly East Asia.”  The Senate language also instructs the BBG to inform the Committee about proposed language service changes.  

The newest member of the BBG Board, Tara Sonenshine, representing Secretary Clinton, will be glad to know that “China’s Got Talent” and nine-hour old news are the best we can do to fulfill our foreign policy priorities.
Breaking news?  Up-to-date information?  Information that will draw in listeners?  Who cares, they will tell you, but at least we can tell Congress we haven’t cut broadcast hours.

By my calculation, VOA Worldwide English radio, which, at one time broadcast live 24 hours a day to the world in 1999, will be reduced to providing 1.5 hours of live programming a day.  

The bottom line:  the BBG staff, long a very vocal opponent of broadcasting in English on radio, is circumventing the will of Congress.  The number of broadcasts are there, the BBG will tell Congress in its defense, but what they won’t say is the quality of the broadcasts is embarrassing and not worthy of a once-great International Broadcaster.  

We will forward this to members of Congress who care about what VOA does and the quality of the material produced along with a truck full of antacid.

Roving Correspondent Leppy Oatcakes

Prague, June 2012

Most Americans know that the US President and the US Vice President don’t travel together for security reasons, and frankly for practical reasons and reasons of economy as well. It’s enough if one senior executive branch official represents the US government at an event abroad. If he or she can’t and needs the second-in-command to be around as well, then there is something wrong, and US taxpayers’ money is likely being wasted.

IBB Director Richard Lobo

The International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard M. Lobo went to Prague, Czech Republic, recently to attend a meeting of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) at the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Mr. Lobo brought with him his right-hand man, IBB Deputy Director Jeffrey Trimble, in addition to a few other senior IBB officials. All of them are employed by the BBG, an agency of the federal government, whose board members can very easily meet and talk to these officials in Washington, DC, where BBG members usually hold their regular board meetings.

The BBG board has nine members, but currently only seven are serving, with two unfilled vacancies; most of their terms have expired, but they continue to serve until they are replaced.The board is bipartisan. Its members are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The IBB Director is also nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The rest of the senior IBB staff are career government employees who rarely leave their jobs and are almost never fired. They run the agency on the day-to-day basis. The BBG manages the Voice of America (VOA) and other US government funded broadcasts and information programs for audiences abroad.

Jeff Trimble

There may be a good reason for BBG members to travel to Prague at least once a year since they are responsible for how Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is managed and also serve on RFE/RL’s board of directors. One could even argue that there was a reason for Director Lobo to be in Prague to learn more about RFE/RL, although he could have gone there during his earlier recent European trip, thus saving money for US taxpayers. If he stayed in Washington, he still could have participated in the BBG meeting in Prague by teleconferencing from the US, as did BBG members Susan McCue and Michael Lynton, as well as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Tara Sonenshine who represented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an ex officio BBG member. Mr. Trimble had a 10-year career at RFE/RL, where his positions included Acting President, Counselor to the President for Programs and Policy, Director of Policy and Strategic Planning, and Director of Broadcasting. It’s not like Mr. Trimble doesn’t know RFE/RL or could not have briefed Mr. Lobo in Washington on RFE/RL issues.

So why would US taxpayers pay for both Director Richard Lobo and his Deputy Jeffrey Trimble to be in Prague at the same time? Isn’t this a waste of valuable time and money, especially at the time when dozens of BBG rank-and-file employee are threatened with being laid off? Shouldn’t have Mr. Trimble stayed behind in Washington, DC to attend to important BBG business while his boss was away for a number of days in Europe?

The International Broadcasting Bureau is part of the BBG and is responsible for administrative and technical operations of US international broadcasting.

Why have an IBB Director and an IBB Deputy Director if both of them can be out of the country for several days at the same time and at the same place? — is one of our “Just Asking” questions.

But wait a minute, there is a great deal of more irony. During the meeting in Prague, the BBG board approved a Resolution Regarding Senator Coburn’s Amendment to Limit Spending on Government-Sponsored Conferences and Travel. According to a BBG press release, the resolution calls for “the development of a broader and more transparent policy to control spending on government-sponsored conferences and travel.”

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposed a model of reform by scaling back, and making more transparent, spending on government-sponsored conferences by establishing attendance limitations on conferences, capping the amount that can be spent on a single conference, capping Agency travel, and requiring all conference expenses to be published online. One can argue whether the BBG meting in Prague was technically a conference, but Senator Coburn also wants to cap government travel. Certainly, sending two highest-ranking agency officials to the same meeting abroad should be looked at by the board as an opportunity to save US taxpayers money by not allowing it to happen again.

“The BBG is the most worthless organization in the federal government,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R – OK) told The Foreign Policy magazine’s blog The Cable in an 2010 interview. “It’s full of people who know nothing about media or foreign policy. All they are doing is spending money and somebody’s got to look into it.”

Senator Coburn could not have said it better.

Lynne Weil is sworn in by IBB Director Richard Lobo

But the story gets even better. Director Lobo and his Deputy were not the only top IBB officials who traveled to Prague. So did the the newly-hired Director of Communications and External Affairs Lynne Weil who — we were told — then stayed abroad to take a long vacation. Apparently, there was no need for her to be in Washington to try to improve the BBG’s disastrous reputation on Capitol Hill, not to mention looking after various pieces of BBG-related legislation heading for a rejection by lawmakers because of secretive and poor drafting by senior BBG officials.

Victor Ashe

Thanks to earlier efforts by BBG’s Republican member Ambassador Victor Ashe, the board’s open meetings can now be viewed online live and on-demand. Ambassador Ashe is also the one who insisted on the BBG adopting the Coburn travel resolution. Because of his push for transparency at the BBG, we are able to report in much greater detail on the travel habits and meeting behavior of top agency officials and we learned much more than we otherwise would.

As we could watch the IBB senior staffers’ participation in the open meeting in Prague, it was obvious at least to us that it was at best minimal and consisted largely of opposing Ambassador Ashe whenever he tried to ask for more transparency. They could have easily offered this kind of bureaucratic resistance at almost no cost to US taxpayers by simply teleconferencing from Washington. The damage of opposing transparency might still occur and be costly, but at least US taxpayers would have been spared travel, hotel and per diem expenses.

In her brief meeting participation moment, Ms. Weil informed Ambassador Ashe that it was the top-level “management” decision not to publish the salary and benefits information, much of which is already available from official sources, when he asked why the board was not informed that one of its directives to put this kind of information online was not carried out. That appears to have been Ms. Weil’s only contribution at the open meeting. It lasted a few seconds during a meeting which itself last almost two and a half hours.

Ms. Weil did not present at the open meeting a full report on her office’s activities because there was not enough time. Neither did Director Lobo or Deputy Director Trimble. But we were told that in her written report, Ms. Weil stated that her office intensified efforts to work with the office of Rep. Mac Thornberry on his provision to ease the legal restrictions on domestic dissemination of materials produced with public diplomacy funding, known as the Smith-Mundt Act. There was apparently nothing in Ms. Weil’s written report to the board — according to our sources — about the firestorm of protests against attempts to modify the Smith-Mundt Act or a statement from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand that she plans to oppose the legislation in the Senate.

Director Lobo told Ambassador Ashe that the senior staff’s decision not to publish the salary and benefits information for employees paid with public funds was designed to avoid “embarrassment.” Mr. Lobo’s participation in the meeting was as well minimal and lasted only about a minute. His Deputy Director Mr. Trimble was not even sitting next to him during the open meeting to offer any off-mike advice. As far as we can tell there was absolutely no reason for both of them to be in Prague and away from Washington.

Since there was also no time for Director Lobo to give his report during the open meeting. He submitted a written report, in which — we were told — he focused on the activities of the Morale Working Group (employee morale at the BBG under the leadership of the management team kept by Director Lobo is among the lowest in the entire US federal government). In his written report, he apparently failed to disclose that the BBG’s employee union AFGE Local 1812 withdrew in protest from the Union-Management Forum, from which the Morale Working Group was formed.

How is extensive travel by senior IBB officials related to employee morale?

Many of these senior executives have been proposing year after year to cut dozens and even hundreds of jobs of BBG journalists and broadcasters while preserving and expanding bureaucratic positions and giving themselves hefty high-performance bonuses — some as high as $10,000, which were approved and defended by Director Lobo as being about slightly below average for the US government as a whole. Keep in mind that the agency has for years received the lowest ratings in leadership and management knowledge in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) government-wide employee opinion surveys. Their latest plan, also strongly opposed by Ambassador Ashe, is to merge the grantee broadcasters — Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN — Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV) into a large, centrally-managed administrative unit. They also convinced most BBG members that they need a CEO who would not be nominated by the President and conformed by the Senate. Critics see this more as an attempt to accumulate more bureaucratic power.

What kind of signal does the presence of a large number of some of the lowest OPM survey rated BBG/IBB senior managers gathering in historic and beautiful Prague send to more than two hundred rank-and-file employees in the US whose real broadcasting jobs these officials wanted to eliminate in their FY2013 budget submission to the Congress?

Not a good signal at all, not to mention the spectacle of wasting public funds that could be used for programming to countries like China, Tibet and Iran. Some of these BBG/IBB officials wanted to cut broadcasts to China and Tibet, but their plans were blocked in Congress.

What the Prague meeting will be probably most remembered for is the restrictive resolution, sponsored by BBG Governor Dennis Mulhaupt, to limit disclosure of information about the board’s deliberations and the staff’s advice to board members. Ambassador Ashe opposed the original version of the resolution, which the senior staff did not share with him until shortly before the meeting. He strongly criticized it as limiting the ability of BBG members and employees to share information with members of Congress, to publicly oppose bad policies, to receive public input, and to expose waste, fraud and abuse of public funds.

BBG Deputy GC Paul Kollmer-Dorsey

Ambassador Ashe said that the BBG Deputy General Counsel Paul Kollmer-Dorsey, who also participated in the meeting in Prague, did not respond to his emails with legal questions about the resolution. Mr. Kollmer-Dorsey answered that he had never received Ashe’s emails, otherwise he would have responded.

The Deputy General Counsel was, however, the only IBB official who had a substantial participation in the open meeting, but only because Ambassador Ashe challenged him on a number of legal points related to the proposed nondisclosure resolution. Even after the board voted on an amendment proposed by Ambassador Ashe to include wording to protect the rights of BBG employees under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, the Office of the General Counsel published the text of the resolution without such wording. This was corrected a few days later, but only after BBG Watch pointed out the embarrassing legal omission.

From what we can see permanent senior agency staffers working for Director Lobo like to travel abroad, some like to combine vacations with official travel — which technically is not illegal or even unethical but can be questioned if important agency business is unattended. Some have also responded to a senior board member in a way which we think is highly inappropriate, even bordering on being impolite.

But, in any case, we could not see any good reason for so many of these senior staffers being in Prague while dozens of BBG, IBB, VOA, RFA, RFE/RL, Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, and Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) — Radio and TV Marti — employees are facing RIFs and other personnel and programming reductions proposed by some of these very same officials. There is certainly no excuse we can think of for the IBB Director and the IBB Deputy Director to travel away from Washington to the same location at the same time, even if they shared a room in a luxury Prague hotel, which we don’t think they did.

If the US President and the US Vice President don’t travel abroad together at US taxpayers’ expense, we don’t think IBB Director and IBB Deputy Director should either.

That’s our answer to the “Just Asking” question.

What’s yours?

PS It seems that getting Congressional approval for the merger of the grantee broadcasters and the CEO position is not so urgent after all, not during the vacation season in any case. Not that it’s a bad thing, because these proposals are deeply flawed and designed to limit Congressional and public oversight. It’s ironic, however, that not only the BBG’s top Congressional liaison official took a long vacation abroad after the Prague meeting, so did, we hear, a BBG member who supports these proposals and could have been lobbying for them on Capitol Hill.

We’re not, in this case, begrudge a BBG member his European vacation, but we do have a legislative suggestion for Sen. Coburn and other lawmakers that could save US taxpayers millions, perhaps even hundred of millions of dollars in government travel each year. Ban government officials from combining official and personal travel and you will discover that suddenly that conference in Europe is not so important after all.

Prague, June 2012

Most Americans know that the US President and the US Vice President don’t travel together for security reasons, and frankly for practical reasons and reasons of economy as well. It’s enough if one senior executive branch official represents the US government at an event abroad. If he or she can’t and needs the second-in-command to be around as well, then there is something wrong, and US taxpayers’ money is likely being wasted.

IBB Director Richard Lobo

The International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard M. Lobo went to Prague, Czech Republic, recently to attend a meeting of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) at the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Mr. Lobo brought with him his right-hand man, IBB Deputy Director Jeffrey Trimble, in addition to a few other senior IBB officials. All of them are employed by the BBG, an agency of the federal government, whose board members can very easily meet and talk to these officials in Washington, DC, where BBG members usually hold their regular board meetings.

The BBG board has nine members, but currently only seven are serving, with two unfilled vacancies; most of their terms have expired, but they continue to serve until they are replaced.The board is bipartisan. Its members are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The IBB Director is also nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The rest of the senior IBB staff are career government employees who rarely leave their jobs and are almost never fired. They run the agency on the day-to-day basis. The BBG manages the Voice of America (VOA) and other US government funded broadcasts and information programs for audiences abroad.

Jeff Trimble

There may be a good reason for BBG members to travel to Prague at least once a year since they are responsible for how Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is managed and also serve on RFE/RL’s board of directors. One could even argue that there was a reason for Director Lobo to be in Prague to learn more about RFE/RL, although he could have gone there during his earlier recent European trip, thus saving money for US taxpayers. If he stayed in Washington, he still could have participated in the BBG meeting in Prague by teleconferencing from the US, as did BBG members Susan McCue and Michael Lynton, as well as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Tara Sonenshine who represented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an ex officio BBG member. Mr. Trimble had a 10-year career at RFE/RL, where his positions included Acting President, Counselor to the President for Programs and Policy, Director of Policy and Strategic Planning, and Director of Broadcasting. It’s not like Mr. Trimble doesn’t know RFE/RL or could not have briefed Mr. Lobo in Washington on RFE/RL issues.

So why would US taxpayers pay for both Director Richard Lobo and his Deputy Jeffrey Trimble to be in Prague at the same time? Isn’t this a waste of valuable time and money, especially at the time when dozens of BBG rank-and-file employee are threatened with being laid off? Shouldn’t have Mr. Trimble stayed behind in Washington, DC to attend to important BBG business while his boss was away for a number of days in Europe?

The International Broadcasting Bureau is part of the BBG and is responsible for administrative and technical operations of US international broadcasting.

Why have an IBB Director and an IBB Deputy Director if both of them can be out of the country for several days at the same time and at the same place? — is one of our “Just Asking” questions.

But wait a minute, there is a great deal of more irony. During the meeting in Prague, the BBG board approved a Resolution Regarding Senator Coburn’s Amendment to Limit Spending on Government-Sponsored Conferences and Travel. According to a BBG press release, the resolution calls for “the development of a broader and more transparent policy to control spending on government-sponsored conferences and travel.”

