Downplaying democracy hasn’t generated foreign policy dividend

Democracy Digest from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED):   A year on from his inauguration, the foreign policy commentariat is assessing President Barack Obama’s record, not least his administration’s approach to promoting democracy and human rights. Robert Kagan detects a strategic shift from the grand strategy adopted after World War II based on military and economic “preponderance of power” to one reconciled to managing America’s

Excerpt from:
Downplaying democracy hasn’t generated foreign policy dividend

With Obama in Moscow, Voice of America Russian Reporters Saw Their Work Vanish

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has put all the eggs of broadcasts to Russia from the U.S. in one basket.

FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, July 10, 2009, San Francisco — Established in 1942 in response to wartime emergency, the Voice of America (VOA) has been the official U.S. broadcaster, funded by American taxpayers and guaranteed journalistic independence by the U.S. Congress. VOA journalists produce radio and TV programs and maintain Internet websites in multiple languages. VOA helped the United States win the Cold War and continues to provide uncensored news to countries with limited or no free media.

But when President Obama went to Moscow this week and met with President Medvedev, Prime Minister Putin, as well as with opposition and civil society leaders, a VOA Russian Service correspondent who was reporting on these meetings vainly tried to see his own work on the VOA website. The VOA site suffered a catastrophic failure and was out of commission for at least two full days due to a suspected North Korean cyber attack. The Russians could not learn from the Voice of America about President Obama’s speeches in which he talked about human rights and media freedom issues in Russia. These speeches were not carried live by the Kremlin-controled national TV and radio networks and did not receive wide coverage from independent media outlets, few of which still remain.

Agency set up to guarantee America’s ability to communicate with the world could not protect its own website

Other U.S. government websites were also targeted by the latest cyber attack, but only the Voice of America website was made inaccessible for a number of days. This failure is extremely disturbing, since the Voice of America, created during World War II with a mission to provide accurate and objective news to the rest of the world, is still considered by the U.S. Congress and the White House as an important national security asset, especially in times of national and international emergencies.

Until the summer of 2008, the Voice of America Russian Service still had on-air radio and TV programs. Some of the radio programs were transmitted on short-wave, which hostile governments cannot easily block, while other radio and TV programs were rebroadcast by local stations and networks in Russia, even as the Russian security services were trying to force them to stop from carrying such foreign broadcasts.

BBG lacks strategic vision and fails to plan for emergencies

This is when the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — the bipartisan body which manages U.S. international broadcasting entities, including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Marti, Alhurra Television and others — decided that from now on the Voice of America will only use the Internet for delivering its programs to Russia. In July 2008, the BBG took all VOA Russian-language radio programs off the air. 12 days later, the Russian army attacked the Republic of Georgia over a territorial dispute, creating a major crisis in Moscow’s relations with Washington and other Western nations. Despite of the political and news emergency resulting from the Russian military attack, the BBG refused to resume VOA radio broadcasts to the war zone.

Before the Russian-Georgian war, members of Congress and representatives of human rights and media freedom organizations had warned the Bush Administration that the BBG’s Internet-only strategy for the Voice of America in Russia represented a serious national security risk and a further threat to what little remained of the Russian independent media. The BBG ignored these warnings.

The BBG not only did not anticipate the possibility of a Russian attack on Georgia, BBG members also did not consider the possibility that Barack Obama would be elected president, or that in the resulting improvement in U.S.-Russian relations, VOA might again be able to expand placement of its programs on national and local media in Russia. Such program placement represents the best option for gaining a large audience, assuming that it does not compromise journalistic freedom and objectivity of the programs being produced for local rebroadcasts — something that the BBG’s “marrying the mission to the market” strategy was not able to guarantee. In fact, it encouraged biased, unbalanced and soft journalism, as in Alhurra TV network’s coverage of the Holocaust deniers conference in Tehran, hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and in some of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) programs. Both Alhurra and RFE/RL are managed by the BBG.

While the Russian government continued to expand placement in the United States for its international TV program, “Russia Today,” the BBG granted victory to the Russian security services in their intimidation campaign designed to drive the Voice of America off the airways in Russia shortly before President Obama was elected and promised to work to improve U.S.-Russian relations. If they are serious about U.S. international broadcasting, the Obama Administration officials should now point out to their counterparts in Moscow that, unlike harsh treatment of foreign and local media in Russia by the Russian secret police, the FBI and the CIA have not been trying to force “Russia Today” off American stations and cable channels.

Had it been allowed to maintain its multimedia program delivery strategy, the Voice of America could now be in a good position to quickly regain its TV and radio audience in Russia. But BBG officials killed both radio and TV, ignoring their own audience research, which showed that VOA was only reaching about 0.2% of the Russian audience through the Internet. Most importantly, however, they ignored clear evidence that, unlike radio and satellite TV, the Internet can be easily sabottaged and blocked not only by the Russian FSB, the KGB’s successor, but even by security services of other countries, and possibly also by ordinary hackers. The BBG has put all the eggs of broadcasts to Russia from the U.S. in one basket.

BBG officials failed to anticipate what might happen to the Internet-only strategy if U.S.-Russian relations should take a sudden turn for the worse. If the North Koreans could launch a successful attack on the VOA website — assuming that North Korea was indeed behind the latest attack — so can the Russian security services if ordered by the Kremlin. They demonstrated this ability during the Russian-Georgian war by blocking the Georgian government websites.

Another BBG-managed broadcaster, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, still has radio programs to Russia. But RFE/RL staff is based in Prague, the Czech Republic, and in Moscow. Its broadcasts do not focus on the United States or provide an American perspective on world events. In any case, RFE/RL reporters working in Russia are vulnerable to intimidation by the Russian security services. These foreign-born, locally-based journalists are discriminated against and denied basic legal protections by the BBG. They would be especially threatened if a serious crisis developed in U.S.-Russian relations.

The U.S. Congress and American taxpayers should be concerned that a VOA Russian Service correspondent traveling with Barack Obama to Moscow could not see for a number of days any of his reports on the President’s comments about human rights and media restrictions in Russia. They should be concerned that a few North Korean agents were apparently able to shut down the Voice of America website serving the entire world, including Russia, China, and Iran. They should also be concerned that members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and their executive staff terminated VOA programs to Russia a few days before the Republic of Georgia was invaded, and that they have failed to protect the VOA website from cyber attacks. (The BBG also ended VOA Hindi radio broadcasts to India shortly before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and VOA radio broadcasts to Ukraine one day before Russia shut of the delivery of natural gas supplies to Ukraine and Western Europe in the middle of winter. They even tried to limit broadcasts to Tibet.)

Americans should not be surprised, however, by the BBG’s dismal record. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has been consistently rated by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management as the worst managed Federal agency.

There have been many calls for abolishing the current board in charge of U.S. international broadcasting. Some have suggested taking away the BBG’s powers to conduct day-to-day journalistic and programming operations. Others have called for selecting competent journalists, human rights, and media freedom professionals to fill the vacant BBG positions.

Journalists working at the Voice of America Russian Service hope that something will be done to make their programs once again heard and seen in Russia. As a result of the BBG’s termination of on-air radio and TV Russian broadcasts, their audience in Russia shrunk by an estimated 98%, an unprecedented audience loss in the history of international broadcasting. The same BBG officials who suggested that the Internet-only strategy for VOA in Russia would work also failed to protect the VOA website from a relatively minor cyber attack.

Frustrated current and former VOA journalists seeks private Russian-American broadcasting ventures to overcome restrictions imposed by the BBG

Some VOA Russian Service journalists, frustrated by the inability of the BBG and VOA management to grasp the opportunities presented by President Obama’s call for a “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations, have started to explore with Russian networks the possibility of launching live TV discussion programs between Washington and Moscow, which would be conducted outside of VOA, privately funded, and would focus on serious political, social, economic, and cultural topics of the day. BBG and VOA officials eliminated such programs last summer and ordered production of short videos with a focus on popular American culture.

The morale of journalists working for VOA’s Russian Service is at all time low. One of its most experienced journalists and managers has left. VOA executives refused to fill the position of the service director, appointing instead a number of non-Russian managers, some of whom do not even speak Russian. They also refused to send a Russian Service reporter when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had her first meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva, during which she called for a new start in U.S.-Russian relations.

In response to the dismal state of VOA’s Russian Service, some former VOA journalists have launched an independent private website, GovoritAmerika.us, which serves as an aggregator of U.S.-Russia-related news and analyses from multiple American government and non-government sources. GovoritAmerika.us website was available online and included extensive summaries of Voice of America reports when the VOA website suffered a two-day meltdown.

With the latest blow of seeing even their current limited work vanish during the critical news window of President Obama’s visit to Russia, VOA journalists are understandably frustrated. Let’s hope that the Obama White House will take notice of this latest example of the BBG’s numerous failures. The latest one is the BBG’s failure to protect America’s lead website for communicating with the rest of the world.

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980’s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia. He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). The book, which describes Pope John Paul II’s views on feminism, also includes evidence of the importance of Western radio broadcasts during his life in communist-ruled Poland and in the first ten years of his papacy. The book also has extensive references to the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by journalists covering the Polish pope.

About FreeMediaOnline.org

FreeMediaOnline.org is a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide.

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us — which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

BBG officials initially had told the VOA Russian Service that their requests to resume radio broadcasts were a “non-starter” even after Russia invaded Georgia. Only after weeks of protests, including reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG finally allowed VOA to produce a short audio program for the Internet, updated only Monday through Friday. This program is rather difficult to find on the VOA website. We made it available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us website managed by FreeMediaOnline.org.

Broadcasting Board of Governors Misleads Congress in Its 2010 Budget Request, Hides Its Poor Management Record, and Plans to Terminate More Broadcasts

FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 11, 2009, San Francisco — The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency responsible for managing U.S. international broadcasts made a number of misleading statements in its Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request to the U.S. Congress. The BBG repeatedly states that the Voice of America (VOA) Russian service responded with “comprehensive coverage” to the Russian military incursion into Georgia in August 2009. In fact, just 12 days before the Russian-Georgian conflict erupted, the BBG terminated all VOA Russian radio programs. The following is a quote from the BBG’s Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request.

VOA Responds to Crisis in Georgia

On August 8, 2008, Russia’s military forces in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia began invading Georgian territory and moving toward its capital, Tbilisi. In response to the crisis, VOA increased its daily Georgian radio broadcasts from 30 to 60 minutes on shortwave and FM. VOA’s broadcast is also available live and on-demand on VOA Georgian’s website. VOA’s Russian Service also provided comprehensive coverage of Russia-Georgia conflict.

Even after the crisis started, former BBG members, Edward E. Kaufman (now a Democratic senator from Delaware) and James K. Glassman (former BBG chairman who was also President Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy) rejected urgent pleas from Voice of America journalists to resume VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts to Russia and to the war zone in Georgia. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, Mr. Kaufman blocked a formal request from another BBG member Blanquita Walsh Cullum ( a Republican appointee and the only working journalist serving on the board) to have a new vote on resuming VOA Russian radio programs.

In another part of the budget request, the BBG admits that the Russian service “ceased its radio broadcasts on July 26, 2008,” and “is enhancing its website to appeal to burgeoning web audiences with targeted content.” The document fails to point out that largely as a result of ending VOA Russian radio and television programs, VOA’s annual reach in Russia dropped by 98% from 7.3% in 2007 to 0.2% (est.) in 2009 (another omission). No other international broadcaster, U.S. or foreign, has ever experienced a similarly dramatic fall in ratings. Even a 25% drop would have been a disaster, yet the BBG claims that despite a 98% audience loss VOA “improved its programming to such strategically important countries as… Russia.”

While advocating Internet-only strategy for Voice of America in Russia — rather than far more prudent and far more effective multiple platform program delivery  — the BBG admits in another part of its budget request that the Internet is vulnerable to blockage and censorship by unfriendly governments, ”Governments also target RFE/RL [a BBG-run private broadcaster] with technological disruption, including a global cyber attack in April 2008 which probably originated in Belarus, and Kazakhstan’s blockage of RFE/RL’s Kazakh-language website in the spring of 2008.” Another cyber attack, this time against Georgian websites, occurred during the Russian military intervention in Georgia. A recent article by Understanding Government, “Will America’s Voice Stay Silenced?“, reported on this issue and other problems at the BBG. 

The BBG’s budget request also states that “in response to the crisis, VOA increased its daily Georgian radio broadcasts from 30 to 60 minutes on shortwave and FM.” That statement is only technically correct. What the BBG does not mention is that the broadcasting board also had plans to eliminate all VOA radio programs to Georgia and that the VOA Georgian service was reduced to a handful of journalists who were not able to immediately increase airtime and had to work nonstop for many days just to produce a 30 minute radio program.

The BBG budget request to the U.S. Congress also includes another disingenuous and misleading statement:

VOA Covers Mumbai Terrorist Attacks

VOA’s South Asia Division language services provided wall-to-wall coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, including on-the-ground coverage from stringers, interviews in Pakistan and India, and live call-in shows. VOA Hindi provided its new affiliate Zee TV with reaction from President Bush, President-elect Obama, U.S. officials, experts and members of American-Indian communities.

In fact, shorty before the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the BBG terminated all Voice of America radio broadcasts in Hindi. While bragging and misleading the Congress about its response to the terrorist attacks in India, in another part of the budget request the BBG frankly admits that it plans to close down VOA Hindi service altogether:

BBG proposes to end VOA broadcasts in Croatian, Hindi, and Greek, and discontinue radio rebroadcasts of PNN television programming and one hour daily of original VOA Persian radio.

Another misleading omission in the BBG’s FY 2010 budget request deals with VOA broadcasts to Ukraine:

Ukrainian Language Broadcasting

VOA’s Ukrainian Service continues to have a major impact through its television programming. An October 2008 survey indicated that VOA Ukrainian’s weekly TV programs reach 11.9 percent of the population and that the combined weekly TV, radio, and Internet audience is 14.2 percent (5.7 million people).

In fact, the BBG terminated all VOA radio broadcasts to Ukraine on December 31, 2008, a day before Russia cut off deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine and Western Europe in a billing dispute with Kiev, as it had earlier terminated VOA radio to Russia. Yet the BBG describes both Russia and Ukraine as “strategically important countries” for VOA broadcasting and in another part of the FY 2010 budget request says that “Russia has effectively turned into a one-party dictatorship in the past few years.”

The Broadcasting Board of Governor ignored numerous requests from members of Congress not to end VOA radio programming to media-at-risk countries like Russia and Ukraine. The BBG also ignored requests from members of Congress not to end VOA radio programs in Hindi.

According to the BBG’s critics, including BBG employees and their union leaders, misleading and disingenuous statements in the FY 2010 budget request reflect a culture of mismanagement and arrogance that was captured in the OPM’s most recent Human Capital Survey designed to measure employee job satisfaction and confidence in the management. This is what the AFGE Local 1812 government employees union website says about the quality of the management at the Broadcasting Board of Governors:

BBG CLAIMS TITLE AS THE WORST PLACE TO WORK IN GOVERNMENT

DATELINE: Washington, D.C., 01/23/09. AFGE Local 1812 has obtained a copy of the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) ranking of government agencies which included the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) based on the results of the 2008 Human Capital Resources survey. The BBG ranked dead last on three of the four categories the OPM measures in its survey. Finishing second to last in one category prevented an atrocious clean sweep of the four categories measuring the effectiveness of management at the BBG.

