Human Rights Abuse in China Exhibit, New York State Senate, May 2013

Coinciding with World Press Freedom Day on May 3, a photo exhibit of human rights abuse in China organized by a media freedom supporter, Laogai Research Foundation founder Harry Wu, is currently on display in New York’s Capitol. Harry Wu serves on the Advisory Board of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusig.org), an independent and nonpartisan organization promoting media freedom worldwide.

Freedom House Annual Censorship Report: China Among World’s Least Free

Click here for the full report.

Laogai Research Foundation Photo Exhibition On Display in New York’s Capital

The Laogai Research Foundation Photo Exhibit has opened in the Concourse Level Entrance to the Legislative Office Building in Albany, New York, and will be on display until Friday, May 10. It is a powerful testimony of the most severe human suffering that has occurred and still occurs in China.

Harry Wu, Founder and Executive Director of the Lagoai Research Foundation, survived 19 years in China’s Laogai. The word Laogai means “reform through labor” and refers to the most extensive system of forced labor camps in the world. The Laogai Research Foundation works to document and publicize other systemic human rights violations in China, including executions, the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, the coercive enforcement of China’s “one-child” population control policy, Internet censorship and surveillance, and the persecution of Roman Catholics, other Christians, Uyghurs, and Tibetans.

The issues surrounding the Photo Exhibit are certainly relevant to New York State. Many Laogai survivors live in New York, and as New York State invests in companies in China, they can address human rights violations and encourage human rights reform.

This photo exhibit is sponsored by New York State Senators Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) and Senator Martin J. Golden (R-Brooklyn).

Harry Wu is expected to be in Albany for the event.

Human Rights Abuse in China 1, New York State Senate, May 2013

Human Rights Abuse in China 2, New York State Senate, May 2013

Human Rights Abuse in China 3, New York State Senate, May 2013

Human Rights Abuse in China 4, New York State Senate, May 2013

Human Rights Abuse in China 5, New York State Senate, May 2013

Human Rights Abuse in China 6, New York State Senate, May 2013

Human Rights Abuses in China 7, New York State Senate, May 2013

Visiting Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) acting president and CEO Kevin Klose met in Moscow at a private party with many of the Radio Liberty Russian Service journalists who were fired by the previous RFE/RL management in September 2012 or resigned in protest. Many of them hope that he will allow them soon to return to Radio Liberty.

For the last few months these journalists have called themselves Radio Liberty in Exile and launched Novaya Svoboda (New Liberty) news website, while the official Radio Liberty has been boycotted by pro-democracy Russians and lost much of its previous reputation and audience.

Radio Liberty Russian Service director for the last seven months Masha Gessen had resigned on April 30. Gessen said that she was going to write a book about the Boston bombings suspects who have family roots in Chechnya in the Russian Federation. The firings and most of the resignations of the old Radio Liberty team in Moscow occurred before Masha Gessen took over her job and brought with her about a dozen of her associates. Most of her associates have now also resigned.

RFE RL acting president Kevin Klose at a party in Moscow with Radio Liberty's fired journalists. Photo by Ivan Trefilov.

The party in Moscow was also attended by famous Russian human rights activist and this year’s Nobel Peace prize nominee Lyudmila Alexeeva who has been one of the fired journalists’ strongest supporters.

RFE RL acting president Kevin Klose greets Lyudmila Alexeeva at a party in Moscow. Photo by Ivan Trefilov.

Two members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Susan McCue, the chair of the RFE/RL corporate board, and Michael Meehan, are arriving in Moscow Friday for a short visit to assess reforms and other changes at Radio Liberty initiated by Kevin Klose. They are expected to meet with U.S. Embassy officials, Russian human rights leaders, independent journalists, and members of the former Radio Liberty team.

McCue and Meehan are believed to be strongly supportive of Klose’s reforms and want to see the fired journalists to be able again to contribute to Radio Liberty’s media freedom role in Russia.

McCue, Meehan and another BBG member, RFE/RL corporate board vice-chair Victor Ashe, were instrumental in hiring Kevin Klose to reform the U.S. taxpayer-supported media institution. He replaced former RFE/RL president Steven Korn who had hired Masha Gessen and dismissed dozens of journalists in Moscow. Security guards prevented them from saying good bye to their audience of many years.

Korn said that journalists had all resigned voluntarily and were treated with respect. Gessen, who had worked for Korn as a private management consultant before being hired, said that she had nothing to do with the dismissals.

Leading figures of the democratic opposition movement in Russia, including Lyudmila Alexeeva, did not believe claims of former RFE/RL managers and wrote protest letters to the U.S. administration and Congress.

Their appeals have been heard. Failed by their own executive staff who failed to alert them to the developing journalistic and public diplomacy crisis, BBG members took matters into their own hands. The appointment of Kevin Klose has started the process of reform. Most of the RFE/RL executives responsible for the firings and programming changes have resigned.

Many of the talented and brave journalists, who have been so badly treated and left to fend for themselves in Putin’s Russia, may soon return to their beloved station to resume their work for media freedom.

There is much hope for better days for Radio Liberty and for its audience.

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).

by The Federalist

“In reality, the actions of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) executives represent US national insecurity: leaving the United States with no broadcast presence in key strategic regions that are known hotbeds of jihadist activities, organizations or operations.  These officials lack the requisite intellectual acumen to understand how vulnerabilities are created in relation to their failed ‘strategic plan.’”

LAST MINUTE UPDATE

Kazakhstan – Chechnya – RFE/RL – IBB

Sexually suggestive videos like this one are a result of the IBB's misguided strategic plan and lack of management control. Targeting largely Muslim Kazakhstan they reinforced anti-American stereotypes and may have encouraged extremism. (These videos were later removed.)

New management at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), appointed by reformist Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) members is now trying to clean up the mess created in large part due to the distorted strategic plan and lack of any prompt management response from the top executives of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) to the crisis in U.S. news outreach to Kazakhstan, Chechnya and Russia.

Kazakhstan: Students Charged with Obstructing Marathon Bombing Probe, EURASIANET.org, RFE/RL

What did International Broadcasting Bureau top executives do?

1. IBB did nothing when last June former Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) management fired experienced Kazakh journalists and eliminated live radio broadcasts to Kazakhstan. They did not alert BBG members that this could become, as it did, a major problem.

2. IBB did nothing when former RFE/RL management produced and posted sexually suggestive videos for audiences in Kazakhstan, a largely conservative and Muslim nation, which produced an outrage and may have encouraged some extremists in their anti-American views. (Offensive videos were later removed.)

3. IBB did nothing as pro-democracy opposition leaders in Kazakhstan began to complain that the Radio Liberty Kazakh website became a tabloid devoid of any significant human rights content.

Interview: North Caucasus Insurgency Was Possible Influence On Boston Suspects, RFE/RL

What did International Broadcasting Bureau top executives do?

1. In the FY 2013 budget request to Congress, IBB proposed to end RFE/RL radio broadcasts to Chechnya, the ancestral homeland of the Boston bombings suspects and to lay off a number of experienced RFE/RL journalists specializing in covering Islamist extremism in the region and countering anti-American propaganda.

2. IBB did nothing as the former RFE/RL management fired dozens of experienced Radio Liberty Russian journalists.

3. IBB failed to alert BBG members to the developing news and information delivery and public diplomacy crisis in Russia, Chechnya, Kazakhstan and in other nations and regions where jihadists operate.

END OF UPDATE

We have temporarily put our FY2014 budget commentaries on hold in order to address a subject of immediate importance:

Boston

April 15, 2013

The Boston Marathon bombing is now part of the story line of the American Experience and will remain so for the rest of our national existence, lest we forget.

By The Numbers:

The human cost: two individuals detonated two explosive devices (pressure cookers loaded with nails and pellets – an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) much like canister rounds used in artillery munitions or as in an antipersonnel Claymore mine).  These homemade explosive devices had the same effect of anti-personnel munitions: to inflict maximum casualties when detonated at close range.  These devices achieved the intended results: three deaths (plus that of a security officer during the manhunt that followed), over one hundred wounded including those who suffered serious traumatic injuries to arms and legs.

The financial cost: public funds spent mobilizing the Boston area emergency medical facilities and response personnel, the mobilization of local, state and federal law enforcement and last, the lockdown of the Boston area – in its effect, walking very close to the imposition of martial law.

Thus, the city of Boston already well-established in American history will add this incident to its historical record: the first successful terrorist attack on the American homeland since September 11, 2001.

The repercussions of this incident and its aftermath will represent many millions of dollars, the lingering trauma to the families of those killed and wounded and another level of wariness for a weary American citizenry (weary and not really fully understanding the nature or depth of the threat).

And there is more.

Federal, state and local authorities must now revise their plans for dealing with international terrorism directed against US citizens and others (the Boston Marathon includes international participants), expand the scenarios of domestic target vulnerabilities and settle on new countermeasures and surveillance techniques.

Approaching the twelfth anniversary of September 11, 2001 we find that we are not as secure as we hoped and a successful prosecution of and/or conclusion to the war against international jihadists remains elusive.

IBB Response and Aftermath

[We are making a distinction here between the remaining presidentially-appointed active Broadcasting Board of Governors members who have started the process of reforming Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and International Broadcasting Bureau executives who nominally work for BBG members and American taxpayers but in reality behave as if they are in charge of the agency. It is these IBB executives who are resisting reforms initiated by current active BBG members. They are defiant and ungovernable. In addition to resistance from IBB officials, actions undertaken recently by BBG Governors are being hampered by the prolonged and unexplained absence from Board meetings of Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton. Without him, the BBG Board has no quorum and can't force reforms at IBB. ]

Along with major news outlets, the Voice of America got burned by an erroneous report, attributed to a sole source, that arrests were imminent on the day of the bombings.  Those arrests never materialized.  Sources indicate that some of the VOA news personnel were skeptical of relying on a “sole source.”  Nonetheless, VOA ran with the report, following the herd.

It is bad enough that the commercial media blew it.  It is worse when the agency follows suit.  One must remember that the Voice of America is supposed to represent the United States to the world.  In short: reporting has to be right the first time and hopefully every time.

Unfortunately, this is a standard that is falling by the wayside, according to dispirited agency broadcasters who, for example, confront on an all-too-often occurrence mistakenly reworked headlines to their stories appearing on the agency’s websites beginning with its English language website.

These lapses belie a more serious problem: the effort by the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) to substantially reduce the presence of the Voice of America (VOA) broadcast programs and eliminate the Central Newsroom.  The Newsroom which represents a core agency operation has been repeatedly and specifically targeted for cuts to staff, along with cuts to broadcast time for Worldwide English programs.  The staff is under-resourced.  Staff members have used the word “schizophrenic” to describe how news stories are processed.  An under-resourced core operation means an increased likelihood that formerly solid news practices are being diluted and standards lowered de facto – the perfect incubator for more, not fewer, errors.

As to the events of April 15, 2013 and beyond:

According to our sources, the agency responded to the Boston Marathon bombings by producing reports from the scene and elsewhere, assembling broadcasters and production personnel for the assignment.

In addition, the agency sent out one of its press releases touting a number of employees described as “experts” on Chechnya, the birthplace and homeland of the suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrapped up the main portion of the national public focus on the event.

Afterward, VOA Executive Editor sent out an email to agency employees.  Starting with the salutation “Friends,” he proceeded to praise the agency’s coverage of events in and around Boston.

[Please note the “Friends” salutation.  Perhaps this was a suggestion from the Partnership for Public Service, along the same lines as another Third Floor favorite, “Colleagues.”  The people on the Third Floor of the Cohen Building are neither.  Review the IBB FY2014 budget request: asking for less money and doing less as the IBB careerists continue to hack away at the agency’s core mission and broadcast operations.  Many employees recognize the hypocrisy; with “friends” like these...]

While perhaps intended to salvage some measure of the agency’s collapsed employee morale, the email appeared to have had the opposite effect.

The email set off a firestorm involving the author, one of the declared “experts” on Chechnya and the service chief of the language service where the expert is assigned, with everyone who was copied on the original email provided a front row seat.

In essence, the staffer complained of being under-utilized during the event, feeling it would have been better to be on site during the Boston attacks and police dragnet, rather than sitting it out in Washington, fielding a few phone calls from press contacts looking for people on the ground in the Boston area to interview.

And that is not the end of it.

Since the emails got wide circulation, other employees chimed in with their own opinions among themselves.  From what we’ve seen, none were positive and many not at all flattering.  Conditions inside Voice of America have devolved to the point that employee angst is now making its way into widely circulated emails, a service chief stepping up to do “CYA” and top VOA executive having to issue an additional email in an attempt to dampen the uproar created with his original email.

Even in the dysfunctional, defunct and generally hostile work environment created by the senior agency management, this is an extraordinary demonstration of finger-pointing.

[By the way, the offended agency employee was sent on a detail to Boston with a production crew to do “follow-up.”]

Our sources also offer the view that one of the things sorely lacking in the current rendition of the VOA Central Newsroom is one or more staffers covering national security affairs, someone with a well-rounded portfolio of contacts and experts to call upon for events such as the one in Boston.

By comparison:

We have said it before and will say it again: Washington, DC radio station WTOP has one of the top national security correspondents in US broadcasting: JJ Green.  His sources are high value and his reports are insightful, penetrative and understandable.  They are archived as both print and audio files on the WTOP website.

In short, what a local Washington, DC area radio station can do, seemingly the international broadcasting agency of the US Government cannot.

Alienation/Disaffection: Causes and Effects

The older of the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is said to have once remarked that he had no American friends and that he didn’t understand Americans.

If you want a sterling example of the failure of the agency and its strategic misdirection, this is it.

The agency has done several things to set itself on this course:

First, it has continued to further erode its broadcast coverage to many parts of the world.  This is a critical failure: creating a vacuum to be filled by others with messages and ideologies hostile to the United States. In China, Tibet, Russia, Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Tatarstan, Turkmenistan and so on.

Second, it has allowed itself to be outplayed by the Chinese, Russians, Iranians and others who are blocking agency broadcasts and websites outright, controlling access to its programs through cyber countermeasures, on some occasions being targeted by specific organizations (the Iranian Cyber Army) for cyber attacks and in other cases having its ability to reach audiences with substantive news programming curtailed in the intended target area through the establishment of laws prohibiting the dissemination of news by international broadcasters.

Third, it has fallen into a trap of its own making, perhaps influenced by a disturbing trend in Western media.  In short, the agency no longer adheres to the provisions of the VOA Charter.  Instead, the agency now embraces naive advocacy.  This isn’t journalism or the war of ideas.  What the agency advocates, “support of freedom and democracy,” should be an intended outcome of its programming choices, not a marketing strategy.  And therein lays the great weakness, the trap and the ultimate strategic failure.

There is nothing wrong with effective “support of freedom and democracy.” It comes naturally if there is outstanding journalism. But IBB strategic planners have made sexually suggestive videos and pop Western music the centerpiece of “support of freedom and democracy” to the Muslim world. They confused Western marketing to a Western audience like themselves with what should be the strategy of using objective, skeptical journalism to help strengthen freedom and democracy instead of preaching about it through music and videos.

Senior agency officials – most notoriously those who shill for the agency’s “flim flam, Soviet-style, dysfunctional and defunct strategic plan” – treat “supporting freedom and democracy” like a commodity – a one-size-fits-all, do-it-yourself kit with universal application.  Ultimately, with this skewed world view, these hucksters have set the United States up to fail with global publics.

In an op-ed piece appearing in the Outlook section of The Washington Post on Sunday, April 28, 2013 (“The second American century?  It’s already here”), Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass notes that in order to solidify this position for the United States in the 21^st century, one of the things we have to come to grips with is: “…accepting that we cannot remake other societies in our image.”

The people on the Third Floor of the Cohen Building who like to utter their “supporting freedom and democracy” mantra leave a great deal out of the equation.  Uttering this mantra ad nausea does not make it real.  While “freedom and democracy” are high value political, social and economic concepts, they also require eternal vigilance and high maintenance.  Absent those beliefs or an historical record of those beliefs, “freedom and democracy” are alien concepts or are interpreted – often negatively – on the strength of other actions – including military operations which produce collateral damage among non-combatants. Playing music and showing funny videos is not going to fix the problem. Accurate, objective news and information, hard hitting journalism, and intellectual commentary might do it in the long run.

Fourth, along with a naive advocacy bent to its unsophisticated editorial content, the agency has also embraced what we call a “kumbaya” posture toward global publics.  The worst example of this is with Radio Sawa – where a programming philosophy was adopted to play pop music to Arab youth and use that “hook” as the basis to get Arab and Muslim youth to like us, identify with us and be like us. Music can be an element of good programming focused on personalities rather than music alone, but it cannot be a strategic element.

Another example of this “kumbaya” programming is a program called “Middle East Voices” in which the apparent intent is to identify with the Arab and Muslim world, seemingly lumping Sunni, Shiite and other sects into some kind of agency self-willed potpourri of peoples without regard to issues specific to each.

[Let’s all join hands and sing, “We Are The World”]

In both cases, it isn’t working and is likely never going to work because it trivializes hundreds of years of history often filled with bloody conflict.

The IBB is into denial on a fundamental, basic level:

Many of these people simply do not want to be like us, do not identify with us or do not want to embrace our lifestyle and cultural choices.  These same people will go to extraordinary lengths to defend their beliefs and reject ours.  These people have closed their minds to us and no amount of hectoring from the IBB ideologues is going to change that.  In fact, it makes things worse (offensive videos with sexually suggestive content).

The two alleged suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing fit that mold, including the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who appears to have traveled back to the Caucasus region in the Russian Federation then returning to the US seemingly with his apparent jihadist views validated.  He was prepared to act.

More IBB Nonsense

The hucksters of the IBB like to lay the claim that they are part of the national security apparatus of the United States.

They are not.

In reality, the actions of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) executives represent US national insecurity: leaving the United States with no broadcast presence in key strategic regions that are known hotbeds of jihadist activities, organizations or operations.  These officials lack the requisite intellectual acumen to understand how vulnerabilities are created in relation to their failed “strategic plan.”

Another point:

An IBB urban myth – in support of its effort to push through the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, the IBB made the argument that with the changes in the law, the agency would now be able to reach ethnic audiences within the United States.

First, these audiences have been reachable via the Internet and agency websites for many years and any US radio or TV station could have already legally taken and legally rebroadcast any Voice of America program found on the Internet.

Second, and more importantly, the IBB has lost sight of an important point of Americana:

These ethnic communities have come to the United States for one common reason: to remove themselves from adverse conditions in their homelands — the vast majority of members of these communities.

These homelands have names: Syria, Darfur, Chechnya among others.

Reaching these people with news about their homelands is one thing.  But for the purposes of our American society, the top priority for these communities is participation in the American Experience: inclusion and not exclusion.  Anyone remotely familiar with these communities knows – and the historical record validates – that the top priority is moving forward.  With each new generation, what we should work toward and hope for is that these communities become better educated, more successful, more inclusive into the American mainstream.

These American communities are not the problem. The problem is abroad: countries on which IBB strategic planners should concentrate but instead are cutting programs and eliminating journalistic positions while expanding their own bureaucracy in the United States.

The agency’s mission is abroad, not in the United States.

And this is in our national interest.

It is not in our national interest to have communities or individuals within those communities who feel isolated, alienated, who cannot make serious cultural adjustments to balance ethnic or religious identity with the broader American culture.  This is not always an easy fit.  At times, what we consider to be “freedom and democracy” appear to those from more traditional societies to be an excuse for licentiousness and excess (again, offensive and sexually suggested videos for Kazakhstan).

And that is what leads to incidents like –

Boston

April 15, 2013

We do not need more people who believe that they have no American friends and who don’t understand Americans, as in the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

And one of the reasons publics abroad feel this way is because US Government international broadcasting has fallen off the rails at the hands of venal, self-interested opportunists within the IBB making decisions that have diminished impact with global audiences. Despite getting larger and larger budgets from Congress almost every year, these IBB executives have not expanded BBG’s global audience since at least 2008. Having failed to grow audiences abroad, this may explain great eagerness of IBB executives to force their ineffective programs on Americans.

They have to go.  No matter how hard they resist, stonewall and engage in acts of gross insubordination to direction from the reformist members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, this IBB cabal has to go.

Their track record has made US Government international broadcasting:

Dysfunctional, defunct and ungovernable.

[This is deviant administrative behavior by a group of government bureaucrats at its worst.  For the Obama administration, the name of the game is this: if you don’t fix it, you tolerate and condone it.  And that is unacceptable.  The IBB is not a group of poster boys and girls for the best of American Federal governance.]

In closing his op-ed piece in The Washington Post, Richard Haass offers the following:

“The alternative to a U.S.- led 21^st century is not an era dominated by China or anyone else, but rather a chaotic time in which regional and global problems overwhelm the world’s collective will and ability to meet them.

Americans would not be safe or prosperous in such a world.  One Dark Ages was one too many; the last thing we need is another.”

Indeed.

The IBB strategic plan serves to facilitate and enable a New Dark Ages.  This plan has created strategic vacuums eagerly filled by others with a very different message for global publics. China – Tibet – Russia – Chechnya – Kazakhstan are nations to which IBB strategic planners cut or proposed to cut programs and programming positions while making their bureaucratic operation the largest single segment of the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ budget (35%).

The Federalist

May 2013

Three members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting, will receive the 2013 Champion of Free Speech Award from the New York Chapter of the Visual Artists Guild. The award will be presented to Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan at the Annual Tiananmen Anniversary Dinner which will be held in New York on Saturday, June 1, 2013.

Victor Ashe

Susan McCue

Michael Meehan

Ashe, McCue and Meehan are presidentially-appointed members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Victor Ashe is former U.S. ambassador to Poland and former mayor of Knoxville, TN. Susan McCue is President of Message Global, a strategic advocacy firm she founded in 2008 for social action campaigns. She is former Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from 1999 to 2007. Michael Meehan runs communications strategy and public relations firm, VennSquared Communications. He had previously served in senior roles on Capitol Hill for U.S. Senators John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and Congressman Vic Fazio and John Olver.

BBG broadcasting organizations include the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti).

Visual Artists Guild is also honoring this year Chen Guangcheng, the blind “barefoot” human rights lawyer who, thanks to the efforts of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has been permitted to reside in New York City with his family as a visiting scholar. The organization is also honoring Lhamo Tso, the wife of imprisoned Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen.

Established in 1985, Visual Artists Guild’s mission is to support freedom of speech and expression. “Our nonprofit organization holds the belief that the right of freedom of expression is the lifeblood of all artists,” said Visual Artists Guild Board Chair Ann Lau. “Our mission is to bring to world attention whenever such a right is threatened or suppressed,” Lau added. The organization has lobbied members of Congress to continue funding of U.S.-supported broadcasts to nations without free media to to resist proposals to cut these programs.

Visual Artists Guild will be honoring this year Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan for “their tremendous efforts to defend and promote media freedom through their work at the Broadcasting Board of Governors,” said Peggy Howard Chane, President of the Visual Artists Guild NYC.

The New York chapter of Visual Artists Guild was established in 2008 by Ann Noonan, past Board member of Visual Artists Guild and current Executive Director of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org). CUSIB Advisory Board members Tala Dowlatshahi (Reporters Without Borders) and Harry Wu (Laogai Research Foundation) are some of the past recipients of of the Champion of Free Speech Award. CUSIB supported the nomination of the three BBG members to receive this year’s Champion of Free Speech Award as being the most active and effective advocates of media freedom through the Broadcasting Board of Governors programs.

BBG Watch has learned that Visual Artists Guild wanted to honor this year Ashe, McCue and Meehan as BBG members who prevented proposed cuts in Voice of America and Radio Free Asia broadcasts to Tibet and China and for initiating management reforms at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and the International Broadcasting Bureau to repair damage caused by the 2012 firing of dozens of Radio Liberty journalists in Russia and cancelation of their programs in support of human rights. Thanks to their intervention, new RFE/RL management is working on restoring Radio Liberty’s media freedom role in Russia and management reforms are expected at the International Broadcasting Bureau as well to improve flow of information to other nations without free media.

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.

History of Champion of Free Speech Award

In June 4, 1989, Tom Van Sant, an artist with the Visual Artist Guild and board member was driving through Boston on the way to the airport when he saw several hundred students on a vigil in front of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology administration building. Van Sant was very much moved by this silent protest of the Tiananmen massacre. He got off his car and joined the students for an hour before he proceeded on this journey. While on the plane trip back to Los Angeles, he started to design a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue from a magazine. The next day, at the Visual Artist Guild board meeting, Van Sant presented the idea to build a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue that was destroyed at Tiananmen Square. The board overwhelmingly decided to support him in this project. In the early morning of June 12, 1989, a 23 foot replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue made of foam and wood was erected at the Los Angeles Civic Center by Tom Van Sant and his fellow artists.

