Link to Washington Examiner

When the U.S. officials in charge of persuading foreign audiences must themselves be persuaded by the Dalai Lama not to end Voice of America radio programs to Tibet, it is apparent there is something rotten in the management of U.S. international broadcasting.

READ Washington Examiner Op-Ed: Bureaucrats grasp for power at Broadcasting Board of Governors by Ted Lipien

“…it took relentless efforts by the BBG’s senior Republican, former Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe, to persuade his colleagues that the executive staff is taking the agency in the wrong direction.

Ashe was supported on Tibet and China by two Democratic members of the BBG — Michael Meehan and Susan McCue, who even suggested that broadcasts to Tibet should be paid for from cuts in management expenses. Eventually, all the BBG members voted to restore funding for Tibetan and Cantonese broadcasts.

The struggle for public control of taxpayer-funded U.S. international broadcasting is, however, far from over. The BBG staff, with the support of some board members, is still pushing forward with the proposal to merge the independent surrogate broadcasters — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks — under a single administration headed by a new CEO who would not be directly answerable to Congress.”

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, at VOA Chinese 70th Birthday Reception on Capitol Hill. BBG members failed to attend the reception and later proposed to end VOA broadcasts in Cantonese to China and VOA Tibetan radio. They subsequently decided not to proceed with these cuts but other broadcasting cuts are still on the table.

In a Christian Science Monitor op-ed, Joseph A. Bosco, who served in the office of the secretary of Defense as a strategic communications officer from 2002-2004 and as China country desk officer from 2005-2006, criticizes the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) for proposing cuts in news broadcasting to China, Tibet, Burma, Vietnam, Laos and other countries without free media while China and other authoritarian regimes expand their propaganda outreach abroad. In response to strong criticism by media freedom groups, human rights organizations and members of Congress from both parties, the BBG has already announced its intention to reverse some but not all of its proposed cuts in Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) broadcasts. The cuts were proposed by the BBG executive staff and initially accepted by most BBG members.

The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com
Why Voice of America is losing to voice of communist China – at home and abroad

In the war of ideas between freedom and authoritarianism, the Voice of America (VOA) broadcast program is losing to the voice of communist China – not because Beijing’s message is better but because its strategic vision and will to win surpass Washington’s.

The United States government is unilaterally disarming (through funding and personnel cuts) much of its program of speaking truth to the Chinese people. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic is aggressively expanding its campaign to spread untruths, especially about Western anti-China “plots.” Worse, China’s misinformation now openly targets the American people, as well – and does it from American soil.

Yet the Broadcast Board of Governors, which manages and oversees all US civilian international broadcasting, proposes cutting parts of its radio transmissions to China and Tibet as well as Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. The board plans to eliminate dozens of personnel directly or indirectly involved in local language broadcasts to those countries even as it adds scores of administrative positions despite budget constraints.

The board of governors proposed drastic reductions in its Mandarin radio broadcasts until Congress ordered a halt. It is now reviewing its plans for total elimination of the Cantonese program reaching China’s most dynamic and democratic-leaning population. The rationale was that “audiences…prefer digital and social media.”

By contrast, Beijing recognizes the continuing importance of radio and television to tens of millions of Chinese. The government-controlled China Central Television has just opened a new state-of-the-art broadcast bureau in Washington, D.C. as part of a major overseas expansion aimed at boosting China’s international influence.

Read more

Lipien reports that US government-funded media freedom broadcasters, Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, RFE RL), have resorted to self-censorship of their news to keep broadcasting on two leased radio stations in Moscow in the days leading up to Russian presidential elections.

Self-censorship affects only their radio newscasts on two AM Moscow transmitters, which are leased and paid for by the US government to rebroadcast VOA and RL programs. It does not extend to their other program delivery options, such as their websites.

Lipien reported that the newscasts on these stations were changed in response to a request from Russian operators of the transmitters who had warned that broadcasting political programming or poll results several days before the elections would violate Russian media law.

Because uncensored VOA and RL newscasts are still available online and, in the case of Radio Liberty, also through shortwave radio transmissions, a spokeswoman for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages and funds these two broadcasters, said that

the restrictions “do not interfere with the ability of the Voice of America or Radio Liberty to cover the elections or to carry on with their other duties.”

In the case of the Voice of America, however, removing news even from some broadcasts may violate Public Law 94-350, also known as the VOA Charter, which mandates that

“VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.” Furthermore, the law, also known as the VOA Charter, stipulates that “VOA news will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive.”

Removing certain news from certain Voice of America newscasts or eliminating newscasts altogether undermines the law’s requirement that VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news, BBG Watch concluded.

The BBG’s newly-hired director of communications Lynne Weil said in a response to an inquiry from Free Media Online, a US-based media freedom NGO, that

“the BBG and its content providers, including the many individuals who risk their lives to shine the light of truth on some of the world’s darkest corners, are fiercely protective of their journalistic independence and integrity, and vigilant about any obstacles – real or potential – to getting their work done.”

Lynne Weil further explained that

“The VOA Russian Service intends to report on the elections and update its website and blogs throughout the election cycle, without any restriction on its activities, BBG spokeswoman said. The VOA Russian Service prepares, however, a 30 minute radio program that gets broadcast Monday through Friday on another AM station in Moscow. The rest of VOA’s programming on the Moscow medium-wave station is in English.  Because the frequency is on a local lease, it is subject to the Russian law.  To comply, in the five days before the election the VOA English Service is making a  change to the 24/7 stream sent to Moscow —  replacing its five-minute hourly newscast with a pre-recorded segment that invites audiences to go online to VOANews.com for news and information about Russia and the world,” Lynne Weil said. “The remainder of English stream to Moscow is unchanged.”

Read Lipien’s full op-ed in Digital Journal Op-Ed: America’s radios dancing to Putin’s tune in Moscow

BBG members with IBB Director Richard Lobo and Deputy Director Jeff Trimble

by The Federalist
 
As we already know, as part of the administration’s FY2013 budget, the Broadcasting Board of Governors and International Broadcasting Bureau (BBG/IBB) want to destroy 33% of Voice of America (VOA) language services, totally or in part.  The list of services affected has already been identified in other commentaries and won’t be repeated here.  Cuts to other US Government broadcasting entities are also proposed.
 
Concurrent with this demolition operation is something else which we believe is intended to facilitate the process and ultimately take the United States Government out of the business of direct international broadcasting.  Considered in all its aggregate parts, the BBG/IBB “flim flam strategic plan” will represent a strategic victory for US adversaries around the world.
 
Below is an email from VOA director David Ensor.  In this email, Mr. Ensor announces that content from other US Government entities will be commingled on the VOA website.  We can dismiss the “blue sky, best case scenario” outlined in Mr. Ensor’s memo.  Things don’t go smoothly inside the Cohen Building and this will be no exception.  But it makes for interesting reading and gaining insight into the mindset of the BBG/IBB.
 
Let us examine what we believe to be the scenario that is unfolding and its long-range goals and consequences.
 
Commingling content from different US Government broadcasting entities is disturbing.  Each entity has a specific mission as identified in enacting legislation by the US Congress.  If successful in demolishing the various broadcasting assets, the BBG/IBB clearly would intend to increase the commingled content to the point that it will be difficult to identify what content belongs to whom.
 
With the broadcasting elements destroyed, the BBG/IBB will have accomplished what it sets out to do: deprive global publics of direct US Government broadcasts and limit agency output to the Internet, making it the sole source for audio, video and text.  The agency will have eliminated its core audience base on radio.  To follow will be television.  The agency may claim otherwise, but it is obvious that it would be substantially cheaper to produce web-television rather than direct broadcast television.  And please note that this will not be high-end television.  It will be cheap television which equates with bad television.
 
At present, the agency’s own data shows that its audience via the Internet is about 10-million.  That’s 10-million out of a world population of 7-billion.  It would take decades to acquire the audience the BBG/IBB intentionally will abandon: 100-million on radio, another 100-million on television.
 
In the process, it is likely that the identity of the various US Government broadcasting assets will be so badly obliterated that no one will know what the replacement is and who is running it.  To outward appearances, it will be just another (mediocre) website competing with thousands if not millions of others.  It will have social media content as its top priority and maybe some news material dispersed throughout.  But don’t expect it to be anything remotely cutting edge or up to the same standard as the VOA Charter – which the BBG/IBB makes every effort to seemingly ignore, evade or disavow knowledge of still being in existence.
 