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposed a model of reform by scaling back, and making more transparent, spending on government-sponsored conferences by establishing attendance limitations on conferences, capping the amount that can be spent on a single conference, capping Agency travel, and requiring all conference expenses to be published online. One can argue whether the BBG meting in Prague was technically a conference, but Senator Coburn also wants to cap government travel. Certainly, sending two highest-ranking agency officials to the same meeting abroad should be looked at by the board as an opportunity to save US taxpayers money by not allowing it to happen again.

“The BBG is the most worthless organization in the federal government,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R – OK) told The Foreign Policy magazine’s blog The Cable in an 2010 interview. “It’s full of people who know nothing about media or foreign policy. All they are doing is spending money and somebody’s got to look into it.”

Senator Coburn could not have said it better.

Lynne Weil is sworn in by IBB Director Richard Lobo

But the story gets even better. Director Lobo and his Deputy were not the only top IBB officials who traveled to Prague. So did the the newly-hired Director of Communications and External Affairs Lynne Weil who — we were told — then stayed abroad to take a long vacation. Apparently, there was no need for her to be in Washington to try to improve the BBG’s disastrous reputation on Capitol Hill, not to mention looking after various pieces of BBG-related legislation heading for a rejection by lawmakers because of secretive and poor drafting by senior BBG officials.

Victor Ashe

Thanks to earlier efforts by BBG’s Republican member Ambassador Victor Ashe, the board’s open meetings can now be viewed online live and on-demand. Ambassador Ashe is also the one who insisted on the BBG adopting the Coburn travel resolution. Because of his push for transparency at the BBG, we are able to report in much greater detail on the travel habits and meeting behavior of top agency officials and we learned much more than we otherwise would.

As we could watch the IBB senior staffers’ participation in the open meeting in Prague, it was obvious at least to us that it was at best minimal and consisted largely of opposing Ambassador Ashe whenever he tried to ask for more transparency. They could have easily offered this kind of bureaucratic resistance at almost no cost to US taxpayers by simply teleconferencing from Washington. The damage of opposing transparency might still occur and be costly, but at least US taxpayers would have been spared travel, hotel and per diem expenses.

In her brief meeting participation moment, Ms. Weil informed Ambassador Ashe that it was the top-level “management” decision not to publish the salary and benefits information, much of which is already available from official sources, when he asked why the board was not informed that one of its directives to put this kind of information online was not carried out. That appears to have been Ms. Weil’s only contribution at the open meeting. It lasted a few seconds during a meeting which itself last almost two and a half hours.

Ms. Weil did not present at the open meeting a full report on her office’s activities because there was not enough time. Neither did Director Lobo or Deputy Director Trimble. But we were told that in her written report, Ms. Weil stated that her office intensified efforts to work with the office of Rep. Mac Thornberry on his provision to ease the legal restrictions on domestic dissemination of materials produced with public diplomacy funding, known as the Smith-Mundt Act. There was apparently nothing in Ms. Weil’s written report to the board — according to our sources — about the firestorm of protests against attempts to modify the Smith-Mundt Act or a statement from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand that she plans to oppose the legislation in the Senate.

Director Lobo told Ambassador Ashe that the senior staff’s decision not to publish the salary and benefits information for employees paid with public funds was designed to avoid “embarrassment.” Mr. Lobo’s participation in the meeting was as well minimal and lasted only about a minute. His Deputy Director Mr. Trimble was not even sitting next to him during the open meeting to offer any off-mike advice. As far as we can tell there was absolutely no reason for both of them to be in Prague and away from Washington.

Since there was also no time for Director Lobo to give his report during the open meeting. He submitted a written report, in which — we were told — he focused on the activities of the Morale Working Group (employee morale at the BBG under the leadership of the management team kept by Director Lobo is among the lowest in the entire US federal government). In his written report, he apparently failed to disclose that the BBG’s employee union AFGE Local 1812 withdrew in protest from the Union-Management Forum, from which the Morale Working Group was formed.

How is extensive travel by senior IBB officials related to employee morale?

Many of these senior executives have been proposing year after year to cut dozens and even hundreds of jobs of BBG journalists and broadcasters while preserving and expanding bureaucratic positions and giving themselves hefty high-performance bonuses — some as high as $10,000, which were approved and defended by Director Lobo as being about slightly below average for the US government as a whole. Keep in mind that the agency has for years received the lowest ratings in leadership and management knowledge in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) government-wide employee opinion surveys. Their latest plan, also strongly opposed by Ambassador Ashe, is to merge the grantee broadcasters — Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN — Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV) into a large, centrally-managed administrative unit. They also convinced most BBG members that they need a CEO who would not be nominated by the President and conformed by the Senate. Critics see this more as an attempt to accumulate more bureaucratic power.

What kind of signal does the presence of a large number of some of the lowest OPM survey rated BBG/IBB senior managers gathering in historic and beautiful Prague send to more than two hundred rank-and-file employees in the US whose real broadcasting jobs these officials wanted to eliminate in their FY2013 budget submission to the Congress?

Not a good signal at all, not to mention the spectacle of wasting public funds that could be used for programming to countries like China, Tibet and Iran. Some of these BBG/IBB officials wanted to cut broadcasts to China and Tibet, but their plans were blocked in Congress.

What the Prague meeting will be probably most remembered for is the restrictive resolution, sponsored by BBG Governor Dennis Mulhaupt, to limit disclosure of information about the board’s deliberations and the staff’s advice to board members. Ambassador Ashe opposed the original version of the resolution, which the senior staff did not share with him until shortly before the meeting. He strongly criticized it as limiting the ability of BBG members and employees to share information with members of Congress, to publicly oppose bad policies, to receive public input, and to expose waste, fraud and abuse of public funds.

BBG Deputy GC Paul Kollmer-Dorsey

Ambassador Ashe said that the BBG Deputy General Counsel Paul Kollmer-Dorsey, who also participated in the meeting in Prague, did not respond to his emails with legal questions about the resolution. Mr. Kollmer-Dorsey answered that he had never received Ashe’s emails, otherwise he would have responded.

The Deputy General Counsel was, however, the only IBB official who had a substantial participation in the open meeting, but only because Ambassador Ashe challenged him on a number of legal points related to the proposed nondisclosure resolution. Even after the board voted on an amendment proposed by Ambassador Ashe to include wording to protect the rights of BBG employees under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, the Office of the General Counsel published the text of the resolution without such wording. This was corrected a few days later, but only after BBG Watch pointed out the embarrassing legal omission.

From what we can see permanent senior agency staffers working for Director Lobo like to travel abroad, some like to combine vacations with official travel — which technically is not illegal or even unethical but can be questioned if important agency business is unattended. Some have also responded to a senior board member in a way which we think is highly inappropriate, even bordering on being impolite.

But, in any case, we could not see any good reason for so many of these senior staffers being in Prague while dozens of BBG, IBB, VOA, RFA, RFE/RL, Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, and Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) — Radio and TV Marti — employees are facing RIFs and other personnel and programming reductions proposed by some of these very same officials. There is certainly no excuse we can think of for the IBB Director and the IBB Deputy Director to travel away from Washington to the same location at the same time, even if they shared a room in a luxury Prague hotel, which we don’t think they did.

If the US President and the US Vice President don’t travel abroad together at US taxpayers’ expense, we don’t think IBB Director and IBB Deputy Director should either.

That’s our answer to the “Just Asking” question.

What’s yours?

PS It seems that getting Congressional approval for the merger of the grantee broadcasters and the CEO position is not so urgent after all, not during the vacation season in any case. Not that it’s a bad thing, because these proposals are deeply flawed and designed to limit Congressional and public oversight. It’s ironic, however, that not only the BBG’s top Congressional liaison official took a long vacation abroad after the Prague meeting, so did, we hear, a BBG member who supports these proposals and could have been lobbying for them on Capitol Hill.

We’re not, in this case, begrudge a BBG member his European vacation, but we do have a legislative suggestion for Sen. Coburn and other lawmakers that could save US taxpayers millions, perhaps even hundred of millions of dollars in government travel each year. Ban government officials from combining official and personal travel and you will discover that suddenly that conference in Europe is not so important after all.

Libby Liu, RFA President

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) plan to merge the grantee-surrogate broadcasters into one large administrative structure is meeting with a strong opposition among both management and employees of Radio Free Asia (RFA) as a killer of effective journalism, efficient management and good labor relations.

The consolidation plan is also being widely criticized by managers and employees of other BBG-run grantee-surrogate broadcasters, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), as an attempt by BBG executive staff to centralize corporate control to the detriment of specialized reporting in support of media freedom and democracy.

President of Radio Free Asia Libby Liu made the strongest case against consolidation in a memo sent to Radio Free Asia Board of Directors who are also members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency which manages RFA, RFE/RL, MBN, the Voice of America (VOA), and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB — Radio and TV Marti).

All nine members (five Democrats and four Republicans) of the BBG sit on Radio Free Asia’s corporate board. Michael Meehan serves as Chair and the Vice-Chair is Victor Ashe. With the two current vacancies at the BBG, Radio Free Asia’s corporate board is made up now of the following seven Broadcasting Board of Governors members, four Democrats and three Republicans:

Michael P. Meehan, RFA Corporate Board Chair – D
Victor H. Ashe, RFA Corporate Board Vice-Chair – R
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – D
Michael Lynton – D
Susan McCue – D
Dennis Mulhaupt – R
Dana Perino – R

But party affiliations do not necessarily determine how BBG members view various recommendations from the senior executive staff. Both Ashe and Meehan have strong reservations about the consolidation plan. For example, both Meehan and McCue also sided early with Ashe in opposing the staff’s proposal to eliminate Voice of America broadcasts to China and Tibet and to reduce some RFA broadcasts. Eventually, all BBG members changed their vote on this issue. It remains to be seen how, after strong outside criticism and internal opposition to the merger plan, RFA Board members will respond to Liu’s memo.

View PDF file of the memo.

Brian Conniff, President, MBN

Libby Liu’s memo was in response to the Grantee Consolidation Plan, which was prepared at the request of BBG members by Brian Conniff, President of Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. Even though Conniff put together the report, it is being mischaracterized as “his” proposal. Conniff like Liu has serious reservations about the proposed consolidation. He keeps telling his associates that he was asked “how to do it,” not whether “it should be done.” He is also quoted as saying that he “doesn’t see the why either” and admits privately that the numbers in the report are largely guesswork. MBN sources told BBG Watch that Conniff will not rebut Liu’s memo.

Sources also told BBG Watch that the only enthusiastic supporter of the merger plan among the top management at the grantee broadcasters is RFE/RL’s new president Steven Korn. He was rumored to be former BBG chairman Walter Issacson’s pick to run the new bureaucracy, sources told BBG Watch. Both Isaacson and Korn were formerly executives at CNN and have had experience in corporate broadcasting. This may explain their approach to corporate mergers and centralization of news production, which critics say are politically unrealistic and unsuitable for U.S. taxpayer-supported overseas broadcasting to many separate audiences.

One of the key elements of Isaacson’s vision was the creation of the Global News Network to combine news output of all grantee broadcasters, Voice of America, and Radio and TV Marti. Sources told BBG Watch that heads of nearly all BBG broadcasting units are also opposed to this plan and see it as a waste of resources to support a news product for which there is no target audience inside or outside of the United States. Meanwhile, BBG/IBB executives have proposed the elimination of many broadcasts to countries with restricted media and dozens of journalistic position in anticipation of implementing the strategic plan.

Isaacson, who had embraced the strategic plan and the grantee consolidation plan developed by the BBG’s International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) top officials, resigned last January. But before his resignation, the Board approved their recommendations. According to critics, they used Isaacson unfamiliarity with U.S. international broadcasting and Congressional intent to push for increasing their central control and authority.

Since then, Congressional committees in the House and the Senate took bipartisan actions to rebuke various portions of the strategic plan and criticized the BBG staff for repeatedly resisting directives from Congress.

It is likely that the U.S. Senate will not approve the key component of the BBG strategy — modifications to the Smith-Mundt Act which prohibits the BBG from distributing its programs in the United States. The BBG/IBB staff convinced Isaacson and other Board members that they can get these restrictions lifted by the U.S. Congress, but after a firestorm of protests in the U.S. media, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D – NY), who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced that she favors keeping the troubling amendment out of the Senate bill and stripped out in conference committee when the House and Senate bills are reconciled.

Despite being called by other members of Congress as “opaque in [their] decision making and incredibility tone deaf to Congressional priorities,” the BBG’s management team working for the International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard Lobo continues to lobby BBG members and members of Congress to go along with the grantee consolidation plan. Knowing that the merger is highly controversial in Congress and among the grantees and their outside supporters, BBG/IBB executives are trying to push it through without congressional hearings. But they have met with strong opposition from at least one BBG member, Ambassador Victor Ashe, who is demanding a thorough public discussion of the plan’s potential risks to the efficiency, specialization and independence of grantee-surrogate broadcasters. He has accused BBG/IBB executive staff of trying to move forward with the consolidation plan and the proposed CEO position at the BBG without proper public and Congressional scrutiny. In response to Ashe’s demands, the executive staff eventually asked for public comments on the consolidation plan.

The grantee broadcasters have long been viewed as generally much better managed than the bureaucracy of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the International Broadcasting Bureau. The grantees have been valued by their audiences abroad, members of Congress and other supporters in the United States for their ability to produce highly-targeted, specialized programs at a relatively low cost to US taxpayers.

Critics of the plan argue that it will destroy the grantees’ competitive advantage and transfer control from area specialists and journalists to bureaucrats. They point as an example to management changes implemented by Steven Korn at RFE/RL, where all top managerial positions are now held by non-journalists. They replaced “old white guys,” a term reportedly used by Korn in an email to a BBG member to describe some of the previous managers who were journalists or regional and U.S. international broadcasting specialists with long professional experience. Rank and file RFE/RL employees, and particularly RFE/RL journalists, broadcasters and lower level managers, are strongly opposed to the merger, sources tell BBG Watch.

Opposition to the merger is likewise very strong managers and employees of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, which include Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV.

Of all the grantee broadcasters, Radio Free Asia is reported to be particularly well managed and its top management has excellent relations with RFA employees and their union. As Libby Liu’s memo points out, in the 2011 OIG report on Radio Free Asia, RFA is described as an organization whose personnel at all levels are “dedicated to its mission of providing accurate and timely news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press.” The report elaborates on the positive pieces of the company to conclude that, “staff morale and job satisfaction are high.” The OIG inspection further observes that RFA has “strong, experienced executive direction.”

The union representing RFA workforce sent the following letter, which was shared with BBG Watch by some of the employees:

To Whom It May Concern:

The Newspaper Guild/CWA will be watching any consolidation very carefully. Obviously we view with great concern any consolidation that potentially could fracture the excellent relationship between the union-represented employees at RFA and the current RFA management. Further, we would remind the decision makers that you can’t simply apply new policies to the Guild members. Any changes would need to be bargained. If this plan moves forward, it would behoove the BBG to engage the union earlier rather than later.