That morning, thousands of people in Los Angeles saw the statue and were amazed at this symbol of support for the students in China. The City Council of Los Angeles held an emergency meeting to decide if the statue would be allowed to remain on the pedestrian overpass of a thoroughfare as no permit were given prior to its installation. During the Council meeting, a 4.2 earthquake happened and people rushed out of the building. The Councilmembers saw that the statue stood still even after the earthquake, they subsequently allowed the statue to stay for a month.

In 1991, Los Angeles City Council members presented Visual Artists Guild President Ariel Hart and Tom Van Sant with commendations.

In 1992, Visual Artists started giving out awards at our annual award dinner and Tiananmen Commemoration.

Among the many past awardees were: Todd Carrel (ABC News Bureau Chief), Harry Wu ( Human Rights activist), Emily Lau (Hong Kong Legislator), Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, PEN West (Writers group), Wan Dan (Tiananmen student leader), Committee to Protect Journalist, Mak Yin Ting (Hong Kong Journalist Association president), Han Dong Fang (Labor Rights activist), Tom Van Sant (sculptor), Wei Jingsheng (pro-democracy activist), Mia Farrow and Ronan Farrow (Darfur activists ) and others.

The New York chapter of Visual Artists Guild was established in 2008 by Ann Noonan, past Board member of Visual Artists Guild.

Visual Artists Guild have held press conferences, speakers forums, protests, art exhibitions and other performance arts to highlight issues on freedom of speech and prisoners of conscience.

Visual Artists Guild have also produced documentaries and videos on those issues. Some of the issues can be found as:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s36epkE1etc (Hong Kong in Transition )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J7xS7m28is (20th anniversary Award ceremony)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1m6_xZ6_VA (March for Human Rights)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW_BDEPi0HM (Appeal for journalist Ching Cheong’s release)

Some of the VOA reports and other videos from New York activities:

http://www.voafanti.com/gate/big5/www.voachinese.com/content/article-20120429-rally-chen-guangcheng-149413865/957470.html

http://www.voafanti.com/gate/big5/www.voachinese.com/content/article/778875.html (appeal not to cut VOA budget)

http://www.voafanti.com/gate/big5/www.voachinese.com/content/article-20101001-la-protest-prc-104144539/770066.html

Some of the New York activities:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbcZWg28HDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IldJVOJlXLo

Visual Artists Guild’s web site is http://www.visual-artists-guild.org

Susan McCue

Michael Meehan

Two board members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Susan McCue and Michael Meehan, will travel to Russia at the end of the week to assess progress in restoring Radio Liberty’s reputation and effectiveness in the country after the turmoil of the last few months brought about by the firing last September of dozens of journalists.

In addition to serving on the BBG board, Susan McCue is also the chairwoman of the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) corporate board, which includes Meehan and all other BBG members. BBG member Victor Ashe serves as the co-chair of the RFE/RL board. He is currently on a trip to Asia and was unable to travel to Russia at this time.

With BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton absent from meetings without any public explanation since January, McCue, Ashe, Meehan, and Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine, who represents ex officio BBG member Secretary of State John Kerry, are now the only ones in charge of U.S. international broadcasting. They selected Kevin Klose, a distinguished journalist and former NPR executive who had been RFE/RL president in the 1990s, to resolve the crisis at Radio Liberty, which in the last seven months has lost not only its reputation but also much of its previous audience.

Klose took over as acting RFE/RL president and CEO in January. Some of the RFE/RL managers who had planned the firing of journalists in Moscow have already resigned from the U.S. taxpayer-supported media freedom institution.

RFE/RL announced Tuesday that Masha Gessen, the controversial director of the Russian Service, has now also submitted her resignation. She claims that she had nothing to do with the decision to fire the journalists, but her resignation may open the way for returning them to Radio Liberty.

Journalists were dismissed by the previous American management of the station after Gessen’s appointment was announced but before she officially assumed her duties. She had previously worked as a management consultant for former RFE/RL president Steven Korn who was responsible for hiring her and firing Radio Liberty journalists.

Kevin Klose will be present in Moscow during the visit by McCue and Meehan. They are expected to meet with Russian human rights activists and media experts who strongly support the fired Radio Liberty team. They include Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lyudmila Alexeeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group. Kevin Klose has been in close contact with Alexeeva and other Russian democratic leaders.

Victor Ashe

Sources told BBG Watch that both McCue and Meehan are in favor of returning the journalists to Radio Liberty and restoring their programs. Victor Ashe has taken the same position. He was the first BBG governor to call publicly for management reforms at RFE/RL. Ashe had apologized earlier to the fired journalists on his own behalf.

“We cannot let the tragic events at the Moscow Bureau over the past six months go unmentioned. As one Board member, As one individual Governor, I want to apologize for what happened. I can assure you the Board was never informed in any significant way as to what happened. That does not lessen the scope or the manner in which decisions were made and implemented. I feel with Kevin Klose, RFE/RL has a new leader who generates confidence and deserves our support as he works to deal with the situation.”

McCue, Meehan and Ashe have also tried to reform the bureaucracy within the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), the executive arm of the BBG, which had failed to alert the board to the developing crisis at RFE/RL and a public diplomacy disaster in Russia. These reforms are proving to be more difficult to achieve, however, due to resistance from IBB officials, sources told BBG Watch. But, according to the same sources, BBG members are determined to resume their efforts to transform the IBB bureaucracy after they return from their overseas trips.

Radio Liberty in Exile journalists who were fired or resigned from Radio Liberty shortly before Masha Gessen took over as director of the Russian Service. Gessen said she had nothing to do with these firings in September 2012. She resigned April 30, 2013.

Controversial director of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Russian Service Masha Gessen has resigned after only seven months on the job. She had been hired in September 2012 by former RFE/RL president Steven Korn who himself was replaced in January 2013 by new acting president Kevin Klose.

Her departure may open the way for rehiring Radio Liberty journalists in Russia who were fired by RFE/RL’s previous management shortly before Masha Gessen became Russian Service director, sources told BBG Watch. Klose has already met with representatives of the fired journalists and with Russian human rights leaders who support them, including the Moscow Helsinki Group chairwoman Lyudmila Alexeeva.

[aside]

‘Special operation’ at Radio Liberty in Moscow, Part One

Some were called at home early in the morning by a receptionist. Others found out something was wrong when they reported for work at the Radio Liberty bureau in Moscow. Newly hired guards stopped them. They were told to go to the Moscow law office which does legal work for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

Some 20 journalists and web editors would be fired that day and about the same number the next.

‘Special operation’ at Radio Liberty in Moscow, Part Two

“We are often asked why we didn’t refuse to sign our dismissal agreements, why we didn’t protest, why we did not strike and occupy the office?

What could be the outcome in such a case?

We could have a big scandal with big damage to the image of the station and the American government. All anti-American propagandists in Russia would be ready to blame USA in connection with this incident. In fact , the fired journalists, me included, worried more about saving America’s and RFE/RL’s reputation than the RFE/RL management , which hired guards to repress us. Imagine photos in the Russian newspapers, TV and online media how these guards are leading us out! A very good news for everbody who hates America.” — Vladimir Abarbanell

Abarbanell and others formed Radio Liberty in Exile and started to provide multimedia coverage of human rights and other news stories in Russia which “Radio Gessen,” as it became known, was downplaying or ignoring, according to independent journalists.

[/aside]

Shortly after Gessen’s appointment was announced by Korn in September, but before she came officially on board, RFE/RL managers fired dozens of Russian Service journalists in Moscow in a special two-day operation carried out without any warning and without allowing those fired to say good bye to their audience. More journalists resigned in protest and with their fired colleagues formed Radio Liberty in Exile. Gessen, who had previously worked as a private management consultant for RFE/RL, denied that she was responsible for the dismissals. Her associates were hired to replace some of the fired journalists. Former RFE/RL managers claim that all journalists had resigned voluntarily and were treated with great respect.

Compared to how employment of dozens of Radio Liberty journalists was terminated last September, today’s resignation of Masha Gessen was a civilized affair. “Masha Gessen is an award-winning journalist who will continue to bring her insight, energy and activism to journalism — in the interest of civil society in Russia,” said RFE/RL Acting President and CEO Kevin Klose.

Unlike today’s news, the mass dismissal last year of well known and respected reporters, many of whom specialized in human rights reporting and exposing political corruption, produced moral outrage among pro-democracy Russians supporting Radio Liberty, as did programming changes introduced by Gessen. Russian media reported that Radio Liberty de-emphasized news and investigative political reporting and increased the number of features and images on the Russian website. Media reports also pointed out that the redesigned website began to lose visitors at an alarming rate.

Nearly all leading Russian democratic leaders and human rights activists issued statements in support of the fired journalists. They included former president Mikhail Gorbachev, former reformist prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, all of them in opposition to President Putin’s authoritarian rule.

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lyudmila Alexeeva and other Russian human rights leaders wrote protest letters to the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress. Alexeeva told RFE/RL president Kevin Klose that Gessen does not understand Radio Liberty’s mission and should leave her post.

Russian media reported that Radio Liberty’s reputation among pro-democracy Russians was ruined and it has lost a significant portion of its previous online and radio audience. Many leading Russian oppositionists have been boycotting the station and giving interviews to the fired journalists for their Radio Liberty in Exile Novaya Svoboda (New Liberty) news website.

Some members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency which oversees RFE/RL, said that they had not been fully informed about the firings of the Moscow staff and programming changes. They also said that their own top executives in the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) failed to alert them to the growing crisis in Moscow. They also became aware that the claims of the former RFE/RL management that the fired journalists lacked digital skills were completely untrue. Those fired included members of the award-winning Internet team and many other professionals highly skilled in multimedia broadcasting.

BBG members eventually selected Kevin Klose to restore Radio Liberty’s effectiveness in Russia and in other countries without free media. Critics of the former RFE/RL management among BBG governors, Susan McCue and Victor Ashe, were elected recently as chair and vice-chair of the RFE/RL corporate board. Along with another BBG member Michael Meehan, they are believed to support rehiring of the fired journalists.

Victor Ashe said that their dismissal from Radio Liberty last September was a tragedy and apologized to them on his own behalf.

“We cannot let the tragic events at the Moscow Bureau over the past six months go unmentioned. As one Board member, As one individual Governor, I want to apologize for what happened. I can assure you the Board was never informed in any significant way as to what happened. That does not lessen the scope or the manner in which decisions were made and implemented. I feel with Kevin Klose, RFERL has a new leader who generates confidence and deserves our support as he works to deal with the situation.”

Afterwards, it was reported that Masha Gessen tried to prevent Ashe, the vice-chairman of the RFE/RL corporate board, from attending a reception in Washington, DC during which she received a journalistic award from a for-profit U.S. investment corporation Liberty Media. Ashe was invited by Liberty Media. Gessen reportedly relented after Kevin Klose said that he would also not attend the reception if Ashe was barred from entering.

In the United States, other defenders of the fired journalists included Ann Noonan, Executive Director of the independent Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org) who spoke on their behalf at Broadcasting Board of Governors open meetings. Gessen criticized Noonan and other CUSIB members in an interview for Russian media.

Russian media is now reporting widely on Masha Gessen’s resignation from Radio Liberty.

###

RFE/RL Press Release

Gessen Resigns As RFE/RL Russian Service Director

April 30, 2013

Masha Gessen, RFERL website photo

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC — Masha Gessen, director of the Russian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for the past seven months, today announced her resignation from the position to begin work on a new book.

“Masha Gessen is an award-winning journalist who will continue to bring her insight, energy and activism to journalism — in the interest of civil society in Russia,” said RFE/RL Acting President and CEO Kevin Klose.

Gessen, author of the political biography of Vladimir Putin, “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” (Riverhead Press, 2012) is a 2013 winner of the 4th annual Media for Liberty award for “The Wrath of Putin,” published in Vanity Fair magazine last year.

Ms. Gessen also lectures on human rights, and is a regular contributor to The New York Times’ “Latitude” blog.

Klose said that in future, the Russian Service will be coordinated by senior editors in Prague, the network’s operations center, and Moscow, where the service recently installed a state-of-the-art news bureau.

RFE/RL is a private, independent international news organization whose programs — radio, Internet, and television — reach influential audiences in 21 countries, including Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the republics of Central Asia. It is funded by the U.S. Congress through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

Polish Television will air next weekend a five-part documentary film about the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe as a tribute to its message of freedom.

Radio Free Europe no longer broadcasts to now free Poland, but the American taxpayer-funded institution is highly valued in the country for helping to sustain the struggle for democracy during the Cold War.

The documentary film titled “Radio of Freedom” offers a condensed history of nearly half a century of communist rule in Poland. The station played a critical role during that entire period by exposing human rights abuses and serving as an open forum for pro-democracy Poles living in Poland and in the West.

Leaders of the Catholic Church, including the future pope John Paul II, left-wing activists and intellectuals like Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik, and workers such as Solidarity leader Lech Walesa relied on Radio Free Europe for uncensored information and commentary. They also contributed to its programs, both secretly and openly.

Last year, Poland celebrated the 60th anniversary of the first Polish broadcast of Radio Free Europe which aired in 1952. The late first director of the Polish Service, Jan Nowak Jezioranski, was honored with a special plaque in Warsaw. In 1996, Jan Nowak Jezioranski received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, highest civilian award in the United States.

Polish Radio digitized the entire collection of preserved RFE Polish tapes (using the copies at the National Digital Archive in Warsaw) and has them available on its site in digital format.

The Polish Television film is just one of many honors Radio Free Europe is receiving in Poland. Politicians, intellectuals, artists and ordinary Poles have expressed in various ways their appreciation of the station’s remarkable role in the nation’s recent history.

But its influence was not limited to Poland alone. Led by Peja of the Polish rap group Slums Attack, Europe’s rappers recorded last year a multilingual tribute to the political and cultural freedom message of Radio Free Europe.

Using historical film footage of Radio Free Europe broadcasters, rappers from several European countries make statements similar to dissident voices heard on the station before the fall of the Iron Curtain. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe broadcast both news commentary and music, which communists in Poland and other Soviet-dominated nations tried unsuccessfully to silence through jamming of radio signals.

But in today’s unusable and not much freer world, the station’s important voice of freedom to nations which continue to suffer under authoritarian regimes is becoming unfortunately much weaker due to decreased U.S. funding and growing indifference in America to showing solidarity with dissidents who fight for their rights in countries like China, Iran and Russia.

Last year, the former American management of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) fired dozens of journalists in Russia without even allowing them to say good bye to their audience. It was perhaps the lowest point in the station’s pro-freedom history. It happened at the time when President Putin was intensifying his war against civil society. A new management, installed earlier this year by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. government’s sponsor of the station, is reportedly working on repairing the damage and bringing the journalists back.

But the fact remains that most Americans have forgotten how effective dissident voices from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and Voice of America (VOA) were in peacefully transforming unfree societies at a minimal cost. It is still the best investment in democracy abroad and security at home, but it needs additional funding from Congress to remain effective in technologically transformed world and to counter increased pushback from dictators, authoritarian regimes, terrorists, and other anti-American ideologists.

Poland’s tributes to Radio Free Europe serve as a reminder that while Central and Eastern Europe are now largely democratic, many less fortunate nations still need a platform for uncensored, dissident voices and a show of solidarity from America.

Ted Lipien listened to Radio Free Europe while growing up in communist-ruled Poland and later served as Voice of America (VOA) acting associate director. He is a co-founder of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB).

Watch RFE/RL Video: Radio Free Europe at 60

Lipien, who now is a director of the independent Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org) pointed out that the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) — the executive arm of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — actually wanted to end Radio Liberty broadcasts in Chechen, Circassian and Avar, three local languages of the violent North Caucasus region, and to lay off a number of experienced journalists. Officials did not succeed in making these cuts owing to strong opposition in Congress. However, the former management of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty did fire dozens of journalists who reported on and analyzed lawlessness and anti-Americanism in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The article goes on to say that anti-Americanism is the official ideology of President Putin and that officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau are still proposing programming cuts and resisting efforts by BBG members to reform the bureaucracy. It also points out that BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton’s unexplained absence from meetings in the last four months has created a crisis for other BBG members who are trying to set U.S. international broadcasting on the right path. Lipien calls it a national security issue that must be resolved.

READ MORE: LIPIEN: Hushing America’s message in terrorism’s redoubt, Ted Lipien, The Washington Times, April 29, 2013.

Radio Liberty in Exile Facebook Page and New Liberty SvobodaNew.com Photo

Fired Radio Liberty journalists are providing multimedia human rights news coverage in Russia that the official Russian Radio Liberty, led by Masha Gessen, is unable or unwilling to deliver.

Gessen appears to have been busy lately traveling abroad, receiving awards, promoting her writing, and posting her personal views on her Facebook page on such topics as legalization of multi-partner marriages. Her team in Moscow appears to have relatively little experience in political reporting using audio and video.

This past weekend, Radio Liberty in Exile covered and posted on its website videos from a press conference of human rights activists and civil society leaders: Ludmila Alexeeva, Lev Ponomarev, Lev Gudkov, Svetlana Gannushkina, Georgy Satarov, and Karina Moskalenko.

The human rights event was not covered by the Gessen team in Moscow, which usually does little work on weekends judging by important news stories that are missed or only briefly covered.

But overall, coverage on the official Russian Liberty has improved somewhat since Kevin Klose took over as acting president of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Taboid feature stories with images of semi-naked women designed to attract a younger audience (it did not work) have disappeared from the site and Radio Liberty journalists in Prague, who were not fired, have provided some substantive news coverage. It is, however, not enough to win back the lost online audience and reputation.

During the press conference in Moscow, various pro-democracy leaders said that Putin’s regime began a war against civil society in Russia. Most of these leaders are boycotting the official Radio Liberty and have demanded the re-hiring of the fired journalists.

Radio Liberty in Exile journalists recorded and posted several YouTube videos from the human rights press conference.

Working as unpaid volunteers, they had provided earlier a superior analysis of the suspected Boston terror bombers links to Chechnya. They interviewed experts in the United States and in Russia and posted videos of these interviews on their website, Novaya Svoboda (New Liberty). The official Russian Radio Liberty had practically no original multimedia material on the story.

Fired Radio Liberty journalists also covered Alexei Navalny’s political trial in Kirov, also posting numerous photos, videos and interviews.

Remember President Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, and the 18½ minute gap in President Nixon White House tapes? Some of us do.

International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) Director Richard Lobo had been tasked with ensuring the full recording of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) telephonic board meeting on April 24. He was in fact one of the important participants in the meeting, as were some other IBB officials and staffers. BBG, the agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting, had announced previously on its official website that the audio recording and transcript of the meeting would me made available online to the public shortly after the conclusion of the board’s session.

Coming shortly after the Boston terror bombings, it was an important meeting of U.S. officials responsible for programs designed to counter jihadist propaganda abroad with accurate news and information. Some of these officials had tried earlier to end U.S.-funded broadcasts to Chechnya, an enclave in Russia from where the family of the suspected bombers came from.

We now learn that there is a mysterious gap or gaps in the recording. The audio has not been posted on the BBG website and no official explanation was provided. Sources told us that not even BBG members can get the full story as to why a gap or gaps in the recording have occurred. They are baffled and frustrated by their inability to control IBB bureaucracy, which keeps failing them again and again without suffering any consequences.

In fact, it is BBG members who get blamed in the media for the mistakes of IBB bureaucrats whom they can’t replace, one source told BBG Watch. They can’t even hire their own chief of staff because top IBB executives are making it difficult, the source added. Michael Lynton’s inexplicable absence contributes to the crisis and makes the agency ungovernable at the time of increased risks to U.S. national security in the aftermath of the Boston terror bombings. The fact that some of the IBB officials had proposed last year to end broadcasts to Chechnya, the ancestral homeland of the suspected bombers, and to fire a number of experienced journalists, underscores how critical reform of the IBB bureaucracy has become.

The board meeting itself was controversial because it was called as a way of pressuring BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton to participate. Without him, the board has no quorum. Without a quorum, BBG members can’t take formal votes, which makes the federal agency virtually ungovernable and contrary to what the law provides. With the four BBG members unable to give orders to IBB Director Lobo, he can do whatever he wants. Again, this is not what the Congress has intended.

Michael Lynton was again absent during the telephonic conference call on April 24. Again, there has been no explanation that we know of. The board had no quorum and therefore it did not have a formal meeting. Again, to pressure Michael Lynton to appear, BBG members who were present voted to recess their meeting until Many 15.

Sources told us that BBG members who participated in the April 24 conference call were extremely unhappy with both Lynton and Lobo. According to sources, Lobo apparently made some statements as to how he sees his role if the BBG board has no quorum. We were told that he questioned whether he can implement decisions made by the majority of BBG members present if there is no quorum. The question everybody wants to have an answer to is whether Lynton and Lobo are coordinating their actions.

We are told now that there is a gap in the audio recording from the April 24 session and that no one has so far explained why it happened. U.S. international broadcasts contribute to America’s security. Americans have the right to know why Michael Lynton fails to show up for Broadcasting Board of Governors meetings, why agency officials defy wishes of BBG members, and why International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard Lobo cannot produce a full recording from the most recent board meeting.

Members of Congress had previously accused IBB officials on several occasions of deliberately ignoring Congressional directives. This has become a matter of U.S. national security and the Congress should demand answers from Michael Lynton, as well as Director Lobo and his senior staffers.

The U.S. government’s International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)–the administrative arm of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) media agency for informing and influencing foreign audiences–censors selection of articles for its “Media Highlights” distributed mostly to Americans who pay the salaries of IBB officials.

While censorship by IBB public relations experts is not complete, articles by mainstream American reporters and scholars which are critical of the U.S. international broadcasting bureaucracy often don’t make it into the publicly distributed “Media Highlights.” IBB sends out these “Media Highlights” to subscribers by email. They can also be seen online on the BBG’s official website.

To add insult to injury, most of what is deemed not appropriate or safe for average Americans to read, can be viewed by top agency officials in secret emails. As in the former Soviet Union, IBB bureaucrats distribute some of these “less than desirable” articles only to a small group of IBB officials and members of the BBG board.

Such double standards in how government officials communicate with the public, common in totalitarian and authoritarian systems, are dangerous in a democracy. Most BBG board members are reported to be opposed to this practice, but they have been unable to force their executive staff to modify it, sources told BBG Watch.

Encouraged and protected by IBB Director Richard Lobo, these officials are becoming more and more defiant, ignore BBG members, and refuse demands for transparency. At this time, BBG members are powerless because they lack quorum due to unexplained and prolonged absence of BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton. In his absence, IBB executive staff can do whatever they want if IBB Director agrees. At least for the federal entities managed by the BBG, the remaining five board members cannot force Director Lobo to do anything he does not want to do. He seems to be happy with what his staff is doing.

It should be pointed out that national security or privacy considerations have nothing to do with selecting articles for inclusion in the BBG “Media Highlights.” They are not considered classified, even in the version distributed to insiders. In fact, articles kept from wider distribution often show how actions and inaction of IBB officials are harmful to U.S. international broadcasting and may threaten U.S. national security.

Officials limit the distribution of such articles to a small inside group of top executives. Not even all rank and file BBG employees get to see them unless they find them online on their own, including on the BBG Watch website. But we have also learned that an agency official tried to influence an independent American blogger not to re-post articles from BBG Watch. The blogger refused the request. But the fact that it was made shows that top IBB executives have adopted a culture of censorship which is destroying the agency, its reputation and employee morale. Americans should be worried.

In the Soviet Union, such privileged groups of party officials were the executive staff of the Politburo. They were responsible for keeping Politburo members informed about what was going on. But the Broadcasting Board of Governors is a U.S. government agency set up by democratically elected representatives of the American people. Americans are entitled to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent. This money should not be used to distribute censored and misleading information. Any deliberately censored information is misleading.

In fact, not even BBG members may be getting everything they need to know from their staff. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has a bipartisan board composed of nine individuals nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate (one of them, Secretary of State Kerry, is an ex officio member). They are entitled to accurate, unbiased and complete information from the agency’s permanent bureaucracy. But while they apparently do get the secret media list, it is not at all certain whether all critical articles make it into the secret emails to BBG members. We are told that board members are growing increasingly frustrated with IBB bureaucracy. It is a known fact that IBB senior staffers have been trying to keep BBG members in the dark about various issues and are ignoring some of their directives. Many believe that they are in an open rebellion against their bosses.