The BBG’s management problems are not limited only to federal government workers at the Voice of America working in Washington, D.C. but extend to other BBG-managed  U.S.-funded broadcasting entities throughout the world. Foreign journalists working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a private broadcaster also supervised by the BBG, accuse the management of depriving them, based on national origin, of the same job security and labor protection rights which are available to both American and Czech employees. RFE/RL headquarters are based in Prague, the Czech Republic. RFE/RL’s former acting president, Jeffrey Trimble, is now the BBG’s executive director and was responsible for implementing personnel and other management decisions during the period covered by the Human Capital Survey. He was replaced at RFE/RL in Prague by another BBG-selected official, Dr. Jeffrey Gedmin, a former resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists-at-risk are a group of the most vulnerable contract employees from countries like Russia, Uzbekistan,  Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Afghanistan, Iran and several others. These journalists charge that by taking advantage of the communist era laws still on the books in the Czech Republic, the BBG has restricted their right to challenge unlawful discrimination and employment termination in Czech and U.S. courts.

Two former RFE/RL employees plan to pursue their claims against RFE/RL and the BBG by challenging the communist era Czech laws in the European Court of Human Rights. They have also petitioned United States Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and its supervising Federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

On May 6, the Czech news agency, CTK, and the largest Czech national daily Dnes (Today) reported that the two petitioners, former RFE/RL employees, a Croatian citizen Snjezana Pelivan and Anna Karapetian, an Armenian journalist, are charging BBG and the management of U.S. Congress-funded radio station with fraudulent deception intended to keep RFE/RL foreign personnel in a legal vacuum without court protection in the United States and the Czech Republic.

The BBG has also been severely criticized for imposing its programming and marketing strategy on journalists and forcing them to follow recommendations from uninformed consultants, some of them with links to BBG members, rather than allowing journalists and managers to use their own expert  knowledge of the audience. In an interview scheduled for publication this week, former head of RFE/RL Russian Service, Mario Corti, who was forced out in a programming dispute four years ago, charges that the BBG’s strategy and the American management of the station have destroyed the unique value of Radio Liberty broadcasts in Russia and made them nearly ineffective. Corti is now a manager at a private radio network in Russia. Since his departure, RFE/RL has been criticized by a Russian human rights organization for giving airtime to nationalist extremists known for promoting racist views and its Moscow-based bureau chief was downplaying the impact of the murder of a prominent human rights reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

But one of the most severely criticized BBG operations has been the Alhurra Television program for the Middle East.  According to KEBABfest blog, maintained by Arab-Americans, Alhurra viewers are subjected to “hours of mindless chatter interspersed with shallow assessments of selected current events and random feature stories (some of which are marginally entertaining). There is no depth in the news coverage, nor in the rest of the programming. Rather, there is a failed attempt at fast-paced US-style news that comes off as chaotic and incoherent.” Alhurra was also criticized for giving airtime to Holocaust deniers. A study by researchers for the University of Southern California, who conducted a review of Alhurra broadcasts, concluded that “the quality of Alhurra’s journalism is substandard on several levels“ and that the station has no significant audience in the Middle East.

Not surprisingly, the BBG is presenting Congress with a much rosier picture of Alhurra programming:

Expanding our reach.

The new three-hour daily show Al Youm launched on March 8, 2009 has redefined Alhurra’s voice in the region with an information mix unique in the Middle East today. The new show provides a platform for focusing on the news of the day, discussing compelling social issues, and a spectrum of information not presented anywhere else in the region’s media. The program broadcasts reports directly from the Middle East with hubs in Dubai, Beirut, Cairo, and Jerusalem. The mix from the region and America will continue to capitalize on Alhurra’s ability to provide the people of the Middle East with unique insight into America that will inform their views and opinions of the region, the world, and the United States.

While the original concept for Alhurra’s surrogate broadcasting, based on outdated Cold War models, came from neoconservatives in the Bush White House, programming and marketing strategy for Alhurra, Radio Sawa and other  U.S. broadcasting entities, which is still followed by the BBG, was introduced by former Democratic BBG member Norman Pattiz, founder of U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One and a protege of Vice President Joe Biden when he was a U.S. senator from Delaware.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors FY 2010 Budget Request to the U.S. Congress (link) provides for an interesting reading and is a good example of how government bureaucrats try to hide their mistakes and mismanagement of government resources while asking U.S. taxpayers for more money, said Ted Lipien, former VOA acting associate director, who is now president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit which supports independent journalism worldwide.

In response to the termination of VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, FreeMediaOnline.org has helped to launch a Russian-language news website, GovoritAmerika.us, which offers a wide selection of Russian-language news analysis from both U.S. government and nongovernment sources. GovoritAmerika.us is staffed by volunteers and receives no public funding.

WILL AMERICA’S VOICE STAY SILENCED? – Understanding Government – understandinggov.org

FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 8, 2009, San Francisco —  Understanding Government website — undestandinggov.org — has published an in-depth report on the management crisis at the Voice of America (VOA) and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which runs U.S. international broadcasting operations. The report refers to the work of FreeMediaOnline.org and GovoritAmerika.us in support of independent journalism in media-at-risk countries.

WILL AMERICA’S VOICE STAY SILENCED?

07. May 2009
An Understanding Government report

By Mitchell Polman

Washington, D.C. — Since it was founded in 1942, the Voice of America has been just that – a radio voice for the American perspective on the issues of the day and a prime source of information about American society for its overseas audiences. VOA has also brought educational programs to overseas audiences on such issues as public health and business skills. In recent years, however, the broadcasting service has experienced staff cuts, service reductions, and politically-charged controversies.

At the center of the storm has been the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, which oversees U.S. government-funded media outlets. And these problems have arisen while – largely through emergency supplemental appropriations from Congress in the past couple of years – the Broadcasting Board of Governors has seen its budget actually increase. Critics say that the BBG has skewed priorities and has spent money that could have gone to its broadcasting services on wasteful administrative overhead and public relations efforts.

America’s voice in Russia fades to silence

Last year the BBG made the unpopular and unexpected decision to terminate all Russian language shortwave radio and television broadcasts of the Voice of America. It ordered VOA to shift its resources towards Internet-based broadcasting. The decision has been widely criticized, in large part because Internet penetration in Russia is too low – estimated at 20% by some pollsters – to justify ending radio and television broadcasts to the Russian public.

But critics see more than just a mistaken choice of media. Former VOA Deputy Director, and author of the book Voice of America: a History, Alan Heil, Jr., for example, said regarding radio service to Russia that “the Voice of America cannot continue to be silent. It would not only be contrary to the U.S. national interest. It would also be a distinctly untimely disservice to millions of listeners in Russia and the surrounding republics that had, until last July, depended on VOA Russian for more than sixty years as their reliable window on a turbulent world.”

Critics note that it is easier for governments to block websites and control Internet usage than it is to block shortwave radio, and that shortwave radio is more commonplace in conflict zones – where the need for independent media is most vital. The BBG’s decision has been called shortsighted for other reasons, in particular because the VOA could have continued producing shortwave and FM radio as well as television content using its seasoned Russian-language reporting staff – and used it on the Internet as well. Instead, the BBG ordered VOA to produce content only for the VOA website and terminate all Russian language radio and television programming.

And while some in the Broadcasting Board of Governors may consider shortwave radio to be a dying technology, the Russian government apparently does not. As the Voice of America fades as a radio source, Radio Moscow has been renamed the Voice of Russia, and it continues to broadcast in shortwave throughout both Russia and the entire world.

“Runet” – the Internet in Russia

Obviously, there is a vital role for the Internet in America’s information arsenal. In a December 2008 report, the media research group InterMedia said that television remains the dominant source of news coverage in Russia, but that the Internet is growing. 19% of the population, according to InterMedia, reported using the Internet to follow current events in Russia in 2008, up from 13% in 2007.

However, by some estimates only 2% of Russians have broadband service. Without broadband service, listening to radio programs or watching television programs over the Internet can be difficult. Broadband and DSL subscriptions are on the rise, but they are still mostly available in Moscow and St. Petersburg and other major cities. Several companies have large plans to expand their networks. However, as it stands now, many homes can not get even dial-up service for lack of a landline, and it is doubtful that Russian citizens will put up with or pay for watching or listening to a half hour long program on a painfully slow Internet connection. Overall, it seems clear that the share of the Russian population that is not thoroughly “wired” is now unable to be part of the VOA audience.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty gains while VOA loses

The BBG shifted some of VOA’s resources, including radio frequencies, to a different radio broadcaster — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). RFE/RL – known simply as “Svoboda,” or “freedom,” in Russian, was a vital source of information for human rights activists inside the USSR during much of the Cold War. However, the two broadcast entities do not share the same mission or approach to broadcasting, so an expansion of Radio Free Europe cannot be seen as a substitute for what VOA has done in the past.

To begin with, RFE/RL focuses exclusively on news involving the country and region that is broadcasting to, whereas the VOA adds world news and reports on American policies and society. In addition, RFE/RL contracts with private companies overseas or surrogates in places like Moscow to reach its audience. The surrogate companies and their staffs and families are often subject to governmental pressure, intimidation, and threats. The Voice of America, on the other hand, broadcasts directly from Washington and avoids these direct pressures.

Historically, the Voice of America had a larger audience in Russia than RFE/RL has at present. According to InterMedia, VOA’s Russian language service had a cumulative annual audience for 2007 of 6,504,030 people (broadcasting for three hours of radio daily and one hour of TV) while RFE/RL had 3,613,350 people (broadcasting eighteen hours daily on radio). VOA radio had an average weekly listenership of 481,780 listeners, VOA TV had an average weekly viewership of 722,670 viewers and VOA had 120,445 visitors for its website from Russia. These statistics are for Russia only – they do not include Russian language speakers from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan or other former Soviet republics, which are believed to be a substantial audience.

Finally, there is also some dispute about the methodologies being used to determine the number of visits to VOA’s Russian language website. Sources familiar with VOA’s numbers comment that roughly half of the visits to VOA’s Russian language site may actually be coming from inside the United States. Even if this estimate is exaggerated, there is no disputing the fact that the number of VOA website users is far below the audience that VOA TV and radio enjoyed in Russia. The most recent InterMedia study shows VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia dropped by 98% in just one year: from 7.3% in 2007 to an estimated 0.2% in 2009 (0.2% is the VOA Russian Internet reach.) This drop was experienced only by VOA, so it cannot be solely because of the Russian government’s restrictive media policies. Clearly the disappearance of VOA radio service has harmed America’s ability to reach out to Russian citizens.

Reaction from inside and outside Russia

The cutbacks in VOA service have drawn protests from many quarters. On July 31, 2008 a prominent group of human rights activists in St. Petersburg, Russia, including Aleksandr Nikitin, Anna Sharogradskaya, Olga Staravoitova, and lawyer Yuri Schmidt, sent a letter to Congress asking it to intervene with the BBG saying, “(The Russian) public is deprived of objective coverage of events inside the country and abroad. International radio stations broadcasting in Russian and Internet are the only sources of unbiased, balanced, and truthful information, especially analysis of global events. That is why we believe that it is premature to end VOA’s Russian Service broadcast.”

The bi-partisan Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or CSCE, sent a letter to the Broadcasting Board of Governors in October 2008 protesting the Russian service cutbacks as well as planned reductions in VOA’s Ukrainian and Georgian services then-Chairman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) and Ranking Minority Christopher Smith (R-NJ) asked for VOA shortwave radio service to be restored saying, “Freedom of the media in Russia, especially on the airwaves, has been cut to the point that it is extremely difficult for people to hear views other than those espoused by the Kremlin.”

Problems with the BBG decision emerged in stark relief during the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia. Russian language VOA programming went off the air on July 26, less than two weeks before the Russian army entered Georgia on August 7, 2008. Russian speakers in the region thus had one less source for coverage of the war and of the American government’s views. The Georgian language service had also been slated to go off the air, but was granted a reprieve and temporarily increased at the insistence of Congress.

VOA would suffer similar embarrassments in the months ahead as, for example, it terminated Ukrainian language radio service the day before Russia disrupted gas service to Ukraine on January 1, 2009, and when VOA’s highly popular Hindi language radio programs (with an audience of eight million listeners a week) went off the air shortly before the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. After protests from VOA supporters, VOA radio returned on a Moscow-based AM channel for only thirty minutes a day Monday through Friday, down from its previous three hours.

Former VOA Staff Calling for Service Restorations

One of the most prominent critics of the BBG is Ted Lipien, who spent 33 years with the VOA as a reporter and then as Associate Director for Central Programming. Retiring in 2006, Mr. Lipien soon after started the website FreeMediaOnline.org to assist independent broadcasters and journalists worldwide. Responding to the cutbacks at VOA, Mr. Lipien launched GovoritAmerika.us, a Russian language site containing news summaries from U.S. government and non-governmental sources.

Mr. Lipien’s criticisms of the BBG go beyond disagreements over planned cutbacks. He charges that BBG market research findings have led Voice of America to cut back on criticism of the Putin government. Mr. Lipien has similarly charged that market research was behind a Radio Liberty decision to carry a program featuring Russian extremists, which sparked protests from Russian human rights groups. Lipien says that most of the responsibility for the cutbacks in Russian language service is the responsibility of Ted Kaufman, a close confidante of Vice President Biden who replaced Biden as U.S. senator from Delaware.

Lipien is also critical of BBG member Jeffrey Hirschberg, charging that Hirschberg’s business interests in Russia are “an apparent conflict of interest” with his BBG responsibilities. Hirschberg, a former Director of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, is still on their board and is a partner and Managing Director of Kalorama Partners, LLC, a Washington, DC-based consulting and risk-management company. However, no specific conflict of interest has been documented and it is worth noting that Hirschberg is also a board member of the human rights group Freedom House. But according to Lipien, “in many ways, BBG’s business-connected members with conflicts of interest are more dangerous for journalistic independence at VOA and RFE/RL than the White House and State Department officials who in the past had also tried to interfere with programming for political reasons.”

James Glassman, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy near the end of George W. Bush’s term, was previously the BBG Board Chairman and led the effort to abolish the Russian language services. The board members who voted to abolish the services cited the decline of shortwave and the rise of the Internet as part of their reasoning for the changes.

Voices of discord at VOA Russian service?

However, other VOA insiders speculate that the reorganization of the Russian service may in part have been due to a reputation that it developed in earlier times as having a myriad of internal personnel problems. Former USIA official William P. Kiehl, the Country Affairs Officer for the USSR and Baltic States from 1981-1983, said of the VOA Russian service,

Among those who worked with, but not in, the Russian Service of the VOA, it was known as ‘the snake pit’ because of the internecine warfare that was a constant among the staff. The Russian Service like many language services then and now reflected both the good and the bad of the societies that provided the native speakers–so in the case of the Russian Service you had Westernizers and Slavophiles, monarchists and socialists, Jews and anti-Semites, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians, people with all sorts of agendas, all working together in a high pressure situation under the supervision of a Russian speaking Foreign Service Officer from the ranks of the USIA or the State Department.

Clearly, the diverse staff of the VOA Russian-language service – a product of the Soviet Union’s own complicated legacy – must have been a difficult one to manage. But it produced programming that was listened to by millions of Soviet citizens during the Cold War, and remained popular after the breakup of the USSR. This legacy has been interrupted with the changes to VOA’s Russian service.

The future of the BBG

Currently there are four vacancies on the BBG Board out of a total of nine seats. Secretary of State Clinton holds one seat on the board, but generally speaking the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, currently designated to be Ms. Judith McHale, sits in for the Secretary. Board members can serve after their terms have expired until replacements are named. Currently, four members are serving in this status. While traditionally, four members have been named by the Senate Minority Leader, and four by the sitting president, it is now technically possible for President Obama to remake the Board in its entirety by himself.