Also to be considered is the success that various hostile elements have had in cyber-warfare operations against agency websites.  BBG/IBB websites have demonstrated their value – as vulnerable soft targets for honing one’s offensive cyber-warfare skills.  If there were Olympic medals for cyber warfare operations, the Iranians, Chinese and Russians would be competing for gold, silver and bronze – especially when going up against rube operations of the BBG/IBB.
 
Not part of the Ensor memo is another development which is an important element in the mix.
 
Recently, the BBG/IBB dropped InterMedia as its audience research partner.  A new contract has been let with the well known Gallup polling organization.  This is a $50-million dollar contract which appears to be parsed out in $10-million dollar annual increments.
 
One of the things the BBG/IBB hopes to do is market the research provided by Gallup to customers.  These customers would include other international broadcasters and media.  It would also market the research to other agencies of the US Government, including the Department of Defense and perhaps also the Central Intelligence Agency.
 
It is hoped that selling its research to non-US Government customers will help offset the costs incurred in the new Gallup contract.
 
The results of this “strategy” have already turned up some ironic results.
 
Recently, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announced that it had almost doubled its audience in Iran.  Now who do you suppose supplied the research data that the BBC relied upon?
 
The Broadcasting Board of Governors and International Broadcasting Bureau!
 
Thus, the agency’s own research shows that the BBC is clobbering BBG broadcasts to Iran via its Persian News Network, which is supposedly coming in at around 6% – and maybe less now.
 
So why are we spending a lot of money on what appears to be yet another BBG/IBB failure-in-progress?
 
But there’s more to this scenario.
 
One can envision without needing too much imagination to see where this is heading.
 
One can foresee a BBG/IBB that will reduce itself to being a social website which also supplies research data to a variety of clients and generates revenue.  Let’s carry it further: it can relocate itself to the Dulles Town Center, out of sight and out of mind and without having to manage and maintain expensive broadcasting infrastructure and staff.
 
And it will undoubtedly be fully privatized.
 
But privatized means just that.  Should this be the scenario that comes to pass, the Congress should end taxpayer support of BBG/IBB activities.  The BBG/IBB will be out of the business of direct US Government international broadcasting which has been determined to be in the national and public interest, social chit-chat is not.  It will not have or support the missions of its current entities.  It will have re-fabricated itself as the “GNN:”
 
Global Nothing Network.
 
Mr. Ensor’s email/memo follows for your reading pleasure.
 
The Federalist
March 2012
 
 
 

###
From: David Ensor
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:28 PM

To: VOA Language Service Chiefs; VOA Language Service Division Directors; VOA Language Programming Directorate; VOA Managing Editors; Matthew Baise

Cc: Steve Redisch; Rebecca McMenamin; Barbara Brady; David Borgida; Richard M. Lobo; Jeffrey Trimble; Jay Tolson

Subject: VOANews.com
 
Colleagues,
 
Our English language website-one of the most popular websites offered by U.S. international broadcasting– is going to try something new.
 
In the next few days, our website will broaden its offering to readers, by adding a few stories each day chosen by VOA web editors from the reporting of our sister news organizations, RFE/RL, RFA, MBN and OCB.  This will enrich our already strong site, and we hope, attract more readers to it, (and also to those of our colleagues, since there will be links).
 
Here is how it will work:  when the VOA web team identifies a story from-for example RFE– that it would like to use, it will send that story to the relevant VOA personnel to make sure the story is not one that VOA already has from its own reporting, or in which there may be problems. For example, a story on Ukraine would be sent to the VOA Ukrainian Service and to Central News, for vetting.  They will then have about an hour to let the web editor know if:
 
 
1.      VOA already has this story so if we’re putting it on our website, we should use our own version,
 
2.      There may be factual or editorial problems that need to be addressed before the story should be put on our site.
 
 
 
When the web editor does not hear back on either point one or two, the story will go up on the site about an hour after the query.
 
I want to stress another important point about VOANews.com:
 
the VOA English language web team is eager to put more original content stories generated by VOA journalists on the site. Reporters working in the language services, and language service chiefs should be on the look-out for stories that break news or offer special insights and that might be of interest to VOA’s English internet public.  If your service breaks a story that might be of interest beyond your audience, please assign someone to make at least a rough English translation and flag it to Central News, and to Matthew Baise and his team.
 
This will help VOANews.com to continue its growth as a significant global site, one that offers original content, in addition to a presentation of the main stories around the world and about the Unite States.
 
 
David
 
 
David Ensor
Director
 
Voice of America
330 Independence Ave, SW
Washington DC 20237
(202) 203.4500

The BBG is proposing to eliminate all Voice of America Cantonese-language programs. Meanwhile, the central government in Beijing, acting through its local authorities, is also trying to restrict the use of Cantonese by broadcast media in Guangdong, the most populous province in China.

As reported last December by Sally Wang in South China Morning Post, broadcasters will need to have permission to use Cantonese on television, radio and in online footage from March, according to an order posted on the Guangdong provincial government website. View: Cantonese broadcasts restricted in Guangdong.

This latest move against media use of Cantonese comes just over a year after the government proposed switching prime-time programming on Guangdong TV’s main channels from Cantonese to Mandarin (Putonghua). The authorities later postponed implementation of their proposal when it triggered a series of mass demonstrations by furious Cantonese speakers. An activist behind the Cantonese-language campaign in 2010 said: “This will strangle the local traditional culture,” South China Morning Post reported.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is also on the same wavelength with the communist authorities in Beijing when it comes to another language and culture under pressure. This year, the BBG is also proposing to end all Voice of America radio broadcasts in Tibetan.

Last year, the Broadcasting Board of Governors tried to silence all Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio and TV broadcasts to China and to rely only on Internet-based news delivery. The Internet in China is almost totally controlled by the Chinese regime which blocks VOA Cantonese and Mandarin websites. This attempt was stopped by the U.S. Congress which ordered the BBG to continue VOA broadcasting in both Cantonese and Mandarin.

Despite this rebuke from Congress, the BBG made a new proposal this year to close down the VOA Cantonese Service and to end VOA Tibetan radio broadcasts. It is not clear whether presidentially-appointed BBG members were informed by their executive staff about the protests in China against Beijing’s attempts to limit use of the Cantonese language. It is also not clear whether the staff told BBG members about an earlier unsuccessful attempt by the BBG to reduce radio broadcasting to Tibet. It triggered a protest in 2007 on Capitol Hill by Tibetan Buddhist monks and an admonition from Congress to the BBG not to cut radio programs to Tibet.

Cantonese and Tibetan are not the only languages targeted this year by the Broadcasting Board of Governors for cuts and reductions. Voice of America English news and other English programs will see devastating cuts under the BBG budget proposal for fiscal year 2013. The BBG wants to eliminate 71 positions currently used to prepare VOA English programs and 14 positions used to prepare VOA Spanish programs. Many other VOA services will also be cut or reduced under the BBG budget proposal.

Critics blame the overall culture of mismanagement and contempt for rank-and-file journalists by a small group of entrenched executives who have just proposed to cut $17 million form the VOA budget. They plan to end VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet, to eliminate the VOA Cantonese Service and to cut more than 200 positions.

Meanwhile, Voice of America broadcasts to Iran and Russia continue to attract negative attention for poor performance and, in the case of the VOA Russian Service, favoring a pro-Kremlin view while ignoring American viewpoints on human rights violations in Russia and Vladimir Putin’s autocratic rule. America’s enemies in Russia, China and Iran have good reasons to cheer. U.S. taxpayers funding pro-Putin VOA programs – Washington Examiner.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is also being criticized for mishandling broadcasting to the Middle East by BBG-run Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa.

A Bloomberg editorial, “U.S. Broadcast for Iran Might Be Free, But Doesn’t Have to Be Cheap: View,” asks: “Programs that go on and on. Shows that lack focus. Graphics and production values that make Iranian state TV look hip by comparison. Why has the U.S.-run Persian News Network been so bad for so long?”

The Bloomberg editorial notes that the Broadcasting Board of Governors just announced a 2013 budget that would cut VOA’s allocation by $17 million. “The network should cancel them [proposed budget cuts] and focus on what it can do well,” the editorial says in reference to the VOA Persian satirical TV program “Parazit.”

The PNN web site is off-putting, the editorial notes. The Bloomberg editorial concludes that “When a well-executed show like ‘Parazit’ can begin to undercut the legitimacy of the Iranian regime, there’s no telling what a superlative network could do.”