As incredible as it may sound, it appears that in some respects Soviet leaders may have been in fact kept somewhat better informed by their bureaucracy than Broadcasting Board of Governors members are by theirs. While Soviet citizens were also not deemed trustworthy enough to get the whole truth in Soviet newspaper articles, Politburo members did receive extensive secret transcripts of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Voice of America (VOA), BBC and other Western broadcasts which were highly critical of these self-appointed dictators. We do know for sure that the American public gets a shorter, “censored” version of media articles from these IBB officials charged with promoting media freedom abroad. We don’t know if BBG members get all the articles that they and all other Americans should see if taxpayers’ money is going to be used for this purpose.

Dangers of the Repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act If Current IBB Officials Remain in Charge

Ironically, the same IBB officials who censor information distributed to the American public are in charge of managing RFE/RL and VOA as these media outlets prepare programs for overseas audiences. But thanks to the recent repeal of some of the provisions of the Smith-Mundt Act, these government bureaucrats will soon be allowed to distribute Voice of America and other programs in the United States. It is more than likely that in addition to VOA news and other programs, these IBB officials will distribute to unsuspecting Americans their own propaganda.

Americans also have a good reason to worry about news and information being censored or manipulated by government officials charged with their distribution if these are the same officials who already censor such information.

BBG Watch has learned that to justify the censorship of their “Media Highlights,” IBB officials keep telling those who ask that they do not list articles which appear in blogs, even blogs of very respectable publications and institutions, such as National Review and The Heritage Foundation.

But the claim of not listing blog articles is patently untrue, as we have seen numerous articles in the public BBG “Media Highlights” taken from blogs rather than mainstream media publications. These were not surprisingly mostly those articles that made IBB bureaucrats look good, some of them clearly initiated by the agency’s public relations staff.

IBB officials certainly set a miserable example of how a media freedom agency ought to operate and open themselves up to charges of hypocrisy. While programs for overseas audiences are not subject to this kind of internal censorship by the Office of Communications and External Affairs and other IBB executives, some of these officials exercise enormous power which has been shown to stifle honest reporting by agency’s journalists. Coverage of the Radio Liberty crisis in Russia has been inadequate and biased. Top IBB officials have also failed to alert BBG members to the growing controversy over the firing of dozens of Radio Liberty journalists.

Reasons for reported self-censorship by some of the agency’s journalists have been traced to the fear of retaliation from the management. Top IBB officials have been known to eliminate programs they don’t like and phase out jobs of journalists they don’t like. Their desire for power and central control over information and budgets is insatiable, which explains their tendency to censor what American taxpayers and their Congressional representatives can see. It appears that they will do almost anything to avoid bad publicity.

What is even more dangerous is that the same officials are now writing regulations on how they plan to distribute their agency’s programs to the American public after previous legal restrictions on such domestic distribution have been lifted with the recent modification of the Smith-Mundt Act.

Americans should demand that these officials be required to apply the same Voice of America Charter requirements for accuracy and objectivity, not just to VOA news and other programs, but to all of their public relations output as well. IBB officials need to told that censorship of any kind is prohibited. This is critical now that restrictions on domestic U.S. distribution of programs have been lifted.

This continuation of Soviet media techniques by IBB officials is embarrassing for an agency claiming to be supporting media freedom abroad. It is also futile.

Those interested in U.S. international broadcasting have probably already seen these “inappropriate” or “dangerous” articles online or got them delivered to their email boxes using Goggle Search. They can easily see that IBB is manipulating access to information for those interested in U.S. international broadcasting issues, which includes American taxpayers who pay their salaries, members of Congress and Congressional staffers.

Examples

Two significant recent articles did not make the official BBG’s “Media Highlights” list. We are not talking here about articles by unknown bloggers, but well known and highly respected scholars and reporters who have previously written and published about U.S. international broadcasting.

The public relations office did not think this analysis by The Heritage Foundation scholar Dr. Helle Dale was worth sharing with the American public:

“Congress to Broadcasting Agency: Is Anyone Listening to Us?“, Helle Dale, The Foundry, The Heritage Foundation, April 18, 2013.

U.S. international broadcasting strategy again landed under congressional scrutiny in Wednesday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, a Heritage Foundation scholar Helle Dale reported.

“Representative Brad Sherman (D–CA) wanted to know why the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) ignored the congressional mandate to keep broadcasting to Pakistan in several local languages. In spite of a specific $1.5 million appropriation for broadcasting to Pakistan, everything has been cut except programming in Urdu. “You would not dream of broadcasting to Los Angeles in only one language,” said Sherman.”

It appears that the IBB Office of Communications and External Affairs does not want those interested in U.S. international broadcasting issues to know what Representative Brad Sherman and other members of Congress may think about agency officials.

The Office of Communications and External Affairs also did not include in the “Media Highlights” an article in the Foreign Affairs Journal blog, “Moscow on the Potomac” by Judy Bachrach, which described a bizarre attempt to ban a BBG member from an event honoring Masha Gessen.

Moscow on the Potomac, Judy Bachrach, World Affairs Journal, April 15, 2013.

Most BBG Members Appalled by Staff

Most of the remaining board members (only five out of nine are left, with the Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton being absent from board meetings for the past four months) are appalled by this double standard approach to public relations, but they appear incapable of changing it due to resistance from IBB Director Richard Lobo who is also opposing other reforms sought by BBG members, agency sources told BBG Watch.

These might be the same officials who tried to ban an independent American reporter from the UN. The same ones who for months issued press releases deceiving members of Congress, Congressional staffers, American public, and probably BBG members as well, into believing that “Parazit,” the popular Voice of America satirical television program to Iran, was still on the air when in fact they knew that it was discontinued. The same ones who ignored their own study by a respected Russian media scholar who pointed out that the VOA Russian Service had developed a “pro-Putin” bias. The same ones who ignored signs of crisis at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and failed to alert BBG members. The same ones who in numerous Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employee surveys have been rated the worst managers in the federal government. The same ones responsible for the lowest employee morale among all similar federal agencies, according to the same OPM surveys. These are the same officials who wanted to end or reduce programs to China, Tibet, Russia, and to Chechnya, the homeland of the Boston terror bombings suspects.

Sources told us that board members have warned Director Lobo that he and his staff open the agency, which is charged with promoting media freedom abroad, to accusations of using double standards. These warnings, we are told, have been ignored. The latest news is that they failed to make a full audio recording of the last informal (Michael Lynton did not participate) BBG board meeting, as they were required to do. We are told that only a partial recording is available and that there is a gap or gaps in what was recorded. The apparently partial recording has not yet been released to the public and no reason was provided. Did one of the IBB officials say something that Americans would find appalling? Perhaps something on how to control information released to the American public or how to limit oversight by the BBG Board and Congress?

Americans have every reason to worry if these officials write and implement regulations on how the government will be distributing news content in the United States. Like former Soviet bureaucrats, they have tasted power and censorship and they like it. BBG members need to remove them from their decision-making positions if the U.S. international broadcasting agency is going to save its reputation, serve audiences in countries without free media, contribute to U.S. national security, and survive.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher at the VOA Chinese 70th anniversary reception, Dec. 2011.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, has introduced a resolution urging that the Broadcasting Board of Governor (BBG) to start broadcasting by the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Azeri to Iran and Baloch to both Iran and Pakistan. He is also reported to be highly frustrated with the BBG’s bureaucracy in the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) for cutting programs despite being given more money by Congress in previous years.

The proposed resolution is a “Sense of the House” measure — expressing the wishes of the House of Representatives, but it would not become law requiring the BBG to take these actions.

BBG’s International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) executives, who had been criticized before by other members of Congress of ignoring Congressional directives, would be wise, however, to listen to Rep. Rohrabacher. The same executives have been responsible over the years for cutting broadcasts to many critical areas and proposing to cut broadcasts to many others, including Iran, China, Tibet, Russia, as well as Chechnya, the ancestral homeland of the Boston terror bombings suspects.

Rep. Rohrabacher’s resolution was referred to the authorizing committee of which he is a member. There is no separate provision for funding the new services.

Rep. Rohrabacher has been a strong supporter of U.S. international broadcasting but also a strong critic of the IBB senior staff. He has been an outspoken advocate for human rights and democracy around the world

Sources told BBG Watch Rep. Rohrabacher is extremely concerned that IBB executives are cutting and weakening broadcasts to critical and dangerous parts of the world despite having received more money from Congress in previous, due in large part to his earlier efforts, and being specifically told by members of Congress not to cut any more programs.

Sources told us that Rep. Rohrabacher feels his support for U.S. broadcasts is being thwarted by the agency’s bureaucrats. He blames  them for cutting programs and weakening news, information and commentary instead of making them stronger and more effective in countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Tibet, and Russia.

Sources described Rep. Rohrabacher’s frustration with the agency’s  International Broadcasting Bureau executive staff and Voice of America leadership, as enormous. Most presidentially-appointed members of the BBG Board are equally frustrated by IBB officials who are being protected by IBB Director Richard Lobo. Due to mysterious and prolonged absence of BBG Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton, who has not attended any BBG board meetings since January, other BBG members are unable to proceed with reforming the bureaucracy due to a lack of quorum.

###

Victor Ashe

“The recent fire started in the outside smoking area adjacent to the main building. The smoking area has now been moved to the ares in the front next to the guard house. It should be removed all together,” Ashe said.  “It is a serious health issue and also now a safety issue.  We should offer non smoking programs to those employees who wish to transition from smoking to non smoking.”
 
“The taxpayers and the Board needs a full report on the cost of the fire, how much insurance will cover and how much taxpayers will have to cover and the full extend of damage.  That was not available at the april 24 meeting and I have asked OCB director Carlos Garcia to provide this information to us.” Ashe added.
 
“I also asked that the board be given a report on the OCB lawsuit which is many years old and continues to risk financial costs to the taxpayer.  We should at least determine if a settlement is possible,” Ashe added.
 
Ashe added he “was deeply concerned about the failure to record the April 24 BBG adjourned Board meeting. It was most unfortunate and I really do not know what the facts are behind this.  However, for an agency whose mission is transparency and the full news, we should apply those standards to ourselves. It is rare that we discuss matters which should be confidential.  I favor openness and am glad many of my colleagues share this view,” he added.

BBG Board, Apr. 2013. Image shows four vacancies.

Sources at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) report that BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton has missed yet another board meeting, making the agency essentially ungovernable. This is contrary to what the law requires for managing the agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting.

BBG Watch has also learned from agency sources that a complete recording of the meeting may not be available online to the public as promised on the BBG’s website due to what officials describe as a technical issue.

Sources also said that the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) director Richard Lobo, whose staff was responsible for making the recording, has made comments suggesting that he might not carry out BBG members’ directives he disagrees with unless the board has a quorum.

Presiding Governor Lynton’s absence and Director Lobo’s reported comments in effect make the BBG ungovernable. These reported comments and Lynton’s prolonged and unexplained absence of over four months are especially troubling at the time of serious national security challenges to U.S. international broadcasting in the aftermath of the Boston terrorist attacks.

These developments, combined with the reported lack of a complete audio recording from the latest meeting, raise serious questions. Are they coincidental or are some IBB officials and Governor Lynton trying to prevent a presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed board from functioning as designed by Congress and required by law?

Asked by a reporter for a comment, BBG’s only Republican member, former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe, said that Michael Lynton’s prolonged absence is “inexplicable.” Ashe expressed hope that Lynton would “soon start to communicate with other BBG board members.”

All other remaining governors–Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan–as well as Secretary of State John Kerry’s representative, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine, participated in Wednesday’s meeting by phone. It was Lynton’s absence that prevented the board from having a quorum. The board is now down to only five members, including Lynton, and has four vacancies. It should have four Democrats, four Republicans, and the Secretary of State who serves as an ex officio member.

President Obama had nominated a Democrat, Jeff Shell, to be BBG chairman and Matt Armstrong as a Republican member, but their nominations have not yet been confirmed by the Senate and may not be for quite some time. Also, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine, who has represented both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry at BBG meetings, will reportedly leave her post soon. This will deprive the board of a foreign policy and public diplomacy professional who has become familiar with U.S. international broadcasting issues.

Michael Lynton

The White House should replace Michael Lynton as soon as possible while keeping the remaining three active members to maintain continuity and prevent IBB senior staff from completely taking over the agency. As for candidates for new BBG members, there are many outstanding Americans who 1. have the necessary experience in international broadcasting, foreign affairs and human rights advocacy; 2. are not hampered by conflicts of interest typical for international media executives; and 3. would be able to devote enough time and attention to their duties, including showing up for meetings.

It is worth noting, that while BBG has had as members Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and several women, it never had an African American member. In recent years, it also had very few experts on human rights and media freedom issues in the countries to which broadcasts and other programs are directed.

Many recent nominees have been media executives who have made large political contributions to presidential and Congressional candidates. Some of them know how to work with authoritarian regimes to distribute their non-political media products for profit, but they do not know how to work against these regimes by delivering news and information these regimes want to exclude at all cost. Their presence on the BBG board and as top executives at some of the broadcasting entities has become a major problem for U.S. international broadcasting in recent years.

Richard Lobo

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is currently in a legal limbo and is basically unable to function. While the of majority of board members present can still make their wishes known to their executive staff, the International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard Lobo, who is in charge of the executive staff, can ignore any requests he disagrees with by claiming that the board lacks a quorum.

This places just one presidentially-appointed official in charge of the agency rather than the board consisting now of four presidentially-appointed officials, not counting Michael Lynton. This goes against the legislation which established the BBG board and against wishes of many members of Congress who no longer have any faith in IBB bureaucrats being able to manage news and information programs to dangerous parts of the world and countries without free media.

Lynton’s absence is simply inexcusable in this critical period for U.S. national security. There have been speculations that Lynton, whose company, Sony, does business in both Putin’s Russia and communist-ruled China, has been unhappy with other BBG members for initiating reforms at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) designed to improve its news coverage of Putin’s assault on the rule of law.

Lynton was reportedly a strong supporter of former RFE/RL president Steven Korn who had fired dozens of experienced Radio Liberty journalists reporting on political corruption and human rights violations in Russia. Lobo’s IBB senior staff failed to alert BBG members to the outrage these firings and programming changes produced among pro-democracy Russians. Most board members eventually became aware of the problem on their own and selected a reform-minded media executive Kevin Klose to resolve the crisis.

We have made this point again and again that leaving the entire agency in the hands of the IBB director and his senior staff in the aftermath of the Boston terror attacks can be dangerous for U.S. national security. These executives have been rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) surveys (Federal Employee Viewpoint as being the worst managers in the entire federal government, as well as being responsible for the lowest employee morale among federal agencies.

They are also the same officials who last year had proposed ending Radio Liberty broadcasts to Chechnya, the ancestral homeland of the Boston bombers. The same managers had also proposed ending or reducing broadcasts to China and Tibet. Most of these proposals were rejected by members of Congress who criticized and in some cases ridiculed IBB “bureaucrats.”

[aside]During the debate in the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2011, Congressman Brad Sherman D-CA, Congressman Connie Mack R-FL, and Congressman Chris Smith, R-NJ said that “bureaucrats” should not be allowed to make the decision to cut VOA radio and TV to China. Rep. Mack commented on the BBG’s audience research, which claims low audience figures in China for Western radio stations, but which free media advocates describe as completely unreliable: “People in China or Cuba, as you can imagine, will not jump in joy and admit it (listening to Western radio stations). If you say yes, in China or Cuba, the government will punish you. People are afraid for their own lives.” Rep. Smith pointed out that the company, which the IBB uses to conduct audience research, “gets money from the BBG, and then gives money to contractors in Beijing to conduct the survey.”[/aside]

But while members of Congress managed to block plans to end broadcasts to China and Tibet, former RFE/RL managers, whom Lynton had supported, succeeded in firing dozens of Radio Liberty journalists in Russia and in ending their programs in defense of democracy and human rights. Radio Liberty’s reputation and audience in the Russian Federation, including the dangerous North Caucasus region, have plunged.

Sources told BBG Watch that Lobo and his senior staffers are definitely using the excuse of Lynton’s absenteeism to resist urgent reforms to the IBB bureaucracy desired by the majority of BBG members. Sources told us that Governors Ashe, McCue and Meehan have been unsuccessfully trying to recruit a chief of staff who could help them exercise more control over the rebellious IBB executives while they wait for the legislative proposal to establish a permanent CEO position to go through Congress. The future of the CEO legislative proposal is uncertain. According to sources, Lobo denies that he is trying to delay the hiring of the temporary chief of staff.

To put pressure on Lynton to show up, BBG members who participated in Wednesday’s telephone call adjourned their meeting to May 15. During the session they received an update on the fire at the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) building in Miami and heard reports on several other topics. The OCB fire was reportedly started by a smoker outside of the building. According to sources, some BBG members wondered why smoking was permitted so close to the facility. The fire damaged the newsroom but did not interrupt Radio and TV Marti programs to Cuba.

During the Wednesday’s session, BBG members could not vote on anything due to the lack of quorum. IBB officials promised to post an audio recording of Wednesday’s meeting the BBG website, www.bbg.gov. Agency sources told us that there is no complete audio recording but there may be a partial recording. We were not able to confirm this information late Wednesday evening.

This announcement, prominently displayed before on the BBG website, has disappeared from the Home page and from the Events page where it was posted previously.

“The Broadcasting Board of Governors will hold a meeting by telephone on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 3:30 p.m. EDT. This is a continuation of the April 11, 2013 meeting adjourned due to lack of quorum. The agenda includes reports from the Board’s Governance and Strategy and Budget committees. Topics include progress on compliance with the January 2013 Office of Inspector General’s report, the Board staffing plan, the language service review process, and an update on the agency’s strategic plan.

An audio recording and transcript will be available following the meeting on www.bbg.gov. (Emphasis added.)”

The above announcement and a reference to an audio recording can now only be found on the BBG website as a link under the May 15 board meeting announcement. There is no mention on the website about what happened at the April 24 meeting and about the continued absence of BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton. The very short announcement about the upcoming May 15 board meeting provides no additional details.

“The Broadcasting Board of Governors will meet on May 15, 2013, at BBG’s headquarters in Washington. This meeting will be a continuation of the recessed meeting from April 11, 2013. More details will be posted here when they become available.”

There is no excuse for the presiding Governor of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to make U.S. international broadcasting during a period of a national and international emergency hostage to his continued absence. If he had a legitimate reason for being absent, Michael Lynton should make it public. Otherwise, he should attend all future BBG meetings to make a quorum and resign as soon as one or two new Governors are confirmed by the Senate. He should excuse himself on any votes dealing with Russia, China or any other country where his company does business and relies on the goodwill of a local regime.

U.S. international broadcasts plays a vital national security role. It cannot function without a functioning board. Michael Lynton owes America an explanation. Richard Lobo also needs to explain why the agency he was put in charge of by President Obama has been so badly managed during his tenure.

The mystery continues whether the U.S. international broadcasting agency’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton will participate in Wednesday’s Broadcasting Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) meeting. He has not shown up for any meetings during the last four months, thus bringing important board’s business to a halt. The BBG board is now down to five members and without Michael Lynton it has no quorum. Members cannot vote on any critical issues.

[aside]

Michael Lynton is CEO of Sony Entertainment, Inc. He is the former CEO of AOL Europe and Chairman and CEO of Pearson plc’s Penguin Group.

Mr. Lynton is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Rand Corporation, and the Harvard Board of Overseers.

He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School and is proficient in French, German and Dutch.

Lynton was named the BBG’s interim presiding governor following the departure of Chairman Walter Isaacson in February, 2012. He also serves as a member of the Governance Committee

Lynton was appointed to the board on July 2, 2010 to a term expiring on August 13, 2012. By law, any member whose term has expired may serve until a successor has been appointed and qualified.[/aside]

Lynton’s absence has created a true emergency as the board is unable to address various national security-related challenges that became even more urgent after the Boston bombings. Dozens of fired Radio Liberty journalists are still unable to work for BBG in producing programs for the Russian Federation, including Chechnya, the ancestral homeland of the Boston bombings suspects.

Former Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty management team in Prague and International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) officials in Washington proposed last year to end radio programs to Chechnya.

Active BBG members, who have already initiated reforms at RFE/RL, still face a challenge in reforming the IBB bureaucracy. Lynton’s absence makes this process, important for U.S. national security, more difficult. On the other hand, Lynton’s company, Sony Entertainment, does business in Russia and China, which raises questions of conflict of interest. It might be better for all concerned if Mr. Lynton resigned and someone else would be quickly nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate to take his place on the BBG board. In the meantime, however, he should attend BBG meetings until either Jeff Shell or Matt Armstrong are confirmed to maintain a quorum, but he should excuse himself from any votes dealing with broadcasting to Russia and China.

Agency sources told BBG Watch that in an attempt to shame Lynton and force him to attend, other BBG members decided to adjourn their April 11, 2013 meeting due to lack of quorum and to continue it on April 24 rather than wait for their next regular meeting in June, which will be in Prague, the Czech Republic. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has its headquarters in Prague.

Lynton’s long absence has not been explained. Some speculate that he may be unhappy with other BBG members, Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan, over their decision to initiate management reforms at RFE/RL. Lynton supported former RFE/RL president Steven Korn.

This is what a BBG press release has to say about Wednesday’s meeting:

“The Broadcasting Board of Governors will hold a meeting by telephone on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 3:30 p.m. EDT. This is a continuation of the April 11, 2013 meeting adjourned due to lack of quorum. The agenda includes reports from the Board’s Governance and Strategy and Budget committees. Topics include progress on compliance with the January 2013 Office of Inspector General’s report, the Board staffing plan, the language service review process, and an update on the agency’s strategic plan.

An audio recording and transcript will be available following the meeting on www.bbg.gov.”

According to agency sources, the April 24 meeting will deal with the business that could not be dealt with on April 10 or 11 because of the absence of a quorum.  But there will be no quorum, if Michael Lynton again fails to participate.

Waiting for Godot continues. Some agency employees have been heard joking whether Michael Lynton should not be placed on the FBI’s “Most Missing List.” But especially now, after the Boston bombings and the role that U.S. international broadcasting could play in countering jihadist anti-American propaganda, this is no joking matter.

Z. Dzieciolowski

Kremlin control of the Russian media may not be absolute, though it comes pretty close, and the few independent media have to watch their backs constantly. Aleksey Levinson, Mikhail Sokolov and Zygmunt Dzieciolowski discuss the specifics of the situation in the context of the ever more authoritarian Putin regime. The discussion was originally published by UK-based OpenDemocracyRussia website. LINK

[aside]

[/aside]

ZD:  The Russian media are clearly going through a rather difficult period. Officially censorship doesn’t exist but everyone knows that key TV channels are tightly controlled by the Kremlin. Independent media are experiencing increasing problems and journalists; editors and media owners realize how vulnerable they are in their relations with the authorities. Let’s focus on the media, specifically radio broadcasts funded from foreign sources. Under communism things were absolutely clear cut: in the evenings people listened to the Voice of America, BBC, or Radio Liberty if they wanted to learn about events in their own country or what was going on in global politics. Today things are more complicated; the arrival of the internet has changed the information landscape. But I suggest that we begin by looking back. Could you tell us about your first encounters with foreign radio broadcasts?

Foreign broadcasts

AL:  I must have been about seven years old, it was in the mid 1950s. My parents and I were living at our dacha; at that time all foreign broadcasts were jammed in Moscow but just outside Moscow reception was relatively good. And it was there, at someone’s dacha, that I heard these strange noises, a kind of wailing and humming. I asked what it was and was told it was the sound of jamming… They were listening over it to the Voice of America.

MS:  I recall exactly that I started listening to the BBC and Voice of America in 1973, during the Arab-Israeli war, because those stations weren’t jammed as much. I was desperate for some information from another, non-Soviet, viewpoint… I started listening to Radio Liberty in 1980: during the Olympics there was a period when the jamming was weaker.

Voice of America began broadcasting to the Soviet Union in 1947, providing listeners with an alternative take on the news—and all that jazz. Willis Conover’s popular ‘Jazz Hour’ programme made him one of the most famous Americans in the Soviet Union. Photo (pd)WikiCommons/voanews.com

ZD: Nowadays most people say that under communism foreign radio broadcasts were of colossal importance. Isn’t that somewhat exaggerated? Would Gorbachev not have emerged anyway and brought about change even without Liberty, Voice of America, the BBC’s Russian Service, or émigré journals such as Posev, Grani, Russkaya Mysl’?

AL:  No, I don’t think so. Gorbachev had absorbed a culture passed on to him by Moscow’s intelligentsia and that was what distinguished him from other communist leaders. The radio stations, in their turn, played a major role in shaping the views of the higher echelons of Moscow’s intelligentsia.