The Obama Administration has not given any indication who it will appoint to the BBG or if it will even keep the BBG as an institution. In both 2007 and 2008 the Office of Personnel Management rated the BBG as having the worst employee satisfaction level of any government agency. So new appointees will have their hands full trying to fix it, and the abrupt decision taken in 2008 to end Russian-language service may be impossible to reverse. There continues to be a great deal of uncertainty surrounding much of VOA’s work. For example, the Uzbek language service was taken off the air, only to be switched back on in 2004-5. It is now again being threatened with closure.

It is quite possible that the Obama Administration views the BBG as an agency in need of an overhaul. The BBG was founded in the wake of the dismantling of the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1999, a move which reshaped – not necessarily for the better – America’s public diplomacy. At that time, most of USIA’s programs were folded into the Department of State. But there was a fear that VOA, RFE/RL, and Radio Marti (which broadcasts to Cuba) would be unable to maintain their journalistic independence under the Department of State. The concept of a bi-partisan board with governors from both parties appointed by the president, with a spot reserved for a State Department official, arose as a solution to that problem.

Today, questions remain as to how international broadcasting operations should be managed. As a Senator, Vice President Biden was among those most involved in the discussion. How the Obama Administration will approach international broadcasting remains to be seen, but it is likely the BBG’s many perceived missteps are going to lead to some changes. In these challenging times, America can ill afford such tumult in its overseas broadcasting services.

Senator Lugar is right about past U.S. public diplomacy mistakes

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, March 4, 2009, San Francisco  

Senator Richard Lugar is right about past mistakes that had crippled U.S. public diplomacy, but new actions by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors also continue to silence America’s voice abroad

Closed Down American Centers and Crippled Voice of America

In an insightful and candid article posted on the Foreign Policy magazine blog, Senator Richard R. Lugar, argues that the United States can only blame itself for not being able to properly explain America to the world. He pointed out that “reaching out to the man or woman on the streets of Jakarta or Caracas or Cairo is the practice of public diplomacy,” which, unfortunately — according to Senator Lugar — the U.S. government has not done very effectively in recent years. The closing down of American information and cultural centers abroad — the subject of Senator Lugar’s article — is, however, only one example of an American institution destroyed or severely crippled by political expediency and naivete of Washington bureaucrats. The Voice of America (VOA)  — international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government  — is another institution being dismantled by the very agency — the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) – set up to strengthen U.S. broadcasts to the world and to represent America abroad.  

In his article, the Republican senator from Indiana noted the continued existence of various U.S. public diplomacy initiatives, including the Peace Corps and the Fulbright academic exchange program. He also mentioned the Voice of America without offering any further comments about VOA. His overall conclusion, however, after analyzing other public diplomacy programs, was that the United States has been “waging the battle of ideas with one hand tied behind its back.”

Lugar’s criticism is focused on the dismantling of the United States Information Agency (USIA) by a joint action, taken by the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress, and the subsequent closing down of American information and cultural enters around the world. Senator Lugar wrote that the United States no longer has “a worldwide equivalent to what Britain and France have, namely, facilities in major world cities with libraries, reading rooms, outreach programs, unfiltered Internet access, film series, lectures, and English classes that enable people to meet with Americans of all walks of life and hold two-way conversations on issues of mutual interest.”

The central point of Senator Lugar’s article is that the U.S. government’s own actions and inactions have contributed to its inability to conduct effective public diplomacy overseas. But the closing down of American centers has not been the only action that was damaging to America’s image abroad in recent years. While Senator Lugar noted that the Voice of America still exists, many of VOA radio programs for overseas audiences have in fact been terminated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

BBG Ends VOA Radio to Russia Less than Two Weeks before Russia Invades Georgia

In an incredible show of bad judgment, this bipartisan board had taken VOA radio programs to Russia off the air just 12 days before the Russian invasion of Georgia last summer. The BBG also ended VOA radio broadcasts to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania just as Mr. Putin started to increase pressure on Russia’s neighboring states to make them follow the Kremlin’s foreign policy objectives. BBG members even wanted to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to the Republic of Georgia — one of the most vulnerable of the former Soviet republics – but the Russian invasion forced them to suspend their decision, at least temporarily. Earlier, the BBG also tried to reduce radio broadcasts to Tibet.  The Board only backed off when pro-independence demonstrations in Tibet were bloodily suppressed and a group of Tibetan monks staged a silent protest on Capital Hill.

In yet another show of incredibly poor judgment combined with bad timing and ulterior bureaucratic motives resulting in a major waste of U.S. tax dollars, the BBG had silenced Voice of America radio programs to Ukraine on December 31, 2008, just one day before Russia halted natural gas deliveries to Europe. Since then, Ukraine has sunk further into a major economic and political crisis, which is threatening its pro-Western foreign policy and democratic changes won during the Orange Revolution.

As a supporter of American Centers abroad who appreciates the value of teaching English and sharing American culture, Senator Lugar would probably also appreciate the damage of the BBG’s persistent efforts to reduce funding for Voice of America English broadcasts. (BBG claims that some of these VOA programs have small audiences and therefore should be terminated. But the BBG has done close to nothing to help market and distribute such programs. The agency instead poured millions of dollars into private entities and their contractors. As it turns out, the results in terms of audience size in many cases are not statistically significantly any better than what traditional VOA broadcasting was able to deliver at a much lower cost and with much greater credibility in representing America.)

Responding to these decisions, a union representing the Voice of America employees said on its website that the BBG has made “at least a half dozen mistakes in the past few months.” One of them resulted in the silencing of the Voice of America Hindi radio broadcasts just a few weeks before the terrorists attacks in Mumbai. ProPublica.org, a nonprofit investigative journalism website, and FreeMediaOnline.org, another nonprofit organization which supports media freedom worldwide, have also reported extensively on journalistic scandals and mismanagement at the BBG.

“America” As a Bad Word — Market Research without Political and Human Rights Context

BBG officials argue that their actions are based on solid market research. Theirs is the same argument used previously to justify the closing down of American information and cultural centers around the world, namely that radio — which comes as close to providing similar people-to-people contact with real Americans as American centers had done before they were eliminated — is not nearly as effective as the Internet, short video clips, and other impersonal but highly technological solutions.

The real story behind the BBG’s actions is a combination of incredible incompetence and the desire of BBG members to subcontract Voice of America work to private entities which can benefit their U.S.-based friends, supporters and constituents. Several years ago, BBG bureaucrats spent countless hours discussing names for  their new privatized broadcasting stations for the Middle East, making sure above all that no word “American” was used. Their market research showed that Muslim audiences did not approve of such verbal associations with America. We can only imagine what the Voice of America would have been named if the BBG had existed during World War II and had been able to conduct market research in Hitler’s Germany. Presumably, at that time most Germans also did not like the word “American.”

Dubious Market Research in Russia Results in Attempts at Censorship

More recently, BBG-commissioned market research in Russia revealed that panels of Russian media users don’t like to hear criticism of Mr. Putin’s authoritarian rule. Based on the previous BBG logic and actions, VOA journalists — who had been told to start blogging after the BBG eliminated their radio programs to Russia — are likely to be urged now to go easy on criticizing Mr. Putin and to hold back on expressing in their blogs their personal opinions about human rights abuses. Inside sources told FreeMediaOnline.org that such instructions have in fact been issued to the VOA Russian Service staff, although it’s unclear where within the BBG hierarchy they have originated. What’s quite clear, however, is that the BBG is responsible for creating a culture in which bureaucratic interests and poorly-understood and often patently compromised market research data take precedence over journalistic values, human rights concerns, and plain common sense.

It is unlikely that VOA Russian Service journalists, who are committed to journalistic freedom and objectivity and protected by the Congressionally approved VOA Charter, would comply with censorship orders. “They want VOA’s Russian Service toothless,” was a conclusion of one VOA journalist who remains defiant. Ultimately, however, their jobs as journalists are not protected if the BBG wants to get rid of those who do not play ball. Since VOA employees cannot be fired directly for their criticism, the way the BBG had dealt with such internal opposition it in the past was by eliminating programs which these employees produce and making them subject to reduction-in-force separation from government employment.

One of the reasons the BBG favors privatized broadcast entities over VOA is the ability to fire their journalists at will. The BBG even denies some foreign-based journalists basic protections of U.S. labor laws. BBG members may not even realize that this has serious implications for America’s image abroad and journalistic freedom. These abhorrent, un-American, and undemocratic BBG policies also make these foreign journalists insecure about their employment more vulnerable to intimidation and recruitment by the intelligence services of dictatorial regimes.

The Russian Service journalists, who were completely demoralized when the former BBG Chairman James K. Glassman personally refused their urgent pleas to allow them to resume radio broadcasts to the war zone in Georgia, have recovered much of their fighting spirit and seem unafraid to offer highly critical comments about Mr. Putin’s rule in Russia and the suppression of local independent media. BBG-ordered program cuts, however, severely limit their ability to provide in-depth multimedia coverage of human rights abuses and other critical issues.

BBG Market Research Encourages Airing of Racist Views on RFE/RL

A few years earlier, BBG-hired private consultants also cited market research to force programming changes at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) — a surrogate broadcaster with a splendid Cold War record completely mismanaged and set adrift by the BBG. Based on market research, RFE/RL journalists were strongly discouraged from sounding too critical about human rights abuses in Mr. Putin’s Russia. Those who resisted were silenced, fired or forced to resign. BBG consultants told RFE/RL reporters that Russian audiences want a more positive view of Russian society and politics and a more critical view of the West. 

About the same time, BBG member Jeff Hirschberg (D. Jeffrey Hirschberg), who has business links in Russia, and the Board’s executive director Jeffrey Trimble conducted secret negotiations with Russian officials to assure them that RFE/RL would practice only ”responsible” journalism. When human rights journalist Anna Politkovskaya was brutally murdered in 2006, their hand-picked managers in charge of RFE/RL operations Moscow and Prague expressed confidence in Mr. Putin’s leadership. Another change resulting from BBG market research in Russia was to allow Russian nationalists and other extremists access to Radio Liberty airwaves, causing a Russian human rights organization to issue a warning that comments by these individuals on a U.S. taxpayer-funded station promote acts of violence against immigrants, Blacks, and other minorities.

In criticizing Radio Liberty, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau said the station was guilty not only  of enabling such people “to spread their poisonous views,” but also of legitimizing their ideas “in the minds of many impressionable radio listeners.” The appeal, written by the organization’s head Aleksandr Brod, argues that stations, which “in their pursuit of higher ratings“ invite such “nationalist radicals,” are giving these enemies of democracy a larger audience and exacerbating ethnic tensions.

BBG Eliminated Voice of America Arabic Broadcasts

Because most VOA journalists would not blindly accept BBG’s directives, former and current BBG members had made sure earlier that the Voice of America would no longer have any Arabic-language broadcasts that would be immune to BBG-desired changes based on short-term trends identified by dubious market research. With strong encouragement and support from the Bush White House, BBG officials created instead Alhurra Television for the Middle East, making sure it has no cumbersome journalistic and financial standards used by VOA and no mandate to present a broad spectrum of American views and values that some Middle Eastern audiences might find objectionable.

While I’m not an expert on the Middle East and the Islamic world, I have studied propaganda and written extensively on this subject. My media contacts throughout Eurasia have been quite clear that they are not fooled by clever names for broadcasting entities thought up by the BBG and would prefer to receive American news and views from an authoritative American source clearly identified for what it is. BBG officials and the Bush White House should have known that propaganda techniques used during World War II and even during the Cold War — one of which was to try to obscure the identity of the originator of news and information — have no chance of success in the era of instant communications and the Internet.

Denying the Holocaust at U.S. Taxpayers’ Expense

BBG members acted surprised when Alhurra reporters gave extensive coverage to statements from a Holocaust deniers’ conference, held in Tehran, with absolutely no attempt to present balancing views. Yet these Alhurra reporters and TV anchors were not doing anything in this case that BBG’s own market research would not support.
Use this link to the ProPublica.org web site to view the Alhurra report with English subtitles: http://www.propublica.org/feature/alhurra-video

Misleading Administration and Congress

In answers to written questions from Senator Richard Lugar submitted during her Senate confirmation process, Hillary Clinton said that “the BBG has learned that it must rely on the best market analysis to understand the unique listening habits and attitudes of the populations we seek to inform.” The BBG indeed spends tremendous amount of taxpayer money on market research. Unfortunately, most BBG members have demonstrated that they lack both experience and judgment to apply research results to political realities in countries without free media.

Before being confirmed as the Secretary of State, Senator Clinton obviously had no time to study closely U.S. international broadcasting or the BBG (of which she is now an ex officio member). In her answers to Senator Lugar, she most likely repeated information provided by the BBG staff. She also told Senator Lugar that “performance of America’s international broadcast entities has been quite successful in telling America’s story (largely the task of the VOA).”

I believe Secretary Clinton, along with most Americans, would be surprised to learn that the Voice of America does not have a single Arabic-language program. Neither does any other U.S. government-supported entity that has “American” in its name — thanks to the BBG’s strategy of privatizing U.S.  international broadcasting and using market research to make decisions that ultimately belong in the political rather than commercial sphere.

In carrying out its privatization of U.S. international broadcasting, the BBG has ignored and mislead Congress and high Administration officials and has tried to keep secret its mistakes and actions designed to weaken the Voice of America. BBG officials had refused to make public an independent study, which was highly critical of Alhurra, until they were forced to make it available on the Internet by the Obama transition team. The termination of VOA radio broadcasts to Russia was also done without any public announcement.  

Supporting Privatized Entities More Important to BBG than Representing America

Senator Lugar is right that, from the U.S. public diplomacy perspective, the elimination of American centers abroad was a damage self-inflicted by the U.S. Government (the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress). Also a self-inflicted damage was the elimination of the VOA Arabic Service by the BBG and the termination of VOA on-air radio programs to Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and many other countries.

The governments of most of these countries would have gladly allowed VOA to continue these radio broadcasts on local stations, thus assuring VOA access to a wide audience. The situation in Russia is drastically different, with the secret police actively prohibiting VOA rebroadcasts by private stations and keeping a close eye on the work of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalists in Russia who are Russian citizens and thus subject to Kremlin’s laws.

The intimidation of RFE/RL reporters in Russia makes the continuation of VOA radio programs from the safety of Washington even more necessary as a powerful political signal to the Kremlin’s secret security services, and equally to the segment of the Russian population that cares about democracy and human rights. BBG officials, however, refuse to admit that there is a security problem, since they justified the termination of Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia by claiming that RFE/RL radio broadcasts would be sufficient. They also don’t want scrutiny of their earlier decisions to place significant RFE/RL facilities and other U.S. international broadcasting resources in Moscow within easy reach of Russia’s security services.

Naive About Mr. Putin’s Secret Police and Internet in Russia

According to information and documents obtained by FreeMediaOnline.org, BBG staff shows a high level of cluelessness about the ability of the new, post-Soviet KGB, now known as the FSB (Mr. Putin’s former employer), to control the Internet in Russia. Despite obvious signs that the Internet is great but not safe in times of serious crisis and not sufficient to reach the most vulnerable audiences, BBG bureaucrats remain widely enthusiastic about their Internet-only strategy for VOA’s Russian Service. With their American-only mindset, they assume that war zone victims, refugees, and the poorest and most repressed segments of world’s populations have high-speed  and uncensored access to the Internet just like they do in their Washington suburban homes.

