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VOA Public Relations does a number on Lipien, 1Amendment responds

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Voice of America Director Ensor’s ‘Getting It Right in Russia’ explanation misses the main point

In a Washington Times Op-Ed, a Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting member Ted Lipien warned about a pro-Putin bias in the Voice of America Russian programs. Lipien reported that a highly respected independent journalist in Russia hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors to evaluate the VOA Russian website concluded last year that it has a pro-Kremlin bias and downplays human rights reporting. BBG executives apparently failed to share the results of this study with BBG members.

On January 31, the Voice of America posted on its Russian website an alleged interview with a prominent Russian anti-corruption lawyer, anti-Putin opposition leader and blogger Alexei Navalny but had to remove it and apologize after Navalny said that the interview was “100 percent fake.” Navalny, who is viewed as an enemy by the Kremlin and has been a target of disinformation campaigns by Prime Minister Putin’s supporters, accused the Voice of America of “going nuts” and suggested that all those working for the VOA Russian Service should be let go.

BBG Watch website reported that despite issuing an apology, some staffers who were responsible for posting the fake interview have been telling VOA and BBG management that Navalny did give them an interview through an exchange of emails and then lied about it. BBG Watch reported that these staffers are recent arrivals from Russia who were hired as poorly paid contractors to replace experienced journalists who had been retired or pushed out because they were critical of Putin and may have lacked new media skills.

Asked by BBG Watch for a comment, Lipien said that in his long career with the Voice of America he did not recall a single incident where VOA would air a fake interview with a major anti-communist figure like Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa, or Vaclav Havel. “Had we done so due to some kind of secret police provocation, of which there were many, we would certainly not accuse these brave men of lying,” Lipien said.

The fact that this incident happened and that some VOA Russian Service staffers are still engaged in a whispering campaign of accusing Andrei Navalny of lying, as reported by BBG Watch, is extremely disturbing, Lipien said. Voice of America director should have called Alexei Navalny and issued a personal apology, which should have been posted on VOA websites in Russian and English, Lipien suggested. The fact that the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported on the fake interview incident in both Russian and English, but the VOA English news website completely ignored the story, points to serious problems with Voice of America journalism under the guidance of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. In many ways, it is now much worse than it was when VOA was still part of the United States Information Agency but VOA journalists knew how to use the VOA Charter to demand that controversial stories be covered, Lipien said. BBG Watch has been reporting that BBG

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Washington Times Op-Ed warns about pro-Putin bias in Voice of America Russian programs

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Will fundraising for Obama get Dick Lobo chairmanship of Broadcasting Board of Governors?

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Russia and the West: why democracy threatens Putin

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New York, January 13, 2012–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Thursday’s attack in Moscow on Dododzhon Atovulloyev, exiled publisher and editor-in-chief of the Tajik pro-opposition newspaper Charogi Ruz.

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New York,
December 15, 2011–Today’s murder of Gadzhimurad Kamalov, founder of the independent newspaper Chernovik in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan today is a lethal blow to press freedom, said the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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Killing of Chernovik founder in Dagestan must be investigated

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Putin’s ‘Ceausescu moment’? Maybe not, but ……

Oleg Kashin, a correspondent for the Russian business daily Kommersant, by his home on a central Moscow street, a 10-minute walk from the Kremlin. The two had
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Our regular contributor, The Federalist, also makes other points on the BBG’s audience size announcement.

US International Broadcasting and the BBG: The Numbers Game
by The Federalist

In its press release of November 15, 2011 the BBG claims an audience increase of 22 million to a projected total of 187 million people, based on its “audience data.”

Here is a short primer on “the numbers game.”

Everything starts with the questions asked in the survey. The BBG does not provide a breakdown of the questions asked in the press release or in its “research methodology.” This is important because no one can examine how the BBG collates the responses.

Typically, survey questions will provide a range of questions. Within that range will be responses that would collectively be categorized as positive and perhaps one or two responses that would be categorized as negative. Depending on the intended outcome that the BBG wants to demonstrate, one method used could be to lump all the positives together, particularly if collectively they represent a positive aggregate response.

Everyone inside the Cohen Building knows that surveys are an inexact process. This is especially the case when conducting surveys in authoritarian or controlled societies. A lot also has to do with how the survey is conducted, often over the telephone. If people live in a controlled society, the prudent thing to do is to be judicious in how one responds to anonymous surveys. Thus, depending on how things are going in the target area, the responses could be more or less of an accurate representation of respondent habits.