[aside]

“It was Russia itself and the Russian government that prevented the closure of Radio Liberty. New evidence kept emerging showing how much Russia’s reality differed from Western ideas of how real democracy works.” Mikhail Sokolov

[/aside]

ZD: At some point Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty opened offices in former communist countries, which led many people to believe that the fact they were able to open offices and function in those countries meant they were no longer needed. Mr. Sokolov, you were involved in establishing these broadcasts in Russia. Why did you fight to retain sources of independent broadcasting even when you knew that everything was changing?

MS:  The situation at that time these offices were being opened had not yet establised; no one knew what would happen the next day. No one had predicted the events of August 1991, in a sense it was a historical coincidence, just as it was really pure coincidence that I was the one who got Yeltsin to sign the decree opening the Radio Liberty office. So the Moscow office of Radio Liberty existed as a kind of fall-back, knowing that we could be closed down at any moment. At some point, US officials started talking about stopping the broadcasts to Russia – they felt that democracy had prevailed.

But then they realized this wasn’t the case. Just take all the ups and downs in the years 1991-1992; the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet in October 1993; the Chechen War in 1994; the second Chechen War in 1995; the Zyuganov-Yeltsin struggle in 1996; the market crash in 1998; another war in Chechnya, Putin and so on in 1999. It was Russia itself and the Russian government that prevented the closure of Radio Liberty. New evidence kept emerging showing how much Russia’s reality differed from Western ideas of how real democracy works.

The role of the internet

ZD:  Has the massive spread of the internet changed the situation?

[aside]

“It’s a mistake to think that the internet is replacing other media. It enters into a complex relationship with pro-government or opposition media, rather than replacing them.” Aleksey Levinson

[/aside]

AL:  It’s a mistake to think that the internet is replacing other media. It enters into a complex relationship with pro-government or opposition media, rather than replacing them. People who get their information from the TV and newspapers can supplement it with news from the internet. Of course, there are young people who have gone over to the net completely, who don’t see or hear anything else, and have never been interested in the information and news component of TV, but they are in a minority. Most people still keep an eye on what’s happening on the TV screens.

As for radio, to my knowledge the popularity of stations such as Ekho Moskvy[Rn. Echo of Moscow] hasn’t been negatively affected by the growth of the internet.

MS:  The popularity of Radio Ekho Moskvy has increased because of its website, which has provided new opportunities and generated synergy between the site and blogs on the one hand and broadcasting on the other. It has developed into a major multimedia platform.

Ekho Moskvy has remained an important outlet challenging the Kremlin on air and online. Photo (cc) Flickr/Chili 070. Some rights reserved

AL:  In this respect the idea of taking radio off the air and switching to the internet contradicts the claims of the sociology of communication. It’s  as if you suggested we stop eating bread and start drinking twice as much water instead. The one doesn’t replace the other. A certain number of listeners may have the technical prerequisites to make a complete switch from radio to the internet,  but a significant proportion of Radio Liberty’s listeners are people who are not so well versed in using the internet. And these people just lose the radio when it’s taken off the air.

MS:  You see, half of Russia’s population still doesn’t use the internet. And several studies have shown that many of those who do, use it for various consumer purposes rather than for searching for information on current affairs.

Why should the US bother?

ZD:  Let’s imagine the US Congress were to invite us to address one of its sub-committees when next year’s budget comes up for discussion. Your job is to convince the Americans to allocate money to radio broadcasting. Why should the US taxpayer, in 2014, pay for the upkeep of an overseas office of Radio Liberty?

AL: Well, as far as I know, the American taxpayer has been brought up to believe in the global balance of values, and specifically that the US cares about the balance between good and evil in the world, between democratic values and their opposite. The American taxpayer knows that in Russia right now this balance is rapidly shifting in a direction the US considers undesirable. And in this context it is clear that media with a degree of independence play a crucial role. They don’t necessarily have to broadcast from abroad; they don’t have to represent only the foreign point of view. But journalists within Russia, who promote the values that are dear to the US Congress and the Founding Fathers, clearly need support.

The RFE/RL headquarters in Prague. The 60th anniversary of Radio Liberty’s first broadcast to the Soviet Union earlier this year was marred by Russian authorities’ stripping of its AM license as well as controversial layoffs in its Russian Service. Photo (cc) WikiCommons/Petr Kadlec. Some rights reserved.

ZD:  A pro-Kremlin critic of this view will say that all this talk of good and evil is just clichés disguising the genuine, authentic interests of American imperialism.

MS:  Well, even if my funding came from, say, Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, a local herring merchant, Putin would say anyway that I’m an ‘agent of foreign imperialism’ or an enemy of Russia’s stability, simply because of the views I represent.

AL: The thing is, the Kremlin has its own notion of ‘the people’ and this is reflected in its targeting. For example, the Kremlin view is that people believe unconditionally the assertion that he who pays the piper calls the tune i.e. if someone is receiving money from somewhere, then he must be an agent of his sponsor. This view does indeed exist among the people but other opinions also exist and there are many of them. But this particular view is simply construed as ‘the’ popular opinion. As for the public as a whole, it often regards a different point of view as very useful, even if it happens to contradict their own. A wide range of Russians would like to hear another point of view, of themselves and of their country, even if it is one they a priori disagree with.

MS:  Moreover, the response to this information is much stronger and livelier if it comes from outside than if the same thing is said at home. Because, for the majority of people here, the point of reference isn’t Navalny, Nemtsov, Kasparov or who knows who else, but rather the ‘Washington politburo.’ That’s how they’ve been raised. And whatever Washington says, even if it’s unpleasant, is interesting or important, at the very least…

ZD:  But you mustn’t forget that Washington, too, might have its own interests.

MS:  Even if this mythical ‘Washington’ we’re now talking about didn’t have the slightest interest in the fate of democracy in Russia, it couldn’t completely close its eyes to what is happening there.

[aside]

“A wide range of Russians would like to hear another point of view, of themselves and of their country, even if it is one they a priori disagree with.” Aleksey Levinson

[/aside]

The problem is that over the past decade this country has blocked all attempts to stop the development of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea. Are the Americans worried about nuclear weapons in those countries? Yes, they are. What else is there? Has Russia supported the Cuban regime? Yes, it has. Does it support the regime in Venezuela, a nasty regime, not conducive to the US geopolitical influence? It does. Does it supply the Syrian government with weapons? It does.  It keeps coming up with all sorts of conditions for the transit of military equipment to Afghanistan, is uncooperative in negotiations and so on. Generally speaking, it behaves, to put it mildly, like a jerk!

Even if we assumed that the US doesn’t care at all about journalists and politicians being killed in Russia and about every democratic principle being violated, it would still be in its interest for this country to be functional, pro-European and pro-American, to represent some kind of liberal alternative, whatever Putin might call it. All this is in the interest of both Russia and the US because even Yeltsin’s feeble democracy didn’t give the US as much of a headache in terms of foreign affairs as Putin’s semi-dictatorial, authoritarian regime has managed to. That’s all there is to it.

However, if you help shape public opinion in favour of something sensible by means of such instruments as radio broadcasting or independent media, the regime can no longer seriously destabilise the global situation. That’s the main argument in favour of independent media.

The importance of institutions

AL: Russia’s foreign policy is determined by the balance of power within the country. Russia needs democratic institutions to ensure that its foreign policy course is not dictated by people who sympathise with regimes of Assad’s or Chavez’s ilk.

ZD:  So when we talk about the crucial importance of support for the media from abroad we’re basically talking about independent public institutions in Russia?

MS:  Of course! We are often asked what point is of having one or two additional media outlets openly funded from abroad when we have some self-financing media here. And my answer is always: just look at what’s been happening recently and you’ll see that a) there are increasingly fewer media and b) those that exist are increasingly less independent. Editorial teams in a variety of media are constantly being purged. People representing certain views, even moderately pro-Western ones, are being purged. Note what has lately been happening with the Kommersant group, what methods are being used to compel it to change course.

Other publications are being marginalised, losing the financial support of businessmen; the businessmen are being approached by state security officials, their businesses are being harassed. You know the situation atNovaya Gazeta: it’s been squeezed so hard that it can hardly breathe and its owner, Alexander Lebedev, is on the verge of bankruptcy. And no amount of crowd-funding can cover the shortfall.

[aside]

“Editorial teams in a variety of media are constantly being purged. People representing certain views, even moderately pro-Western ones, are being purged.” Mikhail Sokolov

[/aside]

When opposition activists are being detained left, right and centre, it makes fears mushroom. And that, in turn, restricts the leeway of independent media, although some pseudo-independent media do exist. The problem is that they have been infiltrated by Putin’s people. Everyone knows that the Kremlin briefs editors-in-chief, and although half of them are formally independent, they too receive direct instructions concerning who to write about, whom to invite and whom not. It’s no secret that freedom of the media in Russia is just a sham.

The total number of independent media left in Russia is, at most, today, some three or four.

ZD: Is the current media landscape in Russia really so dismal?

MS:  All ‘independent’ radio stations follow instructions from the Kremlin administration to a greater or lesser degree. The same applies to the Rain TV station – formally it’s independent but it can’t afford to do certain things. In my view the only genuinely independent publication remaining in Russia is Novaya Gazeta.

ZD: One can’t fail to notice that in the West the interest in supporting democratic society in Russia is on the wane.

AL:  Well, the West is disappointed. They understand that on the whole this project has failed. They thought Russia would join the common European home, the European family, within two to three years but this did not materialize. Nor has it materialized within ten years and now, in the opinion of the majority of the population, the likelihood of it doing so is near zero. This is a cheerless country that has turned its back on the West and has started finishing off its opposition.

MS: What’s happening now is a completely familiar situation from a historical point of view. To be honest, I’m surprised that it hadn’t been predicted. Because, after a while, every revolution is followed by restoration. But what can these people be expected to restore, those who were raised by the KGB and have never even left the Communist Party of the USSR, people like Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his associates? What kind of restoration can we expect if all the restorers have a Soviet mindset?

Russia today

AL: I believe that early on, right after the collapse of the USSR, it was possible to speak of a democratic project, at least in the minds and speeches of politicians, but these days this is quite insignificant. Nowadays something else is at issue: the state Russia is in. What’s really going on here? Are we sliding into a completely dysfunctional condition and are we doomed to stay there for many years to come? Or are we going through a rather difficult but nevertheless, transitional, period? That’s the key question. And that is why the radio and independent media play a vital role in preserving some democratic institutions, at the very least in the form of some intellectual frameworks that will start operating again within some foreseeable future.

MS: You can always make comparisons, look for analogies and ask yourself what’s preferable: the Shah or a fundamentalist Ayatollah regime in Iran? What is preferable: early Putinism, the time when NTV, TV-6 and Radio Liberty were still working and were re-broadcast across Russia, or some future, decrepit Putinism, one supported by young people in cassocks, Orthodox fundamentalists? Surely you agree that secular authoritarians are preferable to religious fanatics? Aren’t we seeing a tendency in Russia to strengthen the religious hierarchy and to use fundamentalist Orthodoxy as a political force?

AL: In this respect, compared to the US, we are, metaphorically speaking, on the other side of the hill. We are climbing up it while others are already on the way down. We’re simply at another stage of development. Russian and American fundamentalism are also on different sides of the hill.

MS: But I would say that this has to do with our lack of experience and historical backwardness, and that compared with the West we are somewhere at the stage of the 1960s or 1970s at best. What does Putin’s regime resemble? I remember very well how popular it was in the Soviet days to expose autocrats, Latin American dictators, or Greece’s ‘black colonels’. From this perspective it’s hard not to notice our historical backwardness. And that is why, naturally, our fundamentalism is different.  In this country, the kind of problems that are highly relevant now are the ones the West overcame a long time ago.

ZD:  I expected our discussion to be much more straightforward. I was hoping to hear your views on foreign funding of the Russian media. But it has transpired that there’s no way we can tackle this issue without discussing a number of other, more global issues. Talking to you has made me realize how difficult it will be for Russia to articulate the necessary answers without fully independent media, without a number of strong platforms for free intellectual debate. Let’s hope that the American taxpayer, international foundations, and private donors will understand this and extend their support to radio stations, journals, and internet resources that help Russia to talk to itself.

PS.

openDemocracy Russia will be running two roundtables at the Perugia Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy on 26/27 April. For more details, visit: journalismfestival.com .
Founding editor of oD Russia Zygmunt Dzieciolowski will be taking part in the panel discussion on Russia’s Investigative journalism.

News Report and Commentary

Tara Sonenshine

BBG Watch has learned that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs will soon be leaving her post at the State Department and her representational role at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting. According to sources, Tara Sonenshine told her staff of her intention to leave her job this summer. In addition to her public diplomacy duties at the State Department, she was representing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry at BBG board meetings.

Sonenshine has been one of the more active participants in BBG proceedings and is well liked by those BBG members who are also actively engaged and show up for meetings. At this point, there are only three of them in addition to Sonenshine who is now Secretary Kerry’s representative: Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan. They will miss her as a colleague and an ally. Her future replacement is not likely to be announced soon.

Sonenshine’s expected departure will be yet another blow to these three members and the agency. The BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton has not been showing up for meetings since December 2012. He is making it extremely difficult for the remaining three Governors and Secretary Sonenshine to conduct urgent BBG business.

With four vacancies and without Lynton, the Board no longer has a quorum. Lynton’s prolonged and unexplained absence is a problem and has turned into an embarrassment. The IBB senior staff is in open defiance refusing to carry out members’ directives to bring on board a BBG chief of staff as a temporary solution while the legislation to establish a CEO position goes through Congress.

President Obama had nominated Jeff Shell to become the new BBG chairman and Matt Armstrong as a board member, but these nominations still need to be confirmed in the Senate. Secretary Kerry can select another State Department official to represent him at BBG meetings once Tara Sonenshine leaves her post. But the BBG will lose her valuable insight and input, as well as her sharp mind and a friendly personality, one source who knows her told BBG Watch.

Sonenshine’s part-time tenure at the BBG has not been easy. She has been exposed to more than usual level of incompetence on the part of the International Broadcasting Bureau senior staff and had to put up with extremely poor judgement or indifference on the part of some BBG members who have since resigned. But unlike some BBG members, she quickly realized that the IBB bureaucracy was a big part of the problem, a source told BBG Watch.

Her boss, Hillary Clinton, had called U.S. international broadcasting “defunct.” She had to have been listening to what Sonenshine was telling her about the IBB bureaucracy and some of the BBG members, as well as some of the media executives they brought on board. Together with IBB officials, they have created one of the biggest public diplomacy disasters for the U.S. in Russia when former Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) managers fired dozens of journalists who were reporting on human rights abuses and political and economic corruption within the Putin government.

As the U.S. official in charge of public diplomacy, Sonenshine was appalled by what happened to Radio Liberty and the protests she received from such renowned human rights leaders as Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lyudmila Alexeeva. She was relieved when Kevin Klose was selected to reform RFE/RL and she had a chance to meet Alexeeva in Washington, a source told us.

Lyudmila Alexeeva with RFE/RL acting President Kevin Klose and Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine, Washington, DC, March 1, 2013.

If U.S. international broadcasting is a stepchild ignored by the administration and most members of Congress, U.S. public diplomacy is also not what it used to be when the United States Information Agency (USIA) operated as a more or less independent entity from the State Department. Ironically, the incompetent IBB senior staff is pushing for the same kind of centralization and merger of U.S. international broadcasting that according to most experts severely undermined independent and effective public diplomacy when USIA was merged with the State Department. The same marginalization will be the fate of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia (RFA), Middle East broadcasting Networks (MBN) and also the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio and TV Marti if IBB bureaucrats get their way, critics warn.

Since the position of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs was established in 1999 when USIA was abolished, a confirmed Under Secretary has been on the job only 70% of the time. Prior to Tara Sonenshine’s tenure, the office was ‘unencumbered’ 33% of the time.

If Sonenshine departs in mid-July, she will have been in office approximately 460 days. The average tenure of the six preceding Under Secretaries of State for Public Diplomacy (so excluding Sonenshine’s time in office) is 512 days.

The average gap between the resignation of an Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and the swearing of a successor is 248 days. These numbers do not show much interest on the part of various administrations in public diplomacy and the public diplomacy office at the State Department.

This problem was excellently analyzed by Matt Armstrong, the former Executive Director of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and the latest nominee to serve on the BBG Board. Armstrong wrote about it in his MountainRunner blog.

R we there yet? A look at the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy (and Public Affairs), Matt Armstrong, www.MountainRunner.us, January 10, 2012.

Source: www.MountainRunner.us

In his article, Armstrong included this chart which clearly shows that public diplomacy is not something the State Department establishment takes very seriously. Unfortunately, the same can be said about U.S. international broadcasting, with four vacancies on the BBG board, a missing Presiding Governor, and no relief in sight. At least, it is good to have an exceptional and capable Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy at BBG meetings for as long as Tara Sonenshine remains in her post.

Damage to the Newsroom was caused by heavy smoke and the sprinklers which automatically came on.

According to reports, no one was injured and programs to Cuba continued. Employees were evacuated to adjacent areas. Sources describe considerable water damage in the Newsroom but say that programs will continue.

Andrei Babitsky

Fired Radio Liberty Russian journalists delivered some of the best in depth analysis of the links between the Boston bombings, violent jihadism and Chechnya. Known as Radio Liberty in Exile, journalists fired last year by the former management of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) turned to their still employed RFE/RL colleague and supporter Andrei Babitsky, a famous former Chechnya war correspondent, to offer his analysis on their Novaya Svoboda (New Liberty) website. Radio Liberty in Exile also spoke with Dr. Mikhail Berg, a Russian scholar and writer living in the Boston area and with a former Soviet-era dissident Pavel Litvinov.

In his video interview with Radio Liberty in Exile, Babitsky described the terror bombings in Boston as a jihadist attack on American civilization.

Jihadists, according to Babitsky, believe that other civilizations and other people do not have the right to exist and their extermination is therefore justified.

Babitsky said that while the Boston suspects were of Chechen origin with links to Russia and Daghestan, the origins of the terrorist crime in Boston are rooted in the jihadist ideology which has an international appeal among certain groups of people.

Babitsky pointed out that jihadism is very similar to 20th century’s totalitarian ideologies of communism and fascism which also stipulated that certain people and groups do not have the right to exist and can be liquidated. Babitsky described jihadism is an international ideology whose supporters can be found in any country.

These radicals openly advocate the destruction of Christian and other civilizations. Babitsky warned that this will not be the last such attack. Americans have to be vigilant, he added.

Link to Andrei Babitsky video (in Russian).

Babitsky also told Radio Liberty in Exile that “after Chechen jihadist activity in Russia has been reduced and they are being squeezed, apparently, there is an increase of their activity abroad – in Syria, where the Chechens really fight now, and in the United States.”

The Radio Liberty in Exile website is called Novaya Svoboda (New Liberty). Using Google Hangout, fired Radio Liberty journalists have also conducted an exclusive video interview with Russian writer Mikhail Berg who lives in the Boston area. Dr. Berg is an independent scholar at the Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Unlike Babitsky who focused more on religious extremism and jihadism, Dr. Berg observed that according to media reports the Boston bombings suspects hated America. He noted that hatred toward America has become the ideology of the Russian government of President Putin. That hatred toward America is also being promoted in the North Caucasus region, Dr. Berg said.

Link to Dr. Mikhail Berg video (in Russian).

Pavel Litvinov, a Russian writer, human rights activist and former Soviet-era dissident who now lives in the United States, told Radio Liberty in Exile that the first media reports focused on the two suspects being foreigners, but then it became obvious that they have lived in the United States for quite some time. Litvinov said that he agrees with the view that America needs to take responsibility for what they have become, but he also noted that U.S. media reported on their links to Russia and the exile of their family to Kyrgyzstan.

Link to Pavel Litvinov video (in Russian).

Radio Liberty video interviews were conducted by Vladimir Abarbanell, a highly respected journalist who before his dismissal from RFE/RL was in charge of the Radio Liberty regional correspondent network he had helped to establish. Before joining RFE/RL, he was a private radio station owner and president of the Independent Broadcasters Association in Russia. Like all Radio Liberty in Exile journalists, he works as a volunteer with no pay.

Good analysis was also available on the RFE/RL English-language news website, thanks to recent reforms instituted by new acting RFE/RL president Kevin Klose, but not on the Russian Service website because well-known analysts and media experts no longer want to be associated with it after the firing of Radio Liberty journalists.

The RFE/RL English-language news website, however, has already been largely transformed and from its recent tabloid media format to its original focus on serious journalism.

RFE/RL Central Newsroom Director Jeremy Bransten interviewed Aslan Doukaev, director of RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service, for some insight into the two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and their ancestral homeland.

RFE/RL: You mentioned earlier that in transit to the United States, the Tsarnaevs spent some time in Daghestan, although they were ethnic Chechens. Daghestan has recently become the focus of much of the violence in the North Caucasus. Can you give us a picture of what has been happening in that republic over the past 15-20 years?

Doukaev: It all began in 1994, when the so-called first Chechen War began in neighboring Chechnya. Chechnya over the past 19 years has suffered two serious conflicts. It left behind devastation and destruction and a lot of people were killed. But that conflict was not contained to Chechnya only. It gradually spread to neighboring territories: Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and in particular, to Daghestan.

Daghestan is the biggest Russian republic in the North Caucasus. It’s the size of Scotland, it’s multiethnic and it has become these days the epicenter of instability in the south of Russia. While Chechnya is increasingly peaceful and stable — more or less — Daghestan seems to be descending into chaos. Every day we get reports about clashes, attacks, bombings, kidnappings. So Daghestan has a become a focal point of the insurgency in the North Caucasus.

RFE/RL: And is it fair to say that the mood in society has become increasingly radicalized?

Doukaev: We can say with certainty that Daghestan today is probably the most radicalized Russian republic. The so-called Salafis, the Wahhabis, they openly organize their meetings. The insurgency enjoys a certain amount of support from the population. There are various reasons why that’s happening. We may talk a lot about the corruption, the economic situation, the police brutality etc…. The fact is that today Daghestan is the most unstable, the most violent, the most radicalized territory in the whole of the Russian Federation.

RFE/RL: Now of course these two young men were living in the United States, though it seems their families retained strong links to the North Caucasus. What do we know about the North Caucasus diaspora in the United States? Are ethnic Chechens the most numerous?

Doukaev: We don’t know much about the diaspora. It’s not very big. There were several waves of immigration. The first wave was after World War II, and this diaspora lives in New Jersey, mostly. I hear that there are small communities in various parts of the United States, in Portland, Oregon, in Boston — by the way. But by and large, the Chechen community in the United States is very small and it’s not really well organized. There are scattered communities in various parts of the States. I don’t think they were in any way part of those communities, part of those diasporas. They had a kind of isolated existence in Massachusetts, mostly.

The interview shows that Kevin Klose, RFE/RL’s new acting president recently selected by BBG members, is slowly returning the U.S. taxpayer-supported institution to its former high journalistic standards after a period of unprecedented upheaval and losses of audience and reputation.

The full interview with Aslan Doukaev, director of RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service, can be seen here: “Interview: More About Tsarnaev Brothers And Their Ancestral Homeland,” RFE/RL, April 20, 2012.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty radio broadcasts in Chechen, Avar and Circassian, some of the main local languages in the North Caucasus region, were facing elimination last year due to decisions made by officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)–the bureaucratic arm of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency that manages all U.S. civilian news broadcasts for audiences abroad. IBB officials, working with the former management of RFE/RL, almost succeeded in carrying out these cuts. Fortunately, they were blocked by strong opposition in Congress to these proposals.

The Russian-language RFE/RL website, still under the control of the Russian Service director Masha Gessen, offered little expert analysis, as it is being boycotted by most well-known Russian experts who are unhappy with Gessen, her editorial policies and the firing of dozens of experienced Radio Liberty journalists in Moscow last year.

Andrei Babitsky, like many other RFE/RL journalists still working at the station’s headquarters in Prague, hopes for the return of the fired journalists and does not want to work with the current Russian Service director.

Babitsky published a powerful open letter welcoming the resignation of the former RFE/RL president Steven Korn who made decisions to cut broadcasts and fire journalists. Korn defended these decisions as necessary for digital transition, but Radio Liberty in Exile is proving that they were and are digital media experts in addition to being excellent journalists in every other respect.

Nearly all leading opposition leaders in Russia and human rights activists support the fired journalists and demand their return to Radio Liberty. These journalists have shown with their in-depth analytical coverage of the Boston bombings that Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty needs them. Their return is especially urgent since Russia’s President Putin continues to suppress free media while the Kremlin-controlled state media channels continue to promote the ideology of anti-Americanism that may inspire future terrorists in Chechnya, Daghestan and other regions of the Russian Federation where jihadists may be looking for recruits.