Paul A. Reilly
Local Representative
Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild
1100 15th Street NW Suite 350
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202 785-3650 x13
Fax 202 785-3659
www.wbng.org

In a memo to Radio Free Asia Board of Directors, RFA President Libby Liu also expressed her deep reservations and concerns about the consolidation plan. Her memo was also shared with us by RFA employees.

Liu wrote that after careful review, she is concerned that “the proposed merger may neither save money nor improve programs while contravening the clearly‐stated will of Congress.” Liu pointed out that “Radio Free Asia and RFE/RL were created by Congressionally‐enacted federal legislation in the midst of substantial debate and lobbying resistance.” “The intent of Congress is clearly stated in the conference language with each piece of the relevant law,” she told BBG members.

RFA president also stated:

“The expenditure of taxpayer money to fund a consolidation in order to achieve an organizational structure considered and rejected by the Congress when these laws were enacted, contravenes the letter and intent of actual legislation which still has the full force of the law. In the absence of a Congressional directive, such a course seems imprudent and wasteful if not irresponsible.”

RFA President Libby Liu also voiced concerns about the impact of the proposed consolidation on the journalistic performance of Radio Free Asia and other grantee broadcasters:

“Among my chief concerns is the validity of the claim that there would be no ‘negative impact on programming’. Upon review of the Plan, I interpret that claim to be literal in the sense that it means that there are no anticipated job eliminations in the ranks of the content producers. There will, however, be a dramatic negative impact on the editorial leadership insomuch as an Executive Editor is a completely different caliber of journalist than a ‘brand manager’.

Furthermore, I cannot see how having a much reduced and less specialized/more dispersed team of support (finance, human resources, technology, facilities, legal and communications) can help but adversely affect the ability of the journalists to maintain the quality of their product. The Plan assumes that the same number of content producers (or more) can be fully supported and managed by roughly one half of the support and management they currently have.

She also quoted an observation of one RFA senior manager:

“Nowhere does the grantee consolidation plan take into account the certainty that a more bureaucratic, top‐heavy organization would impede the competitiveness and the rapid journalistic decision‐ making that is required for RFA to maintain its standing with its listeners and viewers.

The plan is not designed to support effective journalism.”

Libby Liu also expressed the concern of RFA managers that the consolidation plan would result in dilution of managements’ familiarity, expertise and attention to the specialized missions of the grantees and needs of their employees.

“The cultural authenticity that prevails through RFA’s approach cannot be replicated in a larger hierarchy in which each rung of the decision‐making ladder is not intimately familiar with the history, context and nuances of each of our mandated language services,” Liu wrote to BBG members.

Other than supporting the BBG strategic plan, there does not seem to be any clear reason for actually undertaking this consolidation, the memo states:

There are no compelling arguments that a consolidated large grantee will enhance the successful delivery of content or achieve more effective impact by any of the three private corporate grantees envisioned and created by Congress. The separate missions and distinct corporate cultures are neither mentioned nor considered.

The memo points out that instead of proceeding with the unpopular and risky consolidation that would be contrary to the existing laws and Congressional intent, the BBG could take other steps to save money and increase efficiency:

Savings or improvements that can be achieved without Grantee Consolidation:
Several savings strategies which could be pursued and achieved without the disruption and negative impacts described above include the following:

• Negotiating group contracts of high value services – wire services, health insurance, other benefits.
• Subletting the DC RFE space and accommodating the RFE staff in RFA’s space at 2025 M St.
• Common secure storage capacity is currently available with no additional costs.
• Links between the offices could provide backup paths for redundancy in the near term.
• Common reporting practices can be developed for apples to apples financial analyses between the grantees.

Radio Free Asia President Libby Liu concluded her memo with the following appeal to the members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors:

“In my position as President of Radio Free Asia, my duty is to make decisions or recommendations in the best interests of Radio Free Asia after performing due diligence. Based on the information presented and discussed, I conclude that the plan as proposed demonstrates costs (or harm) far outweighing the benefits (even if accepted without substantiation).

As I have advised previously, it is the Radio Free Asia Board of Directors’ fiduciary responsibility to make decisions in the best interests of Radio Free Asia and to exercise the necessary due diligence to make an informed decision. It is entirely within your purview to come to a contrary position from mine. But I would respectfully request that you consider the best interests of Radio Free Asia when you make this decision for Radio Free Asia.

The best interests of Radio Free Asia have not been addressed or considered to my knowledge in any of the discussions, working groups or written reports to date. Neither have I heard the respective best interests of RFE/RL or MBN addressed or considered in this matter. As far as I have been informed, these decisions appear to be driven by a majority of the Broadcasting Board of Governors acting on behalf of US International Broadcasting generally – although, as noted above, I do not see the information thus far presented as substantiated, complete or persuasive that the Plan satisfies even those broader interests.

In open BBG meetings I have heard articulated the notion that this is a first step in a larger restructuring of the entire US International Broadcasting enterprise. If it is a first piece of a whole, shouldn’t the entirety of the plan be already developed, examined and approved? Standing alone as so‐called “low hanging fruit,” the proposed grantee consolidation is damaging to the people who depend on us, to national security interests, and to the effective and efficient execution of our Congressionally‐mandated mission with hypothetical benefits.”

Libby Liu, RFA President

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) plan to merge the grantee-surrogate broadcasters into one large administrative structure is meeting with a strong opposition among both management and employees of Radio Free Asia (RFA) as a killer of effective journalism, efficient management and good labor relations.

The consolidation plan is also being widely criticized by managers and employees of other BBG-run grantee-surrogate broadcasters, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), as an attempt by BBG executive staff to centralize corporate control to the detriment of specialized reporting in support of media freedom and democracy.

President of Radio Free Asia Libby Liu made the strongest case against consolidation in a memo sent to Radio Free Asia Board of Directors who are also members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency which manages RFA, RFE/RL, MBN, the Voice of America (VOA), and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB — Radio and TV Marti).

All nine members (five Democrats and four Republicans) of the BBG sit on Radio Free Asia’s corporate board. Michael Meehan serves as Chair and the Vice-Chair is Victor Ashe. With the two current vacancies at the BBG, Radio Free Asia’s corporate board is made up now of the following seven Broadcasting Board of Governors members, four Democrats and three Republicans:

Michael P. Meehan, RFA Corporate Board Chair – D
Victor H. Ashe, RFA Corporate Board Vice-Chair – R
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – D
Michael Lynton – D
Susan McCue – D
Dennis Mulhaupt – R
Dana Perino – R

But party affiliations do not necessarily determine how BBG members view various recommendations from the senior executive staff. Both Ashe and Meehan have strong reservations about the consolidation plan. For example, both Meehan and McCue also sided early with Ashe in opposing the staff’s proposal to eliminate Voice of America broadcasts to China and Tibet and to reduce some RFA broadcasts. Eventually, all BBG members changed their vote on this issue. It remains to be seen how, after strong outside criticism and internal opposition to the merger plan, RFA Board members will respond to Liu’s memo.

View PDF file of the memo.

Brian Conniff, President, MBN

Libby Liu’s memo was in response to the Grantee Consolidation Plan, which was prepared at the request of BBG members by Brian Conniff, President of Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. Even though Conniff put together the report, it is being mischaracterized as “his” proposal. Conniff like Liu has serious reservations about the proposed consolidation. He keeps telling his associates that he was asked “how to do it,” not whether “it should be done.” He is also quoted as saying that he “doesn’t see the why either” and admits privately that the numbers in the report are largely guesswork. MBN sources told BBG Watch that Conniff will not rebut Liu’s memo.

Sources also told BBG Watch that the only enthusiastic supporter of the merger plan among the top management at the grantee broadcasters is RFE/RL’s new president Steven Korn. He was rumored to be former BBG chairman Walter Issacson’s pick to run the new bureaucracy, sources told BBG Watch. Both Isaacson and Korn were formerly executives at CNN and have had experience in corporate broadcasting. This may explain their approach to corporate mergers and centralization of news production, which critics say are politically unrealistic and unsuitable for U.S. taxpayer-supported overseas broadcasting to many separate audiences.

One of the key elements of Isaacson’s vision was the creation of the Global News Network to combine news output of all grantee broadcasters, Voice of America, and Radio and TV Marti. Sources told BBG Watch that heads of nearly all BBG broadcasting units are also opposed to this plan and see it as a waste of resources to support a news product for which there is no target audience inside or outside of the United States. Meanwhile, BBG/IBB executives have proposed the elimination of many broadcasts to countries with restricted media and dozens of journalistic position in anticipation of implementing the strategic plan.

Isaacson, who had embraced the strategic plan and the grantee consolidation plan developed by the BBG’s International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) top officials, resigned last January. But before his resignation, the Board approved their recommendations. According to critics, they used Isaacson unfamiliarity with U.S. international broadcasting and Congressional intent to push for increasing their central control and authority.

Since then, Congressional committees in the House and the Senate took bipartisan actions to rebuke various portions of the strategic plan and criticized the BBG staff for repeatedly resisting directives from Congress.

It is likely that the U.S. Senate will not approve the key component of the BBG strategy — modifications to the Smith-Mundt Act which prohibits the BBG from distributing its programs in the United States. The BBG/IBB staff convinced Isaacson and other Board members that they can get these restrictions lifted by the U.S. Congress, but after a firestorm of protests in the U.S. media, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D – NY), who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced that she favors keeping the troubling amendment out of the Senate bill and stripped out in conference committee when the House and Senate bills are reconciled.

Despite being called by other members of Congress as “opaque in [their] decision making and incredibility tone deaf to Congressional priorities,” the BBG’s management team working for the International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard Lobo continues to lobby BBG members and members of Congress to go along with the grantee consolidation plan. Knowing that the merger is highly controversial in Congress and among the grantees and their outside supporters, BBG/IBB executives are trying to push it through without congressional hearings. But they have met with strong opposition from at least one BBG member, Ambassador Victor Ashe, who is demanding a thorough public discussion of the plan’s potential risks to the efficiency, specialization and independence of grantee-surrogate broadcasters. He has accused BBG/IBB executive staff of trying to move forward with the consolidation plan and the proposed CEO position at the BBG without proper public and Congressional scrutiny. In response to Ashe’s demands, the executive staff eventually asked for public comments on the consolidation plan.

The grantee broadcasters have long been viewed as generally much better managed than the bureaucracy of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the International Broadcasting Bureau. The grantees have been valued by their audiences abroad, members of Congress and other supporters in the United States for their ability to produce highly-targeted, specialized programs at a relatively low cost to US taxpayers.

Critics of the plan argue that it will destroy the grantees’ competitive advantage and transfer control from area specialists and journalists to bureaucrats. They point as an example to management changes implemented by Steven Korn at RFE/RL, where all top managerial positions are now held by non-journalists. They replaced “old white guys,” a term reportedly used by Korn in an email to a BBG member to describe some of the previous managers who were journalists or regional and U.S. international broadcasting specialists with long professional experience. Rank and file RFE/RL employees, and particularly RFE/RL journalists, broadcasters and lower level managers, are strongly opposed to the merger, sources tell BBG Watch.

Opposition to the merger is likewise very strong managers and employees of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, which include Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV.

Of all the grantee broadcasters, Radio Free Asia is reported to be particularly well managed and its top management has excellent relations with RFA employees and their union. As Libby Liu’s memo points out, in the 2011 OIG report on Radio Free Asia, RFA is described as an organization whose personnel at all levels are “dedicated to its mission of providing accurate and timely news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press.” The report elaborates on the positive pieces of the company to conclude that, “staff morale and job satisfaction are high.” The OIG inspection further observes that RFA has “strong, experienced executive direction.”

The union representing RFA workforce sent the following letter, which was shared with BBG Watch by some of the employees:

To Whom It May Concern:

The Newspaper Guild/CWA will be watching any consolidation very carefully. Obviously we view with great concern any consolidation that potentially could fracture the excellent relationship between the union-represented employees at RFA and the current RFA management. Further, we would remind the decision makers that you can’t simply apply new policies to the Guild members. Any changes would need to be bargained. If this plan moves forward, it would behoove the BBG to engage the union earlier rather than later.

Paul A. Reilly
Local Representative
Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild
1100 15th Street NW Suite 350
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202 785-3650 x13
Fax 202 785-3659
www.wbng.org

In a memo to Radio Free Asia Board of Directors, RFA President Libby Liu also expressed her deep reservations and concerns about the consolidation plan. Her memo was also shared with us by RFA employees.

Liu wrote that after careful review, she is concerned that “the proposed merger may neither save money nor improve programs while contravening the clearly‐stated will of Congress.” Liu pointed out that “Radio Free Asia and RFE/RL were created by Congressionally‐enacted federal legislation in the midst of substantial debate and lobbying resistance.” “The intent of Congress is clearly stated in the conference language with each piece of the relevant law,” she told BBG members.

RFA president also stated:

“The expenditure of taxpayer money to fund a consolidation in order to achieve an organizational structure considered and rejected by the Congress when these laws were enacted, contravenes the letter and intent of actual legislation which still has the full force of the law. In the absence of a Congressional directive, such a course seems imprudent and wasteful if not irresponsible.”

RFA President Libby Liu also voiced concerns about the impact of the proposed consolidation on the journalistic performance of Radio Free Asia and other grantee broadcasters:

“Among my chief concerns is the validity of the claim that there would be no ‘negative impact on programming’. Upon review of the Plan, I interpret that claim to be literal in the sense that it means that there are no anticipated job eliminations in the ranks of the content producers. There will, however, be a dramatic negative impact on the editorial leadership insomuch as an Executive Editor is a completely different caliber of journalist than a ‘brand manager’.

Furthermore, I cannot see how having a much reduced and less specialized/more dispersed team of support (finance, human resources, technology, facilities, legal and communications) can help but adversely affect the ability of the journalists to maintain the quality of their product. The Plan assumes that the same number of content producers (or more) can be fully supported and managed by roughly one half of the support and management they currently have.

She also quoted an observation of one RFA senior manager:

“Nowhere does the grantee consolidation plan take into account the certainty that a more bureaucratic, top‐heavy organization would impede the competitiveness and the rapid journalistic decision‐ making that is required for RFA to maintain its standing with its listeners and viewers.

The plan is not designed to support effective journalism.”

Libby Liu also expressed the concern of RFA managers that the consolidation plan would result in dilution of managements’ familiarity, expertise and attention to the specialized missions of the grantees and needs of their employees.

“The cultural authenticity that prevails through RFA’s approach cannot be replicated in a larger hierarchy in which each rung of the decision‐making ladder is not intimately familiar with the history, context and nuances of each of our mandated language services,” Liu wrote to BBG members.

Other than supporting the BBG strategic plan, there does not seem to be any clear reason for actually undertaking this consolidation, the memo states:

There are no compelling arguments that a consolidated large grantee will enhance the successful delivery of content or achieve more effective impact by any of the three private corporate grantees envisioned and created by Congress. The separate missions and distinct corporate cultures are neither mentioned nor considered.