One would also need to know where surveys were conducted: were they concentrated in major urban population centers or did they include respondents in the interior regions of the countries surveyed?

All this being said, let us work with the numbers the BBG provides.

If the BBG numbers are accurate, an audience of 187 million people is not to be taken lightly (for reasons we will get to below).

At the same time, one needs to look at the big picture in the world of numbers. For example:

The total global population is put at about 7 billion.

Of that number, an estimated 2 billion are at the subsistence level.

In China, latest estimates place the population at over 1.3 billion.

In short, 187 million can get lost in the cacophony of the 7 billion.

Next, one should examine the statements made in the press release in support of its survey findings.

“…in Egypt, where Alhurra TV doubled its weekly audience to 15% in tandem with the Arab Spring…”

The question here is how does this compare to other broadcasters, including the regional leader, al-Jazeera TV? The BBG press release doesn’t say. This is a key point. If the BBG audience is fractionally less than that of al-Jazeera, public opinion has moved away from that projected by the United States. Further, in our view, the so-called “Arab Spring” is over. This number could be artificially inflated by momentary events.

Also, the BBG doesn’t say how Alhurra TV fares in the region as a whole. That would be important to see if Alhurra TV is making inroads elsewhere. Since the BBG press release is silent on the point, we can presume that it is not.

“Audience declines took place notably in Iran, where the government continues aggressive jamming of every BBG transmission platform, including satellite uplink jamming;”

Those pesky Iranians. They continue to prove themselves adept at interdiction technology.

But beyond that, another question is how much of the audience loss may be due more to lack of interest than as much to government counter-measures? Keep in mind that the BBG claims that its Farsi-language “Parazit” is widely popular in Iran. One would think that if this were indeed true, it would be reflected in its survey results. Coupled with other agency research on Iran, what may be more the case is that the programs no longer have resonance with an Iranian audience. Further, one must also consider the internal conflict with the Persian News Network (PNN) which some writers allege has become a toady for the regime in Tehran.

Also keep in mind that PNN, largely television based, represents a substantial budgetary “gas guzzler” for the BBG.

We’re saving the best for last.

“While radio remains the BBG’s number one media platform, reaching 106 million people per week, television’s growth puts it 97 million people. The Internet audience was approximately 10 million, with the largest online audiences measured in Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt and Iran.”

Bingo!

There’s no “while” about it. Radio is still king.

But most important of all is this:

Even if you take the BBG numbers at face value, when you examine them in the context of the BBG “strategic plan,” you can clearly see its disaster in the making.

If you eliminate radio broadcasting, as it is the clear intent of the BBG strategic plan, you lose over half of your audience. That 187 million becomes 81 million.

The television component is no bargain. It is the most expensive production and delivery broadcast medium, requiring more people, more production time, satellite time and fees, etc. In terms of cost, it is the least sustainable of the media choices available to the BBG. Plus, one should keep in mind, as the BBG press release points out, it is vulnerable to interdiction, both in terms of blocking satellite channels and in terms of downlink requirements at the receiving end. While people use satellite dishes around the world, the fact remains that certain regimes periodically confiscate private satellite dishes, in part just because they can. Also, in those places where the BBG relies upon placement on television stations (they are not really affiliates in the same use of the word here in the US), these stations often walk a fine line with the sitting governments. Put something on the air that someone doesn’t like and good-bye BBG programs or risk the loss of one’s license and even invite some jail time if the regime is offended enough.

Last but definitely not least, its global Internet audience is tagged at 10 million. If the BBG carries through with its plans to use the Internet as its sole platform for audio, video and text, it will have the equivalent of no audience.

About 70 years into US international broadcasting, how long will it take the BBG to move its Internet audience to a size approximating its current radio audience, particularly when one notes the ability of third parties to engage effectively in cyber warfare and/or, as in the case with China, to have well-established controls to block websites the government deems as undesirable. It is complete fiction to believe that the BBG will have at its command an impenetrable cyber defense against these attacks.

And there is another thing. The BBG has to pay to be posted to search engines. Lose the search engines and there goes the recognition and access.