Either the Broadcasting Board of Governors or Congress should also make sure that managers and officials who wanted to end U.S. radio broadcasts to Chechnya and to lay off journalists who are experts on the North Caucasus region should no longer hold any decision-making positions within U.S. international broadcasting. The new RFE/RL leadership must do the same with managers responsible for causing the boycott of Radio Liberty and its loss of audience and reputation in Russia.

Broadcasting Board of Governors - Information War Lost - Dysfunctional and Defunct  - The FY2014 Budget

by The Federalist

On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 the White House released its FY2014 budget request.

For US Government international broadcasting and the employees who engage in the effort, it is more bad news.  It is yet another sterling example that the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) is taking the US Government out of the business of international broadcasting to global publics.

Before we get into the intended bloodletting, it is important to note that this is the White House’s budget “proposal.”  What actually comes out of the budget via the appropriations and authorization processes in Congress remains to be seen.  Most certainly, the budget will be discussed and debated, with numbers kicked around by the House and Senate and in conference work between the two.  The agency’s principal employee union, AFGE Local 1812, should also weigh in with its position on the budget proposal.  In addition, interested parties outside the government, including BBG Watch, will lend additional commentary.  In short, much work remains to be done.

That said, we note a comment made by Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) member Michael Meehan as quoted in a BBG press release dated April 10, 2013:

“Some of these changes, if enacted, will be very difficult on the men and women involved,” Meehan said.  “We will do everything possible to minimize the impact on our employees through agency buyouts, early-out authority and reducing positions via attrition.”

Governor Meehan is right on target with the first part of his statement.  It will be a traumatizing experience for the employees and contractors who work in the agency, should the budget be enacted to the letter of the White House proposal.  If this happens, in an agency known for being “the worst organization in the Federal Government,” the likely effect is that it will compound the agency’s problems and make the agency even more insufferable in its shortcomings, internally and externally.

With the second part of the statement, Governor Meehan notes intended actions to minimize the impact of the budget proposal.  This will require action on the part of the Federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) through an agency request to offer buyouts and early retirements.

Even so, while the early retirement and buyout authorizations are positives, they still reflect that the agency’s actions are having an adverse impact on its workforce and its operations.  And the buyout and early retirement authority only applies to the agency’s Federal workers, not its contractors – a group of employees that the agency relies heavily upon to carry out its operations.

Nonetheless, we acknowledge Governor Meehan for his candor – much needed from an agency noted for the lack thereof, particularly at the hands of the IBB.

The agency’s budget request totals 144 pages.  That’s a lot to digest.  For the present, we will offer an overview of some things that jump off the pages of the document.

By The Numbers

The agency’s FY2014 budget request is for $731-million dollars.  By comparison, the agency’s enacted FY2013 budget was for $756-million dollars.  Comparing the two, the FY2014 budget is for $25-million dollars less than its FY2013 budget.

Asking for less fiscal resources is the kind of thing that raises eyebrows.  To those of us who follow the agency’s “flim flam Soviet-style dysfunctional and defunct strategic plan,” the outward appearance is that this is yet further indication that the IBB is getting out of the business of US Government international broadcasting.

Presently, the agency’s estimated worldwide audience on all media platforms (including radio, television, the Internet) is hovering around 175-million – out of a global population of 7-BILLION.  In our view, less money equates with less audience and less effectiveness in reaching that audience, particularly when coupled with other agency actions detailed below.

The budget request includes the statement,

“Freedom House notes that 2013 is the seventh consecutive year that declines in worldwide freedom have outpaced advances.”

The budget request states that the agency’s mission is in support of freedom and democracy.  That is not the agency’s primary mission; delivering uncensored news, information and commentary that would result enhancing freedom is the agency’s primary mission.  Mentioning freedom and democracy while failing to increase audiences since at least 2008 is the sales pitch coming from the cartoon strategists of the IBB.  It sounds great, like many sales pitches.  But the proof is in the product delivered.

[Note: The agency’s mission is codified in the VOA Charter.  Read it and you will understand what the agency’s mission is.  “Supporting freedom and democracy” is a subjective outcome.  But it is also an outcome that can be measured and is being measured by others.  Measurements that we provide herein demonstrate that the IBB’s intended outcome has failed.]

Juxtaposing the agency’s statement with the data supplied by Freedom House, one can reach the conclusion that the agency isn’t delivering the goods.  Indeed, it appears to be losing ground.  Add to that the agency’s budget request – something of a form of fiscal self-flagellation – you wonder about the frame of reasoning applied to the request.  Indeed, “reason” may be an oxymoron in this case.

On its face, it appears to be yet another example of agency dysfunction that former Secretary of State Clinton referred to at the time she left office.

Moving on:

Here’s another statement from the budget proposal:

“For 2012-2016, the BBG’s core strategic goal is to become the world’s leading international news agency focused on mission and impact – i.e., to reach key audiences in support of free, open democratic societies.  The agency’s principal performance goal is to reach 216 million in global weekly audience by 2016.”

Wowser!

The long and the short of this statement is that present realities make this statement delusional.

Let’s return to the numbers: an audience target of 216-million in 2016 out of a global population of 7-BILLION.  Also consider that the agency’s audience numbers with its present broadcast operations are tanking; NO INCREASE OF AUDIENCE SINCE 2008 despite larger budgets almost every year since 2008 until now.  Let’s also keep in mind that this agency has been around for 70 years.  Its current dismal showing may indicate the agency and its message are either worn out or (more likely) subverted by IBB decisions.

Who are the “key audiences?”  Certainly, we would include China, Iran and Russia.  But those audiences are approaching extinction through a combination of blocked BBG broadcasts, domestic Chinese, Russian and Iranian controls over the Internet or internal IBB acts of self-destruction as in the case of the Russian Service of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

What this statement amounts to is sloganeering – seemingly picking a number out of thin air to correlate to a calendar year – something one suspects as coming out of the IBB marketing apparatus or its Office of Digital Design and Innovation. We would not be surprised if they plan to start measuring and reporting their audience in the United States, marketing programs to Americans instead to audiences abroad, spending U.S. taxpayers’ money on domestic marketing of news and information. They were pushing hard for a repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act restrictions on domestic marketing of programs and they got it.

As a practical matter, this kind of “growth” amounts to zero growth.  It doesn’t take into consideration that the agency is being tossed around like a rag doll by the Chinese, Iranians, Russians and others.  Right from the start, three key audiences can be factored out of the equation.  IBB decisions have both facilitated and accelerated the process.

Let’s add to that the diminished impact of US Government broadcasts to the Arab and Muslim world.  That part of the equation has taken what appears to be a hard turn toward fundamentalism.  Freedom and democracy are hard sell concepts in a part of the world with no history of the Western practice of both.  This is a world which can speak to an alternative world view: monarchies, dictatorships and theocracies – and well over a millennium in the practice of all.

[Note: Want another example of  failure in the Arab and Muslim world?

Preliminary reports indicate the suspects in the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon were originally from Chechnya, a region in the Russian republic with an active, global jihadist insurrection.

Proposed Chechnya Program Cuts in BBG's FY 2013 Budget Request

But that is not all. International Broadcasting Bureau executives and former Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty managers proposed last year to ELIMINATE RFE/RL RADIO PROGRAMS TO CHECHNYA and to cut the number of journalists reporting on terrorism and other issues in the North Caucasus region. They did not succeed on Chechnya due to strong opposition in Congress and elsewhere, but they DID SUCCEED in firing dozens of experienced Russian journalists who reported on the same issues in Russian, a language widely spoken in the region. Firing journalists in Putin’s Russia and proposing to cut programs to Chechnya shows how utterly clueless these executives are.]

And consider this:

The Chinese have a budget in the range of $8-BILLION dollars for its global media initiative.  Actions speak louder than words and the Chinese are making themselves heard.  When one wants to use the phrase “world’s leading international news agency focused on mission and impact,” put the Chinese at the top of the list, not the also-rans on the Third Floor of the Cohen Building.

As we call it, this is “motion without movement.”  We already know this:

If the budget request reflects the IBB strategic valuation, the agency is already bankrupt.

Blood on the Floor – By the Numbers

According to sources inside the Cohen Building, the following is what the IBB proposes not to be doing in FY2014 regarding Voice of America (VOA) operations:

Greek Service: eliminated (4 positions)

Georgian Service: 4 positions cut (including 1 unfilled vacancy)

Cuts to broadcasts to Afghanistan (10 positions cut, 5 are vacant)

Albanian Service (3 positions cut, 1 is vacant)

Eliminate front office personnel for Near East and Central Asia divisions (6 positions)

Cuts to Spanish to Latin America and Creole to Haiti (8 positions cut, between 6 and 9 vacancies

Urdu radio broadcasts: eliminated (4 positions)

Persian News Network (PNN): radio to Iran eliminated (4 positions)

And the main targets:

Worldwide English: 11 positions cut including 7 vacancies

VOA Central Newsroom: 24 positions cut, 20 which are vacant

Sources also report that $2-million dollars will be cut from funds designated for contractors.  Some estimates put this as equivalent to 30 contractor positions.

[Please note that even though positions are vacant, in budgetary calculations, those positions are funded in order to be filled.  Cut the vacant positions and the funding for filling those positions also evaporates.]

Even though the agency may seek buy-out and early retirement authority – as alluded to by Governor Meehan in his remarks in the agency press release – these must be approved by the Office of Personnel Management [OPM]).  It is somewhat unclear whether or not the agency will get approval because of government sequestration.

On its face:

These proposed adverse actions are inconsistent with an organization that claims its intention:

“…is to become the world’s leading international news agency focused on mission and impact – i.e., to reach key audiences in support of free, open democratic societies…”

This is a specious claim – like so much that comes from the IBB.  Based on the IBB’s intended actions, these claims appear to divert attention away from its true goal: to take the United States Government out of the business of international broadcasting.

It is bad enough that these IBB types are hypocrites.  Even more, they are something far worse, as evidenced by their scurrilous public attacks against agency employees and members of the BBG.

Add to the list of specious claims the one about creating a “global news network.”  This IBB budget proposal for VOA specifically attacks core radio operations including Worldwide English and the VOA Central Newsroom.

As it is now, in the ongoing effort to destroy Newsroom effectiveness, the daily process of reporting news is being described among employees as “schizophrenic:” not being able to cover breaking news and events in a timely fashion.  One should not expect things to improve for the better in the Central Newsroom.

And worse: the agency appears to be abandoning a core journalistic principle of obtaining double sources on news stories.  As recently as the Boston Marathon bombings, the agency got burned – as did other news organizations – by relying on a single “source” who claimed that arrests were imminent in the immediate aftermath of the bombings.

The FY2014 budget request clearly intends to continue the assault on agency radio operations.  Over half of whatever meager audience the agency has remaining for its programs exists on radio.  Kill off the radio and the only thing the agency is doing is spending an exorbitant amount of taxpayer money on an exercise in futility.

And we are getting closer by the day to that moment.

Last but definitely not least:

Remember what we’ve said about the IBB – how they obsess over something they want.  In addition to killing off the agency’s radio broadcasts, their budget proposal includes a request for the establishment of a CEO – a chief executive officer, which they would mold to be a “chief execution officer,” the person to carry out the IBB agenda.

We’ve made this plain before:

At this juncture – and given the nature of the IBB – no CEO is going to save the place and in the wrong hands would likely hasten its demise.

Period.

Particularly when the top priority of the IBB is their venal self-interest and not the national and public interest.

Even if the BBG were to appoint a CEO, there is no guarantee that the individual in that position would survive the conspiratorial and vicious behavior of the IBB after the BBG members who appointed the CEO leave the board and are replaced.

But if you want it to work:

The first order of business is to remove the entire top tier of the IBB, systematically working down through the incompetence and corruption.  It can be done.  It will require an iron constitution but it can be done.

Short message to the BBG: you want a CEO to be your enforcer, not a lackey of the IBB.

Do that and the agency might have a chance to reconstitute its reputation and mission effectiveness.  Don’t do this and the only thing left to do is close the agency and stop wasting taxpayer by keeping the place on life support for the IBB.

Not surprisingly, however, we hear now that IBB’s top leaders are actively preventing BBG members from hiring their own executive officer or a chief of staff.

See: Top IBB officials are preventing hiring of an interim executive officer for BBG, undermine national security.

We’re not exactly holding our breath for a positive.

Remember: this is the worst organization in the Federal Government and one of the worst places to work in the Federal Government.

(Next: Blood On The Floor – David Ensor Speaks – Again)

The Federalist

April 2013

Monday’s, April 22, the Hundson Institue panel in Washington, DC on U.S. – Russia relations, the Magnitsky Act, and the future of the “Reset,” may also turn into an interesting discussion on the war on terror and provide in-depth analysis of Russia’s role in Chechnya in light of the Boston suspects’ North Caucasus origins.

The discussion among Russian and American scholars may also touch on issues of U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting as former officials in charge of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) unsuccessfully tried to eliminate radio broadcasts to Chechnya but succeeded in firing dozens of journalists working in Putin’s Russia for the American-supported media freedom outlet.

Hudson Institute is a nonpartisan, independent policy research organization.

The panelists include Hudson Senior Fellows Andrei Piontkovsky and David Satter, and Cato Institute Fellow Andrei Ilarionov, a former economic adviser to Putin.

Interestingly, all three are on record opposing the former RFE/RL management’s decision to fire Russian and other journalists and to change the station’s programming policies to favor feature reports at the expense of hard-hitting political journalism.

Russia expert David Satter offers scathing criticism of RFE/RL president Steven Korn, BBG Watch, November 19, 2012.

“In a wide-ranging interview recored at the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Russia scholar, journalist and author David Satter offered scathing criticism of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) president Steven Korn. Satter, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, pointed out that by firing dozens of journalists at the Radio Liberty Moscow bureau, Korn ruined the station’s reputation in Russia created over many decades. Satter was interviewed by former Radio Liberty political reporter Mikhail Sokolov.

In the interview, Satter said that Korn does not know the culture of Russia, does not read Russian, does not have a necessary background, and has just been made the head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Satter said that because of Korn’s decisions, Radio Liberty instantly lost expertise, identify and profile. It is obvious that the “new” Radio Liberty will be just a shadow of the old, Satter said.

Satter also called Korn’s actions a huge loss for American public diplomacy. “These decisions cannot be tolerated and accepted as a fait accompli,” Satter said. He also told Sokolov that everyone who was fired at Radio Liberty, without exception, must return to work and predicted that the U.S. Congress will investigate what has happened at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Former RFE/RL president Steven Korn strongly defended his decisions as necessary to transform Radio Liberty into a modern, digital media outlet. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) had replaced Korn with Kevin Klose who is changing programming policies and reportedly is working on bringing the fired journalists back to Radio Liberty.”

Russian opposition leaders say Radio Liberty is no longer a reliable source of information, BBG Watch, February 18, 2013.

“In the last few years Putin’s authoritarian regime intensified its offensive on Russian media.”

“In this precise moment the civil society has been deprived of an important and reliable source of information, which Radio Liberty has been for decades, as well as of its analyses and responsible commentaries. Broadcasting on AM has been interrupted. A significant number of its staff, many of whom enjoyed deserved authority and respect both in the professional media environment and among a large audience, has been dismissed.” — Russian Opposition Coordination Council

In a letter to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) newly-appointed acting president Kevin Klose, several leaders of the anti-Putin opposition, including former reformist Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and Andrey Illarionov, a former economic policy advisor to President Putin who resigned in protest over Putin’s authoritarian rule, wrote that the civil society in Russia “has been deprived of an important and reliable source of information, which Radio Liberty has been for decades.”

Andrey Illarionov currently works as a senior fellow in the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. He is identified on the Cato Institute website as one of Russia’s most forceful and articulate advocates of an open society and democratic capitalism.

The letter to RFE/RL acting president Kevin Klose was also signed by anti-Putin political activist Garry Kasparov, considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time.

Another signatory, Andrey Piontkovsky, is a Russian scientist and political writer and analyst. He has been an outspoken critic of Putin’s “managed” democracy and has described Russia as a “soft totalitarian regime.”

Also see:

Bureaucrats proposed cutting US broadcasts to North Caucasus, home of Boston bombing suspects, BBG Watch, April 19, 2013.

Top IBB officials are preventing hiring of an interim executive officer for BBG, undermine national security, BBG Watch, April 20, 2013.

Expert analysis from RFE/RL on Boston bombings and Chechnya enhanced by Radio Liberty in Exile, BBG Watch, April 20, 2013.

###

BBG Board, Apr. 2013. Image shows four vacancies.

BBG Watch has learned from several reliable sources that top officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) are doing everything possible to delay efforts by members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to hire their own interim executive officer. The person’s job would be to make sure that important board’s directives regarding broadcasts to dangerous parts of the world are carried out by the IBB bureaucracy until a permanent CEO takes over this function. Despite risks to U.S. national security, IBB officials don’t want it to happen and are resisting it with every possible means, government sources told us.

President Obama has proposed a permanent CEO for the agency who would replace the IBB director and report directly to the board. That process, however, requires legislative action and may take a long time. Desperate for quick changes to improve performance, BBG members want a temporary CEO to start solving problems, many of which have been created by the IBB’s senior staff or allowed to develop because of their inaction.

Richard Lobo

Jeff Trimble

BBG Watch has learned that BBG members, who are unhappy with IBB director Richard Lobo, his deputy Jeff Trimble and some of the other senior staffers, have been trying for some time to hire an executive officer who could perform the functions of the CEO until the legislative process is completed.

According to sources within the agency, Lobo and Trimble are using various delaying tactics to prevent BBG members from achieving that goal. They obviously don’t want an activist board or a BBG chief of staff reminding them that if the board makes a decision it is their duty to carry it out, one agency source told BBG Watch.

Decisions and actions by top IBB officials have embarrassed the agency time and again and produced the lowest employee morale in the entire federal government. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was an ex officio BBG board member, called U.S. international broadcasting “defunct” shortly before she left her post at the State Department.

The three remaining most active BBG members, Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan, as well as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine who represents Secretary Kerry at BBG board meetings, want to take quick steps to reform the agency, starting with its overblown bureaucracy. For the first time in many years, the majority of board members are united. But the bureaucrats are not giving up their power easily despite their dismal performance. They are fighting back, an agency source told us.

They failed to prevent the crisis at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty from developing, but they did not like it when some of the board members instead of listening to them took matters into their own hands and appointed Kevin Klose to clean up the mess, the source added. They see that since Kevin Klose’s appointment, failed managers are leaving RFE/RL, and they don’t want the board to repeat the same process as far as they are concerned, the source said.

Unlike a private 501(c)3 BBG-managed media outlet like RFE/RL, BBG members cannot simply appoint someone as their executive officer at a federal agency. They have to rely on the IBB senior staff to initiate administrative procedures to bring someone on board.

Lobo and Trimble are in effect refusing to follow the board’s orders, an agency source told us. The board can’t fire Lobo because he is a presidential appointee. He has not only protected his top officials, whom he had inherited, but had rewarded them with up to $10,000 bonuses. According to our agency sources, BBG members recently told Lobo that in light of his SESs being the OPM’s worst-rated federal managers, he can no longer give them these bonuses in the current budget squeeze situation. He and his deputies were furious, BBG Watch was told.

As for the CEO proposal, Lobo and Trimble were initially strongly in favor of it when former BBG chairman Walter Isaacson and other former BBG members had relied on their advice and Lobo may have hoped that he would be appointed the CEO. These BBG members have since resigned. They had supported a plan to merge all BBG media entities into one large bureaucracy and to privatize IBB, Voice of America (VOA) and Radio and TV Marti.

The merger plan has been criticized as a power grab by the IBB bureaucracy. Critics warned that it would destroy the effectiveness of the so-called surrogate broadcasters like Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), for whom independence and expert specialization are absolutely critical. Critics predict that instead of saving money, the plan would result in a further expansion of the central bureaucracy, which already has very little connection to the programs or the journalists who produce them. The plan was also described as politically naive. Congress would never agree to completely divorcing U.S. international broadcasting from the U.S. government and should not do so, critics said.

In the meantime, the board has been repeatedly embarrassed by the IBB staff’s decisions in the pursuit of their plan, including the failed proposals to eliminate critical broadcasts to Tibet and China. IBB senior staffers and former RFE/RL managers had also proposed last year eliminating local language radio broadcasts to Chechnya, the homeland of the two Boston bombings suspects. This proposal was also blocked in Congress. Some members of Congress did not mince words and said that these bureaucrats were ignoring Congressional directives.

The greatest embarrassment, however, was the meltdown at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty after dozens of experienced Russian journalists had been fired in September 2012. Anti-Putin political leaders and human rights activists became outraged by the treatment the journalists had received and by programming changes at Radio Liberty. The IBB senior staff failed to alert the board to the developing crisis.

BBG Watch has learned that board members are focusing on a candidate for the interim executive position with considerable foreign policy and U.S. international broadcasting experience. They want a person with extensive contacts in Washington, especially on Capitol Hill. They hope that their candidate would simply not allow the kind of missteps and failures of judgement that have occurred under the present IBB leadership. They also want someone who could start restoring employee morale which has been severely damaged by the anti-employee management culture promoted by current IBB leaders.

But BBG members who are pushing for these changes are also facing obstacles other than the lack of cooperation of the IBB senior staff. Their Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton has been absent from BBG board and committee meetings since January. Without him, the board has no quorum. They had to recess their last board meeting and scheduled another one to be conducted by telephone for April 24. It remains to be seen whether Michael Lynton will participate and whether he will side with IBB executives or support other board members.

Lynton’s prolonged and unexplained absence as a board member in charge of U.S. international broadcasting is just as unacceptable when America is facing new terrorist threats, as is the active defiance of IBB executives against efforts by BBG members to reform the agency and to make it more effective in places like the Middle East and Chechnya.

International broadcasting and other media outreach efforts by the U.S. are one of the most effective and most important of our country’s assets in countering anti-Americanism and terrorist ideology abroad.

The reported obstruction by IBB leaders and the continued absence of BBG’s presiding governor are not only unpatriotic, they are dangerous for U.S. national security and must not be tolerated.

Because it is a serious matter, the Senate should act quickly on President Obama’s nomination of Jeff Shell as a BBG member and chairman and Matt Armstrong as another board member. If confirmed, they can help establish the board’s control over the rebel IBB bureaucracy and strengthen America’s voice abroad.

###

We are including a LINK to the Chief Executive Officer Proposal in the Broadcasting Board of Governors FY 2014 Budget Request. What BBG members want to achieve now is to have an interim executive officer or a chief of staff who could move forward critical agency programs. According to agency sources, these efforts by presidentially-appointed BBG members. are now being thwarted by top officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau.

Boston-based Russian writer Mikhail Berg being interviewed by Sergei Mullin for Radio Liberty in Exile.

Last year, U.S. government bureaucrats in Washington wanted to eliminate Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) radio broadcasts to Chechnya. Today, RFE/RL experts, whose programs were saved thanks to actions by media freedom NGOs and sympathetic members of Congress, are providing some of the best analysis on the Boston bombings suspects and their Chechen links.

However, many other experienced RFE/RL journalists and analysts were fired last year by the station’s former management with the knowledge and consent of U.S. officials in Washington, but apparently without full knowledge of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the bipartisan board which oversees the entire operation. Known as Radio Liberty in Exile, these journalists are now working as volunteers to provide their own expert coverage on their news website and social media platforms while waiting to regain their old jobs at RFE/RL with the support of BBG board members and the new management at RFE/RL.

At the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty headquarters in Prague, Czech Republic, RFE/RL Central Newsroom Director Jeremy Bransten interviewed Aslan Doukaev, director of RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service, for some insight into the two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and their ancestral homeland.

RFE/RL: You mentioned earlier that in transit to the United States, the Tsarnaevs spent some time in Daghestan, although they were ethnic Chechens. Daghestan has recently become the focus of much of the violence in the North Caucasus. Can you give us a picture of what has been happening in that republic over the past 15-20 years?

Doukaev: It all began in 1994, when the so-called first Chechen War began in neighboring Chechnya. Chechnya over the past 19 years has suffered two serious conflicts. It left behind devastation and destruction and a lot of people were killed. But that conflict was not contained to Chechnya only. It gradually spread to neighboring territories: Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and in particular, to Daghestan.

Daghestan is the biggest Russian republic in the North Caucasus. It’s the size of Scotland, it’s multiethnic and it has become these days the epicenter of instability in the south of Russia. While Chechnya is increasingly peaceful and stable — more or less — Daghestan seems to be descending into chaos. Every day we get reports about clashes, attacks, bombings, kidnappings. So Daghestan has a become a focal point of the insurgency in the North Caucasus.

RFE/RL: And is it fair to say that the mood in society has become increasingly radicalized?