The memo points out that instead of proceeding with the unpopular and risky consolidation that would be contrary to the existing laws and Congressional intent, the BBG could take other steps to save money and increase efficiency:

Savings or improvements that can be achieved without Grantee Consolidation:
Several savings strategies which could be pursued and achieved without the disruption and negative impacts described above include the following:

• Negotiating group contracts of high value services – wire services, health insurance, other benefits.
• Subletting the DC RFE space and accommodating the RFE staff in RFA’s space at 2025 M St.
• Common secure storage capacity is currently available with no additional costs.
• Links between the offices could provide backup paths for redundancy in the near term.
• Common reporting practices can be developed for apples to apples financial analyses between the grantees.

Radio Free Asia President Libby Liu concluded her memo with the following appeal to the members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors:

“In my position as President of Radio Free Asia, my duty is to make decisions or recommendations in the best interests of Radio Free Asia after performing due diligence. Based on the information presented and discussed, I conclude that the plan as proposed demonstrates costs (or harm) far outweighing the benefits (even if accepted without substantiation).

As I have advised previously, it is the Radio Free Asia Board of Directors’ fiduciary responsibility to make decisions in the best interests of Radio Free Asia and to exercise the necessary due diligence to make an informed decision. It is entirely within your purview to come to a contrary position from mine. But I would respectfully request that you consider the best interests of Radio Free Asia when you make this decision for Radio Free Asia.

The best interests of Radio Free Asia have not been addressed or considered to my knowledge in any of the discussions, working groups or written reports to date. Neither have I heard the respective best interests of RFE/RL or MBN addressed or considered in this matter. As far as I have been informed, these decisions appear to be driven by a majority of the Broadcasting Board of Governors acting on behalf of US International Broadcasting generally – although, as noted above, I do not see the information thus far presented as substantiated, complete or persuasive that the Plan satisfies even those broader interests.

In open BBG meetings I have heard articulated the notion that this is a first step in a larger restructuring of the entire US International Broadcasting enterprise. If it is a first piece of a whole, shouldn’t the entirety of the plan be already developed, examined and approved? Standing alone as so‐called “low hanging fruit,” the proposed grantee consolidation is damaging to the people who depend on us, to national security interests, and to the effective and efficient execution of our Congressionally‐mandated mission with hypothetical benefits.”

BBG Watch News Commentary

The International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) Director Richard Lobo and his staff are working behind the scenes on Capitol Hill trying to get approval for legislation that would limit Congressional oversight of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of taxpayer-supported U.S. international broadcasts, and allow them to hire a new CEO who would not be subject to Senate confirmation and Congressional oversight.

BBG Watch has learned that some of the nine members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors have been kept in the dark about significant details of the efforts by the International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard Lobo and his staff to reorganize the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasts by reducing Congressional oversight.

At least one BBG member, Victor Ashe, is demanding a more open process and public discussion of the proposed changes and expressing concerns that they could drastically limit public scrutiny of BBG operations. Ashe is the senior Republican member and former mayor of Knoxville and former U.S. Ambassador to Poland.

BBG member Michael Meehan, a Democrat, also raised objections at the Board meeting last month in Miami over the proposal to merge the so-called grantee or surrogate broadcasters into one administrative structure. Meehan is in favor of a more comprehensive merger, including the Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB). He indicated that a partial merger may not succeed and would waste the BBG’s time and resources that could be used for more urgent international broadcasting needs.

Ashe has expressed concerns about any kind of merger without public hearings, public input and proper safeguards. Another Democratic BBG member Susan McCue was in favor of the partial merger. She may also be working on the Hill trying to gain support for the proposed legislation to establish the position of a powerful CEO without the need for a Senate confirmation. Both Meehan and McCue supported Ashe at the meeting in Miami in opposing the IBB staff’s proposal to end Voice of America radio broadcasts to Tibet and to close down the VOA Cantonese Service.

Lynne Weil is sworn in by IBB Director Richard Lobo

According to our sources, the newly-hired Director of Communications and External Affairs Lynne Weil who works for IBB Director Lobo sent out an email to BBG members earlier this week informing them about some of her efforts on Capitol Hill to get approval for a new bill that would effectively strip much of Congressional control over the BBG. The proposed legislation would place the Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti, as well as the grantee broadcasters like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) under a CEO who would not be appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate or answerable to the U.S. Congress.

While the IBB staff uses the rationale that this change would establish a journalistic firewall between the Congress and the BBG, critics have pointed out that BBG and IBB executives want to exempt themselves from public and Congressional scrutiny and use the firewall argument as an excuse to get greater control over public funds to spend them as they want and to eliminate news broadcasts to countries like China.

Outside experts familiar with the history of U.S. international broadcasting have pointed out that if it were not for Congressional interventions during the Cold War, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as well as some broadcasting services of the Voice of America, would have been eliminated at the request of the State Department or the White House. But they also point out that more recently an even greater threat has emerged from the entrenched BBG bureaucracy. Members of Congress of both parties again had to step in to save various broadcasting services from being eliminated at the insistence of some BBG members and IBB officials.

Ted Lipien, a former Voice of America acting associate director and co-founder of the nonpartisan Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB), warned in a recent Washington Examiner op-ed that the Broadcasting Board of Governors staff is grasping for power in an effort to limit public and Congressional role in U.S. international broadcasting. He argued that editorial as well as administrative independence was the essential element of the success of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in helping to bring down communism in East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. He also argued for strong Congressional oversight of the BBG.

Many journalists working at Voice of America, Radio and TV Marti, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks ( Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa) see the U.S. Congress as their only protection from IBB executives who, among other things, wanted to end VOA broadcasts to Tibet and China and to reduce RFA transmissions to other countries without free media. Critics say that the most needed firewall would be the one between the BBG/IBB staff and the journalists who are committed to U.S. International broadcasting serving the needs of those who need uncensored news and information.

We have learned that the proposed legislation covers several areas, but the last two proposals are the most important as they would create a position of a powerful CEO and would give BBG members and BBG and IBB bureaucrats vastly greater authority to run U.S. international broadcasting without worrying about Congressional mandates and public criticism.

Our sources told us that this is what the legislation proposed by the IBB staff would do:

- Authorizes the Board to hire, fire, and fix the compensation of a CEO answering directly to the Board.

- Authorizes the Board to delegate certain of its authorities to the CEO, which the CEO would exercise subject to the supervision of the Board.

- Converts the IBB Director position into the CEO position, preserving the journalistic firewall by eliminating the requirement that the position be Presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed.

- Clarifies that the VOA and OCB Directors report to the CEO.
 

We have learned that at least some BBG members were upset about not getting this information earlier and in greater detail and by Ms. Weil’s directive not to share the information that she provided with anyone outside of the Board. She reminded them that at its January 2012 meeting, the Board voted to pursue legislation to create a CEO of United States international broadcasting in the context of a proposed International Broadcasting Innovation Act. This action was planned while the BBG was still led by Walter Isaacson who had plans to turn U.S. international broadcasting into a CNN-like operation and allow it to operate in the United States like NPR and PBS. Isaacson resigned as BBG Chairman and left the Board.

Our sources told us that Lobo and Weil informed BBG members that they have identified an opportunity to implement the front-end goal of the International Broadcasting Innovation Act (IBIA) in the current Congress, rather than the 113th as originally envisioned: adding a provision to a foreign affairs authorization bill now being prepared in the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  Conversations with key House Foreign Affairs Committee majority staff indicate that this initial window of opportunity is open only for a brief time, Weil reportedly told BBG members. Weil did not identify House Republican staffers who may have told her about the “window of opportunity.” She also did not disclose information about any contacts with members of the Senate and their staff.

According to BBG Watch sources, Lobo and Weil did inform BBG members that the proposed provision creating the position of a CEO was revised and no longer includes language regarding the relationship between the CEO and the grantees, to be settled later upon further consideration by the Board. This proposed provision enables the Board to decide the CEO’s responsibilities, authorities and compensation, as well as to hire or fire the incumbent, who would answer directly to the Board.

It appears that the Congress would have no role in this process. Apparently, not even the heads of the Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and the grantee organizations were informed about the latest proposals for the authorities of a new CEO as outlined in recent communications to BBG members from Director Lobo and Lynne Weil.

The secrecy of the process and the way the BBG/IBB staff is trying to rush the proposed legislation, which may have a significant impact on the ability of the United States to inform and influence foreign audiences, raises very strong concerns. It appears that even BBG members are being kept in the dark and are ordered by bureaucrats to keep quiet.

American taxpayers who pay the salaries of these officials and pay for U.S. international broadcasting have the right to know what is being proposed. They should be invited to offer comments and be part of this process. Any proposal that puts Broadcasting Board of Governors and International Broadcasting Bureau officials outside of public scrutiny should be rejected by the Board and by members of Congress.

The BBG Strategy and Budget Committee has requested and received a new China strategy document from a working group composed of BBG and International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) officials and the heads of the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia (RFA). One of the recommendations in the new strategy document is the restoration of all funding for China broadcasts, a major reversal of the executive staff’s earlier position. This includes VOA Tibetan radio and its online radio news content and all of VOA Cantonese radio, television and Internet news.

Echoing the warnings of their critics often expressed on the unofficial BBG Watch website, the BBG and IBB executive staff has now concluded that “As America’s focus on China’s role in the world sharpens, the BBG must develop a more global vision for China.” “Failure to reach out to China’s 1.3 billion people cannot be an option for the United States at this point in history,” the new BBG China strategy document states.
 
The new China strategy document also states that “VOA and RFA will maintain a robust radio presence, delivering programming via SW [shortwave] as well as via two separate satellite paths.” The content and the tone of the new document represent a drastic departure from previous strategy papers produced by the BBG and IBB executive staff.

Efforts to save VOA Tibetan radio broadcasts and the VOA Cantonese Service have been led by BBG Governor Ambassador Victor Ashe against the initial opposition from most of the other BBG members who had accepted the staff’s earlier programming cuts proposal. Ashe, former U.S. Ambassador to Poland and former mayor of Knoxville, TN, is the senior Republican member on the bipartisan Board which runs U.S. international broadcasting. He warned that members of Congress from both parties would never agree to silencing Voice of America Tibetan and Cantonese broadcasts. The BBG executive staff made a similar effort last year to eliminate VOA Mandarin and Cantonese radio and TV. The proposal was soundly rejected in bipartisan House and Senate committee votes.

The BBG has received numerous protests against the proposed cuts from outside groups and individuals, including a plea from a highly respected human rights activist Annette Lantos. She is the wife of the late Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos with whom she had worked on numerous human rights causes around the world. She was joined in her criticism of the BBG decisions by the independent Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB). Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, NGO defending women’s rights in China, also issued a plea in defense of Voice of America Tibetan and Cantonese broadcasts. The union representing BBG employees, AFGE Local 1812, has also issued strong warnings against the BBG and IBB executive staff’s plans to eliminate broadcasts to strategically important countries and regions while expanding bureaucratic positions and outside contracting.

BBG Governor Victor Ashe, right, and VOA Director David Ensor meeting with VOA China Branch employees - BBG photo

At the April 10 meeting of the BBG Strategy and Budget Committee, Ashe persuaded other committee members, Governors Michael Meehan and Enders Wimbush, to direct the staff to draft a new China strategy proposal. The document will be considered by the full Board at their meeting on Friday, April 20, at the Radio and TV Marti headquarters in Miami, FL.

The BBG executive staff is also responsible for other controversial decisions, including the proposal to slash Voice of America English and Spanish broadcasts and positions. Their FY 2013 budget proposal also includes cuts in Voice of America and Radio Free Asia broadcasts to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and numerous other reductions in VOA broadcasting and news operations. The FY 2013 BBG budget proposal would effectively remove the BBG as an international broadcaster in Latin America where Iran is introducing a 24/7 Spanish language satellite television channel.

Critics posting on the BBG Watch website have charged that the proposed cuts in Latin America and in radio broadcasts to Tibet, China and other countries without free media are an attempt by the unscrutinized BBG and IBB executive staff to protect and expand the number of their own bureaucratic positions and their control of U.S. international broadcasting. According to these critics, the China cuts would be used to pay for the proposed English language Global News Network (GNN) and a $50,000,000 audience research contract with Gallup.

The idea for a global news agency run by the U.S. government was reportedly pushed by the former BBG chairman Walter Isaacson who resigned earlier this year. Isaacson is a former CEO of CNN and author of the best selling biography of Steve Jobs.

Tibetans protesting at BBG's Presiding Governor Michael Lynton's Sony office in Los Angeles against silencing of Voice of America radio broadcasts to Tibet.

Critics writing for the BBG Watch website describe the news agency idea as redundant and lacking a target audience. They argue that sharing of news among various BBG entities should be done internally at a minimum cost rather than by spending millions of dollars on a news agency that will provide information which is already available on various BBG entity websites.

Critics also argue that the BBG staff proposal to merge the administration of various BBG surrogate broadcasters will undermine their independence and effectiveness and will transfer the control of vital broadcasting and news operations from experienced area specialists to BBG and IBB bureaucrats.

The new BBG China strategy document does not address these larger issues. Critics fear, however, that the executive staff will not easily give up proposals designed to transfer resources from broadcasters to bureaucrats.

The new strategy document offers BBG members the following options to consider at their April 20 meeting in Miami:

“Additional Options on China for Board Consideration

1. The FY13 budget proposal as transmitted to the Congress. This would end VOA Cantonese and VOA Tibetan on radio (VOA Tibetan on satellite TV would continue), cut two positions from RFA Mandarin, close the RFA Taipei office, and reduce shortwave and medium wave transmissions significantly.

2. Restore service on all platforms while retaining some savings from proposed reductions through integrated programming. Rather than maintaining separate but coordinated VOA and RFA programs on television and radio, RFA content could be windowed into VOA television in Mandarin and Tibetan, while VOA content is windowed into RFA radio programs in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Tibetan. This would allow BBG to take some of the cuts envisioned in the FY13 submission, using the savings to fund other priorities, while maintaining both broadcasters in all languages on all media platforms.

3. Restore all funding for China broadcasts and request an enhancement for FY13. If the Board decides to take this approach, RFA and VOA will need time to prepare enhancement proposals for Board consideration.”

Read the full version of BBG’s Strategic Vision for China.

In her article, “BBG Budget: Voice of America Slashed, Fewer Broadcasters, More Bureaucrats,” Dr. Dale wrote: “The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) recently released its 2013 budget request, which slashes Voice of America (VOA) funding by more than $17 million while increasing funding for major bureaucratic offices inside the International Broadcasting Bureau. A reprioritization is clearly necessary.”

She has also included this chart:

In analyzing this chart, Dr. Dale made the following points:

1. Actual broadcasting services are being cut, resulting in lost viewers and listeners who, since they often have no Internet access, are deprived of trustworthy and important news sources.