It may have not even occurred to these BBG officials that the audience panels they commissioned in Russia at great expense to U.S. taxpayers are most likely controlled by the Russian FSB. Based on my own experience working for many years with owners of pro-democracy private radio and TV stations in Russia who had been harassed into silence by the FSB,  the Kremlin’s spy agency almost certainly has tried to skew BBG’s market research and RFE/RL reporting from Russia.

BBG Deserves Greater Scrutiny

While he did not address these problems, Senator Lugar should be applauded for speaking out candidly about past U.S. mistakes when it comes to public diplomacy. He, along with other members of Congress and the new Obama Administration, however,  now has a chance to save U.S. public diplomacy not only from past disasters but also the ones being currently perpetrated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors and its staff.

At the very least, the BBG members and senior officials deserve a much closer scrutiny of their decisions than they had received during the Bush Administration. During the past eight years, BBG members — both Democrats and Republicans — enthusiastically supported any ill-conceived public diplomacy initiative for the Middle East and came up with a few disastrous ideas of their own at a cost of millions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers. Only one BBG member, Blaquita Walsh Cullum, the only working journalist sitting on the Board, was said to have opposed program cuts to countries without free media and objected to hiring expensive consultants to beef up BBG’s public image in the United States.

Cullum is a Republican and was otherwise a strong supporter of the Bush foreign policy. Other Republican members, including the former BBG chairman James K. Glassman, unquestionably backed cutting of VOA radio broadcasts and privatizing U.S. international broadcasting. Ironically, all Democratic BBG members were just as enthusiastic in their support for the ill-conceived broadcasting initiatives for the Middle East as their Republican colleagues, if not more so.

In fact, the main architect of Alhurra and Radio Sawa was Norman Pattiz, a Democratic appointee and a personal friend and supporter of former Senator and now Vice President Joe Biden. Pattiz — whose company, America’s largest radio network Westwood One, is now in serious financial trouble — introduced commercial market research and commercial music formats at the BBG and pushed hard for eliminating Voice of America broadcasts to the Middle East and other regions. Pattiz worked closely with another former BBG member, Edward E. Kaufman, who is now a Democratic U.S. Senator from Delaware.

Other members of Congress, however, have taken notice of the waste and mismanagement at the BBG. One of the most severe critics of the BBG’s performance during the Bush Administration years was a Republican Senator from Oklahoma Tom Coburn, M.D.

Another U.S. Senator, Sam Brownback (R-KA),  has called for abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors. He introduced legislation that would establish the National Center for Strategic Communications, an agency similar to the now defunct U.S. Information Agency. 

Also, Patrick Leahy, a Democratic Senator from Vermont, has tried to stop the BBG from eliminating U.S. broadcasts in foreign languages. His request to the BBG not to end VOA radio Russia and other  media-at-risk countries was ignored. The BBG executive director Jeffrey Trimble, a former acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,  implemented the cuts, reportedly after requesting and receiving advice and help from Senator Biden’s staff.

VOA employees, including journalists in the Russian Service, are hopeful that the Obama Administration, with its new message about America’s intentions around the world, will understand the public diplomacy value of the Voice of America news broadcasts and will not want to engage in deceptive marketing of news using privatized entities with purposely ambiguous names. Their optimism is tempered, however, by the knowledge that Senator and now Vice President Biden was a strong supporter of former BBG members, Norman Pattiz and Edward Kaufman.  Kaufman, who was at one time Biden’s chief of staff in the Senate, was described by a union leader at the BBG  as “no friend of Voice of America employees.” Biden’s support for the privatization of U.S. international broadcasting may be partly explained by the fact that some of the BBG’s private entities, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, are incorporated in Delaware, Biden’s home state.

Federal Human Capital 2008 Survey (FHCS)

One of the Worst Among U.S. Government Agencies Needs Reform

The BBG, which was rated by its own employees as being among the very worst U.S. government agencies, should be abolished — an action recommended by the highly-respected Public Diplomacy Council, a nonprofit organization which includes former diplomats, academics and other foreign policy experts. The PDC has called on President Obama and Congress to take urgent action in reforming publicly-funded U.S. international broadcasting.

The hundreds of millions of dollars that the BBG spends on the discredited and scandal-ridden Alhurra Television could not only pay for re-opening of some U.S. centers abroad and for restoring VOA radio broadcasts to the Middle East and to Russia. Some funds might even be left to offset the record budget deficit and to help with economic recovery. In any case, most Arabs view Alhurra as the Bush Administration’s propaganda tool.

President Obama apparently understands the credibility issue with Alhurra and probably would not want his name to be associated with a television station that welcomed comments from Holocaust deniers. Rather than going to Alhurra, President Obama gave his first televised message to the Arab world in an interview with the Al Arabiya television network.

The United States should be honest with its potential Middle Eastern audiences. Rather than hide behind ambiguous names like Alhurra and Sawa, it should restore Voice of America Arabic broadcasts and offer programs that truly reflect America’s diversity and values. Some of the privatized entities managed by the BBG have proven again and again that they are incapable of applying high journalistic standards. In their current setup under BBG’s marketing rules, they are also incapable of representing America to the Muslim world.

Another reason for urgent action are the financial scandals that have been a constant occurrence among the privatized broadcasting entities so strongly favored by the BBG. The agency has been largely left unsupervised during the previous two administrations. If Senator Lugar can get his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate to support him and get the Obama White House and Secretary Clinton to go along, he may have a good chance of not only repairing U.S. public diplomacy but of making U.S. government more fiscally responsible and more efficient.

The BBG’s organizational chart looks even worse than the GM corporate structure with multiple non-American brands, multiple physical facilities, and multiple executive positions costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars in completely unnecessary and duplicative expenses. (BBG members should have asked themselves why the British Government was not trying to dilute the BBC’s brandname by hiding it under multiple non-British names.) Eliminating the BBG and consolidating almost all U.S. international broadcasting under one American brand, as proposed by the Public Diplomacy Council and others, could make America’s voice abroad once again strong, credible, effective and fiscally justifiable to American taxpayers.

…after the Cold War, the United States prematurely declared victory in the battle for hearts and minds, terminating the U.S. Information Agency, which ran the centers, and cutting the State Department’s public diplomacy budget. Many thought the Internet and global satellite TV would render irrelevant the people-to-people exchanges fostered by the centers. — Senator Richard R. Lugar

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980’s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia.

Wojtyla's Women by Ted Lipien

About FreeMediaOnline.org

In 2006, Ted Lipien founded FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide.  He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

BBG officials initially had told the VOA Russian Service that their requests to resume radio broadcasts were a “non-starter” even after Russia invaded Georgia. Only after weeks of protests, including reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG finally allowed VOA to produce a short audio program for the Internet, updated only Monday through Friday. This program is rather difficult to find on the VOA website. We made it available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us website managed by FreeMediaOnline.org.

Broadcasting Board of Governors Rated Worst Than Ever By Its Employees and As One of The Worst Federal Agencies

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, January 15, 2009, San Francisco –

FreeMediaOnline.org has been reporting recently on the actions of U.S. political appointees and senior government agency officials who had stopped Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Russia 12 days before the outbreak of the war in the Caucasus, terminated VOA Hindi radio to India shortly before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and ended VOA Ukrainian radio programs on December 31, 2008, just hours before Russia stopped the flow of natural gas supplies to Ukraine and the rest of Europe. 

According to the latest Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS), the employees of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) have recently given the BBG Board members and the officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) the worst ever rating for good management and placed the BBG at the very bottom of Federal agencies.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) describes the Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS) as “a tool that measures employees’ perceptions of whether, and to what extent, conditions characterizing successful organizations are present in their agencies. Survey results provide valuable insight into the challenges agency leaders face in ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce and how well they are responding.”

FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit supporting media freedom worldwide, is deeply concerned that the BBG’s actions are undermining access of international audiences to unbiased news and information from the United States. Especially hard hit are the very poorest groups as well as refugees and other victims of war and repression. In many countries around the world — including Russia, India, and Ukraine –the BBG and the International Broadcasting Bureau staff have abandoned Voice of America radio, which used to serve these audiences, in favor of relying exclusively on television and the Internet. This insensitive and elitist strategy has been condemned by labor leaders, human rights activists, as well as BBG’s own employees.

FreeMediaOnline.org is republishing a report on the latest Federal Human Capital Survey posted on the BBG Government Employees AFGE Local 1812 Union web site.

2008 HUMAN CAPITAL SURVEY RESULTS EVEN WORSE FOR BBG

 

DATELINE: Washington, D.C. 01/09/09.  The results of the 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey for the Broadcasting Board of Governors were released yesterday.  It proved to be the worst survey yet for the BBG.  Some examples of the results:

 

The BBG received a negative response of 37.1% to the survey question: “I recommend my organization as a good place to work”.  The negative responses governmentwide averaged 14.9%.

 

It was a negative response of a whopping 50.9% for the BBG regarding the question: “How satisfied are you with the policies and practices of your senior leaders?”.  The governmentwide negative numbers for this question were 28.9%.

 

For the question, “I can disclose a suspected violation of any law, rule or regulation without fear of reprisal”, the BBG earned a 33.3% negative response.  Governmentwide the negative responses averaged 19.0%.

 

All the negative percentages for the BBG listed above are higher than the previous results for the same questions in the surveys of 2006 and 2004.  Instead of working to improve the dismal showing on past surveys, the management of the BBG and the organizations under its umbrella seem to take pride in being if not the worst, one of the worst, places to work in all of government.  Lisa Vandenberg, the president of the Union representing the employees at the FLRA, was quoted recently regarding the survey results for the Agency where she works, “We were led by people not interested in our mission or sustaining our program.”.  That could very well be said by the people working under the BBG.

 

FreeMediaOnline.org has also been critical of the BBG for dismantling the Voice of America and favoring privatized U.S. broadcasting not designed or staffed to present American voices and explain American values to the world. These BBG policies have resulted in giving airtime on Alhurra Television to Holocaust deniers and allowing racist Russian politicians extensive access to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) airwaves. The BBG has also based much of RFE/RL’s reporting and administration in Russia, where locally-hired employees and contractors, who are Russian citizens, are subject to blackmail and other forms of intimidation from the Kremlin’s secret police and intelligence services.

The BBG executive director is Jeffrey Trimble, who was formerly acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Only five members currently serve on the bipartisan Board: Joaquin F. Blaya, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, Steven J. Simmons, and Condoleezza Rice (ex officio).

One prominent former BBG member Edward E. Kaufman, recently appointed as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, (He had been Senator Biden’s chief of staff and replaces him in the Senate.) joined other Democrats and Republicans, including the BBG’s most recent Republican chairman James K. Glassman, who is now the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs,  in voting to end VOA radio programs to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and India — each time shortly before a major news emergency affecting these countries. Only one BBG member, syndicated radio host Blanquita Walsh Cullum, was reported to have opposed programming cuts to media-at-risk countries. 

Some BBG employees have expressed hope to FreeMediaOnline.org that the new Obama Administration will undertake major reforms at the Agency. The Obama transition team has been credited with forcing the BBG to release contents of a highly critical independent study of Alhurra Television, conducted by the USC Annenberg School for Communication, which the BBG wanted to keep secret. The transition team was reviewing America’s international broadcasting services, including the Voice of America and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and advised the transition team working with the U.S. Department of State on public diplomacy.

The international broadcasting services team was led by Ernest J. Wilson III, Dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. BBG employees will have a chance to question him during a roundtable discussion which will take place January 22, 2009, 12:00 PM, at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Participants can register online on the USC Center on Public Diplomacy web site.

Public Diplomacy 2.0 or Propaganda Museum Exhibits

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, January 13, 2009, San Francisco – 

State Department videos embarrass the U.S. among audiences abroad while the Department’s top promoter of Public Diplomacy 2.0 pushes to eliminate Voice of America radio journalism in favor of TV and Internet propaganda advertising and broadcasting based on Cold War models.

While I was an elementary school student in Poland in the 1960s, we had to write compositions why communism was the world’s best political system and what made Lenin the greatest man who has ever lived. Communist media in Poland was full of similar propaganda, although admittedly it was not nearly as naive as what the Soviet media was offering at the time. Most people in Poland were both offended by and laughed at such crude efforts to promote communism. They listened instead to radio broadcasts by Radio Free Europe (RFE) and the Voice of America (VOA). Everybody knew that these two station, financed by the U.S. government, represented a particular political point of view against communism, but we appreciated the fact that they offered generally accurate news and sophisticated journalistic analysis rather than crude propaganda.

Since then, communism had collapsed and international consumers of media news have become even more skeptical and discerning. And yet a number of recent U.S. State Department political appointees responsible for public diplomacy and officials in charge of U.S. international broadcasting have enthusiastically embraced propaganda advertising  as the primary solution to the problems of how the Bush Administration and the United States are perceived abroad.

These efforts have been in line with the general desire of neoconservative Bush Administration officials to subcontract much of public diplomacy and international broadcasting to private corporations and institutions, thus limiting fiscal controls, transparency and input from professional State Department diplomats and Voice of America journalists who could question and possibly block outlandish and counterproductive ideas. Instead of responsible and balanced journalism by Voice of America, foreign audiences are now being offered short propaganda videos and entertainment-rich programs produced by private contractors.

A similar effort to replace journalism with questionable marketing and advertising concepts has been underway for a number of years at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which is responsible for U.S. international broadcasts. Even though this is a bipartisan board, its Democratic members joined forces with neoconservative Republicans in slashing Voice of America journalistic programs and creating private broadcasting entities, such as Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television for the Middle East, with the stated goal of “marrying the mission to the market,” (BBG’s own slogan.)

BBG members and their private consultants had told these privatized entities to play music, offer programs that audiences agree with, and to make every other effort to attract more listeners and viewers. Not surprisingly, Muslim viewers dismissed Alhurra as an American propaganda station, even though in its misplaced desire to please the audience the station aired reports expressing sympathy with those who deny that six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis during the World War II Holocaust.

Use this link to the ProPublica.org web site to view the Alhurra Holocaust report (with English subtitles) as an example of what the BBG’s marketing strategy has produced at these privatized U.S.-funded stations:  http://www.propublica.org/feature/alhurra-video 

Voice of America is the only U.S. Congress-funded international broadcaster that has tried to resist BBG’s marketing strategy, but “Marrying the Mission to the Market” and  Public Diplomacy 2.0, which in their current form can only be described as Propaganda 2.0, have largely replaced objective journalism in U.S. efforts to communicate with foreign audiences. One of the first Voice of America broadcasting units eliminated by the BBG was the VOA Arabic Service, which was highly-respected in the Middle East for independence and the quality of its radio programs.

More recently, the current public diplomacy chief at the State Department, James K. Glassman, the neoconservative co-author of the book DOW 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market, (Yes, in 1999 Glassman was just as enthusiastic in predicting that the U.S. stock market would soon reach this level as he is now about his vision of Public Diplomacy 2.0.) ordered the termination of VOA radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military attacked Georgia in August 2008. Glassman had also wanted to eliminate all VOA radio programs to Georgia and Ukraine. He personally rejected pleas from VOA Russian Service journalists to allow them to resume radio broadcasts to the war zone in the Caucasus during the height of the Russian-Georgian conflict.

Glassman apparently became convinced that even war refugees and war combatants can get their news from the Internet, and if they can’t, they probably do not matter as an audience since more often than not these groups are not statistically significant. His other assumption was that the Internet requires vast sums of money (for private consultants and contractors), and therefore VOA cannot possibly do both radio and Internet to Russia at the same time, even though many other private and public broadcasters are combining the Internet with radio and TV without much difficulty.  It’s hard to tell what Mr. Glassman thinks about the people in Russia and elsewhere who cannot afford the Internet, but he definitely ignores the power of direct communication between American journalists and their  international audience that has always been crucial, especially in times of serious political crises, and he dismisses concerns about the documented ability of Russia’s secret services to block and sabotage the Internet.