Doukaev: We can say with certainty that Daghestan today is probably the most radicalized Russian republic. The so-called Salafis, the Wahhabis, they openly organize their meetings. The insurgency enjoys a certain amount of support from the population. There are various reasons why that’s happening. We may talk a lot about the corruption, the economic situation, the police brutality etc…. The fact is that today Daghestan is the most unstable, the most violent, the most radicalized territory in the whole of the Russian Federation.

RFE/RL: Now of course these two young men were living in the United States, though it seems their families retained strong links to the North Caucasus. What do we know about the North Caucasus diaspora in the United States? Are ethnic Chechens the most numerous?

Doukaev: We don’t know much about the diaspora. It’s not very big. There were several waves of immigration. The first wave was after World War II, and this diaspora lives in New Jersey, mostly. I hear that there are small communities in various parts of the United States, in Portland, Oregon, in Boston — by the way. But by and large, the Chechen community in the United States is very small and it’s not really well organized. There are scattered communities in various parts of the States. I don’t think they were in any way part of those communities, part of those diasporas. They had a kind of isolated existence in Massachusetts, mostly.

The interview shows that Kevin Klose, RFE/RL’s new acting president recently selected by BBG members, is slowly returning the U.S. taxpayer-supported institution to its former high journalistic standards after a period of unprecedented upheaval and losses of audience and reputation.

The full interview with Aslan Doukaev, director of RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service, can be seen here: “Interview: More About Tsarnaev Brothers And Their Ancestral Homeland,” RFE/RL, April 20, 2012.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty radio broadcasts in Chechen, Avar and Circassian, some of the main local languages in the North Caucasus region, were facing elimination last year due to decisions made by officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)–the bureaucratic arm of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency that manages all U.S. civilian news broadcasts for audiences abroad. IBB officials, working with the former management of RFE/RL, almost succeeded in carrying out these cuts. Fortunately, they were blocked by strong opposition in Congress to these proposals.

RFE/RL is now under a new management of acting president Kevin Klose, but IBB officials who had proposed these cuts are still running the agency in Washington and appear to be resisting attempts by members of the bipartisan BBG board to reform the bureaucracy. They are apparently trying to prevent BBG members from hiring an experienced manager and leader like Kevin Klose to help the board regain control and transform the management culture at the International Broadcasting Bureau, which is now being run by IBB director Richard Lobo and his deputy Jeff trimble.

The former RFE/RL management and IBB officials are still being blamed for less than adequate coverage of the Boston bombings and the Chechen connection by the Radio Liberty’s Russian Service which lost dozens of experienced reporters and analysts who were fired in Moscow last September. Kevin Klose is reportedly working on bringing them back to Radio Liberty. These journalists were replaced by feature writers without much experience in political reporting and the Russian Service website began to resemble a tabloid magazine.

The fired journalists, who call themselves Radio Liberty in Exile, have been providing their own coverage of the tragic events in Boston and analyzing their impact in Russia and Chechnya. Their website is called Novaya Svoboda (New Liberty). Using Google Hangout, they have conducted an exclusive video interview with Russian scholar and writer Mikhail Berg who lives in the Boston area. Dr. Berg is an independent scholar at the Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He observed that according to media reports the suspects hated America and noted that hatred toward America has become the ideology of the Russian government of President Putin. That hatred toward America is also being promoted in the North Caucasus region, Dr. Berg said.

One of the best Chechnya expert Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty still has is a war correspondent Andrei Babitsky who has been a strong critic of the former RFE/RL management and their decisions to fire journalists and eliminate programs. He published a powerful open letter welcoming the resignation of the former RFE/RL president who made decisions to cut broadcasts and fire journalists. Babitsky supports his fired colleagues and told Radio Liberty in Exile that “after Chechen jihadist activity in Russia has been reduced and they are being squeezed, apparently, there is an increase of their activity abroad – in Syria, where the Chechens really fight now, and in the United States.”

Considering these facts, it was extremely unwise for the International Broadcasting Bureau officials in Washington and the former RFE/RL management to propose cutting radio broadcasts to Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus, the homeland of the Boston bombings suspects, and to fire experienced political journalists working in Putin’s Russia. These programs need to be protected in the interest of media freedom and U.S. national security. Fired Radio Liberty journalists in Russia need to return to their former jobs for the same reasons.

U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) still broadcasts uncensored radio programs in local languages to the largely Muslim North Caucasus region in the Russian Federation, the reported home of the Boston bombing suspects. But if U.S. government bureaucrats and the Obama Administration had their way, these broadcasts, which include uncensored news about terrorism, would have been silent by now.

And even though radio broadcasts in Avar, Chechen and Circassian barely survived, RFE/RL is still short of dozens of experienced Russian-speaking reporters whose programs were once heard in the region. These reporters were fired last year by the former management of the station and have not yet returned to work. Russian is widely spoken in North Caucasus, which Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty describes as “one of the most violent and dangerous regions in the world, where media freedom and journalists remain under severe threat.”

Bureaucratic proposals to cut broadcasts to dangerous and strategically important areas of the world apparently prompted former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to declare shortly before leaving her office at the State Department that U.S. international broadcasting was largely “defunct.” She herself was an ex officio member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of these broadcasts, but like most other part-time members of the nine-person (now only five with four vacant positions) bipartisan BBG board, she was also extremely frustrated with the agency’s bureaucracy centered in the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) in Washington, DC.

The FY 2013 Broadcasting Board of Governors budget request prepared by former RFE/RL officials and their colleagues at the International Broadcasting Bureau called for ending broadcasting in Avar, Chechen and Circassian, some of the languages of the North Caucasus region from were the two Boston bombings suspects reportedly came from.

These cuts were not implemented because the FY 2013 budget did not pass in Congress. Human rights and media freedom NGOs vigorously opposed these cuts, as did many members of Congress who criticized them as completely misguided. But dozens of Russian-speaking Radio Liberty reporters were fired last year despite President Putin’s increasing authoritarianism. Their firing triggered protests from anti-Putin Russian politicians and human rights leaders.

While the budget is submitted by the administration, eliminating RFE/RL radio programs to the largely Muslim areas of the Russian Federation (also Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, in addition to North Caucuses was the idea of the former RFE/RL management team, some of whose members have subsequently resigned, and senior IBB officials who are still working for BBG in Washington but have recently fallen out of favor after their mistakes were exposed.

[aside]Fast Facts (for more see LINK to RFE/RL website)

RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service reports the news in one of the most violent and dangerous regions in the world, where media freedom and journalists remain under severe threat.
Languages: Avar, Chechen, Circassian
Established: 2002
Distribution: Radio (SW, satellite)
Coverage: Two hours daily
Location: Prague
Staff: 9 (Prague), 15 stringers

Media Environment
Freedom House Freedom of the Press Index, 2012: Not Free (172nd/197)
Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, 2012: 142nd/179
Media outlets in the North Caucasus face the same limitations as those elsewhere in Russia, with the additional hazard of being located in one of the most violent and dangerous regions in the world. Assassinations and bombings by both Islamist rebels and Russian security forces are common, and anyone viewed as a potential threat can be imprisoned.

Highlights
RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service is the only international broadcaster to provide objective news and analysis to the North Caucasus in Chechen, Circassian and Avar.
In February 2011, North Caucasus Service correspondents joined their colleagues from the Russian, Azerbaijani and Georgian Services in producing a Russian-language discussion program, ‘Free Talk,’ a news and discussion program that attempts to bridge the language gap in the fragmented region. “Free Talk” airs weekly on the Georgian public broadcasting network PIK (First Caucasus News).
North Caucasus Service’s reporting on Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov has been widely cited in major international media.[/aside]

In the FY 2013 BBG Congressional Budget Request, the same IBB officials also proposed cutting Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts to Tibet and eliminating VOA radio, television and Internet content in Cantonese to China.

Many members of Congress were outraged by these proposals and managed to block the proposed cuts to Tibet and China, but Radio Liberty Russian journalists were fired last September and more broadcasting cuts were announced just last week, including elimination of Voice of America radio to Iran.

Meanwhile, presidentially appointed board members in charge of U.S. international broadcasting began to have serious doubts about the competence of their senior staff. One BBG member, former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe, openly criticized RFE/RL and IBB officials and demanded management changes. Himself a Republican, he is supported by two Democratic members, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan. They have joined forces in a bipartisan effort to challenge the bureaucracy and to bring it under control.

After the former RFE/RL management team fired dozens of experienced Radio Liberty journalists in Russia just as President Putin intensified his crackdown on independent, Ashe, McCue and Meehan recruited Kevin Klose, a distinguished journalist and media executive, as new RFE/RL acting president and told him to restore various programs and positions previously eliminated. BBG members who supported the former RFE/RL management team and IBB senior staffers have either resigned or stopped attending BBG board meetings.

This allowed BBG members critical of programming cuts to Tibet, China and Muslim parts of the Russian Federation to initiate partial reforms designed to shake up IBB management. Sources tell BBG Watch that these reforms are being strongly resisted by senior IBB staffers.

But at least thanks to protests from media freedom NGOs, such as the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org) and intervention from members of Congress and activist BBG members, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty still broadcasts radio programs to North Caucasus, from where the Boston bombings suspects reportedly came from. RFE/RL’s new acting president Kevin Klose is reportedly working on returning fired Radio Liberty journalists to their previous jobs.

Still, much more remains to be done at the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Dozens of Russian-speaking Radio Liberty journalists who were fired by the former RFE/RL management team have not yet started broadcasting to Russia and the Caucasus region. International Broadcasting Bureau senior bureaucrats who had proposed cutting radio broadcasts to North Caucasus, including Chechnya, are still at their old jobs. They are now recommending cutting Voice of America radio broadcasts to Iran and reducing broadcasts to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Highly unpopular with journalists and other BBG employees, these executives are being protected by IBB Director Richard Lobo, who was appointed by President Obama. He has not done much except approving high bonuses for his senior staff despite them being rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employee surveys as being some of the worst managers in the entire federal government. The same surveys show that BBG employees have the lowest morale among federal agencies.

There may, however, be some hope on the horizon. The administration has proposed eliminating IBB Director’s position and replacing it with a CEO of U.S. international broadcasting who would report directly to the BBG board. Meanwhile, BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton has not been participating in BBG board and committee meetings since January. Due to his absence, the BBG board does not have a quorum and cannot deal with many urgent issues. Two of President’s Obama new appointees to serve on the BBG board, Jeff Shell to become BBG chairman and Matt Armstrong, are waiting to be confirmed by the Senate. Shell has been already waiting for many months, while Armstrong’s nomination has just been announced.

All of this means that despite the best efforts by Governors Ashe, McCue and Meehan and support from the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine, who represents Secretary Kerry at BBG meetings, U.S. international broadcasting needs farm more attention from both the White House and the U.S. Congress. It also needs more funding as it cannot compete with outlets like Al Jazeera.

U.S. international broadcasting is still the most cost efficient and most effective U.S. national security weapon and public diplomacy tool. But it can serve U.S. national security interests even better with the right management in place. To move forward the process of reform, all failed bureaucrats need to be removed. The Congress should investigate why dozens of Radio Liberty journalists in Russia were fired and radio programs to Chechnya and other Muslim areas of North Caucasus were nearly eliminated. The tragedy of the Boston terrorist bombings should be a wake up call for the administration and the Congress that U.S. broadcasting to the Russian Federation, including Chechnya and other parts of North Caucasus, cannot be ignored and left in the hands of incompetent bureaucrats.

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BBG Watch is republishing a BBG press release on North Caucasus experts at the BBG and portions of the BBG’s FY 2013 Congressional Budget Request. Fortunately, some of the cuts in the budget request were not implemented, but others were.

If government bureaucrats had their way, some of the experts on North Caucasus may have lost their jobs and many programs to the region  would have been eliminated.

BBG Press Release

RFE/RL And VOA Experts Available To Discuss Chechnya

FY 2013 BBG Congressional Budget Request

Program Reductions: RFE/RL [–$9.8 M]

Revamp Broadcasting to the Russian Federation [–$3.249 M]

Communicating with audiences across the Russian Federation is a perennial BBG priority given Russia’s role in the world as well as its limits on free press and free expression. Russia’s denial of RFE/RL access to local FM licenses and affiliations with local stations has in recent years pushed RFE/RL toward new media and alternative delivery platforms in the Russian Federation. This strategy has yielded significant growth in online audiences, inspiring new approaches to packaging and delivering unique and compelling content to RFE/RL’s niche audiences. Building on its success, RFE/RL will engage further in its robust digital migration efforts, adopting an enhanced web and mobile presence-only in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan and ending radio broadcasts. RFE/RL will end broadcasting in Avar, Chechen and Circassian but will offer targeted Russian-language web and mobile content to the North Caucasus. Efficiency measures will also allow some reductions in Russian service staff that will not derail the digital strategy or significantly diminish the remaining radio service. A total of 19 positions will be reduced in the Russian, North Caucasus, and Tatar-Bashkir Services.

FY 2013 Congressional Budget Request

Discontinue Broadcasting in Cantonese [–$.964 M]

VOA Cantonese products continue to have a negligible impact in the crowded South China media market. Audiences are fractional, even for non-news programming. The budget request eliminates VOA broadcasting in Cantonese. As Mandarin and Cantonese are the same written language, VOA will reach the Chinese population targeted by Cantonese on its website. RFA will continue Cantonese broadcasts. This consolidation would also reduce staffing by 7 positions.

FY 2013 BBG Congressional Budget Request

Reduce Duplication with RFA in Asia [–$2.167 M]

The budget request aims to reduce duplication in BBG radio broadcasts to Asia by minimizing VOA’s radio output and re-focusing VOA on television, which is rapidly becoming the medium of choice in Asia. The budget request reduces Burmese staffing, eliminates VOA Lao service SW transmissions, and minimizes its Vietnamese radio broadcasts. VOA would retain some Washington-based staff in the Lao and Vietnamese services to provide a ―Washington Bureau‖ as well as to maintain websites. The budget also eliminates VOA Tibetan language radio, while increasing airtime and resources for VOA’s popular Tibetan satellite television broadcast. RFA would pick up the best transmission hours for Tibetan radio and continue its extensive Tibetan radio broadcasts. This proposal would reduce staffing by one Burmese position, four positions in Lao, 10 positions in Vietnamese, and seven positions in Tibetan.

 

 

“Representative Brad Sherman (D–CA) wanted to know why the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) ignored the congressional mandate to keep broadcasting to Pakistan in several local languages. In spite of a specific $1.5 million appropriation for broadcasting to Pakistan, everything has been cut except programming in Urdu. “You would not dream of broadcasting to Los Angeles in only one language,” said Sherman.”

BBG Watch Commentary

Those who follow developments in U.S. international broadcasting know that most of these decisions are not made by members of the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), of which there are currently only five, but mainly by the executive staff of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) and its director Richard Lobo.

With the Interim Presiding Governors Michael Lynton failing to attend BBG meetings since January, the remaining BBG members have been working hard on plans to reform the IBB bureaucracy by making it accountable to the board, the Congress and American taxpayers. They have been distracted, however, by a major management crisis at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which initially had produced no response from the IBB senior staff and was allowed to get out of control until these BBG members intervened.

Helle Dale is right that the IBB bureaucracy is essentially ignoring Congress. The IBB bureaucracy is also trying hard to ignore and undermine BBG members: Victor Ashe, Susan McCue, Michael Meehan and Tara Sonenshine (Secretary Kerry’s representative). According to our sources, these presidential appointees are extremely frustrated with being kept in the dark, misinformed or ignored by IBB bureaucrats.

Whether the board will be able to bring in its own executive who would clean house and reform at least the federal part of the agency remains to be seen. For now, Ashe, McCue, Meehan and Sonenshine seem to be making some progress at RFE/RL thanks to Kevin Klose whom they had put in charge in January. This is a good model, for in our view surrogate broadcasters should retain as much independence as possible and report directly to the board rather than through a bureaucratic layer as they do now with disastrous effects for themselves and for U.S. international broadcasting (USIB). The key to reforming USIB is de-bureaucratization and de-centralization. The IBB senior staff is pushing for more centralization and more bureaucracy.

Thanks to the intervention of BBG members and their decision to hire Kevin Klose, two senior RFE/RL managers have already left and more personnel and programming changes are expected. It will be interesting to see whether BBG members can accomplish similar reforms at the IBB.

Several sources told us that Director Lobo and his team of senior executives are making it difficult to initiate the process of hiring a highly respected former Congressional staffer and U.S. international broadcasting expert who might become the agency’s CEO.

Director Lobo could have been in effect the agency’s CEO had he been willing to do this job. He is a presidential appointee and BBG members wanted him to show leadership. But he turned out to be an ineffective leader who kept the discredited management team, one of the very worst in the federal government. This made BBG members desperate for finding another executive who could reform the agency and report directly to them, sources told BBG Watch.

“A composite map of the world at night produced by NASA shows the vast areas of the globe—mainly Asia and sub-Saharan Africa—where there is no power grid to light up cities at night. Many of those areas, where reliance on Internet or television is impossible, are precisely the beneficiaries of U.S. international broadcasting. Let us not lose sight of that fact,” Helle Dale wrote. She is the Heritage Foundations Senior Fellow in Public Diplomacy studies.

READ: “Congress to Broadcasting Agency: Is Anyone Listening to Us?“, Helle Dale, The Foundry, April 18, 2013.

Radio Liberty in Exile covers Navalny trial with videos, photos, interviews and news reports

Supporter of Navalny, photo by Yuri Timofeev

Russian journalists summarily fired last September by the former American management of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) are proving once again that they not only enjoy name recognition and respect of their audience, but that they can cover important news events on all media platforms far better than most Russian reporting outlets, including the official Radio Liberty whose reputation and news coverage have been ruined.

Former Radio Liberty journalists have launched a major effort to cover the trial of Russian opposition leader and blogger Alexei Navalny who became famous for exposing official corruption and criticizing the authoritarian rule of President Putin. The official Radio Liberty in Russia is now run by Masha Gessen and her new team, which–critics say–lacks enough experience in covering political events on multimedia platforms.

Navalny arrives for his trial in Kirov, photo by Yuri Timofeev

Some of Radio Liberty in Exile multimedia reporters have been posting online an impressive number of videos, photos, interviews and news reports from the trial of Russian opposition leader and famous blogger Alexei Navalny, which began Wednesday in the city of Kirov.

Their news coverage can be followed on Radio Liberty in Exile Facebook page, Instagram, YouTube and on their Novaya Svoboda (New Liberty) news website.

Former Radio Liberty video and photography expert Yuri Timofeev has uploaded a number of photos and a video of Alexei Navalny speaking Wednesday in Kirov after a short court session.

Timofeev also uploaded a video of Alexei Navalny speaking to his supporters in Kirov before the start of his trial.

More Alexei Navalny photos by Yuri Timofeev can be seen on Radio Liberty in Exile Instagram page.

Despite no funding, their multimedia coverage of news events in Russia and abroad has been outstanding by any standards. It included streaming of online video during coverage of recent local elections in Russia. Some of these journalists are well known political reporters like Mikhail Sokolov, Lyudmila Telen, Kristina Gorelik, Elena Rykovtseva; cultural expert Marina Timasheva; media analyst and professor of journalism Anna Kachkaeva; poet Elena Fanailova; Elena Vlasenko; Anastasia Kirilenko; Yuri Timofeev and many others.

The difference between them and most members of the Masha Gessen’s team is that Radio Liberty in Exile journalists are well-known and highly respected media personalities among pro-democracy Russians, which gives them both credibility and exposure through other independent media outlets, where they publish or appear as guests. Many of them received prestigious awards for human rights reporting and online journalism.

Gessen has been accused in media reports of losing online audience, alienating major leaders of the pro-democracy movement in Russia who strongly support the fired Radio Liberty team, and downplaying news coverage on the station’s Russian website in favor of more feature-oriented journalism. She had also lost 20% of readers for the Vokrug Sveta geographic magazine, which she edited briefly prior to joining Radio Liberty, Russian media reported. According to other reports, the loss of online audience at Radio Liberty has been even greater.

Some changes in favor of more news coverage have been made after Gessen’s supporter and the man who hired her, former RFE/RL president Steven Korn, resigned and new acting president of RFE/RL Kevin Klose came on board in January. With some of the few remaining experienced Radio Liberty journalists emboldened by Klose’s arrival, political news coverage has improved, but it is still far from sufficient and the station’s reputation has not recovered. Radio Liberty in Russia is still without its best reporters and has no chance of regaining its former standing without them.

Members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of RFE/RL and other U.S. taxpayer-supported media freedom broadcasters, have been urging Klose to quickly resolve the crisis. According to sources, they are anxious to put the whole ugly episode behind them. Sources also tell us that BBG members realize that without the return of the fired team, the problem cannot be resolved and are willing to provide Klose with support and resources to achieve that goal.

The last thing BBG members want is to have a discredited official Radio Liberty website viewed as an enemy by pro-democracy Russians and a competing New Liberty website supported by the Russian opposition, one media expert observed. On top of that, they were recently exposed to Gessen’s judgement and leadership skills when she insulted one of them at an event in Washington in which she was being honored for her writing prior to joining Radio Liberty, the expert said. BBG members know that these accomplished journalists will never work for her and she will never be trusted or supported by most leading Russian human rights and opposition figures, the expert added.

Klose is reportedly working on returning fired journalists to their old jobs, but at least for now, many of them are without paid reporting work in Putin’s Russia, as the authoritarian government increases its suppression of free media. They are working as volunteers without any outside funding for Radio Liberty in Exile. Their group includes not only dozens of journalists who were fired but also their colleagues who resigned in protest, as well as many supporters. Thanks to them, Russians can get coverage of the Navalny trial from independent journalists whom they know, trust and respect. But they have suffered a great injustice, many of them are without paying jobs and face a bleak future if no one comes to their rescue.

Their firing was a tragedy, a great loss for U.S. international broadcasting and a public diplomacy disaster. This enormous mistake needs to be corrected as soon as possible. They are wonderful people and great professionals. They simply don’t deserve this kind of treatment from America.

Mr. Klose, please do something quickly to bring them back to Radio Liberty so they can continue their coverage of the Navalny trial as multimedia professionals working for American taxpayers. America will benefit from their experience, dedication and incredible bravery in defending human rights and democracy through accurate and objective journalism.

BBG Watch Commentary

Tara Sonenshine

Voice of America (VOA) interviewed Tara Sonenshine, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Secretary Sonenshine usually represents Secretary of State John Kerry at Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) meetings. She previously represented Hillary Clinton at these meetings. Secretary of State is an ex officio member of the BBG, which includes Voice of America and other U.S. government-funded media entities broadcasting and distributing news and information programs abroad.

The interview with Secretary Sonenshine will be broadcast in full on VOA radio program “Press Conference USA” hosted by Carol Castiel.

This is a short video from the interview. Secretary Sonenshine is being asked what is the biggest challenge in projecting U.S. image around the world?

Link to video.

For more visit Press Conference USA’s website.

We have not seen the full interview, but it is obvious to many that the bureaucrats in charge of U.S. international broadcasting are one of U.S. public diplomacy’s main liabilities.

Voice of America and International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) executives have been trying to eliminate current affairs programs, including VOA’s “Issues in the News.” Their attempt to eliminate this particular program, in which prominent Washington D.C. correspondents discuss topics making headlines around the world, ended in a failure after some BBG members protested. But the senior staff is still trying to end Voice of America radio broadcasts to Iran, to reduce radio transmissions to China, and to eliminate more than 20 positions in the understaffed Voice of America Central Newsroom.

The International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which supports but does not produce any programs and also includes a large and constantly growing bureaucracy, already consumes the largest portion (35%) of the BBG budget. This bureaucracy has become the engine behind program cuts and the main cause of public diplomacy fiascos.

Secretary Sonenshine recently visited Russia where dozens of highly popular and respected Radio Liberty journalists and Internet specialists were fired by the former management of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) with the knowledge and consent of IBB executives. The firing of Radio Liberty journalists triggered protests from famous Russian opposition political leaders and human rights activists, including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lyudmila Alexeeva, with whom Secretary Sonenshine met recently in Washington.

The incompetence of RFE/RL and IBB senior executives resulted in a public diplomacy disaster for the United States in Russia. According to sources, Secretary Sonenshine was extremely unhappy with the situation and vowed to keep a closer eye on the BBG bureaucracy, which her former boss Hillary Clinton called “defunct.” Despite bureaucratic resistance, BBG members have recently initiated some reforms and have put a seasoned journalist and media executive Kevin Klose in charge of RFE/RL.