2. We should not be spending more than eight times as much per capita on public diplomacy broadcasting in Tajikistan than in China.

3. An added emphasis on broadcasting in China will let the U.S. respond to China’s messaging blitz.

4. Instead of increasing funding to bureaucratic offices and cutting back on VOA, the opposite should be done.

BBG's chief strategist Bruce Sherman at BBG Gallup audience research panel

Why is the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) trying to silence Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Tibet when Tibetan Buddhist monks are self-immolating to shock the conscience of the world and the Chinese government is increasing its repression of the Tibetan people and their culture? Why are the Voice of America Cantonese Service and many other VOA brand-names, including VOA English and VOA Spanish, being put on the chopping block by the BBG when China and even Iran are expanding their radio and television broadcasts around the world, including Latin America?

The answer to these questions was provided recently by the BBG’s chief strategist in an important article posted on one of the BBG’s websites.  Because of its significance, we are providing a link to Mr. Bruce Sherman’s article and reposting it at the end of our commentary. He holds the position of  the Director of  the BBG Office of Strategy and Development.

In a display of unlimited confidence, Mr.  Sherman explained that his federal agency can change brand-names at will. No name or institution is safe.  Even those that have been around for more than 70 years, have Congressional mandates and are closely associated around the world with America and its support for freedom can be erased and silenced overnight.

“Where our brands resonate with audiences, we want to preserve them. Where they don’t, we have the flexibility to invent new ones. Radio Sawa (‘together’ in Arabic) helped us rebrand our efforts in the Middle East and reach millions of new listeners.” — Bruce Sherman —  The BBG: One Organization, Many Brands

This is how the Director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors Office of Strategy and Development described the elimination a few years back of Voice of America (VOA) Arabic broadcasts and the banning of the VOA brand-name from the Middle East by the BBG. Mr. Sherman did not elaborate further that the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ decision to kill these broadcasts and their brand-name was based on audience research showing that words like “America” and “American” were disliked in the region.

Using the same logic,  the United States should not have used the “Voice of America” name to call its radio station established during World War II to broadcast news to Nazi Germany. It should have used a more neutral one. Perhaps a name like “Radio Together with Music” would have been less offensive to most citizens of Hitler’s Germany, who after all overwhelmingly supported their leader and viewed America as an enemy until almost the end of World War II.

In his article, Mr. Sherman overlooks an important fact that the American people and the U.S. Congress have always wanted the Voice of America to provide news and hope to those who are the most silenced and the most oppressed.

These audiences are often condemned to censorship and silence not only by their governments but also by the majority of their countrymen fed on regime propaganda. And yet, these marginalized groups that the BBG wants to abandon in its pursuit of a mass audience often produce the most influential intellectual and political leaders in support of freedom.

Think of Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943), a German student active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was executed and widely condemned by the vast majority of Germans at the time of her death. The Voice of America brand-name surely did not resonate well with those who cheered her death sentence.

Chen Guangcheng (born November 12, 1971), an illegally detained civil rights activist in the People’s Republic of China, and Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, belong to the same category of officially marginalized activists and intellectual figures for whom the Voice of America was established more than seventy years ago. They are not likely to receive news through the Internet. The VOA Mandarin and Cantonese websites are in any case effectively blocked by the Chinese cyber police, especially in prisons, labor camps and for those kept under house arrest like Chen Guangcheng and his family.

Chen Guangcheng with his family

Yet, the BBG strategists wanted to do away with the VOA Mandarin and Cantonese shortwave radio and satellite television broadcasts and to rely on Internet only. Their great idea for getting a mass online audience is to  promote English lessons with high school juvenile humor, which while being both creative and popular are ignored by the Chinese censors because they are unthreatening to the regime.

Mr. Sherman would no doubt point out that the agency planned to continue Mandarin and Cantonese radio news broadcasts on Radio Free Asia (RFA), also managed by the BBG. RFA is a “surrogate” broadcaster performing a very important function but was not created to represent the United States by providing American viewpoints. It was created to provide internal Chinese dissident viewpoints delivered by independent Chinese journalists. Two different missions, both equally important.

Still, Mr. Sherman’s commissioned research shows that  the RFA’s brand-name resonates even less well with audiences in China. Should it also be killed and replaced with something more neutral, perhaps even more neutral than VOA once the VOA radio and TV brand-name is also eliminated? The U.S. Congress needs to step in and stop this before it goes any further.

Liu Xiaobo

What is then the real reason for killing the best-known American international radio brand-name in China? The real reason — we suspect — is a bureaucratic desire to take control over U.S. international broadcasting away from the American people, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

It’s not about saving money when budgets are tight. The BBG and its bureaucratic arm — the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) — are wasting U.S. taxpayers’ money right and left.

It’s not about moving to new Internet platforms, which as everyone knows are inexpensive and often free, and which VOA and other U.S. international broadcasters have already been using and expanding their use for many years. It is about preserving and creating new bureaucratic jobs by eliminating critical international news programs.

It is about firing close to 300 journalists and program support staffers so that the BBG can give a 50 million dollar audience research contract to the Gallup Organization.

Gallup has already reported to the BBG that the majority of people in China think that their media are free. This kind of finding is hardly worth millions of dollars. But the VOA Tibetan radio service and the VOA Cantonese news services are to be eliminated to pay for this kind of research in China.

What’s the point of doing questionable research in support of disappearing programs?

Much of what Mr. Sherman writes in his article are conclusions based on similar research findings consisting of only half-truths. Mr. Sherman claims for example that millions of new listeners were reached in the Middle East with the new Radio Sawa brand-name.

It is true that millions of new listeners came to the station over the years. But what Mr. Sherman fails to explain is that the BBG is now paying millions of dollars each year to put music-heavy Sawa programs on local FM and regional AM transmitters — something it had not done for Voice of America Arabic programs. If the same millions have been spent on the production and especially local FM distribution of the old VOA Arabic broadcasts, millions of new listeners also could have been gained for a much more substantive news and information on an American-brand radio and website.

In fact, the audience research data which Sherman swears by is highly misleading and practically useless for countries like China, where people are too afraid to give honest answers to politically sensitive survey questions. Yet, on the basis of this kind of research in highly repressed nations, which may show that broadcaster “A” has 0.1% weekly rating and broadcaster “B” has only 0.04%, the BBG makes strategic decisions to kill brand-names that have been around for 70 years and represent America, its institutions and its values.

How can any sane person make such decisions on the basis of a fraction of one percent difference when the margin of error in this kind of survey can be 3 to 5 percent and more? How can a survey conducted among Tibetan refugees in Nepal be used to prove that VOA Tibetan satellite TV programs should continue but VOA Tibetan radio programs should be eliminated when everyone knows that the Chinese authorities rigorously control private ownership of satellite dishes?

“Where our brands resonate with audiences, we want to preserve them. Where they don’t, we have the flexibility to invent new ones.”

What it means is the flexibility to decide what brand-names resonate with BBG’s International Broadcasting Bureau’s officials  who want to have greater control of U.S. international broadcasting resources. They want the power to kill brand-names, to show incomplete and unreliable research data to BBG members, and to get them to approve their decisions.

Tibetans, victims of human rights abuses in China will be ignored if it means saving the IBB’s bureaucratic jobs, giving $10,000  bonuses to its top executives, allowing them to travel around the world at taxpayers’ expense, and giving them the power to distribute multi-million-dollar contracts. All this for being rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) government-wide employee opinion surveys as being the worst leaders and managers in the federal bureaucracy. Should the U.S. Congress give even more power to this group of bureaucrats held in such low esteem by their own employees who are experts on their own countries and regions?

If that happens, the U.S. Congress, which had created the Voice of America and gave it its Charter and its mandate, will be ignored as well.

The BBG’s own data show that there is little strategic vision in BBG’s strategic planning.  Afghanistan and the Middle East are important, but strategically China represents the greatest  and the fastest growing public diplomacy challenge for the United States. And yet,  the BBG’s per capita spending on China is 39 times less than in Afghanistan, 29 times less than in the Middle East, 18 times less than in Iran, eight times less than in Tajikistan.

A BBG member Michael Meehan pointed out recently that the Chinese spend 6.6 billion dollars a year doing what the BBG is doing. (The BBG’s annual budget is about $750 million.) If there is not enough money, which is clearly the case, the last thing BBG members should be doing is giving more money to their bureaucrats and allowing them to eliminate programs to Tibet and China. This can hardly be based on any kind of strategic thinking.

But perhaps it is be unreasonable to expect BBG and IBB bureaucrats to propose eliminating their own positions to absorb budget cuts. The bureaucrats  will always push for cutting programs and jobs of journalists and broadcasters. That’s why BBG members have a responsibility to protect these important broadcasts. And yet they have failed to exercise this duty. They have given away their powers to Presidentially-appointed IBB Director Richard Lobo, his deputy Jeff Trimble and to Director Sherman.

Among BBG members, Ambassador Victor Ashe seems to be the only one speaking out publicly about the bureaucratic waste and abuse while strategically important broadcasts are silenced for no good reason. Most of the other BBG members approve whatever the IBB executive team puts in front of them, including ending VOA radio to Tibet.

A letter addressed to Congresswoman Kay Granger (R – TX), Chairman of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the House Committee on Appropriations and to Ranking Member Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D – NY) criticizes the Broadcasting Board of Governors for expanding their bureaucracy at the expense of critical overseas broadcasts and U.S. strategic interests:

The proposed reductions are driven not by a considered strategic world view, but by bureaucratic expedience and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of VOA. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, the staff level for VOA will be reduced by 13.2% from the current year. In contrast, only 3.3% of the positions from the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which provides administrative support to the BBG, will be cut.

If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted the number of full time equivalent (FTE) positions for the IBB will rise from 593.2 in fiscal year 2011 to 678.2. In the same time period VOA will lose 121.2 FTE positions. The general trend of the IBB has been to grow larger while the number of language services they support is being reduced. Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support. The eliminations and reductions in broadcasting to Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam alone will cut 28 positions from VOA.

Link to the Letter

Source: Broadcasting Board of Governors FY 2013 Budget Request

BBG’s Strategic Vision and Planning Is Seriously Unbalanced

Mandarin Service

Cantonese Service

Tibetan Service

Burmese Service

Vietnamese Service

NOTE: All data are sourced from BBG 2010 Annual Language Service Review Briefing Book unless otherwise noted.

###

BBG Watch is providing a copy of Mr. Sherman’s article posted on one of the BBG websites:

“One organization, many brands” is integral to the BBG’s new strategy, Impact through Innovation, and Integration. The ability to have multiple brands offers several advantages…

More from the BBG Strategy Blog

By Bruce Sherman
BBG Office of Strategy and Development

The BBG’s major brand names are, of course, the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Alhurra TV, Radio Sawa, Radio Martí and TV Martí. There are also various sub-brands such as Radio Azadi (RFE/RL) in Afghanistan and Deewa Radio (VOA) in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Popular BBG programs — Parazit in Iran, OMG Meiyu in China, and Studio 7 in Zimbabwe — often acquire identities in their own right.

Differential branding is beneficial. It lets us position our products for specific markets and target key audience segments (women, youth, etc.). It helps us stand out in cluttered media environments and deal with challenging political realities, including anti-Americanism. All this helps boost our reach and impact — a BBG priority.

Where our brands resonate with audiences, we want to preserve them. Where they don’t, we have the flexibility to invent new ones. Radio Sawa (“together” in Arabic) helped us rebrand our efforts in the Middle East and reach millions of new listeners.

While the BBG sponsors multiple brands at the agency level, local audiences see only one or perhaps two brands in their particular markets. Research shows they usually know one from the other, and often use one more than the other — which is to say, the brands have unique audiences. Preserving those audiences is decidedly in the BBG’s interests.

Our brands, as symbols of our organizations, also reflect our statutory requirements — to do the news (local and international), represent America, and present U.S. policy. They each are established in law and have supporters in Congress. Preserving the brands thus upholds our congressional mandates.

That said, while supporting the brands, the BBG will become an increasingly unified international media network. Each brand will produce value-added content and retain editorial control. Where two brands coexist, they will complement each other so as to satisfy both audience needs and mission imperatives. The BBG will support them through integrated strategy, budgeting, research, distribution, marketing, and administrative management.

This is the “one organization, many brands” vision. The FY 2013 budget proposals to begin streamlining management and ending language service duplications are steps towards realizing this vision. So, too, is the board’s decision to combine the three grantee organizations (RFE/RL, RFA, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks), into one entity and to seek legislation to achieve definitive agency restructuring.

BBG member Michael Meehan

BBG Watch Commentary

Speaking up at a panel discussion on media freedom, an unidentified Tibetan woman challenged the Broadcasting Board of Governors over the BBG plan to end Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcasts. The March 28 panel discussion in Washington was organized jointly by the BBG and Gallup. A moderator from Gallup repeatedly tried to silence the Tibetan woman, but she was allowed to finish her comments thanks to an intervention by BBG member Michael Meehan who was one of the panelists.

The panel discussed how the world’s populations perceive media freedom in their countries. Gallup and BBG also announced the details of their new global research project, which will cost US taxpayers 50 million dollars over the next five years.

BBG Watch applauds Governor Meehan for defending the Tibetan woman’s right of free speech as a US taxpayer who is concerned how her money is being spent to support freedom and democracy abroad.  While the Governor showed a genuine interest in the tragic human rights situation in Tibet, we disagree with his comments that Tibet is just one of many hot spots around the world that Broadcasting Board of Governors cannot possibly cover.

Tibet is controlled by China, which represents one of America’s biggest strategic challenges, especially in the area of media freedom and public diplomacy. The argument that the BBG should not respond in cases of crisis has been a favorite one of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) bureaucrats who see their positions and their bureaucratic spending threatened each time real news programs are saved or expanded. They have managed to infect BBG members with their faulty and self-serving reasoning.

In fact, if BBG members could have asked the late Vaclav Havel or Lech Walesa, they would learn that it is exactly in times of crisis that the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were needed the most and gained the largest audience and the greatest loyalty of their listeners. That loyalty and friendship toward America lasted for decades and is paying dividends for the United States to this day.

As the unidentified Tibetan woman said, to eliminate VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet at this time is not just wrong; it is outrageous.

The problem is the culture of the BBG and IBB executive staff on whom BBG members depend far too much. These highly-paid executives have lost an appreciation of whom US international broadcasting should serve and with what.

While Governor Meehan mentioned the need to broadcast to those living under authoritarian regimes, neither the BBG and IBB staff or the moderator from Gallup have shown any real concern for the those who are the most oppressed and the most opposed to tyranny. Based on what we saw at this panel, it seems unlikely that the corporate culture at Gallup is well suited to serve the needs of the BBG and American taxpayers when it comes to promoting free speech, media freedom, and US public diplomacy interests around the world.  Gallup may be a great company for commercial and political research serving commercial and political needs, but US international broadcasting was not created for commercial reasons.