At first, the BBG would not even consider restoring VOA radio to Russia, but after protests by FreeMediaOnline.org and others, it allowed the Russian Service to produce a much reduced 30 minute radio program Monday through Friday, which has no current newscasts but does offer more in-depth coverage of critical current issues than what is available from other formats.  Despite BBG’s decision to spend large sums of money on outside Internet consultants and contractors, the Russian radio program is difficult to find on the VOA web site and its audio is often not updated regularly, thus leaving site visitors to hear the same outdated program over a number of days.

Voice of America Russian radio program is made available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us web site managed by FreeMediaOnline.org

ProPublica.org, a nonprofit investigative journalism web site, has uncovered major financial and editorial irregularities related to private contractors hired under the rules set up by the BBG. Some of them were confirmed by an independent study prepared by the Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, University of Southern California. Commissioned by the U.S. government,  the study’s authors concluded that Alhurra, Arab-language television to the Middle East managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors fails to meet basic journalistic standards and is seen by few.

It was beyond the scope of the USC study to point out that the money to operate Alhurra has been taken from VOA broadcasting to such strategic countries as Russia, China (including Tibet), and India.  As millions of dollars were being spent and wasted on Internet propaganda videos at the Department of State and on programs at scandal-ridden private broadcasting entities, such as Alhurra, the Broadcasting Board of Governors also made a decision to stop VOA Ukrainian radio broadcasts. This happened just hours before Russia shut off the flow of natural gas supplies to Ukraine and the rest of Europe.

Only five members serve currently on the Board: Joaquin F. Blaya, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, Steven J. Simmons, and Condoleezza Rice (ex officio). One prominent former BBG member Edward E. Kaufman, recently appointed as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, (He had been Senator Biden’s chief of staff and replaces him in the Senate.) joined other Democrats and Republicans in voting to end VOA radio programs to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and India — each time shortly before a major news emergency affecting these countries, which included the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

In making these cuts, the majority of BBG members completely disregarded warnings and requests from the U.S. Congress, human rights NGOs, and the union of journalists and broadcasting technicians working for the Agency. BBG members have also ignored advice from professional diplomats and media experts familiar with foreign cultures. Neither Kaufman nor Biden seemed concerned that silencing VOA radio while RFE/RL operations in Russia are vulnerable to intimidation by the Russian secret police presents a serious risk. RFE/RL is incorporated in Delaware.

Most BBG officials treat their jobs as giving them carte blanche to support their pet projects.  Democrats on the Board became enthusiastic supporters of the Bush Administration’s plans for privatized broadcasting to the Middle East. The chief architect and implementer of these plans at the BBG was a Democratic appointee, Norman Pattiz, founder of the U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, only one BBG member, a Republican appointee, was reported to have opposed VOA programming cuts to media-at-risk countries, angering both former BBG Republican Chairman Glassman, and Ted Kaufman, former top Democratic member. Leaders of the union representing BBG employees have called for the Board to be eliminated as did the highly respected Public Diplomacy Council, whose members come from diplomacy, the armed forces, nonprofits and academia. Most BBG members are successful businessmen (often in domestic broadcasting industry) with strong political connections, but they lack substantive experience in foreign policy, public diplomacy, international broadcasting, or international human right advocacy.

This is a link to “I Am America” video in Russian on the State Department’s web site that truly qualifies as a historical exhibit in a propaganda museum. It is described on YouTube as a video “presented to the U.S. State Department by Business for Diplomatic Action” that “will be played in U.S. embassies and consulates.” The images of America  are spectacular, but the message is crudely propagandistic and naive. Anybody with even basic political education, which describes much of today’s world, knows that the people in the video do not run U.S. foreign policy and had elected George W. Bush twice as their president before changing their minds about the direction the country should take in dealing with the world. A one-sided view of America will be dismissed as propaganda regardless of how many dollars are spent on a clever advertising packaging.  

In fact, millions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent on these highly embarrassing videos, which are prominently featured on the State Department web site. A single VOA radio or television report about President Elect Barack Obama’s family background and foreign policy plans could not only help repair some of the damage done by these propaganda videos but would also have a long-term positive impact on how America will now be perceived abroad. Unfortunately, for ideological and bureaucratic reasons, the BBG has put VOA on its chopping block, and the  Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy is still determined to replace a substantive dialogue with foreign audiences with short and clever video messages and apparently wants to hold on to his job after the Obama Administration takes over.

Another propaganda video commissioned from private contractors by the State Department public diplomacy 2.0 team announces a worldwide contest for submitting privatelly-produced videos about the meaning of the word ‘democracy.’ View it here. The prize is “an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, New York and Hollywood to attend special screenings of the winning videos, gain exposure to the U.S. film and television industry and meet with creative talent, democracy advocates and government leaders.” The contest has been prominently featured on the State Department’s official web site, but the YouTube page, where contest videos must be submitted, has received less than 160,000 views despite being available for several months. A popular Voice of America radio program can attract many more listeners in single day and offer a journalistic view of American democracy that is far more substantive and credible.

The Internet does offer enormous opportunities for U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting but not in the hands of propagandists, or  private contractors who have no journalistic and foreign policy experience and care primarily about their own profits. Most of the members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (James K. Glassman was its most recent chairman) have done great harm to journalism and to the U.S. image abroad. The current Bush Administration’s public diplomacy chief at the Department of State does not seem to realize that many types of Internet activities are not appropriate or credible when done by government officials and are better left to truly independent NGOs and individual bloggers.

For people placed in charge of U.S.-funded journalistic entities, most BBG members have shown remarkable indifference to the concept of journalistic independence. In their misplaced desire to chase after higher audience ratings, they have allowed Russian-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reporters to be intimidated by the Kremlin’s secret police and tolerate giving extensive airtime to Russian politicians known for their racist views. This is the same marketing-first/journalism-second approach advocated by the BBG that had encouraged Alhurra, another privatized broadcaster, to air comments by Holocaust denies.

Radio Liberty, which during the Cold War had played a highly effective role as a surrogate broadcaster, providing in-depth domestic news coverage for listeners in the Soviet Union, has become a virtual hostage of the BBG strategy of favoring privatized surrogate broadcasting. Mr. Putin’s repressive but sophisticated media policies call for an entirely different approach, and yet the BBG insists that RFE/RL should have a large presence in Russia and rejects VOA radio broadcasts from the United States as unnecessary. But the idea of keeping many private broadcasting entities fits well with the desire of individual BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans, to keep as much control over U.S. international broadcasting for themselves and to reward their friends with well-paid positions and lucrative contracts.  James K. Glassman was reported to have tried to hire Paula Zahn, formerly of CNN, as the BBG’s high profile spokesperson at about the same time when the BBG executive director Jeffrey Trimble, formerly acting president of RFE/RL, was implementing the plan to stop VOA radio broadcasts to Russia. Paula Zahn had wisely declined the offer perhaps after realizing that her job might be to explain why a group of Tibetan monks staged a silent protest on Capital Hill against the BBG’s plans to reduce U.S. radio broadcasts to Tibet. Thankfully, at least in this case the BBG backed down.

Contrary to what BBG members believe, including its most recent chairman, traditional independent radio and television journalism can be successfully merged with Web 2.0 concepts and can achieve high audience ratings without resorting to questionable management techniques, marketing practices and crude propaganda.

They could have learned much about the use of “soft power” from reading a recently published book by Ambassador Patricia Gates Lynch, Thanks for Listening: High Adventures in Journalism and Diplomacy, with the foreword by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. For many years Ms. Gates had been a host of the highly popular VOA Breakfast Show. She made millions of friends for America around the world without resorting to propaganda simply by telling her audiences about America and broadcasting interviews with exceptional and ordinary Americans. Later named  by President Reagan as U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar and the Comoros Islands, Pat Gates also worked briefly as a public relations representative for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at the time when that organization practiced truly independent surrogate journalism while Voice of America offered a mix of American news, American commentaries, as well as reports on political and human rights situation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There was no BBG at that time, and both VOA and RFE/RL were managed by journalistic professionals and distinguished Americans, people like NBC anchor John Chancellor and Malcolm Forbes, Jr. Political appointees serving now on the BBG do not want people with ideas and much greater accomplishments to tell them how to practice broadcast journalism.

Ironically, even as the Cold War ended, neoconservative Republicans and  internationally naive but politically ambitious Democrats serving on the BBG chose the very earliest surrogate broadcasting model developed when Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberation (later Radio Liberty) were still financed and run by the CIA. This model, which was completely outdated and inappropriate for skeptical and hostile audiences in the Middle East (audiences in Easter Europe during the Cold War were highly sympathetic to the message in American-funded radio broadcasts) nevertheless gave BBG members and the White House maximum control over truly uncooperative and potentially uncooperative journalists.

While surrogate broadcasting was effective during the Cold War, even then it faced some serious problems, which BBG members chose to ignore when they developed their grandiose broadcasting plans for the Middle East. They could have learned about these problems and how to avoid them from an exceptionally honest account by former RFE/RL manager James Critchlow. In his book, Radio Hole-in-the-Head: Radio Liberty: An Insider’s Story of Cold War Broadcasting, Critchlow describes some very serious policy and editorial errors committed by naive political operatives, incompetent bureaucrats, and uninformed journalists who had worked at RFE/RL between 1953 and the end of 1980s. 

At least during the Cold War, RFE/RL journalists were based in Munich, West Germany, and were relatively safe from intimidation by the KGB. Serious editorial problems were usually uncovered and corrected until the BBG took over. The BBG placed most of RFE/RL Russian Service reporters in Russia and kept them there even after former President Putin and the KGB’s successor agency, the FSB, nearly completely took control over the local broadcast media using force and intimidation.

Unwilling to give up or significantly scale down RFE/RL’s large bureau in Moscow, BBG members and their staff, some of whom had business and personal links to Russia, began negotiating with members of the Putin regime while BBG-hired consultants told RFE/RL journalists to make their programs less critical of the political and social realities in Russia.

Independent Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya Who Was Murdered in Moscow in 2006

Shortly after independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow in an execution-style hit in 2006, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty managers made public statements strongly suggesting an attempt on their part to appease Mr. Putin. In an apparent effort to protect their presence in the country, the head of RFE/RL Moscow bureau, Elena Glushkova, said in an on-air discussion in October 2006 that the work of Radio Liberty journalists cannot cause Russia any harm. She insisted that RFE/RL reporters respect and love Russia. She also pointed out that all Radio Liberty reporters who work in Russia are Russian citizens and said that her optimism despite the murder of Ms. Politkovskaya is based in her belief in “the common sense of the current Russian leadership.” Maria Klain, Russian Service director at the RFE/RL home office in Prague, also expressed confidence that the radio’s future in Russia looks good. These comments surprised and offended pro-democracy activists in Russia who were still in mourning after Anna Politovskaya’s murder.

More recently, a Russian human rights organization, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, has criticized Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for giving an entire hour of airtime to a Russian politician known for his racist views and verbal attacks on Blacks and other ethnic and racial minorities.  For the new U.S. administration headed by the first African-American president, this is not a very encouraging sign that the BBG’s marketing and programming strategies have been successful. View FreeMediaOnline.org report: “U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Spreading Racist Views on Radio Liberty in Russia: What Would Barack Obama Say If He Knew…”   

One would think that in light of such developments and statements by RFE/RL managers in Russia, the BBG would want Washington-based Voice of America journalists to expand their Russian broadcasts. The BBG’s policy, however, has been not only to dismantle the Voice of America radio services but to make sure that  even the names of the privatized entities designed to replace them did not have any references to the U.S. in an naive belief that this would make them more credible with skeptical and hostile audiences.

By placing much of the work and operations of these privatized entities in countries like Russia and in the Middle East and relying on locally-hired staff, the BBG created no safeguards to make sure that local reporters would not be blackmailed by foreign security and intelligence services. At the same time, the BBG denied locally-hired employees the protection of U.S. labor laws, damaging U.S. reputation in countries like the Czech Republic and drawing attention and criticism from local politicians, including the highly respected former Czech President Vaclav Havel. Link to FreeMediaOnline.org report Radio Free Europe or Radio Free Putin? Did BBG End U.S. Surrogate Broadcasting in Russia on Radio Liberty in an Attempt to Appease Mr. Putin and Pursue Its Marketing Strategy?

The new Obama Administration has a chance to completely reform U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting. Millions of U.S. taxpayers’ money are still being wasted by the BBG in financing multiple privatized broadcasting entities — a veritable GM-like corporate model – with multiple executive positions and duplicate administrative structures. None of these entities is set up to present America’s story to the world.

The Voice of America, the only journalistic organization that knows how to do this job without propaganda and with some measure of credibility, desperately needs protection from the incompetent political appointees at the BBG and from the Bush Administration’s public diplomacy chief. If nothing is done, propaganda will triumph over journalism and America’s reputation abroad will be further diminished. Public Diplomacy 2.0 designed by ideologues, propagandists, and profit-seeking private contractors is an embarrassment. The Obama Administration would do well by sending these State Department videos to a museum as a warning to future government officials in charge of public diplomacy and U.S. international broadcasting who might again be tempted by the allure of propaganda.

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980’s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news broadcasts to Russia and Ukraine.

In 2006, Ted Lipien founded FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide.  He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of more serious  news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

The Worst of Times

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog  The Federalist Commentary, January 8, 2009, San Francisco – This commentary is by The Federalist, one of our regular contributors with inside knowledge of US government bureaucracy.

The Worst of Times

by The Federalist

“US international broadcasting is being led by people not interested in its mission or in sustaining its programs.”

This applies to all levels of US international broadcasting, from the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs down to managers within the broadcasting entities, the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).  When it comes to public diplomacy, the greatest detriment to the national and public Interest may, in fact, be these officials.

Time and again, they have demonstrated an extraordinary disregard for the power, consequence, and significance of silence.  In public diplomacy and in international broadcasting, silence equates with failure, abandonment, and a loss of international power and prestige.

These officials have systematically engaged in silencing US international broadcasting assets: in Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, India and Pakistan…all flashpoints for much larger conflicts.  Worse, they do so with extreme arrogance, without regard to painful realities around the world.  They do not understand the necessity of a strategic triad of broadcast mediums that allow for a flexible and fluid response to changing situations.  In their decision-making, they have repeatedly demonstrated that they are shortsighted, unimaginative, and inflexible…the perfect faults to exploit by forces intent upon defeating the reach of US international broadcasting assets and the US public diplomacy effort.  Discrediting the United States is made a whole lot easier by the ineptitude exhibited in these processes.

In the face of deteriorating circumstances, these officials have embraced an all-or-nothing strategy based on using the Internet as their sole source for audio, video and text.

Let us disabuse the notion that this strategy is groundbreaking, trendsetting or staying ahead of the technological curve.  US government computer systems are vulnerable to cyber warfare.  Recently, a high level briefing was provided the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations regarding the vulnerabilities of and threats to US government computer systems.  The threat is real and substantial.

No doubt, those responsible for Internet security for US international broadcasting would claim that its systems are secure.  However, it should be remembered that a culture of deceit permeates many levels of the US international broadcasting entities…the same kind of deceit that attempts to cover up embarrassing failures of its operations, such as with alHurra television, until the cover-up effort was trumped by  the release of the Annenberg Report on alHurra credited to the Obama transition team.  Claims of cyber security for US international broadcasting systems should be met with great skepticism.  Be mindful of the admonition: consider the source.