“Audience declines took place notably in Iran, where the government continues aggressive jamming of every BBG transmission platform, including satellite uplink jamming; and Pakistan, where the media market is increasingly fragmented and use of radio is declining.”

This statement may not be truly representative of the situational reality. The truth of the matter is that all global media markets are increasingly fragmented. This is a significant issue when one considers the BBG claim that its intended outcome is to be “the leading global news network.”

With specific regard to Pakistan, audience loss may have more to do with over-heated anti-American sentiment and a whole lot less to do with the assertion that “use of radio is declining.” It is well known that the Taliban make considerable use of radio in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is well known that the Pakistanis have become increasingly uneasy with unilateral US military actions within this territory. All of these things may have a whole lot more to do with the decline in the BBG’s audience in Pakistan.

Saying that “use of radio is declining” in Pakistan also seemingly contradicts the BBG effort with its “Radio Deewa” and “Radio Aap ki Dunyaa” projects in the region.

Let’s go back to the numbers:

The BBG is laying claim that the intended goal of its “new” strategic plan is to become the world’s leading global news network. What does that mean? How much of that 7 billion in total world population puts the BBG in the hunt to validate that claim? Hovering around 200 million according to its claimed global audience numbers, it’s a long haul to reach anything approximating a reasonable suggestion that the BBG is a “leading global news network.”

And keep in mind that if the BBG carries out its intended destruction of US Government international radio broadcasting, its audience gets cut by more than half. All of those people aren’t going to run to the Internet. That lesson was learned in Russia, contrary to the outrageous claims by the BBG of Russian audience increases. The BBG’s own research showed that its audience in Russia fell off a cliff when it ended its direct VOA Russian radio broadcasts in 2008.

The BBG has set a deadline of 2016 (its Soviet-style five-year plan) to reach its intended goals. Those goals, based on the BBG’s own numbers, would actually represent a substantially diminished audience with the loss of radio broadcasting. VOA director David Ensor essentially reiterated those goals in a recent C-SPAN television interview.

How does this intended outcome benefit the United States? How does this intended outcome represent a judicious use of US taxpayer money? Unfortunately, to all appearances the answer is” it doesn’t.

In the end, audience size aside, it all comes down to effectiveness. The BBG already a sizable “global news network” through its many and varied entities. And still, with all these assets, its penetration of global publics remains challenged.

One last thing: check the numbers of the press release:

106 million radio audience.
97 million television audience.
10 million Internet audience.

Total: 213 million.

That’s more than 187 million at the opening of the press release.

Well, we’ll give the BBG the difference. It’s still not enough to be “the leading global news network.”

Far from it.

The Federalist
November 16, 2011

###

From the BBG official website:

BBG Broadcasts Reach Record Audiences
(WASHINGTON, D.C.—November 15, 2011) U.S. government funded international broadcasters reached an estimated 187 million people every week in 2011, an increase of 22 million from last year’s figure, according to new audience data being made public by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

“We are pleased that people the world over are responding in unprecedented numbers to our high-quality journalism and active audience engagement,” said BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson. “The ability of our broadcasters to inform, engage and connect audiences through traditional and social media alike lie behind these impressive results and will be essential to driving future audience reach and impact.”

The record numbers, released in the BBG Performance and Accountability Report (PAR), measure the combined audience of the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio and TV Martí, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa). The report details impact on audiences around the globe including people in the world’s most repressive media and political environments.

The BBG’s PAR follows on the heels of BBG’s latest strategic plan, Impact through Innovation and Integration, which sets an over-arching objective of making BBG the world’s leading international news agency working to foster freedom and democracy with the goal of reaching 216 million people weekly by 2016.

This year there were significant audience increases in Afghanistan, where RFE/RL and VOA together reach 75% of adults weekly; in Egypt, where Alhurra TV doubled its weekly audience to 15% in tandem with the Arab Spring; and in Indonesia, where VOA’s aggressive affiliate strategy has boosted weekly audiences to some 38 million adults.

Audiences in many other strategically relevant countries held strong. In Nigeria, VOA retains its position as a news source of record with 23 million weekly listeners. In Burma, VOA and RFA reach 26% and 24% of adults, respectively, amounting to a weekly audience of 10 million.

Audience declines took place notably in Iran, where the government continues aggressive jamming of every BBG transmission platform, including satellite uplink jamming; and Pakistan, where the media market is increasingly fragmented and use of radio is declining.