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, the Washington Bureau Chief of Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai, who used to work for the BBG-managed Alhurra TV, wrote in The Huffington Post article, “Alhurra and the Arab Spring,” that “VOA Arabic had a respected Arabic Service, but the Bush administration decided to replace” it with Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, which — he argues — undermined both transparency and accountability.

“There is one thing in common between Congress-funded Arabic TV, Alhurra, and countries of the Arab Spring. Both have unaccountable leaders, who have been in place since forever, and who look like they are staying indefinitely,” the journalist wrote. He also noted that “Since then, the leaders of Alhurra and Sawa, none of them a journalist, have remained in place and have outlasted administrations and Congresses.”

Link to Washington Examiner op-ed by Ted Lipien.

Ted Lipien, a former Voice of America (VOA) acting associate director, has been warning for some time that marketing and staffing policies pushed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executives have changed the focus of VOA and other BBG broadcasters from serious, accurate and well balanced journalism to ratings-chasing entertainment and sloppy reporting produced by inexperienced, poorly paid, otherwise exploited, unsupervised and unedited contractors, many without any background in American life and media.

In his latest op-ed in The Washington Examiner, Lipien makes this point again. Anticipating the expected line of defense of BBG bureaucrats, who refuse to acknowledge the problem and dismiss a recent “fake” interview on the VOA Russian website and charges of “pro-Putin bias” as atypical, Lipien cites a study by a prominent independent Russian journalist and new media scholar Dr. Nikolay Rudenskiy who found not just one but many examples of the Voice of America Russian Service website giving prominence to pro-Putin and pro-Kremlin views and failing again and again to provide an American perspective on human rights and media freedom violations in Russia.

Lipien was also interviewed by NPR’s Michele Kelemen who reported that a recent webcast on the VOA Russian Service site included a long statement from a Putin supporter in Russia without an effective attempt to counter or balance his pro-Kremlin views.

U.S. taxpayers funding pro-Putin VOA programs – Ted Lipien – Washington Examiner
If American taxpayers had any idea what kind of messages Voice of America (VOA) is sending in their name and at their expense to Russia, they would be hopping mad.

Opposition leaders and independent journalists in Russia have warned that the VOA Russian website has a pro-Putin bias and downplays human rights reporting, but the latest scandal brings the harm to a new level. The VOA site posted a fake interview and embarrassed a leading Russian pro-democracy figure.

The VOA is funded by Americans to broadcast information programs to countries without free media. A leading Russian anti-corruption lawyer and Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, wrote a scathing Twitter comment accusing VOA of “going nuts.”

He dismissed the purported interview with him on the Russian website as “100 percent fake.” He further suggested that someone in Washington should start listening and “let all these guys go.”

The VOA Russian Service removed the interview and apologized to Navalny, no doubt hoping the scandal would soon blow over.

But the story was picked up by RIA Novosti news agency and other Russian media, which reported on it in Russian and English. Significantly, the VOA English website ignored the whole incident.

What we have here is not just an isolated journalistic flop. Russian opposition leaders have known for quite some time there is something fundamentally wrong with the VOA Russian website.

In early 2011, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a federal agency that runs VOA, commissioned a study from a highly respected independent journalist living in Russia.

He warned that the website favored a pro-Putin line. It even downplayed a human rights speech delivered in Moscow by Vice President Joseph Biden.

The BBG bureaucrats did not highlight this damning assessment to members of the bipartisan board or to the new VOA director, David Ensor. They told them instead that the Russian Service was doing a terrific job.

On the day the Russian Service editors were getting ready to post their apology, Ensor praised them for being a model of innovation.

The fake interview was obtained by a newly hired contractor from Russia through an exchange of emails.

Someone should have known that pro-Kremlin activists have broken into email accounts of many anti-Putin leaders, but an editor, also recently hired as a contractor, gave his approval instead of doing further checking.

Even after the Russian Service apologized to Navalny, some of its staffers continued a whispering campaign accusing him of giving the interview and then lying about it.

A pro-Putin bias and scurrilous accusations against a courageous human rights activist may explain what kind of journalists the BBG has been hiring recently to manage the Russian website.

Some of them had worked for the pro-Putin media in Russia. To make room for these poorly vetted and poorly paid contractors, BBG executives retired experienced editors.

These officials also told the Russian Service not to be too harsh on the Kremlin because, according to BBG audience surveys, most Russians don’t like it. And that’s bad for ratings, they said.

They allowed VOA websites to be hacked a number of times. And, they failed to tell the Board promptly about the latest incident.

The same BBG officials are also responsible for drafting a plan to restructure U.S. international broadcasting that will be soon presented to Congress.

And, guess what, it would give them more control and turn the agency into an NPR-like structure with both international and domestic programs. It amounts to asking American taxpayers to continue paying for Putin’s propaganda.

Their latest proposal calls for ending VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet. Congressional committees with oversight functions need to step in and clean the place up before these failed bureaucrats do even more damage to America’s reputation abroad.

Ted Lipien is a former VOA acting associate director and co-founder of the nongovernmental Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – www.CUSIB.org).

Link to the original article >> U.S. taxpayers funding pro-Putin VOA programs – Ted Lipien – Washington Examiner

Kelemen interviewed the new VOA director David Ensor and former VOA journalist and director of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) Ted Lipien. Lipien also served as acting associate VOA director and placed VOA and Radio Liberty programs on stations in Russia before the Russian government of Vladimir Putin forced these stations to drop these programs. CUSIB opposes plans by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to cut VOA programs to Russia, China and other countries that restrict free media.

Ensor told Kelemen “So we may have been scammed, but we may never know for sure.” Ensor apologized for the incident and said the Russian service has tightened its procedures.

But NPR reported that others don’t see this as an isolated incident. Lipien said that the Russian service now relies on contractors, who aren’t familiar with American journalistic values.

“And I’m not saying that one should not hire people with fresh knowledge of countries like Russia,” Lipien says. “But if you are the Voice of America, you also need seasoned editors with other experience — American experience.”

An independent Russian journalist and new media scholar Dr. Nikolay Rudenskiy, who evaluated the VOA Russian website for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages the Voice of America, concluded that it has a “pro-Putin bias” and downplays human rights reporting and American viewpoints. See: “New media scholar Nikolay Rudenskiy is author of ‘pro-Putin Bias in VOA’study.” But a Senate staffer familiar with the evaluation said there is “no smoking gun” to indicate a deliberate pro-Putin bias.

NPR’s Michele Kelemen reported, however, that in one Voice of America Russian Service webcast, the VOA host hardly pushes back in a lengthy interview with a pro-Putin youth leader, who complains that the U.S. is trying to foment revolution in his country.

Read and listen to NPR report: Russian Accuses Voice Of America Of Fake Interview by MICHELE KELEMEN

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

Go here to see the original:
Washington Times Op-Ed warns about pro-Putin bias in Voice of America Russian programs

View original post here:
Victor Ashe Annoys Peers, says Knoxville’s Metro Pulse, quotes from BBGWatch.com

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

A Knoxville magazine website Metro Pulse quoted from BBGWatch.com in its report about Broadcasting Board Governor Victor Ashe’s unprecedented one-man campaign to reform the federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting.

Metro Pulse reported that “A blog [BBGWatch.com report: U.S. official Victor Ashe calls for keeping a radio facility capable of reaching China] that covers the BBG called Ashe’s public dissent ‘unprecedented’ by a member since the members, appointed by the president, do not publicly criticize the running of the agency.” Metro Pulse pointed out that Ashe, who is a former mayor of Knoxville and former U.S. Ambassador to Poland, has been visiting various BBG broadcasting entities and meeting with employees. The report suggest that Ashe “can be expected to continue to be a thorn in the side of his colleagues.”

The article mentions Ashe’s statement in support of keeping open a radio transmitting facility on U.S. territory capable of broadcasting to China.

Metro Pulse also noted Ashe’s successful intervention to make flu shots available to contract employees working at the Voice of America (VOA). “Ashe said the flu does not discriminate between civil service and contract workers. So the flu shots were extended,” Metro Pulse reported.

Read full Metro Pulse story.

John Lenczowski, who as President Reagan’s Soviet affairs adviser was instrumental in increasing funding for Voice of America and Radio Free Europe broadcasts to Poland during Solidarity’s struggle for democracy, wrote in a Washington Times op-ed that by proposing to end VOA radio and TV transmissions to China, the Broadcasting Board of Governors “is about to renounce the most powerful form of ‘soft power’ we have over China: our ability to inform, inspire and connect with the Chinese public – the ordinary people whom the regime fears more than anything else – and help the Chinese people communicate with one another.