You don’t cut off the Tibetan people’s lifeline at the most critical moment in one of the most strategically important countries — you expand it, even if it means laying off BBG and IBB bureaucrats.

We hope Governor Meehan will take these views into consideration. It’s the high time for BBG members to start thinking for themselves and to take charge of US international broadcasting.

TIBETAN WOMAN CHALLENGES GALLUP AND BROADCASTING BOARD OF GOVERNORS – TRANSCRIPT

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN:  I just wanted to make a point when it comes to research in cases like Tibet that is under China’s authoritarian rule, there is no research data that you can collect inside Tibet.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Ma’am, do you have a question?

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: I do. The BBG has proposed to eliminate the Voice of America Tibetan radio. It concerns me because Voice of America radio is the only source of international news and information about America to Tibetans inside Tibet

Radio Free Asia also goes to Tibet, but their mandate is different.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Ma’am, please ask a question?

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: Radio is the most common and cheapest, used by Tibetans everywhere.

President Obama recently said the Voice of America is the voice of freedom.

And, it is so.

Eliminating this voice of freedom for the Tibetans at this time, based on the research that you have collected is just outrageous.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Ma’am, please state a question, otherwise we’ve got to move on. We have a lot of folks here who want to ask questions.

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: I understand. I just wanted to make a point that Tibetans and Tibetan supporters at this time are outraged when the situation inside Tibet is right now…

[Moderator from Gallup attempts to cut off the Tibetan woman's mike.]

BBG GOVERNOR MICHAEL MEEHAN: Let her finish, thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: Thank you.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: Go ahead. Ask me a question. I sit on the Board. You are not going to find a bigger supporter of Tibet than me.

If you have a question, let’s have it.

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: Yes, we would like to ask that you reconsider this proposed budget for 2013 [that calls for] the Tibetan radio to be eliminated.

It [VOA radio] does provide a very vital source of life for Tibetans inside Tibet.

We’d like you to look at that.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: Excellent point. Excellent point.

Thank you for sharing that, your point of view, and it’s an excellent point.

This is one of the harder things that we as a Board have.

Because there is no way that, I would say, that the US government should spend 750 million dollars to try to cover every hot spot in the world.

The Chinese spend 6.6 billion dollars a year doing what we do.

We are just up against some really big forces.

There are seven people that work at the VOA Tibetan [radio] effort. But I would disagree with you that VOA is the only staff that covers Tibet.

We have Radio Free Asia. We have five different companies that are under US international broadcasting.

And, in a case by case basis, we have to find places where there are overlaps of people doing work.

And Tibet is a unique challenge. I understand that. I understand.

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: The mandate is different for Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. I listen to both services.

Voice of America covers international news and news related to America.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Ma’am, this is not the time for a debate.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: Let me finish my point on this. If the Congress … the Congress came to us and said you’ve got to cut the whole place by ten percent, and then they cut us by five percent.

So some cuts have to be made.

80 percent of funding that goes to US international broadcasting are for people.

[At this point the Tibetan woman's mike is cut off by Gallup. Some of her comments cannot be heard clearly.]

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: Only a minute percentage of people.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: But Ma’am, if the other 99 countries that we cover came and made the same point you make, we’d be talking about five, and seven, and nine employees as well.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Next question. Ma’am, we’re going to move on.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: The Board is expanding our efforts in Tibet. We’re expanding our efforts, Mam.

Bureaucratic power-grab

After making a good start on destroying Voice of America’s ability to fulfill its unique mission of informing the world about the United States, the next target of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and International broadcasting Bureau bureaucrat are now the surrogate broadcasters.

Sources tell BBG Watch that the power-grab by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) – International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) bureaucrats is killing morale at the grantee surrogate broadcasters: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), which otherwise have enjoyed very high morale when compared to how the BBG, IBB, and Voice of America (VOA) staffs view their own managers and their leadership qualities.

The bureaucratic power-grab is the proposal to merge all three grantee organizations under one administrative umbrella.

At the same time, BBG/IBB bureaucrats have already grabbed even greater share of resources from the Voice of America (VOA), decimating its broadcasts and staffs. If morale at the surrogate broadcasters is bad, it is ten times worse at VOA, where entire language services are being abolished and its mission of representing the Unites States undermined in a direct violation of the law.

The IBB/BBG management team is in effect abolishing VOA’s broadcasting capabilities, particularly radio, and giving itself control over VOA assets to use for their own bureaucratic purposes. If they were also to gain full control of the surrogate broadcasters, it would be a frightening prospect considering that they have been consistently rated as the worst leaders and managers among all federal government executives. Keep in mind that they are the ones who proposed to end Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcasts while Tibetan monks were self-immolating and Tibet was burning

These BBG and IBB bureaucrats have always had much more control over the Voice of America than the surrogate broadcasters. The merger proposal is designed to put them also in firm administrative control over these privately-run but publicly-funded entities.

The grantee broadcasters are each focused on a particular area of the world and run by professionals who understand special needs of their specific audiences. To the extent that they can be effective, it is due to their programming specialization and administrative independence. They were in fact specifically created by Congress to be independent and to specialize.

The merger proposal in its current form will destroy their independence and ultimately their ability to specialize. This would make them ineffective. They will no longer be run by area specialists and journalists who are in touch with their audiences but by BBG and IBB bureaucrats. And, as we said before, these bureaucrats are the worst in the entire US federal government. It would be equivalent to putting experts in cracking safes in charge of the bank.

For example, the BBG’s CFO’s office has grown by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years while Voice of America staff is being decimated and top programming positions handed over to big contractors. And yet with all those new accountants in place, the CFO still can’t pay BBG, IBB and VOA contract employees on time. One could only imagine what havoc BBG and IBB bureaucrats would cause if given administrative control over the much more efficiently-run grantee organizations.

As these bureaucrats eliminate broadcasts and other information programs, International Broadcasting Bureau offices in the Cohen building are growing out of control. Many sources describe these IBB bureaucrats as being “totally out of touch with the actual broadcasters.”

The argument that the merger proposal will save money by eliminating duplicate administrative positions is completely false. It will simply transfer assets and resources from the grantee organizations who know how to use them efficiently to support specific missions and programs that they understand and feel passionate about to incompetent and power-hungry bureaucrats who have little knowledge of specific regions and their programming needs and care little for the suffering of those who live under oppressive regimes. If they did, they would not want to eliminate VOA radio to Tibet.

They even want to give themselves the power to actively market BBG programs in the United States by repealing the Smith-Mundt Act. Placing all BBG programs, including those from surrogate broadcasters, in public domain is a great idea. To that extent, the Smith-Mundt Act should be modified. But allowing these non-specialist bureaucrats to focus on an NPR-like outreach in the United States will simply further undermine the USIB’s core international mission.

By proposing to end or drastically reduce Voice of America broadcasting to China, Russia, Tibet, Vietnam, Laos, Georgia and many other countries, proposing to decimate VOA English and Spanish programs, and to eliminate Radio Free Asia shortwave radio transmissions to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, these bureaucrats have shown over and over again their indifference to serving the information needs of core international audiences.

Sources tell BBG Watch that BBG member Susan McCue, who as a former Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has more Congressional experience than other Board members, is working on putting together the US Innovation Act (USIA), hoping to pass all kinds of US international broadcasting legislation in one package. Ironically when the United States Information Agency (also USIA) was in charge of US international broadcasting before the BBG came into existence, it would have been inconceivable for VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet or any other nation ruled by a communist regime to be terminated.

It will be interesting to see what emerges from Susan McCue’s effort, but if the proposed legislation limits even further accountability of BBG/IBB officials and puts them in even greater control over strategic international broadcasting assets, the results would be disastrous. These officials claim that they are using audience research, eliminate duplication and save money in a period of tight budgets. Sources among experts at the surrogate broadcasters say, however, that the research techniques these bureaucrats use are flawed, that they can’t interpret correctly even those research results that are accurate, and the whole claim of saving money is false. No money is being saved. It goes to expanding their bureaucratic empire and lining the pockets of big contractors.

If the house is on fire because of a design flaw, one doesn’t go to the house architect to change the design. One calls a fire brigade. If Susan McCue is relying on advice from BBG/IBB in-house “experts” — the worst leaders and managers in the federal government according to OPM surveys — the proposed legislation is bound to increase their power while diminishing public scrutiny, undermining the efficiency of US international broadcasting operations and wasting taxpayers’ money.

A letter addressed to Congresswoman Kay Granger (R – TX), Chairman of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the House Committee on Appropriations and to Ranking Member Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D – NY) criticizes the Broadcasting Board of Governors for expanding their bureaucracy at the expense of critical overseas broadcasts and U.S. strategic interests:

The proposed reductions are driven not by a considered strategic world view, but by bureaucratic expedience and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of VOA. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, the staff level for VOA will be reduced by 13.2% from the current year. In contrast, only 3.3% of the positions from the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which provides administrative support to the BBG, will be cut. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted the number of full time equivalent (FTE) positions for the IBB will rise from 593.2 in fiscal year 2011 to 678.2. In the same time period VOA will lose 121.2 FTE positions. The general trend of the IBB has been to grow larger while the number of language services they support is being reduced. Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support. The eliminations and reductions in broadcasting to Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam alone will cut 28 positions from VOA.

Link to the Letter

What the BBG needs is to reform itself, starting by sending their failed bureaucrats into early retirement, reversing their program cutting proposals, reaffirming Voice of America’s unique mission and preserving the autonomy of the grantee organizations. It would certainly be a welcome news in Tibet and in many other countries where desperate people see the Voice of America and the surrogate broadcasters as their only hope and their only news link to the free world.

by Quo Vadis 

In November 2011, at a forum sponsored by the Public Diplomacy Council and reported on by Adam Clayton Powell III, participants heard that the newest 2011 VOA audience figures showed an increase of 22 million for the international broadcasting audience in comparison with 2010.  Good news, of course, and fast on the heels of a brand-spanking-new Strategic Plan unveiled just a month prior and authored by the IBB spokesman at the forum, the Director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Performance Measurement of the United States Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

In those 2011 VOA audience figures, “the biggest success on the planet” is how the IBB spokesman described U.S. broadcasting in Afghanistan.  Evidently, the data showed three-quarters of the entire country watches or listens to American broadcasts. Additionally, 400,000 Afghans subscribe to BBG text messaging services. According to available research data, less than half of the population in Afghanistan has a TV and only a tiny minuscule has access to the Internet. Therefore, it would not be difficult to deduce that radio, for the time being, is by far the most powerful medium in the country to reach potential listeners.
 
In reaction to the news about the impact and popularity of U.S. broadcasting in Afghanistan, the BBG/IBB in its FY-2013 budget submission decided to cut those evidently powerful VOA radio broadcasts to Afghanistan while proposing to release eight seasoned VOA broadcasters. In so doing is the Agency, as some wonder, transferring the functions away from VOA’s federal employees to the RFE/RL surrogate grantee, thereby opening up the back door to de-federalization?   

That non-sequitur in deciding to cut VOA Afghan broadcasts in spite of their importance and popularity is rivaled by the announcement in the FY-2013 budget that VOA will cut most of its English-language broadcasts to the world including China and the Middle East. This decision ignores the fact that according to some, English is or should be the official language of the United States, remains the language of diplomacy, culture, and commerce in the world as well as being the second language of choice for millions of people around the globe from Albania to Zambia. One can only wonder if the BBC, plus Radio Canada International and Radio Australia, perhaps inspired by the daring VOA example, will soon cut its English-language broadcasts to the world as well. 

At the Public Diplomacy forum, there came a “medium is the message” a la Marshall McLuhan moment when the IBB spokesman stated: “Impact cannot be reduced to audience, but you cannot have impact without audience,” adding that broadcasting needs to look at specific audiences – not just traditional elites, but young people and women.” Actually, the Voice of America has been doing that for many years, informing audiences with the latest news and commentary and tailoring its back-half features to the diverse interests of its listeners with programming aimed at a cross-section of the listening audience: farmers, students, teachers, engineers, politicians, elites, business people, young/old, men/women, rich and poor. In its music programs, the VOA of the not-too-distant past  broadcast the full spectrum of American music: opera and classical music, country, Broadway, folk, pop, rock, hip-hop, blues, jazz and never concentrated solely on rock and pop music, as in Radio Sawa to the Middle East, as if that were the only musical genre produced in America.

Beyond audience growth, another goal of the Strategic Plan, said its author, is for VOA and other U.S. broadcasters to embrace user content and use material created by listeners and viewers. According to the IBB spokesman at the forum, the “value added” by U.S. international broadcasting would be checking and verifying the accuracy of material submitted by the audience. Unfortunately, the “check-and-verify” concept was challenged by the recent gaffe of the VOA Russian website which published a completely fictitious interview supposedly with a leader of the anti-Putin dissident movement in Moscow, Alexei Navalny, who announced to the world that the VOA interview was totally bogus and conducted via cyberspace with an impostor. “Value added” is a slippery slope, indeed.

One questioner at the PD forum said he could not find the phrase “public diplomacy” anywhere in the Strategic Plan.  “Correct,” said the Strategic Plan author, the reason being:  “Objective journalists by and large, don’t subscribe to the idea that they are changing people’s attitudes,” continuing that “attitudinal and behavioral change is the hope, but not a direct goal.”  And the explanation finished with:  “we don’t do the advocacy piece. Good things will come from good journalism.”  

Crystal-clear.  Forget the WHAM (Winning Hearts and Minds) factor.

That comment is in sharp contrast to the words of the distinguished public diplomacy expert, Walter Roberts, whom many credit with being one of the founding fathers of VOA. At the recent 70th birthday celebration of VOA, Walter Roberts stated: As the information revolution proceeds, diplomacy will become much more public diplomacy and public diplomacy cannot exist without international broadcasting. When I predict that in 30 years the Voice of America will exist, I also predict that Deustche Welle will also exist, that the BBC will exist because international broadcasting is a vital part of public diplomacy.”

Although public diplomacy was indeed omitted in the latest Strategic Plan, former BBG Chairman, Walter Isaacson, placed international broadcasting at the center of our national security. In his remarks when the Strategic Plan was unveiled, Mr. Isaacson said: “Our media outlets – VOA, RFE/Radio Liberty, Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa, RFA, and Radio/TV Marti – are a vital, cost-effective national security asset, whose impact is felt by some 166 million people weekly across the globe where critical U.S. interests are at stake.”

That difference of opinion is reflected in the current state of affairs at the BBG/IBB where there is an obvious disconnect about the true mission of international broadcasting between upper management and some middle-managers together with most of the rank-and-file.  Over the past few years, that disconnect is also obvious with the U.S. Congress which has consistently overruled the plans of the BBG/IBB in the national interest and the interests of national security.

The VOA ensemble trudges on and plays its heart out in spite of who happens to be the leader or conductor at any given time. Many directors embraced their duties conducting the VOA ensemble with enthusiasm, earning respect and admiration; others were indifferent or perceived the employees as a bothersome and unruly bunch, preferring to keep interaction to a minimum. Regardless of whether the Director was a gem or a lemon or whether upper management knew the score or didn’t, the broadcasting band continued to play on and does so now until such time as its voice will be silenced.