One more point: the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, James Glassman, thinks that “we’re Coke and they’re Pepsi.”  Perhaps Mr. Glassman doesn’t have a television and hasn’t had the opportunity to watch footage of the current round of conflict between Hamas and the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, or the widening of the conflict by rocket fire now coming from southern Lebanon into Israel.  Or perhaps Mr. Glassman can inquire of Hamas or Hezbollah if they think they are Coke or Pepsi. 

The point is this: the analogy is idiotic…under almost any circumstances but especially those of the present.

These are not the best of times for US international broadcasting.  Maintaining the status quo, through the twits and tweets of a fairy tale world view pontificated by inept political appointees or senior officials covering up the multi-million dollar failures of its high profile projects like alHurra, is the short march to the worst of times.

The Federalist 2009

Thinking About The Unthinkable

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog  The Federalist Commentary, January 6, 2009, San Francisco – This commentary by The Federalist, one of our regular contributors with inside knowledge of US government bureaucracy, is designed to open a discussion on the Free Media Online Blog about the proper role for US public diplomacy and international broadcasting in dealing with terrorism and threats to free media in Russia and other countries.  The Federalist argues that the current US public diplomacy effort based on the mixture of outdated Cold War models and Web 2.0 marketing schemes cannot be successful in responding to the new realities of the post-9/11 world.  The commentator points out that the tactics of Islamist extremists are consistent and predictable and that they will continue to represent a serious threat.  We would like to hear from others whether the US should build its public diplomacy strategy in response to this kind of threat assessment and whether a new approach to foreign policy by the Obama Administration will open up new opportunities for improving America’s image abroad. We invite your comments, which you may post directly on the blog or email them to: contact@freemediaonline.org.  We welcome full-length articles from outside contributors.

Thinking About The Unthinkable

by The Federalist

If you think about the above phrase coined by the late nuclear war theorist, Herman Kahn, you might find it  both unusually appropriate and alarming when applied to US public diplomacy.

There is a fundamental flaw in the current US thinking about this subject.  We seem to believe that the strategies of the Cold War can be updated to successfully deal with our current adversaries.  Such thinking is wrong and, if it continues, it can have fatal consequences for our future.

In facing Islamic extremism, we are not dealing with a “war of ideas”  typical of the Cold War. Neither are we going to impress our adversaries with “Public Diplomacy 2.0.”

The “war of ideas” terminology aptly described the competition between two economic and political systems, capitalism and communism.  Both were products of Western thought and resulted in a public diplomacy strategy that was successful during the Cold War but is not likely to work against Islamist extremists.

“Public Diplomacy 2.0” describes an approach to public diplomacy that seemingly is more focused on a technological medium (and being social gadflies) and less focused on the underlying issues.

Neither term accurately describes the current world environment.  We are faced not with a war of ideas but a war of beliefs — the worst kind of conflict.  The war of beliefs deals in terms of finality and absolutes.

Americans have become too wrapped around the babble of our own point of view.  We are not listening to our adversaries.  This is a serious lapse that, if not corrected, could prove more disastrous than some of our already well-publicized public diplomacy flops.

Our public diplomacy apparatus still believes we are dealing with a competition between two ideologies.  The current Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, James K. Glassman, even talks in analogies of Coca-Cola versus Pepsi.  In doing so, Mr. Glassman makes a good case that he should be replaced.

Al-Qaeda, radical fundamentalists, jihadists and terrorists often use the same technological tools as we do.  However, their message is entirely different from what Mr. Glassman’s analogy seems to suggest.

If one listens carefully to the message of these groups, it’s clear that they do not talk using the terminology of “Coke versus Pepsi.”  Their language is one of annihilation and total war against those they see as a threat to their way of life and their interests.  Americans and other Westerners are seen as nonbelievers or infidels.  We are portrayed as being driven by vice, greed and corruption.  These groups are determined to destroy the Western way of life by any means possible and available.  Generally speaking, they are not interested in talking with us or engaging in a polite discussion over our differences.

When it comes to launching a war, the jihadists have done the math, both on a tactical and strategic level. In responding, we need to reflect on the events of September 11, 2001.  We seem to have forgotten but should remind ourselves that a small number of operatives commandeered four commercial airliners and used them to attack three known sites and a probable fourth.  Three of the four aircraft reached their targets.  Of the three targets, two were completely destroyed and the third damaged.  In each case,  there was a substantial loss of life.  Billions of dollars have been spent in the aftermath of the attacks, both domestically and abroad, to improve defenses against further attacks and presumably to take the fight directly to the terrorists.

Still, the jihadists have done the math…use the smallest number of operatives to inflict the maximum amount of damage, destruction and loss of life. They are likely to use the same tactics again.

Part of the billions of dollars spent has been to upgrade US military and intelligence capabilities to deal with the threat.  Our defense and intelligence agencies point with some pride to the increased level of security we have enjoyed up to this moment.  However, as any analyst knows, understanding the jihadists’ math and developing effective countermeasures is the key to achieving victory or suffering another serious, catastrophic attack.  It is a constantly evolving set of circumstances, until the core threat and its offshoots are completely eliminated.  It requires constant vigilance.

On the tactical level, the concept of  using the smallest number of operatives to inflict the maximum amount of damage is being acted out over and over again.  Witness the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai, India.  A small group of operatives attacked a soft target and inflicted the maximum amount of death and destruction proportionate to their numbers.

Witness also the more recent rocket attacks by Hamas against Israel.  This is another form of the same tactical process.  The Israeli response and the attendant casualties among the Palestinian civilian population are seen as validation of the jihadists’ belief that nothing short of annihilation of the enemy will resolve the situation.

On the strategic level, the jihadists have not deviated from their purpose to bring about the total destruction of the United States.  Destruction of civil society is an acceptable part of this strategy.  The vision that the jihadists have of the United States is not unlike the recently released video game, “Fallout 3.”  This is the America the jihadists want to see.  Acquiring the technology and a deliverable weapon to accomplish this goal is high on the jihadists’ list of priorities.

Seen in this light, the threat from Iran becomes much more real.  It is not merely high-handed volatile rhetoric coming from the Iranian leadership.  That leadership believes in and embraces the jihadists’ strategic concept of annihilation.

We have difficulty in being able to rationally understand this level of rage toward the United States, Israel or other Western societies.  However, we need to see and understand what factors into the jihadists’ calculations as they act upon their sense of rage.  These extremists profess to be Islamists.  Islam is the largest world religion.  Knowing this, the jihadists have drawn the conclusion that, even if they precipitate Armageddon, there is a high likelihood that the group most likely to survive are people who identify with these religious beliefs.  The condition of a post-Apocalyptic world is not a matter of great concern.  The only thing that matters is winning at all costs.

In the United States, most people live in relative comfort.  Many who identify with the religion of Islam comprise some of the poorest of the global poor.  We have a lot to lose.  From the jihadists’ perspective, there is little left to lose in this life.  This is a very appealing message to those whose lives are filled with desperation and who see themselves as exploited by and victims of Western affluence.  The jihadists do not hesitate to draw on examples of over a thousand years of history to point out examples of Western acts against their theology and people.  The jihadists’ philosophy makes heroes out of all those who sacrifice their lives in achieving victory.  Victory is its own reward.

We need to take this threat very seriously.  Up to this point, certain aspects of US public diplomacy, such as “Public Diplomacy 2.0,” have demonstrated that the threat is not being taken seriously.  We have tailored a public diplomacy strategy that seems more like a media advertising campaign during a major sporting event.

In overview, the incoming Obama administration needs to consider several issues:

First, we need to be realistic as to the nature of this threat and its intended outcomes.  This means paying close attention to the message of the jihadists and taking it literally.

Second, the primary objective of US public diplomacy is to deprive jihadists and international terrorism of its most important resource: human capital.  The task is daunting.  The jihadists promise restoring the power of Islam as a global political, social and cultural force to be reckoned with.  The jihadists promise removing the oppressors of downtrodden Muslim people around the world.  The jihadists reinforce this message with action.  Seven years after the attacks of September 11, 2001 the architect of these attacks, Osama bin Laden, remains at-large.  This increases the power of the jihadist message.  If all we have to offer in our public diplomacy effort is the status quo or trite techno-babble, the advantage will remain with the radical fundamentalists.

Third, we need to speak boldly with the international community, our allies, neighbors and those warily watching world events from the sidelines.  We need to appeal to a sense of common purpose to defeat those who intend to bring about the destruction of civilization as we know it.

Fourth, we need to get the Russians back to being fully on board with this effort.  Rather than allow themselves to be distracted by armed or verbal conflict with its neighbors, the Russian leadership faces a much more genuine threat to Russia’s interests.  The United States needs to speak directly to the Russian leadership and to the Russian people through our international broadcasting assets.  It is a serious mistake to be dismissive of the Russian people, their history and their sacrifices…a mistake compounded by the termination of direct Russian radio broadcasts by the Voice of America.  This fatal decision was implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in 2008.

Fifth, we need a thorough rehabilitation of our public diplomacy effort in the Arab and Muslim world.  Current projects such as Radio Sawa and alHurra television are not getting the job done.

Finally, “Public Diplomacy 2.0” should be relegated to the category of fantasy fiction…in much the same way as “Dow 36,000” ( a book co-authored by James K. Glassman).

The Federalist 2008

The Obama Administration Has No Need for Private U.S. Propaganda Radio and TV

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, December 16, 2008, San Francisco – In The Huffington Post article, “Alhurra TV: Uncle Sam’s Boondoggle“ Dr.  Nancy Snow has pointed out a number of serious problems with the  U.S. government-funded Alhurra Arabic-language television program for the Middle East and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages Alhurra. Dr. Snow, an Associate Professor of Public Diplomacy in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, New York, and a Senior Fellow in the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, had predicted that this privatized propaganda enterprise based on outdated Cold War surrogate broadcasting models and mistaken marketing concepts, would result in a failure and would increase rather than reduce anti-Americanism abroad.  She and many other public diplomacy experts were right in advising against the creation of Alhurra and the dismantling of the Voice of America broadcasting to the Middle East.

In the process of privatizing U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting, both Republicans and Democrats serving on the BBG were eager to destroy the Voice of America (VOA) Arabic Service, which followed far stricter journalistic standards of accuracy and balance and was required by law to represent the entire spectrum of American opinions. Dr. Snow is right in pointing out that Alhurra was not just a creation of fabulously incompetent and ideologically-driven neoconservatives. Alhurra may be therefore difficult to get rid of precisely because Democrats were just as guilty of supporting this enterprise as were neoconservative Republicans.

But if the Obama Administration wants to have a fresh start in the Middle East, it should reverse the privatization of U.S. international broadcasting. Alhurra should be abolished or completly redesigned despite the leading role in supporting this failed experiment played by the staff of Senator Joe Biden and his former chief of staff, the newly appointed U.S. Senator from Delaware Edward E. Kaufman (one of Alhurra’s strongest supporters on the BBG).  Alhurra’s godfather on the BBG was Norman Pattiz, founder of the U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One. He is another prominent Democrat and one of Biden’s financial backers.

Mistakes by both Democrats and Republicans led to the current problems in U.S. international broadcasting and public diplomacy. The elimination of the United States Information Agency (USIA), which launched in earnest the privatization of U.S. public diplomacy, was the initiative of the Clinton Administration. At the time, the dismantling of USIA had strong bipartisan support. The creation of Alhurra was the Bush Administration’s initiative, which also received bipartisan Congressional approval. As with the Iraq war, the initial decisions were based on false analysis and empty promises and are now regretted by many who had supported them.

Unfortunately, the misguided privatization of U.S. international broadcasting has not been limited only to the Middle East. In an attempt to bring even more money for Alhurra, the BBG engaged in the process of eliminating or reducing Voice of America broadcasts to a number of strategically important countries and regions, including China, Tibet, Russia, and India. Jobs of U.S. journalists who could have stopped propaganda and bias were eliminated in favor of hiring private contractors who were not subject to the same rules as those followed by the Voice of America.

In a major public diplomacy and foreign policy blunder, Edward E. Kaufman and D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, another liberal Democrat, joined ranks with James K. Glassman, the BBG’s most recent neoconservative chairman, in voting earlier this year to terminate yet another  critical Voice of America program. The BBG ended VOA radio broadcasts to Russia while ignoring strong opposition from many concerned Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress who warned them not to proceed with these cuts.

VOA Russian radio broadcasts went off the air just 12 days before the Russian army attacked Georgia. The BBG refused to reverse its decision, ignoring desperate pleadings from VOA journalists to allow them to resume their job of broadcasting radio to the war zone. James K. Glassman personally told VOA employees that these broadcasts would not continue. Yet this incredible fiasco did not stop Glassman’s friends from calling on the Obama transition team to allow him to keep his current State Department post of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

One of the reasons neoconservative Republicans joined forces with Democrats in an effort to silence VOA Russian radio was to help Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), another private broadcasting entity which is incorporated in Delaware. Shortly before the summer war in the Caucasus and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the same group of Democrats and Republicans on the BBG also voted to eliminate VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia, Ukraine, and India. When terrorists struck in Mumbai, VOA no longer produced radio programs in Hindi to India. By a miracle, VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine were temporarily saved because the BBG staff did not act fast enough to end them before the Russian attack on Georgia.

It should not be a surprise that privatization of U.S. international broadcasting would lead to decisions which harm U.S. national security interests and result in major journalistic failures. Some of these failures, which were highlighted in the study prepared the Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, University of Southern California, are described at length by Dr. Snow. It’s also no surprise that the BBG wanted to keep the study secret even from members of Congress.

As Dr. Snow points out, there were plenty of earlier warnings which the Broadcasting Board of Governors chose to ignore.  Fortunately for media freedom and journalistic ethics, a news event — a conference in Teheran which gathered those who deny the reality of the Holocaust — became an unexpected test of the BBG’s privatization and marketing strategies and eventually led to investigations which exposed both journalistic and financial abuses.

Reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, which had dealt with international media and NPR reporting on the conference in Teheran, was responsible for the initial inquiries on how Alhurra and other BBG-run entities covered various statements by Holocaust deniers.

According to ProPublica.org, another nonprofit investigative journalism website, one Alhurra Television report that had particularly upset lawmakers was from an Iranian reporter who told viewers that there was no proof that 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II. Use this link to the ProPublica.org web site to view the Alhurra report with English subtitles:  http://www.propublica.org/feature/alhurra-video

View  FreeMediaOnline.org report:  “Holocaust conference in Iran: Al Jazeera offers more balance than National Public Radio (NPR) reporter; objective coverage from most other international media”     (In response to criticism, NPR later aired a number of reports to correct its initial reporting. The BBG has been silent about such mistakes and attempted to limit journalistic inquiries.)

Reports which violate basic U.S. journalistic standards became common on the U.S. broadcasting entities privatized by the BBG, as the Alhurra study demonstrates. The Voice of America could not provide a more balanced reporting to counter such abuses because its programs have been reduced or eliminated by the Board and the Bush Administration.

In addition to the effects of privatization and the lack of sufficient oversight, BBG’s marketing strategies, introduced by Norman Pattiz, also contributed significantly to biased reporting and journalistic failures. Political interference with journalistic program content was made part of the BBG’s strategy of “marrying the mission to the market.” Private consultants hired by the BBG were telling Alhurra and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) not to focus too much on human rights issues since such an emphasis might offend highly nationalistic audiences and lead to lower ratings. Norman Pattiz and his consultants also told BBG broadcasters that they can improve their audience reach through music and entertainment programming.