“As China’s increasing economic, espionage and military might threaten ever-greater influence over the United States, why would we even consider junking our most cost-effective leverage over the future of Chinese policy?,” asks John Lenczowski. He argues that if permitted to stand, the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors‘ proposal to eliminate Voice of America shortwave radio and satellite TV broadcasts to the Chinese people will harm our national security posture.

Lenczowski counters BBG arguments by pointing out that Radio Free Asia has a different mission than VOA. “It, like Radio Free Europe, is designed to serve as a ‘surrogate domestic free press’ whose programming concerns developments within China itself – news and information suppressed by the communist regime.”

The VOA has a separate and equally important mission, writes Lenczowski. “It explains U.S. policy and helps foreign audiences understand America. Both missions are essential and cannot effectively be melded into a single station.”

Lenczowski also quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s and Lech Walesa’s comments on the importance of U.S. broadcasts. The Russian dissident said they were “the mightiest weapon that the United States possesses to create mutual understanding between America and the oppressed Russian people.” The Solidarity trade union leader had this to say after he became the first democratically-elected Polish President since WWII when asked about the impact of U.S. broadcasts on the pro-democracy movement in communist-rulled Poland: “Would there be life on earth without the sun?”

John Lenczowski is president of the Institute of World Politics, an independent graduate school of national security and international affairs in Washington, D.C. He is author of “Full Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy” (Lexington Books, 2011).

Read John Lenczowski’s op-ed “Don’t junk critical leverage over Beijing” in The Washington Times.

The rest is here:
Don’t junk critical leverage over Beijing — John Lenczowski on VOA in China

Today’s Pentagon budget must expend billions to cope with new Chinese weapons systems. But we can fund outlets of freedom like VOA and RFA that can eventually reduce that threat by fostering political reform in China for a fraction of the cost.

— Joseph Bosco

Back in March, Joseph Bosco who served in the Defense Department as China country desk officer, wrote an opinion piece for Politico, Launch Twitter in China, in which he made a number of excellent arguments as to why the Broadcasting Board of Governors’decision to end Voice of America radio and TV broadcasts to China is a mistake. It is one of the best media pieces in defense of U.S. broadcasting to China.

“Television and radio,” wrote Bosco, “are still the most effective media to convey dramatic images and descriptions, as well as to provide in-depth discussion, of contemporary historic events. They are also the only contact with the outside world for the millions of Chinese without Internet access.”

As China country desk officer at the Pentagon, Bosco participated in VOA’s and RFA’s Mandarin-language programs. “I can attest to the value of sharing information and ideas directly with Chinese citizens, who want unfiltered communications with the outside world,” he wrote for Politico.

In his first appearance on VOA, shortly after the 2001 EP-3 incident, when a Chinese fighter jet harassed and collided with a U.S. reconnaissance flight in international airspace, he told callers pertinent facts that the Chinese government had withheld in its distorted version of the event.

Like many critics of the BBG, Bosco does not deny the importance of new media. But because the Internet and social media sites are censored in China, Bosco — unlike BBG executives — has no illusions that the Internet delivery is enough or that it should be the only option.

Here are some of the points that the former Defense Department official made in his commentary. They are worth repeating as members of Congress are trying to block the BBG’s ill-conceived plan.

It turns out that China has had considerable success censoring the Internet, however. It blocked coverage of the Egyptian crisis, except for the scenes of chaos and violence. Within Egypt, the Mubarak regime managed to shut down the entire system. Washington should not make Beijing’s task even easier by removing or limiting the most important uncensored communications tool available to Chinese citizens. New technologies should supplement, not supplant, traditional communications that are often more reliable and effective — and sometimes the only international link.

Joseph Bosco previously taught China-U.S. relations at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He is now a national security consultant.

 Sourced from: BBG Watch

This is about yet another example of how BBG’s directives to use a wrong marketing approach to international broadcasting confuse inexperienced web content producers into thinking that their mission is not to provide hard news and expose human rights violations but to make their audiences feel good. Remember that the BBG fired dozens of experienced reporters both at RFE/RL and VOA and now has plans to fire 45 more journalists at the VOA China Branch — a move roundly condemned by members of Congress, Chinese human rights activists, Human Rights Watch, and other human rights organizations.

This is what happened. RFE/RL asked web users to submit their views about 9/11 and published them on a special page.

One of the entries came from Pakistan. Here is what it said:

On that day my father and I were going from Peshawar to Charsadda to attend my cousin’s marriage… While on the way one of my friends called me on my cell phone, the use of which was still rare in those days, and he told me to switch on my television. However, I told him, “I am on the road and not able to get to a television now.” At the same time he told me that someone had attacked America. It was unbelievable for me but when I turned and told this to my father, a big smile appeared on his face. He replied that it had happened because of what America is doing with the international community. After that, when I reached Charsadda, I came to know that everyone was happy about the attack.

The comment may have been later removed since we could not find it.

This is how Michael Rubin assessed the whole thing:

There’s a tendency among many U.S.-government funded broadcasters to believe broadcasting criticism bolsters credibility. In reality, many foreigners just find the self-flagellation pathetic. They tune into VOA and RFE/RL to hear news which their own governments censor, or which their own journalists could never tackle. Expressions of glee at the murder of nearly 3,000 people are not something RFE/RL should tolerate, whether on the RFE/RL website directly, or in a separate project among the “highlights.”

Michael Rubin is absolutely right. But private contractors at RFE/RL are not the ones to be blamed for this. At least they did not post sexy images on their website to increase page views, as the VOA Russian Service did after most of its experienced journalists were dismissed. BBG executives should not be surprised that web content producers are confused about the mission, because BBG members who get their advice from their executive staff are themselves confused.

At least some BBG members seem to think that programs about health for Africa are more important than exposing human rights violations and other crimes of dictatorial regimes. In fact, they negotiated with the repressive regime in Ethiopia to get local placement for their health programming project.

Afterwards, the VOA Horn of Africa Service was told to limit political reporting, their reports were censored, and the service chief was dismissed, reportedly at the insistence of Michael Meehan after the Ethiopian regime complained to the BBG. All of this was done to achieve greater local exposure for VOA programs. Ethiopian Americans and media freedom activists organized an anti-censorship demonstration in front of the BBG building, the largest ever in VOA’s history.

No doubt that audience surveys indicate that health issues are important to radio listeners in Ethiopia and anti-American sentiments are widespread in Pakistan. But VOA was not created to focus on health programming, and RFE/RL’s job is not to make their audiences feel good about themselves. Community service programming is important and can play a part in VOA broadcasts, but programs about health can be produced by others: local radio, Doctors Without Borders, the UN. There is nothing controversial about health.

As for RFE/RL and their My 9/11 project — if you ask stupid questions, you get stupid answers.

It’s possible that the idea for these projects of questionable taste came from within the BBG or from one of their private contractors and consultants, since VOA had a very similar survey: VOA Social Media Project Asks: What’s your 9/11?

Let us know if you know how this idea originated.

The BBG had already eliminated all VOA Arabic content and terminated VOA Russian radio and TV broadcasts just before Russia’s military attack on the Republic of Georgia in 2008. BBG executives, who have an uncanny ability to announce wrong decisions at the wrong time, proposed to end VOA radio and TV to China just before the unfolding of the Jasmine Revolution.

Ensor would be wise to learn that BBG executives will stop at nothing to secure broadcasting capabilities only for their semi-private entities, thus ensuring their survival by taking these capabilities away from VOA despite the waste and the duplication that this approach entails.

David Ensor said that VOA’s future in China is in new media and satellite television. He apparently did not know that the BBG wants to cut the VOA Chinese satellite TV news program, which has had more members of Congress as guests than any other VOA broadcast.

ENSOR: My personal feeling is that China’s one of the most important places for us to reach, and some of these new platforms that you’re talking about – social media, satellite television – are where we need to be headed in China.

Ensor’s answers suggested that he may not know that the VOA Chinese service already has a strong Internet and social media presence which is, however, stymied by Chinese Internet censors.

The new VOA director’s answers also revealed that he may not appreciate the importance of shortwave radio for China’s dissidents, human rights activists, and hundreds of millions of other Chinese who have no Internet access or ability to circumvent the Chinese regime’s firewall. Accessing VOA or RFA websites can expose Chinese dissidents to the secret police.