While radio remains the BBG’s number one media platform, reaching 106 million people per week, television’s growth puts it at 97 million people. The Internet audience was approximately 10 million, with the largest online audiences measured in Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt and Iran.

Download 2011 Performance and Accountability Report (PDF)

BBG 2011 Audience Overview (PDF)

BBG Research Methodology (PDF)

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US International Broadcasting and the BBG: The Numbers Game

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Russia – Government eager to use Net surveillance software currently in test phase

RFE/RL analyst Charles Dameron took issue with another of Putin’s claims in the same interview. Putin said that NTV’s Vladimir Kulistikov’s move to state television from Radio Svoboda is evidence of Russia’s liberalization. Kulistikov was one of the reporters asking questions.

The RFE/RL analyst pointed out that dozens of journalists in Russia have been killed during Mr. Putin’s rule because they offended the authorities.

Ted Lipien said that there was a clear purpose to Vladimir Putin’s comments linking Radio Svoboda to spying on the USSR during the Cold War. Such comments, Lipien said, are designed to intimidate both journalists and Radio Svoboda’s potential audience in Russia, in addition to reassuring Prime Minister’s Putin’s nationalistic supporters.

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Putin goes after Radio Svoboda on Russian TV — CUSIB

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Why Russia’s democrats need West’s support

Internationally renowned for her work, respected for her courage and still mourned by thousands around the world five years after her murder, Anna Politkovsakya has become an iconic symbol in the global human rights struggle. But Sunday night, family, friends, colleagues and
others came together to share a more personal picture.

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Blog: A personal side to Anna Politkovskaya’s legacy

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Russia – Terror, threats and corruption: report of RSF fact-finding visit to Russian Caucasus

On Friday, October 14, the Broadcasting Board of Governors put out a press release heralding its “new” alleged “strategic plan.”

Well, really, this isn’t something “new.” It’s more a case of something being recycled and repackaged. The goals are the same: the destruction of effective US international broadcasting. Someone inside the Cohen Building must think they are being clever. It’s the same stuff, different day.

Granted, this is a press release. However, it is revealing in how the BBG sees some of the things it is doing. For example, you see words like “evaluate,” “develop” and “explore.” None of these things are synonymous with planning. They are synonymous with conceptualizing, testing ideas. So what you see is more of a concept, an idea and less of a meticulous, detailed process of moving ideas into actual actions.

If it hasn’t done so already, the BBG is going to hire a consultant to translate the idea into a plan. There are two things of importance here: (1) the requisite brain power does not reside in the Cohen Building to formulate the plan and (2) down the road, the same requisite brain power does not reside in the Cohen Building to execute the plan. They’re both bad omens, the latter perhaps being the worst of the two. Can or will the BBG follow the “instructions in the box” provided by the consultant? Past experience says they can’t or they won’t, especially if the “instructions” do not comport with the dreamscape of their concept/idea. The “new” strategic plan is much the same as the “old” strategic plan: it’s too big for the careerists in the Cohen Building to get their arms around.

In the private sector, when something this ambitious is attempted, press releases announcing what is coming often put price tags as to the cost. Nowhere in the BBG press release is there any mention of the cost of this concept/idea. That tells the reader of the press release that either the Board doesn’t know how much this is going to cost or that it is afraid to spell it out. The Board doesn’t even offer an estimated price tag for its pie-in-the-sky concept. This is lack of transparency. American taxpayers are entitled to know and to decide, through their elected representatives, whether this particular BBG boondoggle is worth the cost.

Let’s consider at least one item that appears to be at least in the “thinking about it” aspect of the concept:

Right off the bat, we know that the BBG wants to relocate from the Cohen Building. Most often mentioned is acquiring space in the Dulles Town Center in Virginia, west of DC – as in way west of DC, without access to mass transit in the near to foreseeable future. This aspect of the “strategic idea” has enormous costs attached to it, both in terms of exiting the Cohen Building and developing the infrastructure and space requirements in the new location. There may be other similar issues with regard to sites elsewhere in the United States and/or abroad that would be affected by the BBG “strategic idea.”

Someone has to pay for this. That “someone” happens to be the US taxpayer.
Once again: how much is this going to cost? It may have escaped the attention of the BBG or its IBB staff that the US Government isn’t exactly awash in surplus cash these days.