One reason privatization became a major focus for the BBG was the inability of the Board members to force VOA journalists to take orders and compromise their journalistic ethics. Saving jobs of private contractors overseas while eliminating U.S. positions at the Voice of America also became a priority for BBG members and their staff.

In the case of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg and BBG’s executive director Jeffrey Trimble wanted to maintain a large private contractor presence in Russia despite strong evidence that the Kremlin’s secret police has been busy intimidating and blackmailing RFE/RL journalists who are Russian citizens and are subject to Russian laws. (Russian law prevents these contract employees from disclosing to RFE/RL and the BBG that they might have been approached by the FSB, the successor agency of the KGB.) To protect their bureau in Moscow from being closed down, Radio Liberty managers put a positive spin on Putin’s comments about the murder of independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.  View FreeMediaOnline.org report.

  
More recently, a Russian human rights organization, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, has criticized Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for giving an entire hour of airtime to a Russian politician known for his racist views and verbal attacks on Blacks and other ethnic and racial minorities. View FreeMediaOnline.org report: “U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Spreading Racist Views on Radio Liberty in Russia: What Would Barack Obama Say If He Knew…”   

Many independent experts and organizations, including the Public Diplomacy Council, have called for a major reform of U.S. public diplomacy. The Obama Administration should show that it wants U.S. public diplomacy to have a fresh start by abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors and un-privatizing Alhurra Television. The new Administration has no need for private  U.S. propaganda radio and TV operating without proper supervision and accountability. 

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. He is founder and president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit which support media freedom worldwide, and author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

Failure of Privatizing U.S. Image Abroad: White House Publishes Self-Serving But Questionable Claims from the Broadcasting Board of Governors

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, December 11, 2008, San Francisco – The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages U.S. government-funded broadcasts for overseas audiences, has launched a campaign to defend its strategy of privatizing and outsourcing public diplomacy efforts, which it claims is designed to improve America’s image abroad using advertising and other private sector solutions. Nearly everyone in the U.S. and abroad agrees that these efforts have been a disastrous failure, but the White House continues to publish self-serving and misleading assertions crafted by the BBG staff in an attempt to portray the agency as incredibly successful and forward-looking in its approach to public diplomacy.

The White House statement issued to commemorate Human Rights Day and the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 included a claim that “U.S. international broadcasters funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) are overcoming censorship by gathering news from citizen journalists with cell phones, reporting the facts via SMS feeds and targeted e-mails, and encouraging citizens living in repressive regimes to join the information revolution with open discussions on radio and TV call-in shows and blogs. The BBG now offers diverse Internet products in all 60 broadcast languages, ranging from basic text to complex video and audio and live streaming.” The wording of the White House statement may suggest to some that the BBG is paying for these initiatives when in fact U.S. taxpayers’ money appropriated by Congress is being used.

Such self-serving statements are more interesting not for what they include but for what they leave out. For nearly eight years, the BBG has supported the neoconservative agenda of privatizing and outsourcing U.S. international broadcasting, resulting in  an unprecedented failure and a waste of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars. Incredibly,  some of the biggest supporters of this privatization effort have been liberal Democrats serving on the bipartisan Board, including Edward E. Kaufman, the newly appointed U.S. Senator from Delaware, and Norman Pattiz, founder of the U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One.

One of their staunchest neoconservative allies has been James K. Glassman, the BBG’s most recent chairman who is now the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. The record of the failed public diplomacy policies under his leadership has not prevented the BBG or the White House from claiming success. Glassman’s allies have even launched a campaign to help him hold on to his position in the new Obama Administration. His friend of 30 years, syndicated columnist Morton Kondracke, wrote recently in Roll Call, the Capital Hill newspaper, that “keeping on a conservative Republican like Glassman – formerly based at the American Enterprise Institute – may be a hard swallow for Democrats eager to occupy plum jobs. … But before they oust him, they ought to listen to him, take his recommendations for beefing up the U.S. global communications infrastructure and – for sure – maintain his innovations.”

Privatization of U.S. international broadcasting produced this report by the BBG-funded Alhurra Television for the Middle East. To pay for Alhurra, the BBG terminated all Voice of America Arabic broadcasts, which were produced by American-trained editors and were subject to strict editorial oversight.

Glassman, Kaufman and Pattiz may try to present themselves as experts who have uncovered the benefits of privatization of U.S. international broadcasting and the use of the Internet, but most outside experts agree that their innovations have been responsible for the steepest decline in the positive indicators of U.S. image abroad in recent history.

The core of the BBG strategy has been the dismantling of the Voice of America (VOA), the official yet journalistically independent U.S. broadcasting organization, which is subject to U.S. laws and strict fiscal accountability, and replacing it with a number of private broadcasters and contractors, some of them based overseas. Neoconservatives like Glassman were engaged in this effort primarily for ideological reasons, while liberal Democrats like Pattiz and Kaufman who unquestionably supported these ideas also saw benefits accruing to private consultants and contractors who have been linked to them through their business and political connections. As international public opinion surveys, U.S. government audits and reports by investigative journalists show, their efforts were a fiscal and editorial fiasco which turned overseas audiences against the United States.

• Glassman and Kaufman were among the majority of the BBG members responsible for shutting down Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian army attacked Georgia. They also voted to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine.
• The BBG ignored appeals from the U.S. Congress not to eliminate radio broadcasting to countries without free media. On July 17, 2008, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT ) specifically warned the BBG not to stop or reduce broadcasts to Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tibet and to the Balkans, saying that “freedom of speech remains restricted and broadcasting is still necessary” in these countries.
• Glassman, Kaufman and other BBG members voted to end VOA radio broadcasts in Hindi to India. These broadcasts went off the air just a few weeks before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
• The American Federation of Government Employees, Local 1812, which represents VOA broadcasters, said after the Mumbai attacks that it would take at least a half dozen eggs “to cover the faces of those BBG Board members who voted in favor of ending the VOA shortwave radio broadcasts in Hindi.”
• Despite Putin’s crackdown on independent media in Russia, the BBG removed Voice of America Russian radio program from an AM frequency in Moscow. They restored a much shortened broadcast only after protests from FreeMediaOnline.org and other media freedom organizations.
• After the Russian attack on Georgia, Kaufman and Glassman refused to allow VOA to resume radio broadcasts in Russian that could be heard on shortwave in the war zone. Under Secretary Glassman personally rejected appeals from VOA Russian Service journalists to allow them to restart radio broadcasts during the Russian-Georgian conflict.
• The BBG eliminated a call-in radio show by the Voice of America Russian Service which was popular with independent journalists and human rights activists in Russia and in other former Soviet republics.
• A statement issued by the leadership of the Voice of America employees’ unions, AFGE Local 1812 and AFSCME Local 1418, said that the Broadcasting Board of Governors “has been responsible for one blunder after another — to the point that its actions have compromised U.S. strategic interests.” Saying that “the elimination of Russian and Georgian radio broadcasts should be the last straw,” the VOA employees’ union leaders called on Congress to act immediately to dissolve the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Their letter also said that the BBG, “unilaterally and in contravention of the express language of the Congress, closed the Voice of America Russian Radio Service.” “In effect, we are deaf, dumb and blind in Russia,” the union letter said.
• The Public Diplomacy Council, a nonprofit organization which includes former diplomats, academics and other foreign policy experts, blamed the BBG for ignoring strategically important target areas such as Russia, the Balkans, India and the Western Hemisphere. The Council noted that the Broadcasting Board of Governors “has taken special aim at the Voice of America” by abolishing the VOA Arabic Service and reducing its broadcasts in English to the Middle East and other regions. The Council also criticized the BBG’s decision to terminate all VOA radio broadcasts in Russian shortly before Russia’s military attack on Georgia last summer.
• At the urging of James Glassman, the BBG unsuccessfully tried to hire Paula Zahn, formerly of CNN, as its high-profile spokesperson while cutting or reducing programs to countries like Tibet and Russia.
• In its push for privatization, the BBG ignored warnings that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists who are Russian citizens and are based in Russia are subject to intimidation and blackmail by the Kremlin’s secret police. View FreeMediaOnline.org report: Radio Liberty managers put a positive spin on Putin’s comments about the murder of independent Russian journalist
•  Russian human rights organization, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau has criticized Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for giving an entire hour of airtime to a Russian politician known for his racist views and verbal attacks on Blacks and other ethnic and racial minorities. View FreeMediaOnline.org: U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Spreading Racist Views on Radio Liberty in Russia
• The BBG spent millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on private foreign contractors and building construction in the Czech Republic, Russia, and the Middle East while cutting U.S. based jobs and denying U.S. labor law protections to its overseas based employees. View The Herald News: New administration must undue RFE/RL’s anti-diplomacy abroad
• Articles highly critical of the BBG’s actions in the Middle East and Russia have been published by the independent journalism web site ProPublica.org. They point out that despite many major editorial and financial scandals, the BBG still favors the privatized broadcasting entities, such as Alhurra, over VOA. Investigative journalists at ProPublica.org, a non-profit led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, reported that a guest invited to participate in an Alhurra program had called for killings of American soldiers in Iraq. The network also aired a report on a Holocaust deniers conference in Tehran. According to ProPublica.org, “the reporter who covered the conference told viewers that Jews had provided no scientific evidence of the Holocaust.”
• ProPublica.org uncovered major financial abuses at Radio Sawa and Alhurra.
• The BBG has refused to make public an independent study commissioned last year from the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School to review the network’s content because the study is reportedly highly critical of Alhurra and the BBG.

The privatization of U.S. international broadcasting was based on a naive premise that overseas audiences will not associate such names as Alhurra and Radio Sawa with the U.S. government.  The surrogate broadcasting model from the Cold War, embraced by both neoconservatives like Glassman and liberal Democrats like Kaufman, is neither effective nor forward-looking. Their current strategy is to present themselves as innovators of the Internet age. In reality, their neoconservative surrogate propaganda broadcasting policies are responsible for destroying the credibility of the U.S. message abroad have delayed new media innovation by at least eight years.

Under Secretary Glassman is still pushing for further cuts in radio broadcasting by the Voice of America to pay for his latest ideas such as using online contests to promote democracy. He and his former and current colleagues on the BBG fail to see that overseas audiences want serious news that reflect rather than advertise American policies and values — something unlikely to be generated by private contractors working without proper supervision. The Obama Administration should not be fooled by the BBG’s and Under Secretary Glassman’s newly-found enthusiasm for new media.

It might be worth remembering that not too long ago this neo-conservative Republican was just as enthusiastic about the U.S. stock market. Glassman co-authored a book DOW 36,000,  confidently predicting that the stock index would soon reach that level. He now believes that Internet solutions, which bloggers have been successfully using for a long time at practically no cost, require millions of dollars in spending on private consultants and contractors.  Norman Pattiz, whose business ideas and entertainment-based programming for Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television delighted the fabulously incompetent neoconservative BBG members, is now trying to save his own radio company Westwood One from bankruptcy. Westwood One announced on Nov. 18 that it will be suspended from trading on the NYSE as a result of its failure to maintain a minimum $25 million market capitalization level. Its stock now trades at about 5 cents a share.

Unfortunately for the American people and the cause of press freedom abroad, the BBG has been a refuge for political loyalists, U.S. businessmen lacking international sophistication, and ideologues of both parties with no  real experience in foreign policy, human rights activism, and new media journalism. The Obama Administration would be  well-advised to ignore the BBG-generated propaganda and take advice from independent experts with no link to political appointees, consultants and contractors who have exposed U.S. public diplomacy to international ridicule.  Almost all independent experts, including those connected with the well-respected Public Diplomacy Council, have called for reversing the unregulated and completely misguided privatization of U.S. international broadcasting.

This commentary may be republished on the web or in print with attribution to FreeMediaOnline.org.  Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. He is founder and president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit which support media freedom worldwide, and author of Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church (O-Books – June 2008).

Protests Against Plans to Terminate Radio France Internationale Russian Radio

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, December 4, 2008, San Francisco – Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky,  the poet Natalia Gorbanevskaia, Andrei Sakharov’s widow Elena Bonner, French philosopher André Glucksmann, and other French writers, including Thierry Wolton, Alain Besançon, Michel Aucouturier, Stéphane Courtois and Marie Mendras,  signed a petition along with  more than 500 others (as of Dec. 4, 2008) against the planned termination of the Russian program of Radio France Internationale (RFI). Online petition – За сохранение радиовещания RFI на русском языке

The French news agency AFP reported that the petitioners are calling on the relevant French authorities to overturn this decision in order “to help maintain and strengthen democracy in Russia,” The petition stated that “human rights and freedom of speech are not respected in Russia today.” The petition signers recalled that Russian journalists sometimes face murder, as did Anna Politkovskaya,  if they engage in investigative journalism. RFI management announced in October that it would cease broadcasting in six languages including German and Polish. Although broadcast transcripts will be available in Russian on Internet, the petition explained that the RFI website could be blocked by the Russian security services.

RFI’s decision to terminate Russian radio broadcasts follows a similar move last July by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which ended the Voice of America Russian radio. The BBG is a bipartisan board which manages U.S. government-funded international broadcasts, including the Voice of America. VOA Russian broadcasts went off the air just 12 days before the Russian military units attacked Georgia. This decision was widely criticised as a major blunder by members of the U.S. Congress, public diplomacy experts, and media freedom organizations.  The BBG also wanted to end VOA radio programs to Georgia and Ukraine. Those decisions were temporarily suspended after the Russian attack on Georgia.

As a result of the criticism, the BBG was forced to allow VOA to produce a half hour radio program, which is placed on the Internet Monday through Friday and rebroadcast on a medium wave frequency in Moscow. The BBG is also responsible for ending VOA Hindi radio programs to India, an action taken a few weeks before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai despite appeals from U.S. Congressmen who wanted these broadcasts to continue.

Ted Lipien, a former VOA acting associate director and president of the U.S.-based media freedom nonprofit organization, FreeMediaOnline.org, said that both the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors and the management of Radio France Internationale underestimate the extent of media freedom restrictions in Russia and the power that radio has in helping fight censorship. The Internet, while extremely useful, is insufficient and too risky when confronting determined enemies of press freedom, Lipien said.

FreeMediaOnline.org urges supporters of press freedom in Russia to sign the petition calling for keeping Radio France Internationale Russian radio broadcasts on the air: Online petition – За сохранение радиовещания RFI на русском языке

Prior to Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors Ignored Many Appeals for Keeping Voice of America Hindi Radio on the Air

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, December 4, 2008, San Francisco – Commenting on the recent terrorist attacks in India, a union representing the Voice of America (VOA) employees said on its website that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan body which manages VOA and other U.S. government-funded broadcasts for audiences overseas, has made “at least a half dozen mistakes in the past few months.” One of them resulted in the silencing of the Voice of America Hindi radio broadcasts just a few weeks before the terrorists struck in Mumbai.

VOA Hindi radio broadcasts became the victim of a highly unusual political alliance. James K. Glassman, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs – a neoconservative Republican who was the BBG’s most recent chairman – joined forces with liberal Democrats led by  Edward E. Kaufman, newly appointed  to the U.S. Senate from Delaware, in an attempt to terminate VOA radio programs to countries from Russia to India.  They succeeded in silencing VOA radio in Russia just 12 days before the Russian army attacked Georgia and have refused to restore Russian radio programs to the previous levels. The BBG also wanted to terminate VOA radio to Georgia and Ukraine, but the events in Georgia forced them to temporarily suspend those plans.  They did, however, put an end to VOA Hindi radio in India, brushing aside appeals and protests from members of Congress and press freedom organizations.