ENSOR:Some people think if a golden era when Voice of America was on shortwave radio and there were the huddled masses listening and then looking for the secret police to knock on the door and hide the radio. That’s not where we’re at now.

Ensor and BBG executives could learn something from the wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. During a five-minute reprieve from the usual Internet isolation imposed on her, Liu Xia wrote a friend that she is “miserable.”

“Can’t go out. My whole family are hostages,” Liu Xia wrote, as The Washington Post’s Keith B. Richburg reported last month. “I don’t know how I managed to get online,” she also wrote. “Don’t go online. Otherwise my whole family is in danger.”

Radio broadcasts to countries governed by authoritarian regimes are just as important to those listeners whom VOA should focus on as they were during the Cold War. The BBG, on the other hand, obsesses about reaching mass audiences. The message and the purpose behind U.S. international broadcasting is lost on those without the knowledge of history.

Ensor could also learn something from Jing Zhang, a former Chinese political prisoner who now heads U.S.-based NGO Women’s Rights in China.

Not only would the elimination of VOA’s Chinese language service be contrary to the spirit and values of America’s Founding Fathers, it would inflict irreparable harm on generations of dissidents and advocates of freedom and democracy, and silence the most vulnerable groups in Chinese society—the women and children.

Women’s Rights in China urges the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration to face the reality of the China of today, to maintain Voice of America’s Chinese language service and to leave a legacy that could stand up to history.

In his interview Ensor did not show much appreciation for VOA’s traditional mission of reaching out to the most oppressed people around the world. He also showed his ignorance of VOA’s WWII history.

When NPR host Scott Simon said that he was very moved when he was preparing for this interview to read the first words that the Voice of America ever broadcast and asked Ensor whether he is familiar with those words, Ensor’s response was that he was not. The phrase “The news may be good or bad for us. We will always tell you the truth.” appears on the VOA website and in every book about VOA’s history.

The NPR host was better prepared for the interview with Ensor than Ensor is for his new job.

Ensor seems to have bought into the BBG executives’ propaganda that a broadcasting organization like VOA cannot have both broadcasting and social media so it might as well settle only on social media. Perhaps, he’s not curious enough to ask why the same is not true for BBG’s semi-private entities or any other prestigious broadcasting organization.

I wonder if David Ensor knows that VOA has no Arabic service because the BBG had abolished it. Ensor should realize that the BBG has all the power and he as VOA director has none.

2010 OPM's Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey still shows BBG with lowest scores among U.S. government agencies.

Fox News reported — Lawmakers Scramble to Keep Voice of America On Air in China — that Congressional lawmakers are scrambling to prevent America’s international media arm from going off-air in China, arguing that a plan to shift much of its reporting to the Internet won’t do much good in a country notorious for its web censors. 

In a full bipartisan rebuke to the BBG, which manages the Voice of America and other U.S. international broadcasts, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted unanimously for an amendment, introduced by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., containing a provision that would allocate nearly $14 million exclusively for Voice of America’s Mandarin and Cantonese radio and satellite TV programs to stay on the air.

The funding must now be approved by the House Appropriations Committee and agreed to by the Senate. Fox News reported that in a bipartisan letter to the House Appropriations Committee in May, Rep. Rohrebacher and several House colleagues urged the panel to follow suit as it crafts the funding bill. They argued that the radio and satellite broadcasts remain “one of the best ways to communicate directly” with the Chinese people. 

“We believe the administration’s proposal will hinder indigenous democracy movements in China and damage the long-term security of our own country,” they wrote. “Sacrificing U.S. broadcasting abilities while China’s authoritarian regime expands its broadcasting and public diplomacy efforts in the United States is the wrong answer.” 

Speaking at a hearing on religious freedom, democracy and human rights in Asia, Sophie Richardson, Asia Advocacy Director of the Human Rights Watch told the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs that the Human Rights Watch urges the U.S. to “maintain funding not only for Tibetan language programs for RFA and VOA, but also for the Mandarin, Cantonese, and Uighur services.” Ms. Richardson said that these services “are irreplaceable means of transmitting information into and out of all regions of China.”

Speaking at the same hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hollywood actor Richard Gere, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Campaign for Tibet, also called for saving Voice of America broadcasts.

Fox News reported that “Ted Lipien, a former VOA executive who now runs Free Media Online, complained in an op-ed earlier this year that aside from the threat of censorship, two-thirds of China’s population does not even have Internet access. He accused the BBG of turning its back on human rights activists who rely on radio for information.”

In a Washington Times editorial published last March, Lipien wrote:
“The Internet is inaccessible for 750 million Chinese. A listener to VOA radio programs in China is not likely to be a Chinese with an iPhone who goes on shopping trips to New York but someone like Liu Xia, wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Kept under house arrest, she once succeeded in sending an email to a friend, in which she wrote, ‘I don’t know how I managed to get online.’ She then warned her friend, ‘Don’t go online. Otherwise my whole family is in danger.’ BBG officials turn their backs on people like Liu Xia when they claim that ending VOA radio to China would help them develop new media tools to reach a younger, Internet-using audience.” Lipien ended his Washington Times op-ed with a comment about the BBG executive staff, which claims to be able to overcome Internet censorship in China but had failed to protect VOA websites from an Iranian cyber attack:

“The ability of the BBG executive staff to make wrong decisions has been so uncanny that simply by examining their program-cutting proposals, members of Congress easily could have predicted new outbreaks of unrest and assaults on free media shortly before they happened. Congress should not allow this group of managers to commit yet another blunder with a gift to the Chinese Communist Party as it celebrates its national holiday on Oct. 1, the proposed date for ending VOA radio to China.”

Free Media Online has criticized the BBG executive staff for misleading members of Congress and the media with claims that the termination of VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China and the firing of about 40 journalists specializing in human rights reporting are needed to create online presence in China, when in fact VOA already has an active online outreach, which is limited only by the Chinese regime’s censorship of the Internet.

The idea that millions of dollars are needed to expand VOA’s online presence in China is also highly misleading, Lipien said. He pointed out that the beauty of the Internet is that it is inexpensive, as proven by millions of news websites run by individuals and NGOs.

“Only BBG executives, consistently rated year after year in government-wide surveys conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) as the worst managers in the federal bureaucracy, could claim that they need to fire 40 journalists who are experienced in reporting about human rights abuses in China so that they can give millions of dollars to consultants and private contractors, and that this will make the Voice of America more effective. The truth is,” Lipien said, “that the same BBG executives could not even protect VOA’s own websites from a successful attack by Iranian Islamists, and the idea that they can overcome Chinese censorship of the Internet is completely unrealistic.”

“What BBG executives will do,” Lipien said, “is to make easier for the Chinese cyber police, which reportedly number over 40,000, to track down human rights activists in China by forcing them to switch from safe listening to radio or watching satellite TV to using the Internet to access the VOA Chinese website, which may not even be accessible.”

Free Media Online president pointed out that the same executives sent three BBG members on a negotiating mission to Ethiopia and were responsible for censoring Voice of America programs and for the dismissal of a VOA journalist who revealed that the Ethiopian regime demanded that human rights activists be banned from VOA programs.

Link to the demonstration video 1

“The spectacle of BBG members negotiating with repressive regimes, followed by censorship of VOA programs, shows that members of Congress are absolutely right in demanding the continuation of VOA broadcasts to China and calling BBG executives incompetent,” Lipien said. The BBG is a bipartisan board comprised of nine members. Eight, no more than four from one party, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate; the ninth is the Secretary of State, who serves ex officio. In addition to Chairman Isaacson and Secretary Clinton, they include Victor H. Ashe, Michael Lynton, Susan McCue, Michael P. Meehan, Dennis Mulhaupt, Dana Perino, and S. Enders Wimbush.

A former BBG member Blanquita Cullum also observed the tendency of the current leadership to favor communicating with rulers rather than the people who listen to VOA programs because they offer uncensored information and hope. “Now is the time to increase worldwide access to information … This is not the time to pull the plug,” warned Cullum in a Washington Times editorial published last February. She accused the BBG of seeming “more intent on communicating with rulers than with the people.”

Human rights and media freedom advocates in the U.S. have been reposting this Tiananmen Anniversary video. Free Media Online urges further reposting and linking to this powerful video.

8964 from sofunny on Vimeo.