Hopefully, if these reforms are successful, the BBG will no longer be a public diplomacy liability for the United States in places like Russia and China, but Secretary Sonenshine still has a lot of work to do at the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The bureaucracy does not give up easily.

The following is a description of the VOA’s “Press Conference USA” interview with Secretary Sonenshine.

Carol Castiel

Host Carol Castiel and VOA State Department Correspondent Scott Stearns interview Tara Sonenshine, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In a wide-ranging interview, Sonenshine speaks about the role of public diplomacy within U.S. foreign policy, projecting U.S. image, and responds to a series of questions.

For updates on Press Conference USA, and other Voice of America programs, follow host Carol Castiel on Twitter: @CarolCastielVOA

CUSIB Executive Director Ann Noonan at BBG's Feb. 2013 meeting

Ann Noonan, Executive Director of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org) gave an interview to Boxun.com, a Chinese website that covers international political news and human rights abuses in China, in which she condemned the targeting of dissidents’ children by the Chinese authorities. Noonan also defended Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA) Chinese radio programs which are facing reductions due to U.S. budget cuts, but also due to arbitrary decisions by the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), the executive arm of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of these broadcasts.

“We believe that radio broadcast resources are invaluable, especially for the poorer people who live in China and for those who live in the countryside, and we will continue fight for these broadcasts to be maintained by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US federal agency that has been trying to cut them, reduce them, and minimize their importance,” Ann Noonan told Boxun.com. “We will continue to appeal to the U.S. Congress to maintain and expand these radio broadcasts to China,” Noonan added.

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting 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. CUSIB supports journalism in defense of media freedom and human rights by the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio and TV Marti, Radio Sawa, Alhurra TV and other U.S. taxpayer-funded media programs for international audiences produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

At a recent BBG meeting in Washington, Noonan made comments as a member of the public, in which she applauded members of the bipartisan BBG board, including Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan, who are trying to reform the agency. She was at the same time critical of the IBB senior staff for resisting these reforms, mistreating employees, draining resources from programmers, cutting broadcasts and expanding its own bureaucracy. Speaking at the same meeting, Tim Shamble, president of the employee union, AFGE Local 1812, was also highly critical of senior IBB executives.

Another human rights activist interviewed by Boxun.com was a member of CUSIB’s Advisory Board, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers president Reggie Littlejohn. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is a broad-based, international coalition that opposes forced abortion and sexual slavery in China. Littlejohn is also a strong defender of U.S. radio broadcasting to China, as many of the women her organization tries to help live in the countryside, come from poor families, and cannot afford Internet access or buy and install devices designed to counter Internet censorship by the Chinese authorities.

Zhang Anni, Photo courtesy of Human Rights in China

In her comments for Boxun.com, Ann Noonan was reacting specifically to events in China on Feb. 27, when police arrived at the Hupo Primary school in Hefei city and took Zhang Anni, the daughter of activist Zhang Lin, out of class and brought her back home, sparking an online campaign to allow Zhang Anni to return to school.

The incident and the subsequent clashes between Zhang Anni supporters and unidentified assailants as the school officials refused to allow her to return to class were reported by Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.

See: “Clashes as Activist’s Daughter Is Denied Schooling”, Radio Free Asia, April 8, 2013.

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers website also reported on the plight of Zhang Anni, “China: Ten-Year-Old Girl Detained, Denied Food and Water.”

Photos of Zhang Anni and Zhang Lin were provided by another Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting Advisory Board member Jing Zhang, founder of Women’s Rights in China human rights NGO.

Ann Noonan’s comments were reported in English on Boxun.com, “China:Ten-Year-Old Girl Detained, Starved” and in Chinese, link. Boxun.com website has millions of visitors each month despite attempts by Chinese authorities to block it. They also block VOA and RFA websites. CUSIB supports Internet outreach and Internet censorship circumvention efforts by the BBG. CUSIB believes, however, that IBB’s attempts to reduce radio broadcasts are misguided and hurt Chinese human rights activists. According to CUSIB, these cuts are also unnecessary, as much greater savings could be achieved by shrinking and reforming the IBB bureaucracy.

Prior to founding the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting, Ann Noonan was President of the New York Chapter of the Visual Artists Guild. In 1999, she also founded Free Church for China, an NGO which researches and documents religious persecution in the PRC. Noonan was also a Senior Advisor at the Laogai Research Foundation, an NGO founded by another CUSIB member, Harry Wu, to gather information on and raise public awareness of the Laogai system of prison labor camps in China. Ann Noonan has been active in promoting women’s rights and religious freedom worldwide.

Comments for Boxun.com by Ann Noonan

Chinese dissident Zhang Lin, photo courtesy of Women's Rights in China

“My name is Ann Noonan and I am the Executive Director of the Committee for US International Broadcasting. I met Zhang Lin in 1998 in New York City. I remember that he was part of the Coalition for Pro-Democracy in China. On February 25, 1998, we held A Salute to Democracy in China and in New York Dinner.

New York City Former Mayor Ed Koch was the guest speaker, and many prestigious leaders attended. Among them were Laogai Research Foundation’s Harry Wu, and New York’s Central Labor Council former Secretary Ted Jacobsen.

Months later, we learned that Zhang Lin had returned to China and was arrested. In New York, we always refer to Zhang Lin as a tireless freedom fighter. When I served as the President of Free Church for China, we were sure to keep Zhang Lin’s profile in the public eye.

Most recently, we have learned that Zhang Lin’s daughter, Anni, has been singled out by China’s authorities. She has been humiliated by authorities who removed her from her school, detained her at the local police station for many hours, and have not allowed her to return to school.

Like many Americans, I am deeply concerned that any child should be denied an education because of the actions or inactions of their parents.

We at the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting have been fighting for media freedom for journalists who report on stories like these and stories about human rights abuse. When we recently learned that Voice of America radio broadcast services have been reduced using the excuse of sequestration, we raised our voices in Washington, DC and opposed any attempt to silence radio broadcasts to China.

We believe that radio broadcast resources are invaluable, especially for the poorer people who live in China and for those who live in the countryside, and we will continue fight for these broadcasts to be maintained by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US federal agency that has been trying to cut them, reduce them, and minimize their importance. We will continue to appeal to the US Congress to maintain and expand these radio broadcasts to China.

I’d like to say “Hi!” to Zhang Lin’s daughter, Anni, and to let her and all of your listeners know that the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting hopes Anni’s story will be heard by girls and young women throughout the Untied States. We believe they will give you great support and friendship.

I hope they let you go back to school so you can study and learn as much as you want, and when you are an educated woman, I hope you will be able to use these experiences to make your country and our world a safer place for children and families to live.”

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dinner in Washington

Judy Bachrach, Vanity Fair Photo

American journalist Judy Bachrach, who has previously reported on the firing of Radio Liberty journalists in Russia and the management crisis at the U.S. taxpayer-supported Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), published another article showing managerial mess at the media freedom institution even as its new acting president Kevin Klose is trying to reform it and restore its former prestige as a media freedom outlet for countries without free media. As Barchrach’s article, “Moscow on the Potomac” , World Affairs Journal, April 15, 2013, points out, Klose is facing a considerable managerial challenge in trying to do his job in Prague, the Czech Republic, where he is based, as do his bosses at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a federal agency in Washington, DC.

In her latest article,  Bachrach reports how an American official in charge of U.S. government’s international broadcasts, BBG board member and former diplomat Victor Ashe, went to the Newseum in Washington, DC at 6:45 PM last Wednesday pursuant to his invitation for the Media for Liberty Award ceremony honoring Masha Gessen, was told he was not welcome and was asked to leave. The message apparently came from Masha Gessen herself.  In her official job, she works for him and American taxpayers as a mid-level manager at Radio Liberty. American taxpayers pay for her three figure salary and other job benefits, as they do for all of Radio Liberty’s programs, its journalists and other employees.

A contributing editor for Vanity Fair, former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, The Washington Star, The Washington Post and a professor of investigative journalism at John Cabot University, Judy Bachrach  had previously described  for World Affairs Journal the complete disintegration of  Radio Liberty in Russia, Kazakhstan and in other countries. BBG Watch was the first to report in the U.S. on the problems at RFE/RL. Judy Bachrach was the first mainstream U.S. media reporter to write about it. Ashe was the first BBG Governor to call attention to the crisis. With the eventual support from other board members, the board brought Kevin Klose in early 2013 to deal with a journalistic emergency, loss of audience, and a public diplomacy disaster. Klose, a former Washington Post correspondent in Moscow, had already been once RFE/RL president and later served as president of National Public Radio (NPR).

Victor Ashe

BBG Governor Victor Ashe (far left) presents an award to Voice of America Swahili Service, July 2012.

Victor Ashe is one of Masha Gessen’s bosses, not her immediate supervisor (Kevin Klose is), but a member of the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting which includes Radio Liberty. He received his invitation to the award event for Ms. Gessen not from her, but from Greg Maffei, the CEO of Liberty Media Corporation which gave the award to Gessen. But when he arrived with his invitation in hand, Judy Barchrach reported that he was stopped at the door and told that the guest of honor, Masha Gessen, did not want him to attend. “I’m sorry, but the guest of honor has requested that you not be admitted to the dinner,” Bachrach quotes one of the event’s organizers as telling Ambassador Ashe. The same message was repeated later by a Liberty Media Corporation employee.

Victor Ashe is a sixty-eight year old U.S. official who has spent most of his life in public service, including many years as a mayor of Knoxville, TN, and later as a U.S. Ambassador to Poland. A popular politician and respected diplomat, he has been honored many times for his service to his country and last year received the Bene Merito Award from Poland’s government for outstanding contributions to strengthening U.S.-Polish relations.

As one of the top officials in charge of U.S. international broadcasting, he has distinguished himself by his calls for greater transparency, demands for accountability from government managers and showing concern for improving poor employee morale at the Broadcasting Board of Governors. To the great discomfort of government bureaucrats running the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)–the administrative arm of the agency–Ashe was instrumental in getting BBG open board meetings to be streamed online and published his email address and telephone number to invite comments from the public on how the U.S. could do a better job of communicating with audiences abroad. None of this made him popular with the agency’s executive staff, which launched an anonymous smear campaign against him, but other BBG members, BBG employees, their AFGE Local 1812 union, and media freedom NGOs came to his defense. Victor Ashe and two other board governors, Susan McCue and Michael Meehan, spearheaded major reforms at RFE/RL and at the BBG headquarters in Washington.

Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and author of an English-language biography of Russia’s President Putin, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. She described and criticized him as a dictator, but her book also shows him as a strong leader and is the first one providing details of his personal life and presenting his human side to English readers.

In September 2012, President Putin had invited Gessen to a semi-private meeting at the Kremlin in an apparent effort to persuade her not to leave an editorial position at a geographic magazine, which he sponsors, over her refusal to cover one of his publicity stunts. Accounts vary, but Gessen apparently first accepted his request and then turned it down. There is no reliable account as to what else might have been discussed at that meeting, a point made by Judy Bachrach in her article. Shortly after her meeting with Putin, former RFE/RL president Steven Korn announced that Gessen will be working for Radio Liberty.

Since October 1, 2012, Gessen has been the director of the Russian Service of Radio Liberty. Her office is in Moscow, where she lives. Her housing allowance, as Judy Bachrach reports, is paid for by American taxpayers. While not technically employed by the U.S. government, Gessen is representing America to the Russian public. Her actions are closely watched by the Russians who are familiar with Radio Liberty, especially by independent journalists, human rights NGOs and anti-Putin political leaders. She is probably one of the most visible U.S. public diplomacy figures in Russia and the most controversial because of what happened to Radio Liberty. Mikhail Gorbachev, former reformist Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov are among many anti-Putin leaders who have criticized personnel and programming changes at Radio Liberty. Others, including the Moscow Helsinki Group Chairwoman Lyudmila Alexeeva, have sent protest letters to the Obama administration officials, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who was an ex officio BBG member, and to members of the U.S. Congress.

Problems Remain

Masha Gessen was being honored last Wednesday by a for-profit group of rich American investors, Liberty Media Corporation, not for her current work at Radio Liberty, but specifically for her article, “The Wrath of Putin,” which appeared in the April 2012 issue of Vanity Fair magazine. She was given a $50,000 prize.

It could have been also a nice publicity event for RFE/RL, her current employer, and for the BBG. Instead, the organizers restricted media coverage and the evening became yet another embarrassment for the U.S. government, as well as for the Liberty Media Corporation and its chairman John Malone.

This was a truly bizarre development, since Ashe is a presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) who has just been elected to be the co-chair of the corporate board of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, one of several U.S. taxpayer-supported media entities managed by the BBG. He was also just elected chairman of the  RFE/RL board’s Audit Committee. His job is to make sure that U.S. taxpayers’ money is well spent on Masha Gessen’s salary and the programs for Russia she produces.

As Ambassador Ashe was being told that he was a persona non grata at the event and that his invitation had been withdrawn, he was overheard saying that this sounded more like something which would happen in Moscow under Putin than here in the United States. Another BBG member who heard later about what happened to Victor Ashe reacted by describing the withdrawing of the invitation as bizarre and petty.

Several of his Washington friends, including former and current members of Congress who saw Ashe standing in the lobby, were asking why Masha Gessen would want to disinvite a distinguished American, a former U.S. Ambassador, and the vice chair of the public board she works for?

There are several possible answers to this question — none of them justifying the humiliating treatment of an outstanding public servant, but certainly raising serious doubts about Masha Gessen.

What Upset Masha Gessen?

Masha Gessen, RFERL website photo

While this does not justify what happened to Victor Ashe, he, Lyudmila Alexeeva and others may have upset Masha Gessen by defending the honor of dozens of Radio Liberty journalists who had been abruptly fired shortly before the previous management of RFE/RL gave Gessen her job and also hired some of her associates to fill some of the positions of the fired staff. Ashe, Alexeeva and others have also been highly critical of the man who had hired Gessen and later resigned, former RFE/RL president Steven Korn. Ashe had demanded his resignation and has been calling for returning the fired journalists to work at Radio Liberty. Many of them are well known and highly respected by pro-democracy Russians.

Their firing, which Ashe called a tragedy and apologized for it as an individual member of the BBG, has met with moral outrage in Russia. Nearly all leading human rights activists and anti-Putin politicians condemned it, but notably Masha Gessen failed to come to the journalists’ defense. She accused some of them of slandering her, a criminal offense in Putin’s Russia. Prior to accepting her permanent position, Gessen had worked as a private management consultant to former RFE/RL president Steven Korn who made the decision to fire the journalists, although he maintains that they all had resigned voluntarily and were treated with great respect. Afterwards, Masha Gessen made the following statement, which many Russians found incredulous.

”The firings of the staff and the change in its structure were planned quite some time ago. My arrival was only a part of that plan and not the reason for the firings.”

She also defended the decision to fire Radio Liberty journalists.

“I have no reason to doubt the correctness of decisions: everything I know about the process of decision-making, makes me think that the decisions are correct. The fact that they are taken not by me – is just a historical fact.”

According to Russian press reports, Masha Gessen has become alienated from most of the intellectual and independent media community which supports the fired group, now known as Radio Liberty in Exile and which now has its own Novaya Svoboda (New Liberty) website. Perhaps the most famous Russian human rights leader, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Lyudmila Alexeeva, said that Gessen does not understand the mission of Radio Liberty and should leave. The number of visitors to the Radio Liberty Russian website has dropped significantly, according to media reports. The station’s reputation and prestige evaporated.

All of these developments have become a big concern for Ashe and for some of his colleagues on the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Their response was the appointment of Kevin Klose, a distinguished journalist, media executive and professor of journalism, to deal with the crisis. As acting president of RFE/RL, Klose became Masha Gessen’s immediate boss. He had met in Moscow with representatives of the fired journalists and with Lyudmila Alexeeva and other Russian human rights leaders who support them. He invited Alexeeva to another meeting in Washington. He also received an invitation to participate the the Media for Liberty Award ceremony for Masha Gessen.

Detailed Account of What Happened at the Masha Gessen Event

This is an account of what happened pulled together from Judy Bachrach’s article, various other witnesses and sources, and Liberty Media Corporation statements.

Broadcasting Board of Governors member and vice-chair of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty corporate board Ambassador Victor Ashe arrived at the door of Newseum in Washington D.C. last Wednesday at about 6:45 PM, was stopped and told that his name is not on the list of invited guests. He had received the invitation for himself and one extra guest on March 15 from Greg Maffei, Liberty Media CEO. He had responded, accepted the invitation and informed Liberty Media that a journalist Judy Bachrach would accompany him. Bacharach had reported previously on the Radio Liberty crisis for the World Affairs Journal. While standing in the lobby, several people, including former Tennessee Congressman Bart Gordon and former assistant Defense Secretary Powell Moore, came by to greet Ashe and inquired what was the problem.

Ashe told them that he was not on the list and had to await a decision on his admittance from the event organizers. By this time, Kevin Klose, the new acting president and CEO of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty came by and stopped. He was surprised to see Ashe being barred from entering. Klose said he would wait with Ashe until the problem is resolved. He also said that would not attend the event if Ashe is not admitted. Klose is Gessen’s most immediate supervisor. He already knew that Victor Ashe has just been named the new vice chair of RFE/RL board and chair of its Audit Committee in addition to being a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors which has the ultimate authority over Radio Liberty.

Klose volunteered to the Liberty Media event organizers that he would give up his seat to allow Ashe to attend, but Ashe told Klose that he would not take his seat. (It turned out later that Klose was to be seated at the main table where the guest of honor Masha Gessen and Liberty Media Corporation president, billionaire John Malone, were also seated.)

Shortly thereafter, Heather Lipp of Liberty Media Corporation came back after apparently conferring with Masha Gessen and informed Victor Ashe that his invitation had been withdrawn and that the guest of honor Masha Gessen does not want him to attend. Ashe asked why he was not told much earlier about his invitation being rescinded as he had turned down other invitations to accept this one. Heather Lipp of Liberty Media said at that point that she had no record of Ashe responding. Ashe asked how Ms. Gessen could say she did not want him to attend if his name was not on the list. A guest asked whether Ms. Gessen was psychic.

By this time, Kevin Klose said he would go inside and speak directly to Masha Gessen, informing her that it was inappropriate to attempt to bar Ashe from attending when he had been invited by the event organizers and had a copy of the invitation with him. By this time, journalist Judy Bachrach had already arrived and was left standing with Ashe. She was also barred from entering.

Ashe commented that this sounded more like something that would happen in Moscow under Putin than here in the United States. Klose again indicated he would not attend if Ashe was barred.

Another 7 minutes went by and the total time spent at the front door awaiting for the powers to be to decide that to do with Ashe was about 20 minutes. While inside, Klose apparently did not talk to Gessen directly as she was in the company others and he was afraid that if he confronted her it could create a scene. He apparently asked one of the Liberty Media Corporation handlers to deliver his message to Gessen.

Klose (whose name on his handwritten name tag was misspelled as “Close”) then returned and informed Ashe that Gessen had relented and said she had no objection to his presence at the event. Ashe and Judy Bachrach finally got into the gala event where several VIPs, such as Senator Maria Cantwell (D – WA) and Senator Michael Bennett (D – CO) were attending along with Congressman James Clyburn (D – SC) of South Carolina and Congressman Mike Coffman (R – CO) of Colorado.

Ashe shrugged off the whole incident and the insult while Klose made fun of his name being misspelled as “Close.” Ashe later made fun of the incident with a comment “a funny thing happened to me on the way to dinner in Washington, DC.” Klose would not comment on the attempt to ban Ashe from the event, but said that Masha Gessen is a gifted reporter whose work is worthy of Vanity Fair, a statement that most people would not disagree with. Klose also said that he was glad that he and Ambassador Ashe were present at “a celebration of courageous personal journalism.”

Klose did not mention the award for Masha Gessen or the incident in his remarks later in the week at the open BBG board meeting in Washington. Normally, heads of BBG’s media entities brag to no end about such awards. Liberty Media Corporation has not yet posted anything on its website about the award for Masha Gessen. RFE/RL and BBG English-language websites also posted no press releases about the award for Gessen, but the RFE/RL English website had an announcement, “RFE/RL’s Gessen Honored For ‘Vanity Fair’ Putin-Khodorkovsky Profile,” slugged as “Communications / Kudos & Awards.” By calling it something else than a news story, editors apparently could justify not reporting on the incident with Ambassador Ashe or the ongoing controversy over the fired Radio Liberty journalists. The RFE/RL announcement quotes Kevin Klose:

“Masha Gessen’s detailed and enormously readable Vanity Fair article reveals a battleground where iron-willed men maneuver for advantage and retribution,” said RFE/RL’s Acting President and CEO Kevin Klose. “It’s a clear-eyed chronicle that informs and elucidates; it is both necessary and courageous.”

The RFE/RL announcement does not provide for readers to leave comments. (UPDATE: It appears that after we published this information, the article/announcement has been removed from the RFE/RL website.)

Gessen received a $50,000 check along with the Media for Liberty Award. About 70 persons were in attendance seated at 7 tables of 10 each.  The acoustics were not good and Gessen’s comments were barely audible along with John Stossel’s comments which lasted 20 minutes. Sources who had problems hearing her speech believe that Gessen did not mention the fired Radio Liberty journalists or they would have been told that she did.

Liberty Media Corporation Statements

Ms. Lipp of Liberty Media Corporation later said that “we apologized to Ambassador Ashe and his guest at the event. We regret this unfortunate situation and are pleased that they were able to attend the event.” Other sources told us that the only apology came for “a nice young man” working for an independent contractor who was responsible for setting up the event for Liberty Media.

Liberty Media issued the following explanation in response to media inquiries:

“Ms. Gessen is being honored for her article, “The Wrath of Putin,” which appeared in the April 2012 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, which we believe fit the criteria of the award — to explore the link between economic and political liberty – and was evaluated on specific criteria including relevance to the public discourse, educational value, mastery of the media format and thematic relevance.

We are aware, based on the reporting and opinion articles in public media, of the situation with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty in Russia, but it would be inappropriate for us to comment on those matters. To be clear, the focus of our panel was specifically and solely on Ms. Gessen’s article for Vanity Fair Magazine.

As it relates to the request for media credentials, we hope you will understand that this event is invitation only to persons in the media, political and other related fields.  There will be no working media in attendance at the event.  Therefore, we must decline your request for media accreditation to attend and cover the event.”

What Does This All Mean?

Ambassador Ashe’s comment that “this sounded more like something that would happen in Moscow under Putin than here in the United States” strikes us as being right on the mark, as does the tile of Ms. Bachrach’s article, “Moscow on the Potomac.”

An additional irony is that when Elena Vlasenko, one of the Radio Liberty journalists who had resigned in protest, received the Andrei Sakharov Award for Human Right Journalism, specifically for her online reporting, Gessen apparently justified not covering the ceremony by describing it as unfortunately a low profile news event in Russia.

At least prior to the publication of Bachrach’s article, Gessen apparently did not respond to any media requests for her comment about the incident at her award ceremony in Washington.

Ambassador Ashe is not the only person showing concern over the firing of Radio Liberty journalists. Other BBG members, including RFE/RL board chair Susan McCue, are also deeply alarmed and are working with Kevin Klose to solve the crisis.

Ann Noonan, Executive Director of the independent, volunteer Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) has repeatedly called for the reinstatement of the fired journalists, making several appeals at open BBG meetings. In a Russian media interview, Gessen lashed against Noonan, describing her activities and those of other American NGO’s members as “a trick with mirrors: they serve themselves, illuminate themselves, inflate scandal.” She reportedly also told Russian media after her patron Steven Korn had resigned that she will stay at Radio Liberty no matter what.

In commenting on the RFE/RL leaders who had dismissed Radio Liberty journalists, Freedom House president David Kramer said that “nothing short of major change is required, meaning a complete housecleaning of the top leadership.” “The damage they have done is immeasurable,” Kramer added.

Pussy Riot type protest poster in defense of fired Radio Liberty journalists.

Supporters of media freedom in Russia published a Pussy Riot type protest poster, calling on Liberty Media not to forget 40 fired Radio Liberty journalists as the American investment company honors Masha Gessen. The poster shows a naked young woman covering her chest with her arms and a sign: “Liberty Media, Don’t Forget 40 Fired RFE/RL Journalists in Russia.” Many of Radio Liberty journalists, except those hired by Masha Gessen, feel the same way and are not longer afraid to express these views in public.

But it appears that it was a comment like the one below from Ambassador Ashe in support of the fired Radio Liberty journalists that apparently got him in trouble with Masha Gessen.

Being a good reporter is not enough. Many of the fired Radio Liberty staffers are also outstanding, award-winning reporters, some of them far better known and certainly more respected in Russia for their independent journalistic work than Masha Gessen whose account of her meeting with President Putin was far from complete or well presented.