Members of Congress, human rights organizations, and foreign policy experts have condemned the BBG actions as major public diplomacy blunders. The American Federation of Government Employees, Local 1812, which represents VOA broadcasters, said after the Mumbai attacks that it would take at least a half dozen eggs “to cover the faces of those BBG Board members who voted in favor of ending the VOA shortwave radio broadcasts in Hindi.”

No more proof of their keystone cops-like decisions was necessary but the tragic events in Mumbai this past weekend highlight once again the failed policy of the BBG.  That policy -the elimination of VOA shortwave radio broadcasts  and their stubborn refusal to admit their mistakes- is once again demonstrable.

The situation between India and Pakistan is not likely to result in a handholding kumbaya songfest any time soon and the United States claims both as allies.  In this situation the U.S. needs a trusted voice to clearly articulate its policies.  The only solution is to reinstate the VOA Hindi shortwave radio broadcasts.

The VOA employees’ union was one of the many groups and individuals who had earlier warned the BBG not to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to countries like Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and India. Most Republicans and Democrats serving on the BBG were united, however, in their desire to privatize U.S. international broadcasting, which meant dismantling the official Voice of America broadcasts while steering money to Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television.

Despite being supported by neoconservatives, these two privatized stations were a brainchild of Norman Pattiz, a liberal Democrat who is the founder of U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One and a financial supporter of Vice President elect Joe Biden.  Edward E. Kaufman was also an ethusiastic advocate for Sawa and Alhurra. He once served as Senator Biden’s chief of staff and will be taking his place in the U.S. Senate. Some of the privatized broadcasting entities are incorporated in Delaware, which is Biden’s and Kaufman’s home state.

James Glassman, their neoconservative ally and author of the book DOW 36,000, which forecast an unstoppable growth of the U.S. stock market, believes not only in the privatization of U.S. international broadcasting but has also become an enthusiastic proponent of the Internet. His actions while serving with the BBG have deprived radio listeners in war zones and in impoverished regions of access to American news from Washington. Prior to Glassman’s appointment to the BBG,  Kaufman voted with other neoconservative Republicans to eliminate VOA Arabic radio service. They created Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television, the  two scandal-ridden privatized broadcasting entities which lack VOA’s strict fiscal and editorial controls and are not viewed in the Middle East as a credible and authoritative voice of the U.S. government and the American people.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors had been warned repeatedly not to cut VOA radio broadcasts to countries like Russia and India. Shortly before the BBG implemented some of the program cuts, FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, published an article arguing that it was a wrong time to give up Hindi broadcasts to India.

In September 2008, the two Co-Chairmen of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), wrote a letter to the BBG , in which they pointed out that over 70% of the Indian population lives in rural villages, many with no access to TV or the Internet. They expressed surprise that the BBG wants to terminate VOA  Hindi radio at the time when the United States is expanding its strategic partnership with India. The BBG ignored their appeal to allow VOA Hindi radio broadcasts to continue just as they had ignored Congressional warnings not to terminate Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia.

Voice of America Hindi Radio Silent in India during Terrorist Attacks

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, November 28, 2008, San Francisco – Voice of America, a U.S. taxpayer-funded international broadcaster, was off the air with shortwave Hindi radio broadcasts to India during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

The decision to silence these radio broadcasts was made earlier this year by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a U.S. Government agency.

The BBG had also stopped Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia in August of this year and is refusing to resume shortwave transmission that could reach listeners in the conflict area.

Ending VOA shortwave radio broadcasts to India was not an isolated lapse of judgement. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has established a long record of silencing or reducing VOA radio programs to countries without free media as well as countries vulnerable to ethnic conflicts and terrorist attacks.

BBG members who are appointed by the White House and confirmed by the Senate had previously tried to reduce radio broadcasts to Tibet shortly before major pro-human rights demonstrations there. The BBG also wanted to end Voice of America radio broadcasts to Georgia but that decision has been put on hold after the Russian attack.

When given a chance to reconsider their decision, BBG officials ignored appeals from members of Congress who urged them not to terminate Voice of America radio broadcasts in Hindi to India. BBG officials insisted that short and infrequent TV reports and a VOA website will be sufficient for audiences in India.

Democrats selected for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, including Ted Kaufman who was recently appointed to be the US Senator from Delaware, joined forces with neoconservative Republicans to steer money away from Voice of America broadcasts and use them to finance highly controversial and scandal-ridden operations broadcasting to the Middle East, including Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa.

Kaufman and former BBG chairman James K. Glassman, a neoconservative Republican who is now the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy,  repeatedly voted to end VOA Hindi radio transmissions to India, Russia, and other countries. They were joined by other Democrat and Republican BBG members.

For years, both Democrats and neoconservative Republicans on the BBG have been in favor of privatizing US international broadcasting. Only one Republican voted against the cuts in VOA radio broadcasts, which also included reductions in Voice of America English programs.

Critics point out that the BBG has established a solid record of terminating and reducing programs to countries shortly before major wars, conflicts, demonstrations or terrorist attacks. Ted Lipien, president of a media freedom nonprofit, FreeMediaOnline.org, said that based on the BBG performance so far, the National Security Council, the CIA, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security can study BBG decisions on program cuts to reliably predict where the next international crisis will take place.

Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Tibet, China, Uzbekistan and India have all been at one point either completely terminated or targeted by the Broadcasting Board of Governors for cuts and reductions. The BBG was forced to abandon  or scale down some of these cuts due to outside criticism, but VOA Hindi radio programs were already off the air when the terrorists struck in Mumbai.

BBG Insists Congress Approved Its Decision to Terminate Voice of America Radio to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Other Countries

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, November 23, 2008, San Francisco – In a letter that takes exception to the scathing criticism from the Public Diplomacy Council, a Washington, D.C-based nonprofit NGO, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages U.S. government-funded international broadcasts, insists that Congress had approved BBG’s decision to terminate Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to several countries, including Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and India. On orders from the BBG, VOA radio programs to Russia had ceased on July 26, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia.

Many foreign policy experts, members of Congress, and press freedom NGOs saw the BBG’s decision as a major public diplomacy blunder.  But the BBG continues to defend its actions and claims that it had a go ahead from Congress to end VOA radio programs.  After the start of the summer war in the Caucasus, the BBG suspended its orders to stop radio broadcasts to Georgia but refused to resume VOA shortwave broadcasts in Russian.

The Public Diplomacy Council members who have criticized the BBG come from diplomacy, the armed forces, nonprofits and academia.  The BBG has few if any defenders. FreeMediaOnline.org could not identify any member of Congress or a prominent public diplomacy expert who  would express approval for the BBG’s decision to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to Russia. 

In a reaction to widespread criticism, the BBG spokesperson Letitia King wrote to the Public Diplomacy Council that “it is false to claim that the BBG has acted in any way that contravenes Congress.” She also stated the BBG “received Congressional approval for all program changes that have been made, including language service reductions,” and she called on the PDC to correct its error.

Ms. King also took issue with the Public Diplomacy Council’s claim that “the Broadcasting Board of Governors has taken special aim at the Voice of America,” by abolishing the VOA Arabic Service and reducing its broadcasts in English to the Middle East and other regions. She argued that the BBG “has sought efficiencies throughout the organization in order to concentrate resources on language broadcasts.”

FreeMediaOnline.org reported that while planning to eliminate VOA radio broadcasts to  Russia and Georgia, the BBG and its most recent chairman James K. Glassman, the current Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, also planned to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to expand their public relations operations. Among other things, the BBG had made an unsuccessful attempt to hire Paula Zahn, formerly of CNN, as their high profile spokesperson. The funds that the BBG wanted to allocate to this project could have paid for continuing VOA radio broadcasts to a country like Georgia.

In a document titled “Reforming U.S. International Broadcasting for a New Era,” the Public Diplomacy Council makes a number of proposals to reform U.S. international broadcasting and blames the BBG for undermining the effectiveness of the Voice of America. The Council has urged the future Obama Administration to immediately restore all radio services reduced at the VOA in FY 08. 

From the Public Diplomacy Council’s “Reforming U.S. International Broadcasting
for a New Era,” November 17, 2008:
 

On July 26, 2008, twelve days before Russia invaded Georgia, the BBG silenced VOA Russian radio, and then ignored subsequent appeals to restore it.  On September 30, the Board abolished VOA radio services in Serbian, Bosnian, and Macedonian and in the Hindi service to India, provisionally retaining Ukrainian and Georgian.  This action directly contravened Congressional passage last December of an FY 08 appropriation prohibiting all cuts.  The impact: loss of nine million listeners on the eve of a landmark U.S. presidential election.

The BBG spokesperson is vague as to what specific Congressional approval the BBG had received to cut VOA radio programs to Russia and other countries. Although the BBG letter does not offer a proof of any Congressional approval, the BBG seems to be using a highly legalistic argument that Congress has agreed to all the VOA program cuts since it had passed the Administration’s FY09 budget. In fact, members of Congress and a Congressional committee had told the BBG not to proceed with the planned radio program cuts at VOA.

On July 17, 2008, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT ) specifically warned the BBG not to stop or reduce broadcasts  to Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tibet and to the Balkans, saying that “freedom of speech remains restricted and broadcasting is still necessary”  in these countries. But, acting in great secrecy and without any public announcement for U.S. or foreign media, the BBG stopped all VOA Russian radio programs on July 26.

Letter to the Public Diplomacy Council from the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ Spokesperson
November 20, 2008

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) takes sharp exception to many points in “Reforming U.S. International Broadcasting for a New Era,” a statement issued by the Public Diplomacy Council (PDC) on November 17.

It is false to claim that the BBG has acted in any way that contravenes Congress. The BBG received Congressional approval for all program changes that have been made, including language service reductions. The PDC should correct its error.

The success or failure of the BBG should be judged on its broadcasting impact.

The post-9/11 public diplomacy charge was clear: to focus on Muslim audiences as an antidote to poisonous propaganda from Al Qaeda and other extremists. The challenge is how best to do that in specific countries, each with unique political factors, diverse media environments, and populations largely hostile to America.

The BBG has met this challenge by shaping broadcasts to fit the exigencies of each target audience. Since 2001, with support from the Administration and Congress, the BBG has launched six major communication channels – including 24/7 Dari and Pashto in Afghanistan, Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV for the Mi ddle East, Radio Farda and the Persian News Network for Iran, and Radio Aap ki Dunyaa for Pakistan — and ramped up daily broadcasting to Indonesia, Somalia, and other countries. These new initiatives have grown the BBG’s global weekly audience from 100 to over 175 million people. Broken out by country, this number includes: 27 million in Indonesia, 14 million in Iran, 13 million in Afghanistan, 12 million in Pakistan, 11.5 million in Iraq, 7 million in Egypt, 6 million in Syria, and 5 million in Morocco. Over 30 BBG language services now reach in excess of one million people weekly.

The PDC statement misrepresents the BBG’s work in other respects:

• PDC notes that VOA is chartered by statute to present international and U.S. news that is accurate, objective, and comprehensive; to represent America in all its diversity; and to present U.S. policies. But it fails to note that the statute governing broadcasting provides a similar mandate to all BBG broadcast entities. Each of the BBG’s broadcast entities maintains flexibility to tailor content to its audiences.

• Since FY 2000, VOA’s budget has increased over 47 percent, from $127 to $190 million in FY 2008. VOA has added television broadcasts to Afghanistan and Pakistan and increased programs in Persian, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Korean, Somali, and several other languages.

• The BBG has sought efficiencies throughout the organization in order to concentrate resources on language broadcasts. Since FY 200 3, 78 percent of BBG budgetary reductions were to administrative, engineering, and support costs. It would not be possible to reinstate particular language broadcasts without additional cost.

• VOA audiences in Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia continue to be served by high-quality VOA television and Internet programming, and by radio broadcasts from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. VOA television and Internet broadcasts in Hindi also continue.

• To assert that the BBG needs “real strategy and analysis” ignores the BBG’s comprehensive strategic plan, available at http://www.bbg.gov/, which details specific actions to yield measurable outcomes. BBG spending on global audience research has increased from less than $3 million in FY 2001 to $9.1 million in FY 2008.
What matters to the BBG is reaching as many people as possible with accurate, balanced news and information that gains their trust and makes a difference in their lives. The focus of discussion needs to be on how U.S. international broadcasters are going to better serve more people with quality journalism to advance U.S. strategic interests in difficult-to-reach countries were democracy and freedom of speech are in short supply.

We share the commitment of the Public Diplomacy Council to excellence in our international broadcasting efforts and value forward-looking discussion of how t o maximize our effectiveness.

Sincerely,

Letitia M. King
Acting Director Office of Public Affairs

 

In a response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the BBG  Office of General Counsel conceded that it cannot produce a specific document which would have given the BBG Congressional approval for its decision to cut VOA radio programs to Russia and other countries.

The Public Diplomacy Council is not the only group that is highly critical of the BBG. A statement issued by the leadership of the Voice of America employees’ unions, AFGE Local 1812 and AFSCME Local 1418, said that the Broadcasting Board of Governors “has been responsible for one blunder after another — to the point that its actions have compromised U.S. strategic interests.” Saying that “the elimination of Russian and Georgian radio broadcasts should be the last straw,” the VOA employees’ union leaders called on Congress to act immediately to dissolve the Broadcasting Board of Governors.  Their letter also said that the BBG, “unilaterally and in contravention of the express language of the Congress, closed the Voice of America Russian Radio Service.”  “In effect, we are deaf, dumb and blind in Russia,” the union letter said.

Articles highly critical of the BBG’s actions in the Middle East and Russia have been published by the independent journalism web site ProPublica.org. They point out that despite many major editorial and financial scandals, the BBG still favors the privatized broadcasting entities, such as Alhurra, over VOA. Investigative journalists at ProPublica.org, a non-profit led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, reported that a guest invited to participate in an Alhurra program had called for killings of American soldiers in Iraq. The network also aired a report on a Holocaust deniers conference in Tehran. According to ProPublica.org, “the reporter who covered the conference told viewers that Jews had provided no scientific evidence of the Holocaust.”

FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien said that the responsibility for such broadcasts rests with the BBG’s blind trust in high audience ratings as reflected in its spokesperson’s statement that “what matters to the BBG is reaching as many people as possible.”  While the BBG claims that it wants ”accurate, balanced news and information” that gains the trust of audiences overseas, Lipien said that consultants hired by the BBG and its staff have been ordering BBG broadcasters to avoid airing views that audiences would strongly disagree with and to offer those that they like.  Even invited program guests have been told on occasion to moderate their pro-human rights opinions to meet the expectations of the audience.

Lipien said that in addition to airing views of Holocaust deniers, these policies have also led to canceling of VOA call-in radio programs on human rights in Russia and firing of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) editors who defended human rights programming.  Human rights activists overseas are also alarmed by BBG’s actions. Buddhist monks protested against BBG’s plans to reduce radio programs to Tibet. Earlier this year,  a Russian NGO, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, criticized RFE/RL for giving an entire hour of airtime to a former Russian Parliament deputy Andrey Savel’yev. The Russian human rights organization said that Mr. Savel’yev’s “chauvinist and racist views are well-known.” The Moscow Human Rights Bureau said that the station was guilty not only  of enabling such people “to spread their poisonous views,” but also of legitimizing their ideas “in the minds of many impressionable radio listeners.” The appeal, written by the organization’s head Aleksandr Brod, argues that stations, which “in their pursuit of higher ratings” invite such “nationalist radicals,” are giving these enemies of democracy a larger audience and exacerbating ethnic tensions.