8964 from sofunny on Vimeo.

The latest charges of censorship at the Voice of America and the Broadcasting Board of Governors first surfaced in investigative reports by exiled Ethiopian journalist Abebe Gellaw who was recently a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution in California. He publishes the Ethiopian American news website Addis Voice. His website and many others are banned in Ethiopia.

Addis Voice reported that BBG and VOA officials have tried to silence and punish Voice of America journalist David Arnold, the chief of the Horn to Africa Service, for disclosing the Ethiopian regime’s demands for censoring VOA broadcasts made in Addis Ababa during a recent meeting with visiting BBG members. Since his exile from Ethiopia, Mr. Gellaw’s articles and interviews have been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Guardian, and the Far East Review.

In June 2011, three BBG members appointed by President Obama went to Ethiopia where they met with officials of the Ethiopian regime to discuss their complaints of anti-regime bias in VOA news programs. According to reports in Ethiopian American media, BBG members were presented a list of Ethiopian dissidents, political exiles and foreign critics whom the regime wants to ban from Voice of America radio broadcasts, apparently as a condition for lifting the local jamming of these programs. The names were included in a document describing the objections of the Ethiopian regime to VOA news reports. Addis Voice obtained the document and made it available online.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and other media freedom organizations have accused the Ethiopian regimeof Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in power since 1991, of imprisoning journalists, jamming Voice of America and other foreign broadcasts, and blocking many foreign and independent news websites.

Ethiopian American media reported that BBG officials, who apparently wanted to keep the content of their negotiations in Addis Ababa secret, suspended the chief of the Voice of America Horn of Africa Service David Arnold from his position after he had informed his VOA colleagues about the Ethiopian regime’s demands. BBG officials accused Mr. Arnold, a highly-regarded journalist with decades of reporting experience, of engaging in misinformation but later allowed him to return to work after Ethiopian American media reports brought about a storm of criticism and raised charges of censorship. According to reports in the Ethiopian American media, it is not clear, however, whether he will keep his old job and be safe from further harassment by BBG members and their executive staff.

Phone calls, faxes and emails protesting censorship of the Voice of America news, the dismissal of VOA journalist David Arnold, and the BBG’s plan to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China and to fire journalists specializing in human rights reporting can be directed to the following institutions:

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman; Howard L. Berman, Ranking Member

U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John F. Kerry, Chairman; Richard G. Lugar, Ranking Member

Committee to Protect Journalistsinfo@cpj.org

Reporters Without Bordersclc@rsf.org

Index on Censorshipenquiries@indexoncensorship.org

Mr. Arnold was part of a delegation headed by three Broadcasting Board of Governors members — Susan McCue, Dana Perino, and Michael P. Meehan.

A VOA report on the visit, which included information disclosed by Mr. Arnold, was removed from the VOA website, reportedly soon after Ethiopian officials complained about it to the BBG staff. Subsequently, VOA executives also banned news coverage from a meeting of Ethiopian political exiles which was held in Washington, D.C. area, suggesting that the BBG mission to Ethiopia continues to have an impact on the bureaucrats who are eager to please BBG members and their executive staff.

Abebe Gellaw reported that the controversy over censorship at the Voice of America took a bizarre twist last week when the Director of Africa Division forbade staffers from taking notes at a meeting she held with employees of the Horn of Africa Service. The manager in charge of VOA programs to Africa told staff to do more people-oriented programming and cut down on the number of stories focused on political affairs.

Free Media Online president Ted Lipien

“Most BBG members, nominated because of their political loyalty and private sector experience, do not know how to deal with enemies of press freedom and are all too eager to listen to dictators’ complaints against independent journalists without realizing the negative impact of their actions on victims of political repression,” Lipien said.

BBG member Michael P. Meehan

Voice of America sources have told Free Media Online that attempts to punish VOA journalists by BBG members and their staff have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among the media professionals employed by the U.S. government-funded organizations run by the BBG.

“The BBG’s attempts to discipline Mr. Arnold for doing his job as a journalist is even more outrageous in light of the fact that in 2005 the Ethiopian regime charged five journalists working for the VOA Amharic Service with treason and threatened them with the death penalty,” Lipien said. The charges were later withdrawn after pressure from the U.S. government and human rights NGOs.

“The BBG should be in business of supporting media freedom, not secretly negotiating with suppressors of free press in countries like Ethiopia, Russia, and China, and censoring and punishing its own journalists. The goal of U.S. public diplomacy ought to be reaching out to the victims of political repression abroad, not trying to improve relations with dictatorial regimes. The job of dealing with dictators should be left to professional State Department diplomats, who are hopefully both tough and experienced. The idea that political operatives and private businessmen from the U.S. can somehow persuade dictators to soften their grip on the media had been tried by naive individuals numerous times when the Soviet Union still existed and had always failed while making the life of dissidents and independent journalists more difficult and more dangerous,” Lipien said.

“Sending not one but three BBG members to Ethiopia with a large entourage to negotiate with enemies of press freedom was counterproductive and a tremendous waste of taxpayers’ money,” Lipien added. “It made the enemies of press freedom feel good and took away hope from the victims of human rights abuses and the journalists who try to defend them. If it were otherwise, BBG members and executives would not have resorted to censorship and intimidation against their own journalists.”

Lipien suggested that the BBG represents now a greater danger to journalistic independence at the Voice of America than State Department diplomats ever did when VOA was part of the now-defunct United States Information Agency (USIA). This is highly ironic — according to him — because one of the reasons the U.S. Congress created the BBG was to establish a better firewall between VOA journalists and administration officials. “While I worked as a journalist at VOA, lower-level State Department and USIA officials sometimes tried to influence our reporting but these attempts were relatively rare and we were able to ignore most of them before they escalated into a real fight. The BBG, on the other hand, has a much greater direct power over VOA journalists, as Mr. Arnold has found out, and is far less accountable. State Department diplomats were also more aware that it is illegal to interfere with journalistic independence of Voice of America reporters — something that some of the BBG members, some of their executive staffers, and some VOA managers don’t seem to understand, as strange as it may be,” Free Media Online president said.

Lipien also said that compounding the problem is the incompetence of the entrenched BBG executive staff, which feeds the eagerness of BBG members, derived from their private sector experience, to make deals with dictators to establish local program placement in the hope of increasing audience ratings. This is a failed strategy, which the BBG staff also uses to justify eliminating VOA radio and TV broadcasts to countries like China and Russia when their local program efforts inevitably fail, Lipien observed. He listed as examples of the most spectacular failures of the BBG executive staff giving airtime to Holocaust deniers, ending VOA radio programs to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military attack on the Republic of Georgia, their refusal to resume these programs, planning to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China on the anniversary of the establishment of the communist regime in Beijing, and their decision to send BBG members to negotiate with dictators who only stay in power because of their repression of free media.

In a move that is likely to endanger human rights activists, the BBG executive staff has been advocating Internet-only VOA news delivery to China despite Beijing’s effective Internet censorship and its ability to discover identities of individuals trying to access Western news websites. BBG bureaucrats with links to private sector contractors have been making promises of piercing China’s Internet firewall and yet have been unable to protect Voice of America’s own websites from successful attacks by hackers, most likely from China and Russia.

The Ethiopian American organizers of the protest rally against the Broadcasting Board of Governors are warning that the BBG wants to turn the Voice of America into the Voice of China. The rally is scheduled for 9 AM, Monday, July 25, in front of the Voice of America building at 330 Independence Avenue, S.W. in Washington, D.C. just below the Capital Hill. Free Media Online is asking members of Congress to investigate the charges of censorship by BBG members and to protect Voice of America journalist David Arnold and his colleagues from further reprisals.

This report was originally published by FreeMediaOnline.org San Francisco, CA, USA, July 24, 2011.

Dear Mr. Landler:

I read your piece regarding the Voice of America (VOA). It is an excellent explanation of the world view of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

I am a retired Federal employee. I served 28 years with the VOA from 1980 to 2008. At various times, I had the opportunity to observe the senior officials of the BBG, VOA and the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) in motion (as opposed to action). With this in mind, I would like to offer an alternative point of view: I believe that the strategy adopted by the BBG has been an abysmal failure.

Let us examine the “highlights:” In 2008, the BBG terminated direct VOA Russian Service radio broadcasts to Russia. Very shortly thereafter, the Russians invaded the Republic of Georgia. To date, the BBG has steadfastly refused to reestablish the radio broadcasts, instead relying upon a website only for VOA Russian. As the BBG’s research demonstrates, as conducted by a survey company named InterMedia, the VOA Russian audience dropped off a cliff, virtually disappearing to insignificant numbers.