Not much different from the musicians in this video playing Dance of the Comedians from Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” with the irrepressible rascal, Victor Borge, at the podium.

Link to Video

On its Facebook page, Save VOA Tibetan Radio states that stopping the Voice of America’s Tibetan Language Radio would be wrong for the following reasons:

1. Wrong political message to the Chinese Communist Party.

2. VOA Tibetan language radio is a unique source of information for Tibetans.

3. Shortwave radio is still a powerful medium in Tibet.

Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, once noted that, “Tibetans call VOA broadcasts their medicine for depression and exhaustion, and on days that they don’t get to hear it, they say they’ve missed their vital medicine.”

As reported for National Public Radio (NPR) by Louisa Lim, “Protests, Self-Immolation Signs Of A Desperate Tibet,” “The [Buddhist] monks [in Tibet] listen secretly to Voice of America’s Tibetan service news every night, despite feeling almost physical pain at the bleak news.”

Save VOA Tibetan Radio asks supporters to tell their congressmen that they strongly oppose elimination of VOA Tibetan radio and provides a sample letter:

Name of Rep.
Address
Date:

Honorable

We have learnt that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has proposed to eliminate the entire radio broadcast segment of the Voice of America’s Tibetan service, in the 2013 budget proposal. At a time when Tibet is under severe repression, access to information from the free world is all the more vital. Therefore, the US administration and its subsidiary BBG’s proposal to silence the voice of Tibetans through its proposed elimination of VOA’s Tibetan radio program is, not only contrary to the goals and objectives of VOA’s existence, but unfathomable in justification.

As the first truly independent Tibetan radio news service, established by an act of Congress in 1990, VOA Tibetan service through the variety of its program, objectivity, professionalism and news dissemination capability, has not only deservedly earned the reputation for its reliability but has established one of the largest audience base both inside and outside Tibet. BBG’s proposal to eliminate the VOA Tibetan radio not only cuts Tibetan access to news and information from within and outside Tibet but helps Chinese authorities accomplish their aim of controlling free flow of communication and information.

Eliminating the Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcast to Tibet sends a wrong message to the Chinese government that their continuing abuse of human rights, repressive and restrictive Tibet policies are acceptable.
For Tibetans and all those who value human rights, freedom and democracy, BBG’s proposal to eliminate VOA Tibetan radio broadcast is very unfortunate and most troubling. VOA Tibetan radio is a lifeline for the Tibetans inside Tibet and a pride and prestige of the United States.

We request you to please use all your influence to stop eliminating VOA Tibetan radio broadcast into Tibet. We cannot afford to abandon the desperate Tibetans in Tibet at this critical time.

We thank you for your attention to this matter,

Sincerely,

Your name
Address

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) proposal to cut Voice of America radio to Tibet is part of unprecedented cuts and reductions affecting also many other VOA broadcasting services while the BBG expands the number of bureaucratic jobs in its main administrative element, the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB).

A letter addressed to Congresswoman Kay Granger (R – TX), Chairman of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the House Committee on Appropriations and to Ranking Member Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D – NY) criticizes the Broadcasting Board of Governors for expanding their bureaucracy at the expense of critical overseas broadcasts and U.S. strategic interests:

The proposed reductions are driven not by a considered strategic world view, but by bureaucratic expedience and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of VOA. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, the staff level for VOA will be reduced by 13.2% from the current year. In contrast, only 3.3% of the positions from the International Broadcasting Board (IBB), which provides administrative support to the BBG, will be cut. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted the number of full time equivalent (FTE) positions for the IBB will rise from 593.2 in fiscal year 2011 to 678.2. In the same time period VOA will lose 121.2 FTE positions. The general trend of the IBB has been to grow larger while the number of language services they support is being reduced. Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support. The eliminations and reductions in broadcasting to Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam alone will cut 28 positions from VOA.

Link to the Letter

It certainly isn’t BBG Watch. And it isn’t the Committee on US International Broadcasting (CUSIB). One would get a different impression from snarky comments offered by some who blog from inside the Cohen Building.

In our view, the “enemy” is the Board – or more pointedly, the bonus-mongers and self-interested members of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) who spare no effort in pontificating their “vision” of the future. Although they would intend that people believe otherwise, this “vision,” captured in their “flim flam plan,” is one with apocalyptic consequences for US international broadcasting. Why?

At the end of the day, after all bombastic rhetoric, there won’t be any US international broadcasting. The BBG/IBB is committed to ending direct US international broadcasting to global audiences and to do so as quickly as possible.

The BBG/IBB is moving ever more vigorously away from the agency’s mission and more closely to selling propaganda. For the time being, the primary audience of that propaganda is the Congress. Mercifully, the BBG/IBB doesn’t have control over its funding (and it probably couldn’t survive if it did). It has to appeal to the Congress to pony up American taxpayer money to support its skewed vision of the present and the future. Before everything else – the agency’s mission, the agency’s employees, the agency’s global audience – the top priority is getting taxpayer money to facilitate demolishing what the agency does best.

Why do we look at Congress as a principal target of BBG/IBB propaganda?

The simple answer is obvious: that is where funding is authorized, as noted above.

But just as importantly, Congress is one of the world’s most exclusive “communities.” In terms of technology, Members have it all – mobile devices, cell phones, computers with broadband Internet access, satellite television.

Because of this, it is easy for Members and their staff people to fall into the trap set by the BBG/IBB: to believe the fiction that the rest of the world has the same purchasing power, the same access to the technology, the same unfettered way of communicating.

Reality is very different. Members – and many of the rest of us – need to remember that there are parts of the United States that don’t have the means to access this technology. When one considers the rest of the world – about 7-billion strong, the numbers of people deprived of such access increases exponentially.

And outside the United States, things driving access – or lack thereof – are accessibility, affordability, infrastructure support and media controls by governments.

Fortunately, many Members of Congress have the big picture focus and are able to parse out the phony aspects of the BBG/IBB sales pitch.

But that is not going to stop the BBG/IBB with pushing its fabricated “technotopia,” as it is an important component to convincing Members that the rest of the world is “just like us.” The BBG/IBB cannot and will not deviate from its message. If that were to happen, the “flim flam plan” would be revealed for what it is: a canard.

One of the key elements in the BBG/IBB propaganda is the pitch that shortwave radio is a thing of the past.

In that regard, one of our sources supplied us with some interesting information. It comes by way of World Christian Broadcasting, a faith-based organization. It has a website; and from that website, we learn some interesting things.

World Christian Broadcasting has a worldwide audience that it serves. Unlike the BBG/IBB, it is actively engaged in trying to expand and improve upon its audiences. With this in mind, consider the following statement direct from their website:

HYPERLINK:

http://www.worldchristian.org/WhoWeAre/whyshortwave.php

You can read the entire page as to why this faith-based broadcaster relies on shortwave radio. But here is an evocative key point:

”Internationally, however, shortwave is big. Roughly 2.5 billion shortwave receivers exist worldwide. In years’ past, most of those were in China and the old Soviet Union. Once those governments opened the window to the rest of the world, many people predicted the demise of shortwave. 

In fact, the reverse has happened. The International Broadcasting Bureau estimates that at any given time of the day or night, one billion shortwave receivers are turned on. In some places in the world, car radios come equipped with shortwave bands. Even in the U.S., in increasing numbers radios are being sold with all three—AM, FM, and shortwave. For millions of people around the world, shortwave radio is the only means they have for communication from the outside world. And for millions more, though they have local AM and FM available, they tune in to shortwave radio to listen to programs that originate on the other side of the world. It is truly the only international radio source.” (emphasis added)

Wait a minute!

This is the same International Broadcasting Bureau that claims that shortwave radio is passé!

This leads to something for the Congress to consider:

To all outward appearances, there seems to be some misrepresentation going on here. Either the BBG/IBB is misrepresenting shortwave penetration to the Congress and the administration or it is misrepresenting data to World Christian Broadcasting. Which is it? It may be both. Is the BBG/IBB tricking up its research data to suit the audience it is making “data” available to?

World Christian Broadcasting is doing something that to all intents and purposes the BBG/IBB is abandoning: it has a global message that it is trying to get to as many people as possible, by the most effective means as possible.

Let’s go over it again:

“The International Broadcasting Bureau estimates that at any given time of the day or night, one billion shortwave receivers are turned on. In some places in the world, car radios come equipped with shortwave bands.”

One billion shortwave receivers – at any given time day or night.

Presently, the BBG/IBB claims radio audiences at 100-million. That’s 10% of those 1-billion shortwave radios. The BBG/IBB wants to take that 100-million and reduce it to zero, over time, in favor of a paltry 10-million for its Internet content. The BBG/IBB is trying to make that time as short as possible. It is trying to get rid of 33% of its VOA radio operations in one shot in FY2013. In short, the BBG/IBB is going out of its way to undermine a strategic asset of the United States Government, as quickly as possible.

We know who the “enemy” is. Read the paragraph above.

As we have said before, there is nothing more insidious than an organization that is destroyed from within. That seems to be what is going on here.

What needs to be done?

The most important thing is an all-out investigation of what the BBG/IBB is up to. The core issue should focus on the national security implications of faulty BBG/IBB decisions, to be followed by the wasteful or inefficient ways it goes about spending taxpayer dollars and a specious BBG/IBB claim that it is creating a “global news network.”

We see the “flim flam strategic plan” promoted by the BBG/IBB as a cancer, a disease that is terminal for US Government national interests via international broadcasting. The more one looks into what the BBG/IBB is doing, the more that cancer is exposed.

We know who the “enemy” is.

By any measure of our national values, what is going on inside the Cohen Building is an outrage. It cannot be ignored. It cannot be tolerated.

The Federalist
March 2012

The Dalai Lama said that Voice of America Tibetan radio is “vital medicine” for Tibetans, and the Tibetan people consider it as one of the most valuable and priceless gifts from the people and government of the United States to them.

Sign a Petition Save Voice of America Radio to Tibet

The Broadcasting Board of Governors Chief Financial Officer Maryjean Buhler pointed out at last week’s public board meeting that the BBG proposes in its fiscal year 2013 budget a reduction rather than an elimination of the Voice of America Tibetan Service.

The BBG proposal means, however, an elimination of the entire VOA Tibetan radio broadcasting service, leaving only a VOA Tibetan website and a VOA Tibetan television program. Neither of these can be viewed easily in Tibet due to the Chinese regime’s draconian restrictions on private ownership of satellite dishes and its effective blocking of VOA websites. This means that the VOA Tibetan Service would be reduced to providing news only to Tibetans living in exile rather than to Tibetans in Tibet, where the Voice of America is most needed and its radio programs are secretly listen to as reported recently by National Public Radio.

This video from last Thursday’s BBG board meeting includes comments by CFO Maryjean Buhler and BBG Governor Victor Ashe who is said to oppose cutting Voice of America radio broadcasts to Tibet. Ashe said that he received numerous protests and indicated that BBG members are taking another look at this matter.

###

This document is reposted from savevoatibetanradio.com website.

Stop the Voice of America’s Tibetan Language Radio from going silent for the Tibetan people

In the FY2013 budget proposal, the Broadcasting Board of Governors plans on eliminating the Voice of America’s Tibetan language radio to Tibet.

The Tibetan People are burning with anguish and pain at this moment

This comes at a period when Tibet is literally burning, and China’s repression and crackdowns on the Tibetan people are at their harshest and most violent. Twenty five young people, mostly monks and  nuns, have self-immolated to draw attention to the attacks  on Tibetan religion and culture. China’s response has been to crackdown harder, conduct beatings and detentions and inflict painful and humiliating ‘re-education’ programs at Tibetan religious institutions.

Wrong political message to the Chinese Communist Party

Cutting this lifeline for Tibetans in their hour of need sends a wrong message to China. China will understand it to mean that decimation of Tibetan religion and culture, and indeed their very identity, will now be overlooked by America. And to the Tibetan people, it will be a heartbreaking blow from a nation that Tibetans love, respect, and consider a friend in stormy weather.

        VOA Tibetan language radio is a unique source of information for Tibetans

A recent NPR report on the Tibetan self-immolations in Tibet said, “The monks listen secretly to Voice of America’s Tibetan service news every night, despite feeling almost physical pain at the bleak news.” That’s because ever since 1991, when the Voice of America was mandated by an act of Congress to start its Tibetan language service, it has been the only international broadcast into Tibet that provides world news, US news, the activities and efforts of the Dalai Lama for his people, and information and analysis on the workings of the free world to Tibet. And today, VOA Tibetan radio is still the only one that gives all of that to the Tibetan people.

Shortwave radio is still a powerful medium in Tibet

Shortwave radio remains a cheap, easily concealed, and thus the safest mode of getting news and information in Tibet. Radio signals are jammed by the Chinese in town centers, but in the rural areas where the vast majority of Tibetans live, Voice of America’s radio is loud and clear.

The Dalai Lama said that Voice of America Tibetan radio is “vital medicine” for Tibetans, and the Tibetan people consider it as one of the most valuable and priceless gifts from the people and government of the United States to them.

Save VOA Tibetan radio on behalf of the millions of Tibetans living under extreme oppression, and the American people who have supported the plight of the Tibetans for over 50 years.

Getting a BBG Birthday Cake

THE VOA ANNIVERSARY WALTZ:  LA DANSE MACABRE?

by Quo Vadis

For the past 10-15 years, as annual budget time nears, there’s a haunting presence in the halls of the Voice of America, call it, if you will, Mme La Guillotine furtively hovering in the background as broadcasters wonder whether this year it will be all over and they will be declared extinct like the dodo bird, a faded blip on the international broadcasting scene. A small cabal from the Executive Staff on the third floor of the Cohen Building, known as Valhalla to rank-and-file, stride to and fro with furrowed brows from meeting to meeting buttressed by bulging binders and glowing Power Point presentations, as they ponder the fate of the VOA language services in what some think is a macabre reenactment of the thumbs-up or down of Roman Coliseum days.

Some Services are plagued with this recurrent nightmare year after year as grating as a needle stuck in the groove of a scratched LP or maddening as the events in the film, Groundhog Day.  One of them is the VOA Georgian Service, doomed and then redeemed not once but many times. The Service was first saved from extinction by a VOA Director after a persuasive presentation by the service members together with a panel of knowledgeable experts.  In succeeding years, that pesky Mme La Guillotine persisted in prowling around the parameters of the Georgian Service. In ’08,  they were again on the chopping block but were saved, this time by the intervention of two gutsy Congresswomen, one who chaired the Congressional Georgian Caucus and believed that the Republic of Georgia was of great geo-political importance to the United States, a seemingly foreign concept to those making the decisions on diminishing the Voice of America. Fast forward to 2011 when VOA Georgian celebrated its 60th year of broadcasting with the well-deserved congratulatory messages and celebration. With those cheers for VOA Georgian achievements still a fresh memory, the fate of the Service once again hangs in the balance with severe cutbacks proposed in 2012, keeping only two employees who will be expected to produce high-quality TV and Internet – a recipe for potential failure.