There are other considerations:

A plan has timelines. It has cost estimates for each incremental aspect of the plan along these timelines. None of this is spelled out in the press release.

By contrast, consider the expansion of the METRO system in the greater DC area. Aspects of that plan are constantly being addressed in public statements, estimating the cost and the delivery date of new extensions and new equipment to the existing system. None of that is visible in the BBG’s press release.

Some experience with agency projects has been that projects don’t get completed on time. That’s more cost.

The BBG has already demonstrated another aspect of its “plan:” it will terminate certain services before the plan is fully developed.

For example, in 2008 the BBG ended its direct broadcasts to Russia via the Voice of America (VOA). The agency’s own research shows that its audience fell off a cliff when that happened. In addition, it wants to terminate VOA Mandarin and Cantonese broadcasts, supposedly relying on Radio Free Asia (RFA) to maintain a token radio presence until the Board kills that off, too.

The true “genius” of this approach is what is called “the consequence of unexpected events.” In other words, setting something in motion with either no or limited ability to respond to events unforeseen. Remember, not long after the BBG ended its VOA Russian broadcasts, the Russian Republic invaded the Republic of Georgia. Not having effective reporting via radio broadcasts of the VOA Russian service was a huge victory for the Russians all by itself.

The press release also talks about “developing” cyber countermeasures. This means the radio broadcasts will be dead before the cyber countermeasures are in place.

There should be no doubt whatsoever that the BBG is behind the curve in this critical area. The situation in cyber warfare is not static. It is evolving constantly. We already know that the Chinese and the Iranians are well ahead of the curve in this regard and are no doubt continuing to advance and refine the programs they use to block Internet content and/or to attack websites they view as hostile to their national interests.

Another cost issue regards running parallel operations while transitioning to new physical plants (the Cohen Building to the Dulles Town Center scenario). It is not going to be a situation in which operations end on a Friday at the old location and resume at the new location on Monday. It doesn’t work that way. Anyone with broadcasting experience knows that.

One of the things the BBG likes to hawk is that it will save money by ending duplication of language services. This is a bogus argument. There is no language duplication. There are entities with the same language services. But as the Board fully knows, different entities have different missions. The language services facilitate the mission of the specific entity.

There is a very legitimate question of what the intended mission of a reorganized entity is going to be. The press release makes clear that the BBG intends to attempt to comingle the three grantees, which have separate audiences, missions, etc. That can’t be something that will go smoothly. As already noted, the BBG intends to usurp VOA Mandarin and Cantonese and plant it under the flag of RFA which has an entirely different mission. That can’t be good, in part because the institutional identity of VOA will be destroyed. It would be analogous to the BBC taking a broadcast language service of longstanding BBC identity and handing it over to a lesser known enterprise as an “XYZ” entity, for example.

Particularly troubling is the idea of taking listener/viewer content and using it on-the-air. How does one verify that the content is legitimate and is not doctored or planted by individuals with ulterior motives or other “masters?” It happens all the time on the Internet and one should expect the BBG to be just as vulnerable under this strategic “idea.” In order to validate itself in its “global news network” posture, and to demonstrate that it has superior timely news reporting, one can expect things to get on the air with less than complete scrutiny in the attempt to be a step ahead of more experienced networks.

Once again the American taxpayer is being called upon to write a blank check and turn it over to the BBG. That is a big mistake. The agency’s track record is suspect up to this point (in places like Russia and the Middle East). One should not throw good money after bad.

Last but not least, Secretary of State Clinton has made it clear, “We are losing the information war.” The agency responsible for losing it is the BBG. Nothing in the BBG’s “new strategic plan” is demonstrative of a turnaround in this misfortune.

Memo to Secretary Clinton: the BBG “strategy of defeat” continues.

The Federalist
October 15, 2011

Link:
The “New” BBG Strategic Plan

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Russia – Five years after Politkovskaya’s assassination, impunity still reigns

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US ‘must do more’ to promote Russian democracy

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Russia – Southern Urals media community concerned over dismissal of editors

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Justice still pending in Politkovskaya murder case

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Russia – Call for more effort, more vigilance five years after Politkovskaya murder

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Putin’s return signals end of ‘managed democracy’

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From BBG website: Pyongyang is a vibrant city and busy with activity

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BBG ‘s PR gurus come and go quickly, wrong strategy remains