In the Spring of 2011, with unrest and revolution roiling throughout the Middle East, the BBG’s Radio Sawa and al-Hurra television were not the go-to source for news and information. That distinction rests with al-Jazeera, far and away the leader in news and information for Arab audiences. The BBG is notorious for making outrageous statements that don’t hold up to careful and critical examination and scrutiny.

Next is the matter of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The BBG intends to terminate VOA Mandarin and Cantonese radio broadcasts. Instead, the BBG intends to rely primarily on Internet content, with marginal radio backup via Radio Free Asia (RFA) broadcasts into the country. I use the term “marginal” because RFA has been a distant third to broadcasts of VOA (the leader), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), until they ended their broadcasts. It is unlikely that RFA will rocket to a position of prominence or dominance of radio broadcasting into China.

Another word about the PRC: the Chinese government has made it explicitly clear that it will block VOA Chinese language websites aimed at domestic Chinese audiences. The National Endowment for Democracy reports that the Chinese government has 50-thousand personnel assigned to domestic Internet surveillance. In addition, the PRC has a robust cyber warfare operation. Some of these operations are under the direction of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This should indicate the level of importance the Chinese government attaches to controlling the Internet and blocking content which it contends is harmful to their interests.

Recently, Gmail and Google email accounts of government officials and private sector executives were hacked by an attack originating inside China. The Chinese, their capabilities and resources should not be taken lightly. The BBG efforts to circumvent these capabilities should be taken lightly, with a healthy dose of skepticism thrown in. In addition, the Iranian Cyber Army recently hacked all VOA websites and proxies for a period of five hours. In place of the VOA web pages, people attempting to access the sites were treated to a screen with messages in English and Farsi directed to Secretary of State Clinton, along with an animation of the Iranian flag wafting gently in the breeze and an AK-47 rifle.

Mrs. Clinton recently remarked in congressional testimony that we are losing the information war. The federal agency responsible for losing the information is the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Now who am I to believe: the Secretary of State or the BBG representatives inside the Cohen Building? The good money for credibility is with the Secretary of State. All this talk about Twitter and Facebook is BBG babble.

The truth of the matter is that people, when they migrate to new media are not migrating to BBG new media. They are predominantly going to Facebook and Twitter accounts of indigenous people and organizations. The BBG is not controlling the conversation and dialogue. Further, they are not offering a service that is exclusive to them. People have options, many options; and the research demonstrates that they are turning away from the new media of the BBG.

The BBG is desperate for a place in the present and future. It has no place; at the very least, experience has demonstrated that it has a substantially diminished if not marginalized place in the present and future. It is not likely that it will recover its lost ground in the foreseeable future.

However, at the same time, the BBG will prevail upon the Congress and the American taxpayer to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a failed enterprise. For any of us who committed our careers in the Federal government with the VOA, the current results are reprehensible. They are disgusting. Coming up with fantasies concerning the agency’s place in the 21st media and information doesn’t alter the reality, substance and consequences of the BBG’s failed strategic plan.

Regards,

Gary Marco

Voice of America: 1980-2008 President, AFSCME Local 1418, Voice of America: 1983-2008

A Chinese free labor union leader like Poland’s Lech Walesa could be declared expendable by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages U.S. international broadcasting operations, because he has no Internet and no higher education, is older than 30 and is poor.

Government executives who advise part-time presidential appointees at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) would want you to believe that silencing Voice of America radio to China is a great political and technological idea that is bound to displease the communist regime in Beijing. The savings would be used to expand Internet presence, or so they claim.

But theirs is a misguided proposal that would harm both the United States and pro-democracy forces abroad. It sends a strong signal to authoritarian regimes that Americans either don’t care about human rights or don’t know how to defend them. Not surprisingly, the Chinese communists already have greeted the BBG announcement as a defeat for America.

Read The Washington Times op-ed: LIPIEN: Don’t silence Voice of America radio to China

A few days before the Islamist cyber attack on the Voice of America websites, Blanquita Cullum, a conservative radio host and former member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), criticized the Obama Administration for planning to drastically reduce American radio news programs to China in favor of Internet-only news delivery to China by the Voice of America. Ms. Cullum wrote in an op-ed published by The Washington Times that by terminating long-distance shortwave transmissions, the government agency in charge of U.S. international news broadcasts is ignoring the digital divide between richer and poorer regions of the world and dismissing efforts by authoritarian regimes to censor the Internet. She charged that the BBG appears more intent on communicating with rulers rather than with the ordinary people who can’t afford or are denied access to the Internet.

Voice of America Chinese Service

The radio broadcasts set for termination are produced by the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia (RFA). They are funded by Congressional appropriations and overseen by the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors, a nominally independent federal agency which is consistently rated in official government-wide employee surveys as one of the worst-managed within the U.S. government. The Broadcasting Board of Governors is in charge of all U.S. civilian international news broadcasting, including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television.

Conservative radio host and former Broadcasting Board of Governors member Blanquita Cullum has been critical of the BBG's decision to reduce U.S.-funded radio broadcasts to China and other countries without free media.

In her Washington Times commentary, Obama bows to Chinese dictators, Blanquita Cullum, who had served on the Broadcasting Board of Governors during the George W. Bush Administration, has accused the current Board members and the Obama Administration of planning to cut off outside news to people still oppressed by communism. According to her and other critics of the planned termination of U.S. government-funded radio broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese, the President’s budget request of $767 million for the BBG for Fiscal Year 2012, represents a “strategic disintegration plan” – marking America’s exit as a bona fide force in international broadcasting.

The current BBG has nine members, all of whom have been appointed by President Obama. The Board also has the executive staff, whose top managers have been responsible for a number of financial scandals and journalistic blunders. While the BBG members were replaced after the new administration took office, the executive staff remained. They are the initiators and planners of the previous and the latest series of radio programming cuts in U.S. international broadcasting.

The current BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson is the former Chairman and CEO of CNN and former editor of Time Magazine. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton serves as an ex officio member of the BBG. The Board also has Republican members, including Dana Perino, the former White House Press Secretary to President George W. Bush, and Victor H. Ashe, the former U.S. Ambassador to Poland during the George W. Bush Administration. They were all nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate.

Blanquita Cullum, the only former BBG member recognized in the Congressional Record for being “a champion of the mission of U.S. international broadcasting,” argues in her op-ed column in The Washington Times that the BBG’s over-reliance on delivering news from the United States to countries without free media, using the Internet rather than a mix of radio, Internet and satellite TV, is both misguided and dangerous. She points out that “it is easier and cheaper for despots to shut down the Internet than it is to jam radio,” and accuses the BBG of “ignoring the digital divide – the gap between those who have effective Internet access and those who don’t.” According to AHumanRight.org, an NGO which strives to expand free access to news and information around the world, 7 out of 10 people do not have Internet access. AHumanRight.org estimates that almost 5 billion people lack Internet access.

Blanquita Cullum had been a strong critic of the BBG executive staff while she was still serving as a Board member and managed to prevent some but not all of the previously proposed broadcasting cuts. Other BBG members and their staff wanted to use savings from some of these programming cuts to hire their friends as public relations consultants for the BBG. Her fight against mismanagement at the BBG was recognized by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican from Oklahoma, in a statement placed in The Congressional Record.

“Chief among her concerns,” Senator Coburn wrote, “has been for the continuation of U.S. international radio broadcasts, the form of communication which to this day remains the most readily accessible and cost-effective means of communication for billions of oppressed people living in poverty.”

Senator Coburn has been a consistent critic of the way the BBG manages its broadcasting operations and spends public funds.
He has publicized examples of VOA broadcasts to Iran which, he charges, undermine U.S. policy and give a platform for anti-American propaganda. He has also charged that U.S. broadcasts in Arabic on Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television have also given “uninterrupted and unchallenged platforms to terrorists and other enemies of the U.S. and our allies.”

One of the most blatant examples of editorial mismanagement at the BGG, exposed with the help of Free Media Online, was the airing of statements by Holocaust deniers by Alhurra Television.