In the ’08 proposed closures which Georgia barely escaped thanks to swift action by Congress, VOA Tibet was also scheduled to go off the air but escaped like its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who had been forced into exile to India many years before.  Last year, the VOA Tibetan Service, created by law in 1991, celebrated its 20th anniversary at festivities replete with kudos and toasts to its accomplishments. The very next year, perhaps because of the anniversary curse, third-floor executives announced that VOA Tibetan radio broadcasts, described by the Dalai Lama as a crucial lifeline to the outside world for his oppressed people, would be off the air leaving TV and internet. BBG executives are evidently oblivious to the fact that only exiled Tibetans in India can see VOA Tibetan TV since transmissions are effectively blocked within the country just as Chinese authorities prevent any internet access.  One of those fabled and familiar “oh well” moments.

Speaking of the bad-luck connection between VOA anniversaries and disaster, the Russian Service celebrated its 60th anniversary with much hoopla only to be unceremoniously shut down a year later in August of ’08 two weeks before the invasion by Russia of neighboring Georgia.  Ignoring the specific written advisory of Congress that radio/TV broadcasts to Russia be continued, the BBG transferred VOA Russian to internet only with the inevitable result that it lost its listeners, prestige and reach. Four years later, we see an aggressive Russia caught in the vise of an autocratic Putin and his plutocracy with unprecedented-since-the Cold-War venomous anti-American attacks issued from its ruling circles as our U.S. ambassador frantically strives to connect via Twitter.

The revolving-door scenario is repeated with the VOA Greek Service year after year: dumped and then resurrected, closed and then opened like a barn door in a windstorm.  Appeals to Congress and support from American Hellenic organizations kept turning the tide but again this year the Red Queen refrain – Off with their heads – is heard as the Greek Service faces closure for mysterious reasons known only to a select few perhaps in the secluded holy monasteries of Mount Athos.

The VOA China Branch narrowly dodged the infamous VOA anniversary curse last year when the U.S. Congress overruled the BBG‘s plans to cut radio/TV broadcasts to China and transfer its communication functions solely to InterNet which is almost totally blocked by China’s formidable cyber army. The Branch properly celebrated its 70th anniversary not in the confines of the VOA building but in the Rayburn Building of the U.S. Congress.

In March, the VOA celebrated its 70th anniversary with a glowing tribute to its influence and impact throughout the world over seven decades with congratulations from the U.S. President, the Secretary of State, video greetings from the Dalai Lama and Burmese activist Aung Suu Kyi, all kinds of hosannahs from near and far, from inside and outside the building.

Knowing the track record of anniversary celebrations preceding extinction, one can only wonder if the BBG knows something that VOA employees do not?

Moral of the story?  Beware of management emissaries from Valhalla bearing cake.

The bureaucratic executive staff at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and its operating arm the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) are proposing major cuts in U.S. international broadcasting to strategic countries and regions while expanding their own ranks and expenses. They have targeted the primary strategic U.S. broadcaster — the Voice of America (VOA) — for the most severe program cuts and reductions while bureaucratic IBB positions will grow from fiscal year 2011 from 593 to 678.

The IBB/BBG executive bureaucracy has been rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) surveys as the worst among all federal agencies in management knowledge and leadership.

Growing bureaucracy at the expense of programs

The proposed reductions are driven not by a considered strategic world view, but by bureaucratic expedience and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of VOA. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, the staff level for VOA will be reduced by 13.2% from the current year. In contrast, only 3.3% of the positions from the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which provides administrative support to the BBG, will be cut. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted the number of full time equivalent (FTE) positions for the IBB will rise from 593.2 in fiscal year 2011 to 678.2. In the same time period VOA will lose 121.2 FTE positions. The general trend of the IBB has been to grow larger while the number of language services they support is being reduced. Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support. The eliminations and reductions in broadcasting to Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam alone will cut 28 positions from VOA.

PROPOSED REDUCTIONS AT VOA

The Broadcasting Board of Governors oversees all civilian international broadcasting operations funded by the U.S. government:  VOA/Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia (RFA) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN).

Of these, VOA is the only Agency subject to direct Congressional oversight because it is part of the U.S. Government.

In addition to world news, VOA provides news and information about the United States, its people, its ideals and beliefs and its government policies.

RFA, REF/RL and MBN are privately-run organizations yet federally funded by grants from the BBG.  Each operates as a surrogate broadcaster by acting as a free-press for those countries in which they operate.  Their mission is to be an alternative for in-country news.  Their mission does not include broadcasting news from or about the United States, its people, its ideals or U.S. government policies as is enshrined in the VOA Charter, Public Law 94-350.

ACTIVITY                  # OF POSITIONS         #OF POSITIONS CUT

Central News                     125                            – 43 

POTENTIAL IMPACT:   With its Central Newsroom staff in Washington, DC, reduced by one third, VOA would risk losing a high quality  news service that has been its brand since 1942.  It will no longer be able to cover news, trends and American life comprehensively 24/7 — its trademark as a “go to” source about America and the world.  Carefully sourced information is essential to the success and standards of VOA’s more than 40 language services.  The news writing responsibility will be delegated to the language services which are staffed in part with non-U.S. citizen contractors who have little, if any, stake in or understanding of U.S. foreign policy.  It is essential to use a Central News Service which could and should be used by ALL the various elements.  The recent occurrence in VOA Russian where a fake interview with the dissident Naval’ny was posted on the VOA Russian website is a perfect example of the chaos that can ensue if this reorganization of Central News is approved.

English                                  99                             – 28

POTENTIAL IMPACT:   Radio broadcasts (shortwave, AM and FM) would be silenced to all areas of the world except Africa.  This includes strategically important broadcasts to the Middle East, China and Tibet where where VOA English is the only USG international broadcast service that is not jammed.  VOA’s remaining global broadcasts in English would cease including all hourly newscasts and regionalized news and information about America from a uniquely American point of view.  Emphasis would be placed on social media and the Internet which are easy to interdict.  In this decision, the BBG ignores the fact that all over the world, English is becoming a favorite second language, especially among the youth.  The great popularity of  VOA Special English programs with its limited vocabulary and explanation of idiomatic English phrases is a prime example of good programming that reaches listeners who are interested in English.

Broadcast Operations       284                           -16     

POTENTIAL IMPACT:    Linked to reduction in need for radio technicians to support programs throughout this list

Spanish                                  27                            -14 

POTENTIAL IMPACT:    Six Spanish broadcasters will remain in Washington; 4 will be transferred to New York, and 4 to Miami.  This is Phase 1 of a long-range VOA and Radio-TV Marti consolidation.  VOA radio relays to 19 Spanish-speaking countries in our hemisphere will be severely curtailed at the same time Iran has established HispanTV a Spanish language TV channel that communist/Cuba sympathizer Hugo Chavez is actively involved with.  This is in addition to Hugo Chavez’ other project – Telesur which besides Venezuela is cosponsored by from Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Uruguay.  Telesur broadcasts 24/7 to South, Central and North America.  The Network has a staff of 500 with offices throughout Latin America and broadcasts via satellite, cable, and terrestrial TV and radio platforms.  The content has been identified by various groups as being anti-U.S.  Perhaps as a result, one country after another in Latin America is choosing leftist governments.  The BBG has been steadily ignoring these threats in our hemisphere cutting Portuguese to Brazil and sporadically broadcasting to countries which could be potential threats to our national security.  Also, there has been NO directive from Congress which would authorize the BBG to dramatically reorganize and consolidate Radio/TV Marti.  What happens to the Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act, Public Law 98-111 which Ronald Reagan signed in 1983 putting it under the auspices of the VOA?

Afghan (Dari-Pashto)          40                             -10 

POTENTIAL IMPACT:    VOA radio to strategically-important Afghanistan would be halved from 12 to 6 hours daily during the critical 2012-2014 drawdown period for NATO and US forces.  Original programming would be cut, risking a possible loss of younger multimedia expert staff and a substantial reduction in VOA Afghan’s audience share (60% of adults).   Six hours weekly of TV would be retained while all research information points to the fact that RADIO is the prime communication in Afghanistan.

Vietnamese                       16                                -10

POTENTIAL IMPACT:    VOA will lose its 17 ½ hours weekly of radio, leaving only Internet services to a country where all the media are controlled by the Communist Party.  The six remaining staff members may not be able to: 1) sustain four current Internet sites they now reach, as Hanoi steps up efforts to control these by establishing its own state-owned social network, 2) retain the VOA Vietnamese position as the third most visited website at the Voice.  The proposed cut would severely hinder America’s ability to counter the propaganda of communist governments in Hanoi and Beijing.  The VOA Vietnamese Service has been a trusted source of news since 1943 and has almost 5 times the audience of the Vietnamese Service of Radio Free Asia.  In essence, this cut to VOA Vietnamese is punishment for a job well done.

Cantonese                             7                               -7            ABOLISH SERVICE

POTENTIAL IMPACT:  VOA Cantonese would be abolished on grounds that the audience is “negligible.” But RFA Cantonese will continue, with eight staff members even though it has only a “trace” audience.  In an independent survey last year, VOA had a weekly TV audience share of 9.8 % in Hong Kong and 1.9% in Guangdong Province.  VOA has a recognition factor there 2.5 times greater than RFA.  VOA and RFA have different and distinct missions (preamble, page 1). Following the example of the successful programming to Eastern Europe and the USSR during the Cold War when the US broadcast through surrogate stations RFE/Radio Liberty as well as VOA, RFA should be entrusted with programming about domestic events while VOA Cantonese radio/TV would concentrate on world news.  Another factor arguing for retention is the fact that as of March 1, 2012, Chinese authorities stopped all Cantonese-language programming in Guangdong province affecting over 50 million people.  Hong Kong, also predominantly Cantonese-speaking with 7 million people, could also be affected down the line.  Contrary to what the BBG has erroneously said re: Mandarin and Cantonese having the same classic standard Chinese characters, SPOKEN Mandarin and SPOKEN Cantonese are totally different languages.  During this time when Cantonese speakers in China would be deprived of media in their own language is a crucial strategic moment for VOA/RFA to INCREASE not decrease programming.

Tibetan                                 22                            – 7

POTENTIAL IMPACT:    All VOA Tibetan radio will be abolished, with TV expanded from its current two hours to three hours a week to a country where there are no affiliates on which to broadcast the program.  Although PRC radio jamming is extensive, the television audience in Tibet is still smaller by comparison because of government efforts to jam TV satellite signs.  There’s no reason to help the PRC achieve their objective of silencing the Voice and radio which remains a major information link to the worldwide Tibetan diaspora.  Interestingly enough, in his remarks recorded for the 70th anniversary of VOA, the Dalai Lama kept repeating the impact of VOA Tibet RADIO to the Tibetans and its great importance.  A recent feature on NPR revealed the fact that Buddhist monks secretly listen to VOA Tibet radio programs although under constant surveillance by Chinese militia.  At this critical moment when over 20 monks have self-immolated to bring the attention of the outside world to their plight is no time to CUT VOA Tibet programs which are truly a lifeline for those listeners.  Accurate research on radio listening habits in Tibet are virtually impossible to obtain since outsiders are not allowed free access into the country.  Research is available on TV listening habits among Tibetan refugees in India who fled the oppression in their native country.

Bangla                                 11                             – 6

POTENTIAL IMPACT:   All Bangla AM and shortwave will cease, and remaining 5 staff will concentrate on FM and TV placement.  VOA Bangla, aided by a powerful AM signal from Thailand, had more than 1,000 fan clubs in 2002 and its presence on Dhaka FM demands adequate staff to produce programs.

Albanian                             12                              -5 

POTENTIAL IMPACT:   All VOA radio in Albanian will end, but TV production will continue.   VOA is the leading international broadcaster to Kosovo and Albania but will be hard pressed to retain this position with only 7 staff.

Greek                                   4                              – 4              ABOLISH SERVICE

POTENTIAL IMPACT:  The proposed elimination of broadcasting to this strategically important country is ill-advised.  It would come just as its financial crisis and internal unrest threaten Greece’s security and the financial stability of both the EU and the United States.  VOA Greek reaches nearly 500,000 people weekly in Athens alone.  It is also on the air in Cyprus.  Its strategic importance is being totally ignored.

Turkish                                 8                            – 4

POTENTIAL IMPACT:   Cutting this service in half to focus only on the Internet while abolishing TV and radio broadcasts would seriously undermine VOA’s capability to reach a critical and growing anti-American Muslim audience in the volatile region.  It would also threaten impressive audience gains of the past year.  The 24/7 website recommended by the BBG requires more staff, not less.  Internet service in Turkey is spotty at best.  The BBG, as is the norm, is shooting itself in the foot with this decision and in addition, imperiling our national security.

Georgian                            6                            – 4

POTENTIAL IMPACT:   Reducing rejuvenated VOA Georgian by two thirds makes no strategic sense.  In 2010, when Georgian broadcasts ceased, Russian troops invaded that strategically important country two weeks later.  Russia occupies, or has growing influence, in neighboring South Ossetia and Abkhazia and hostilities could potentially break out with no warning.  The Republic of Georgia is making tremendous strides in its economy.  The 60 years of VOA Georgian broadcasting into the country have created a pro-American stance among its people.  Georgian forces have fought in Iraq & Afghanistan. VOA Georgian radio would disappear at precisely the wrong time especially since many predict that after his victory, Putin may once again begin aggressive actions against Georgia.  The two surviving staff members would find it impossible to produce both a high quality Internet and TV service prescribed by the BBG following the proposed reduction.   The BBG is setting the service up for failure and within a year, would probably close the service.

Lao                                      6                               -4

POTENTIAL IMPACT:  Lao media are tightly controlled by the ruling communist party which has been in power since 1975.  With its staff cut to two and the loss of shortwave transmissions, VOA Lao will be severely weakened — producing material largely for 8 affiliated FM stations across the border from Laos in neighboring Thailand.  Laos is a country hungry for a variety of Western news sources.  VOA and RFA, even with their different missions, can fill the void,

Burmese                           13                             – 1

POTENTIAL IMPACT:    Burma is on the verge of substantial democratic reforms.  It’s been said that the Rangoon government is contemplating allowing VOA radio and TV programs to be rebroadcast on Burmese government controlled media which may be wishful thinking and not valid information on which to base the decision to possibly cut .  Affiliate programming is highly uncertain as that programming can be shut down suddenly and quickly as it was with VOA Russian, Ukrainian, Azerbaijan and other language services.  Ironically, in a video presentation at the VOA 70th anniversary celebration, the leader of the Burmese democracy movement, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, spoke of her 18 years under house arrest and repeated over and over how VOA Burmese which she listens to every night was her lifeline of information and the source of the hope that kept her alive.

PROPOSED_REDUCTIONS_AT_VOA.doc.PDF

PROPOSED_REDUCTIONS_AT_VOA.doc