After years of dedicated service to America and democracy in Russia, these journalists were thrown on the street by the former American management of RFE/RL, not even allowed to say good bye to their radio and online audiences of many years. They are gifted and brave, but most of them have no chance to make a living as independent reporters under President Putin’s rule unless they are allowed to return to Radio Liberty.

The question to be asked is not who is a good reporter but who has good judgement, good managerial and people skills, trust and support of the pro-democracy public in Russia and ability to lead the Russian Service of Radio Liberty as president Putin continues to clamp down on media freedom. The bizarre and embarrassing incident last Wednesday, it seems to us, provides at least part of the answer to this question. As suggested by Lyudmila Alexeeva and others, Masha Gessen should leave as a manager at Radio Liberty and use her talents as a writer and reporter elsewhere. Practically every independent Russian journalist, human rights activist and opposition leader agrees that this is the only way to save Radio Liberty’s important role an alternative source of news and commentary in Putin’s Russia.

BBG Governor Victor Ashe Commenting on the Fired Radio Liberty Journalists

“We cannot let the tragic events at the Moscow Bureau over the past six months go unmentioned. As one Board member, As one individual Governor, I want to apologize for what happened. I can assure you the Board was never informed in any significant way as to what happened. That does not lessen the scope or the manner in which decisions were made and implemented. I feel with Kevin Klose, RFE/RL has a new leader who generates confidence and deserves our support as he works to deal with the situation.” — Victor Ashe, BBG Governor

Get to Know Some of the Fired Radio Liberty Journalists and Their Colleagues Who Resigned in Protest

Watch this Radio Liberty in Exile’s “US CONGRESS HELP US” video on YouTube.

“Mindful of the damage to RFE/RL’s reputation in Russia caused by the previous RFE/RL management, CUSIB remains aggrieved that dozens of courageous journalists who were fired from Radio Liberty in Moscow in September 2012 have not yet been reinstated.

More than 6 months have passed, but we will remain vigilant on behalf of these brave reporters. We expect that good news about them will be heard later this month and that they will be brought back to Radio Liberty.” — Ann Noonan, Executive Director, Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB)

April 11, 2013 meeting of the Broadcasting Board of Governors

BBG Watch is reposting the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ (BBG) press release on their open meeting in Washington on April 11. The press release gleefully ignores enormous hardships imposed by the management on the agency’s employees, which were at least touched upon although not fully discussed during the meeting. The press release also does not mention that due to the absence of BBG’s Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton, this was not a formal board meeting and neither was the previous one in February.

No explanation was provided for Lynton’s prolonged and unexplained absenteeism from BBG board duties.

The official BBG press release also does not refer to the elimination of Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Iran and  other cuts and program reductions at VOA, Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), and Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB). There is nothing in the press release about the proposed elimination of over 80 employee positions at the Voice of America alone.

The BBG press release also does not summarize public comments during the meeting.

The press release rightfully notes several significant achievements of BBG journalists, broadcasters and IBB support employees. All of them do a great job of delivering news and uncensored information to many countries without free media. The press release also shows that BBG Governors who were present, Ambassador Victor Ashe and Michael Meehan, conducted a productive meeting, albeit without a quorum, and focused on a number of issues of great concern to BBG staff. It was noted by one of BBG members that they managed to save a Voice of America radio program “Issues in the News,” which the management wanted to eliminate along with many others.

Although not reflected in the press release, the continued poor performance of IBB executives was evident throughout the meeting, especially during the public comments period.

Ann Noonan, Executive Director of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB), spoke for three minutes. Tim Shamble, the President of the BBG employee union, AFGE Local 1812, also spoke. Both of them focused on serious problems at the agency, which the BBG press release ignored.

Shamble pointed out that the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) executives are refusing to settle a suit filed by the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) employees who were illegally RIFed.

Despite several judgements against the agency and practically no hope that the agency will ever prevail in court, the Office of General Counsel and IBB’s top leadership (Acting General Counsel Paul Kollmer-Dorsey, IBB Director Richard Lobo and IBB Deputy Director Jeff Trimble) refuse to settle the case while RIFed employees are threatened with foreclosures on their homes and are otherwise exposed to great hardships. U.S. taxpayers will also be losing millions of dollars because of the delay tactics adopted by these officials.

In the case of illegally fired OCB employees, IBB officials choose to ignore Arbitrator’s decision and that of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). The FLRA rejected all of the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ exceptions to Arbitrator Suzanne R. Butler’s decision in the Office of Cuba Broadcasting 2009 RIF (reduction-in-force) case involving illegal firings of OCB broadcasters. But the Agency Executive Staff has apparently told agency lawyers to continue to appeal that supposedly binding decision. The Director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, along with the rest of the Agency Executives, refuse to honor the two judicial decisions which overwhelmingly supported the RIFed employees and to re-hire and compensate them for the unjustifiable lay-offs and hardship.

In painting the picture of the top IBB officials’ contempt for BBG employees and the law, Tim Shamble explained how ironic it is that IBB executive staff is talking to the union about ways of improving dismal employee morale — an initiative the union president welcomed — while ignoring the plight of the illegally RIFed OCB broadcasters.  Shamble also pointed out that IBB officials are even refusing to agree in union-management negotiations to the use of such terms as “fairness” and “dignity.” IBB officials participating in these negotiations along with others have been consistently rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employee surveys as being some of the worst managers in the federal government.

BBG’s Ambassador Victor Ashe took a note of these issues during the meeting by asking IBB and OCB officials to make a strong effort to resolve the case of illegal RIFs at OCB and to save U.S. taxpayers’ money. He also indicated that the management’s inability to come to terms with the union on a new contract may also be a waste of taxpayers money in addition to making employee morale even worse than it is. It was clear from looking at the IBB officials that since the money does not come out of their own pockets they could care less and are going to ignore Ambassador Ashe’s comments.

CUSIB Executive Director Ann Noonan told BBG Watch that in addition to her prepared statement she also wanted to express her appreciation for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) acting president Kevin Klose’s “powerful and persuasive explanation how surrogate broadcasters and the Voice of America complement each other’s work and in different but effective ways serve their audiences, help to advance freedom and protect America’s security and other interests abroad.” Noonan also wanted to express her appreciation for Governor Michael Meehan’s efforts to improve the delivery of BBG programs into China and Tibet and for his leadership together with Susan McCue, Ambassador Ashe and acting RFE/RL president Kevin Klose in resolving the management crisis at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

For Immediate Release
April 12, 2013

CUSIB Executive Director Ann Noonan Congratulates Susan McCue and Victor Ashe on Becoming New Chair and Vice-Chair of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Board, Opposes Cuts in Broadcast Services

Ann Noonan, CUSIB Executive Director

CUSIB Executive Director Ann Noonan presented the following remarks at the Public Comment section of the BBG Open Meeting held on April 11, 2013 in Washington, D.C.:

On behalf of CUSIB, I’d like to echo our heartfelt congratulations that was expressed yesterday by our Director Ted Lipien, to both Susan McCue who has been elected to serve as Chair of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Board, and to Victor Ashe who has been elected to serve as the Vice-Chair.

We also congratulate Tenzin Tethong who was chosen to lead Radio Free Asia (RFA) Tibetan Service. CUSIB remains deeply concerned about the ongoing and desperate situation in Tibet which is causing the number of self-immolations to rise. We continue to support all RFA and VOA services for the people in Tibet with the hope that these communications will help their plight and offer them hope.

CUSIB is completely opposed to the proposed elimination of VOA radio broadcasts to Iran, and reduction of radio broadcasts to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Surely, money for these programs, critical for U.S. national security, can be found within the vast non-programming resources and bureaucracy of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB). We appeal to Congress NOT to allow these cuts to be implemented. Congress should provide individual media entities with more funding while insisting that the IBB management structure be greatly reduced and reformed. Resources should be given directly to program producers, who can manage them more wisely and more efficiently.

CUSIB opposes the current sequester cuts to VOA Cantonese and Mandarin Services. It is inexcusable to use sequestration to silence U.S. radio broadcasting while keeping the bureaucracy largely intact.

We all know that maintaining short wave and medium wave radio transmissions is an inexpensive and crucial use of resources to reach those who are too poor to afford other media platforms or can’t use them for other reasons. Many people who live in China’s countryside have traditionally relied upon these radio broadcasts and continue to do so. As you know, the Chinese government blocks the Internet and only very few are able to circumvent this kind of censorship.

VOA Cantonese has lost 1 short-wave and 1 medium-wave transmission, and Mandarin Service has lost 2 short-wave transmissions. VOA contractors are forced to take off at least one day every two weeks. Some foreign stringers need to cut back their contract services by around 30% or face layoffs until September 30. This is unacceptable.

We urge RFE/RL to listen to appeals from the Czech Helsinki Committee and other human rights organizations to settle its pending overseas discrimination lawsuits brought by its former foreign employees in Prague. RFE/RL should be a model of human rights and labor rights observance, NOT a target of criticism by foreign media and accusations of hypocrisy.

Mindful of the damage to RFERL’s reputation in Russia caused by the previous RFERL management, CUSIB remains aggrieved that dozens of courageous journalists who were fired from Radio Liberty in Moscow in September 2012 have not yet been reinstated.

More than 6 months have passed, but we will remain vigilant on behalf of these brave reporters. We expect that good news about them will be heard later this month and that they will be brought back to Radio Liberty.

Thank you.

For further information, please contact:

Ann Noonan, co-founder and Executive Director
Tel. 646-251-6069

Ted Lipien, co-founder
Tel. 415-793-1642

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.

BBG Press Release

BBG Highlights Strategic Interests In Transitioning Societies

April 11, 2013

Washington, DC – The Broadcasting Board of Governors today discussed innovations across the agency in delivering independent news to transitioning societies, and the implications of the FY 2014 budget request for U.S. international media.

Governors Michael Meehan and Victor Ashe focused at the start on the many threats against BBG journalists worldwide, pausing in remembrance of Somali journalist Mohammed Ali Nuxurkey, who worked for VOA in Mogadishu. On March 18, Nuxurkey was sitting in a café when he was killed by a suicide bomber.

“His death is a sad reminder of the danger reporters face because they live in the volatile places we report on,” said BBG Governor Meehan, who presided over the meeting. Meehan also recounted details of other threats to BBG journalists in Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Cambodia. He reiterated calls for information and the release of Alhurra reporter Bashar Fahmi, who has been missing in Syria for more than seven months.”

Governor Meehan also commended the work of those who help make the transmissions possible. “I’d like to make special mention of the people behind the scenes who work under the same conditions, sometimes at risk to their lives, to help bring the light of truth to people living under repressive regimes and in conflict zones,” he said.

In the context of this volatile global media environment the Board discussed its just-released FY2014 budget request.  The BBG’s $731 million request includes proposed investments designed to support initiatives to counter violent extremism, with particular focus on the Trans-Sahel and Maghreb regions of Africa, along with an enhanced reporting capability in Burma.

Discussion at the meeting highlighted the importance of increased funding for the Internet Anti-Censorship program as a key initiative to serve audiences in countries that lack Internet freedom.  The Board noted the inclusion in the budget of a proposal to establish a Chief Executive Officer for all civilian U.S. international media. Establishing a CEO is an important objective of the BBG and the Administration.

The Board also received an update on the status of changes to the law that soon will allow greater access in the United States to content produced across the BBG.  Draft guidelines on how the agency will handle domestic requests for materials are under development and will be published for public comment following review by the office of management and budget. The changes, made to a law that is commonly known as Smith-Mundt, will take effect on July 2, 2013.

In reports delivered to the Board, leadership of the BBG-supported broadcasters outlined new strategies, programming and platforms that are being used to bring the light of truth to conflict zones.  Voice of America Director David Ensor detailed new initiatives in Africa, including an SMS service in Nigeria, new FM and mobile services in Mali, and a new FM service in South Sudan. Acting President for RFE/RL Kevin Klose stressed the importance of the free, independent, fact-based journalism in transitioning societies and thanked the BBG for its assistance in providing shortwave transmissions for their Uzbek and to Turkmen services at “the exact time it was needed.” Radio Free Asia President Libby Liu presented a video made by RFA journalists of violent communal clashes in Burma – the only video known to have made it out of the country.  Office of Cuba Broadcasting President Carlos Garcia-Perez and Middle East Broadcasting Networks President Brian Conniff also provided reports.

Governor Meehan also took a moment to recognize the “tireless and selfless service” of Dennis Mulhaupt, who resigned from the Board earlier in the week. As a result of his departure, Governor Susan McCue will chair the RFE/RL corporate board and Governor Victor Ashe will serve as vice chair. Governor Ashe was also chosen to chair the audit committee for RFE/RL.

The Governance Committee will recommend to the full Board that Susan McCue become the committee chair.

Under a new policy, members of the public who had registered to attend the meeting were given the opportunity to speak for up to three minutes.

The Board will reconvene on April 24 and plans to hold a town hall meeting on May 15.  Further details will be posted on www.bbg.gov as they become available.

Video of the board meeting can be viewed here.

Matt Armstrong

President Obama announced his intent to nominate Matthew C. Armstrong to serve as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the bipartisan federal board in charge of U.S. international broadcasting. The board is now down to five members, instead of nine, and has as its Interim Presiding Governor, Michael Lynton, who has not been showing up for meetings in recent months. Armstrong is a Republican nominee. He will presumably fill a vacancy created with the departure of Dana Perino.

Matt Armstrong, and another nominee Jeff Shell who is President Obama’s Democratic choice to become the BBG chairman, still have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The confirmation process can take several months.

Meanwhile, because of Michael Lynton’s prolonged and unexplained absence, the BBG board cannot hold formal meetings or vote on pressing issues. Their last meeting on April 11 was not a formal meeting.

Three BBG members, Ambassador Victor Ashe, Susan McCue and Michael Meehen, however, have been active in trying to provide leadership and oversight. They have been supported by Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine who represents Secretary Kerry at BBG meetings. They can still vote as corporate board members of various BBG private broadcasting entities. They have been especially engaged lately in pushing for management reforms at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and have selected Kevin Klose as RFE/RL’s new acting president.

Matt Armstrong served as Executive Director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. He is a publisher of the MountainRunner blog on public diplomacy and strategic communication. His expertise is mainly in public diplomacy and journalism, but he has been publishing articles on his blog on U.S. international broadcasting, both his own and by other experts.

In January 2012, Armstrong published an article by the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) director Ted Lipien outlining what kind of members and vision the Boadcasting Board of Governors should have, “U.S. international broadcasting needs a new leadership, new plan, and more public scrutiny,” MountainRunner.us, January 30, 2012.

BBG Watch welcomes the nomination of Matt Armstrong to serve on the BBG board. His expertise in public diplomacy will strengthen this very important institution and will help other BBG members and any future CEO in their efforts to reform the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), the worst managed organization within the federal government. We hope that Mr. Armstrong will help to transform the IBB from a centralized bureaucracy bent on increasing its power into a lean support organization that serves rather than issues commands to individual media entities.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 11, 2013

President Obama Announces Another Key Administration Post
 
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key Administration post:
 
·         Matthew C. Armstrong – Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors  
 
President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individual to a key Administration post:
 
Matthew C. Armstrong, Nominee for Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors

Matthew C. Armstrong is an author, speaker, and strategist on issues related to public diplomacy.  In 2011, he served as Executive Director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.  Previously, Mr. Armstrong was an adjunct professor of public diplomacy at the Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Southern California.  In 2010, he founded and served as President of the MountainRunner Institute and published a blog on public diplomacy and strategic communication.  He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Diplomacy Council and a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.  Mr. Armstrong received a B.A. and an M.P.D. from the University of Southern California.   
 
###
 
 

Susan McCue

Victor Ashe

Two Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) members who have been some of the strongest supporters of reforms at Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) were elected today (April 10, 2013) to lead the RFE/RL corporate board. Susan McCue has become RFE/RL Corporate Board Chair and Ambassador Victor Ashe  RFE/RL Corporate Board Vice-Chair. McCue, who was previously RFE/RL Board Vice-Chair, is replacing Dennis Mulhaupt as the head of the corporate board. Mulhaupt resigned from the BBG on Tuesday (April 9) and from his RFE/RL board position. RFE/RL’s corporate board is made up of all members of the BBG. There are now only five BBG members, instead of nine.

Absentee BBG Interim Presiding Governor Michael Lynton has missed BBG board and committee meetings, as well as RFE/RL board meetings, since January.  After the resignation of Dennis Mulhaupt, the BBG board would not have a quorum if Lynton were not present, but RFE/RL board needs only four members to have a quorum.

McCue and Ashe have been especially active recently trying to resolve the management crisis at RFE/RL. They have received strong support from BBG member Michael Meehan and Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine who represents Secretary of State John Kerry at BBG and RFE/RL board meetings. Kerry is an ex officio member of both BBG and RFE/RL boards.

Susan McCue spearheaded the selection of Kevin Klose, a distinguished journalist and former NPR president, to become RFE/RL’s acting president after former president Steven Korn resigned. The crisis at RFE/RL deepened after Steven Korn had fired dozens of Radio Liberty journalists in Russia.

Klose enjoys strong support from all BBG members and has been working closely with McCue and Ashe.

Sources told BBG Watch that both McCue and Ashe are confident that Klose is making the right changes and taking RFE/RL in the right direction. One of his tasks is believed to be reintegrating back into Radio Liberty Russian journalists who were fired last September.  Both McCue and Ashe strongly support this move, sources told BBG Watch, as do Meehan and Sonenshine.

Ted Lipien, director of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB -cusib.org), told BBG Watch that  the election of Susan McCue as RFE/RL Board Chair and Ambassador Victor Ashe as RFE/RL Board Vice-Chair just one day after the resignation of Mr. Mulhaupt is a highly positive development and shows that most of the remaining BBG members are engaged and ready to provide strong leadership.

“Ms. McCue and Ambassador Ashe are both outstanding public servants who care deeply about U.S. international broadcasting and believe in the mission of  serving those who need access to uncensored news and objective information denied to them by their governments or because of lack of media development. Both of them have  advanced U.S. public diplomacy and national security interests through their vigilant oversight of  U.S. international broadcasting,” Lipien said.

Susan McCue was also elected as chair of the BBG Governance Committee. Victor Ashe was also elected chair of the RFE/RL Audit Committee.

Lyudmila Alexeeva with RFE/RL Board Co-Chair and BBG member Susan McCue, Washington, DC, March 1, 2013. On April 10, 2013, Susan McCue became RFE/RL Board Chair.

Susan McCue is President of Message Global, a strategic advocacy firm she founded in 2008 for social action campaigns.

She was the founding President and CEO of The ONE Campaign to combat extreme global poverty and was Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from 1999 to 2007. Before that she held numerous communications positions in government and campaigns. She is currently Vice Chair of Humanity United and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A New Jersey native, Ms. McCue is a graduate of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., with degrees in economics and journalism.

McCue is co-chair of the Communications and Outreach Committee, chair of its subcommittee on Innovation and is now chair of the Governance Committee. She is also now  Chair of the Board of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

McCue 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.

Left to right, Gov. Meehan, RFA President Libby Liu, Gov. McCue, Gov. Ashe and Aung San Suu Kyi, Dec. 2012.

Ambassador Ashe holds the distinction of being the longest serving mayor of Knoxville. During his time in office, from 1988 to 2003, he was the President to the U.S. Conference of Mayors from 1994 to 1995 and received their Distinguished Service Award for Leadership in 2003.

Ashe served as the United States Ambassador to Poland from June 2004 to October 2009. In 2004, he was a Fellow at Harvard University’s JFK Institute of Politics.

From 1968 until 1974, Ashe served as a Tennessee State Representative. In 1975, he was elected State Senator and held office until 1984. Ashe served in 1967 as a staff assistant to US Sen. Howard Baker. He was executive director of the Americans Outdoors Commission, 1985-1987 chaired by Sen. Lamar Alexander (then Governor).

Five U.S. Presidents, beginning with President Ronald Reagan, have named Ashe to different federal positions. He is the first former Ambassador and local elected official to serve on the BBG.

Ashe currently sits on the Board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Rivers Association, and is a former member of the AmeriCorps Board of Directors. He is president of the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association, chair of the Tennessee Clean Water Network, both based in Knoxville, Tenn., and chair of the Douglas Henry State Museum Commission located in Nashville, Tenn.

Ambassador Ashe earned a B.A. in History from Yale University in 1967 and graduated from the College of Law at the University of Tennessee in 1974.

Ashe is a member of the Governance Committee and the Strategy and Budget Committee, serves as Corporate Board Vice Chair of Radio Free Asia (RFA), sits on the audit committees of RFA and  now chairs Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty audit committee.  He also chairs the audit committee of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

Ashe was confirmed to the board on June 30, 2010 to a term expiring on August 13, 2010. By law, any member whose term has expired may serve until a successor has been appointed and qualified.

He is married to the former Joan Plumlee and they have two children: J. Victor and Martha.

Ashe welcomes comments and views on BBG issues. He can be reached by phone at 865 523-6573, email at vhashe@aol.com, or mail addressed to his residence at 3709 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, Tenn., 37919.

BBG Budget Request Reflects Strategic Priorities And Global Media Environment

Washington, DC – The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) today released its FY 2014 budget request to help U.S. international media meet its strategic priorities in light of dynamic global media environments and current spending constraints.

“Tight budgets require us to prioritize the use of our resources even as we strive to make the best use of 21st century opportunities to inform, engage, and connect with our audiences,” said Michael Meehan, chairman of the board’s Strategy and Budget Committee. “As is true across the federal government, we have to take a hard look at spending — seeking efficiencies wherever possible and limiting the impact on our mission-critical work.”

For FY 2014, the BBG has requested $731 million for U.S. international media.  The request contains proposed investments designed to increase the impact and reach of U.S. international broadcasting with $13.9 million primarily to support critical initiatives to counter violent extremism.  The investments as a whole would:

• Create a multi-channel, multi-language information and engagement initiative targeting youth in the Trans-Sahel region of Africa.
• Provide deeper, on-the ground coverage in the critical Maghreb region – the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
• Engage new audiences in Burma by investing in the creation and distribution of compelling content for distribution over TV satellite, local affiliates, mobile, and other digital platforms.
• Realign transmission assets and upgrade other infrastructure to improve service to critical audiences and to reduce reliance on external leases.

The request also contains $12.5 million in Internet anti-censorship funding to continue a broad-based approach to the deployment of emerging technologies and partnerships with cutting-edge experts, developers and in-country networks.

Included in the budget request is a legislative proposal to establish a Chief Executive Officer for all civilian U.S. international media.  Establishing a CEO is a key objective of the BBG and the Administration.  The proposal will improve the management and efficiency of BBG operations, helping to mitigate the challenges of a part-time board.  The BBG’s governing board has repeatedly voiced support for creation of a CEO, an element in their five-year strategic plan, had has previously submitted language to Congress for such a position.  The Department of State’s Office of the Inspector General underscored the importance of such an action.

The CEO will be empowered to provide day-to-day executive leadership for U.S. international broadcasting and will have management authority over the federal and non-federal elements.  The Board will hire and supervise the CEO, retaining the critical role of setting the strategic direction of U.S. international media, as well as evaluating its journalistic quality and maintaining its journalistic integrity.

The BBG’s strategic plan provides the context for the budget request and notes that to be competitive in today’s complex media markets, the agency must innovate as never before. To have the resources and management structures to enable such innovation, the agency must integrate its operations.

Proposed shifts include scaling back selected language services to reduce overlap, increasing  cooperation, and ensuring that broadcasters will provide complementary content; streamlining and restructuring central news operations; realizing savings in information technology; and making other administrative and support reductions in ways that will not diminish the agency’s ability to execute its mission.

The FY 2014 budget request includes program, transmission and staffing reductions across all the networks — at the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting — and the International Broadcasting Bureau, in part through efforts to continue to restructure operations and end duplication.   This includes rationalizing distribution through reductions of some cross-border (shortwave and medium wave) broadcasts where they have the least impact – either because audiences are small, or because people prefer to access programs on other, more popular media, including FM radio, television, and the Internet. The VOA Greek and RFE/RL Balkan services would be closed under this proposed budget.

“Some of these changes, if enacted, will be very difficult on the men and women involved,”  Meehan said.  “We will do everything possible to minimize the impact on our employees through agency buyouts, early-out authority and reducing positions via attrition.

The BBG FY 2014 budget request is available here.

The BBG FY 2014 Investment Proposals are available here.

The BBG FY 2014 Chief Executive Officer Proposal is available here.

Related

• Budget Request Reflects Long-Term Strategy, Changing Media Environment
• FY 2011 Budget Request for the Broadcasting Board of Governors
• Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request for U.S. International Broadcasting