While the BBG members approve strategic plans and budget submissions to Congress, the recommendations for program cuts come from the permanent BBG executive staff. They were responsible in the past for proposing to reduce radio broadcasts to Tibet, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia. They have also been accused of failing to maintain editorial standards, which led to such journalistic blunders as the airing of statements by Holocaust deniers on the BBG-managed Alhurra Television for the Middle East. They also failed to prevent major financial scandals at the BBG-managed broadcasting entities.

In one of their most controversial moves in recent years, the BBG executive staff had sold the previous BBG members on the idea of eliminating VOA radio broadcasts to Russia. In her commentary in The Washington Times, Ms. Cullum pointed out that after the BBG had ended VOA Russian radio programming in 2008 just several days before Russian military forces invaded the Republic of Georgia, subsequent survey data indicated that sole reliance upon a VOA Russian website resulted in a wholesale disintegration of its audience base. Ms. Cullum had opposed these programming cuts when she was still a member of the BBG.

Americans for U. S. International Broadcasting Petition Save Voice of America Shortwave

Americans for U.S. International Broadcasting, a group of current and former VOA and BBG employees and free media advocates, have started a petition drive to convince Congress to reject the BBG’s and the Obama Administration’s proposals for eliminating shortwave radio broadcasts to China.

Senator Richard Lugar

Some members of Congress and their staff are also concerned about media censorship in China and the Chinese government’s efforts to control Internet access in their country. Senator Richard Lugar, Republican from Indiana, issued a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report — “Another U.S. Deficit – China and America – Public Diplomacy in the Age of the Internet”– which details China’s initiatives to censor the Internet while expanding its influence in the world. The report was prepared under the direction of Senior Professional Staff Member Paul Foldi, who visited the region.

ANOTHER U.S. DEFICIT
—CHINA AND AMERICA—
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN THE
AGE OF THE INTERNET
A REPORT
TO THE MEMBERS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
FEBRUARY 15, 2011

XinhuaNews, the official press agency of the Chinese government, will soon be allowed to open a multi-floored office in Times Square and already broadcasts from an AM transmitter in Texas. By contrast, Beijing limits the Voice of America to a single, two-person office there, blocks the opening of a VOA bureau in Shanghai. Furthermore, China forces both VOA and Radio Free Asia to beam in on Short Wave radio from distant locations well outside its borders. China also routinely jams these transmissions as well as blocks both VOA’s and RFA’s Internet sites. Meanwhile, Congress has provided tens of millions of dollars to assist in Internet freedom issues including Internet Censorship Circumvention Technology, but little of that money has been allocated by the State Department in spite of clear bipartisan support.

VOA insiders told Free Media Online that the BBG executives who make decisions to eliminate radio broadcasts have no experience of living under communism and do not understand the psychology of authoritarian rulers and those who suffer under oppressive regimes.

The Taipei Times reports that the morale of the Voice of America Chinese Service journalists is at its all-time low.

According to sources at VOA, who spoke with The Taipei Times on the condition of protecting their anonymity, the work environment had turned sour as pressure from management led to on-air hosts self-censoring themselves.

One instance involved the invitation of World Uyghur Congress leader Rebeiya Kadeer for a show, which resulted in the show’s host being slapped on the wrist afterward for failing to invite a Chinese official to provide the other side of the story.

“The Chinese propaganda is already available for all to listen to,” the source said, adding that VOA did not need to serve as a platform for the views of the Chinese Communist Party and in many cases VOA served as one of the few means for minorities to voice their message out.

The source also said it was highly unlikely that Chinese officials invited to participate on a VOA show would have agreed to do so.

Eventually, employees discovered that the pressure from management, which on certain occasions resulted in self- censorship, was the direct result of a sustained campaign of complaints from Chinese diplomats.

“[Yielding to their pressure, and now shutting us down] sends the wrong strategic message to Beijing,” a source said, adding that regardless of whether Congress passed the budget cuts or not, “this should serve as a warning to management at VOA not to give up on human rights in China.”

The Voice of America Chinese Service journalist may very well be right that the BBG has been succumbing to the pressure from Chinese diplomats who complain to the State Department.

Chairman Walter Isaacson made news last October by naming China’s and Russia’s official media as America’s “enemies,” alongside state media in Iran and Venezuela, but he quickly disavowed his comments, most likely after being rebuked by high-ranking officials of the Obama Administration, either at the State Department or at the White House. He used such strong language while calling for more money for the BBG to combat foreign propaganda.

Mr. Isaacson criticized the state media in China and Russia at the 60th anniversary celebration for Radio Free Europe (RFE), which he credited with contributing to the end of the Cold War. [A transcript of the speech is available here.] When questioned by The Cable, a FOREIGN POLICY (FP) blog about his “enemies” comment, Isaacson apologized for the remark, while saying that the “enemies” he was referring to were in Afghanistan, not the several countries he mentioned.

“I of course did not mean to refer to, nor do I consider, that Russia, China, and the other countries or news services are enemies of the U.S., and I’m sorry if I gave that impression,” he told The Cable. The BBG has also published a statement of clarification on its website.

The incident showed that not even the BBG Chairman is protected from censorship by autocratic regimes. Their diplomats are putting pressure on the State Department, which under the Obama Administration seems far more willing to carry their message of censorship to the BBG Chairman and to get him to comply with their demands.

Ted Lipien, former Voice of America acting associate director and VOA journalist during several Democratic and Republican administration, said that President Obama’s refusal to meet prior to his official visit to Beijing with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama has send a strong message to human rights activists and government censors alike in China and other countries ruled by authoritarian regimes. According to Lipien, the tone set by the Obama Administration has also contributed to self-censorship and unbalanced reporting at the Voice of America and other broadcasting entities managed by the BBG. An analysis conducted by Free Media Online showed that the Voice of America has violated its Congressional mandate in reporting on the ongoing debate in Congress about the new START treaty with Russia on arms reductions by heavily promoting the pro-treaty statements by the Obama Administration officials and almost completely ignoring serious objections to the proposed treaty raised by Republican lawmakers.

The Voice of America reporting on the U.S. debate about the proposed START treaty would make the Voice of Russia radio and Russia Today television proud, said Ted Lipien who now heads Free Media Online, a California-based NGO which supports free and independent media and reporting worldwide.

In 2008, Free Media Online launched GovoritAmerika.US, a Russian-language website which aggregates U.S. government and non-government media reports. The website was created in response to the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ decision to cancel VOA Russian radio broadcasts, an action taken just 12 days before the Russian military attack on the Republic of Georgia. Free Media Online has been highly critical of the BBG’s management of  U.S. international broadcasting, terminations of radio broadcasts, and over-reliance on the Internet without being able to protect its websites from cyber attacks.

Links to sign a petition to save U.S. news radio broadcasts to China.

This report was first published by FreeMediaOnline.orgTruckee, CA, USA, February 21, 2011.

LIPIEN: Remembering a Polish-American patriot

Zofia Korbonska was underground resister, VOA journalist

To those who knew her personally, Zofia Korbonska was a loyal and generous friend. But Mrs. Korbonska, who passed away last week [August 16, 2010] in Washington at the age of 95, was also a heroic figure of the anti-Nazi and anti-Communist resistance movement in Poland between 1939 and 1947. In later years, driven from her native country by the socialist regime, she worked tirelessly in the United States as a Voice of America (VOA) journalist to bring uncensored news to her native country. Read more

Related posts:

1. Zofia Korbonska Funeral Arrangements
2. Zofia Korbonska, Polish Freedom Fighter and Voice of America Broadcaster, Dead at 95
3. Zofia Korbonska’s Obituary

 Sourced from: TedLipien.com

Zofia Korbonska at the Polish Service of the Voice of America in Washington, DC in 1974

FreeMediaOnline.org

“Ahmadinejad denies Holocaust, madam from Istanbul denies Armenian Genocide. Congratulations to Radio Liberty – you are in a good company!”

AZG Daily report in English

AZG Daily report in Russian

Also read Foreign Policy Blog post about mismanagement at the BBG.

Radio Liberty Radio Free Europe listeners have been reacting with dismay to RFE/RL Russian Service radio report from Turkey which repeatedly questioned the Armenian genocide as a historical fact. RFE/RL is funded by U.S. taxpayers and managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, an independent agency consistently rated by the US Office of Personnel Management, OPM, as the worst-managed in the Federal government.

In an effort to transfer the bulk of US government international broadcasting operations to private contractors, political appointees and their executive staff running the BBG have eliminated or severely reduced the Voice of America (VOA) programs in Arabic, Russian and other languages. VOA operates under a Congressional Charter which guarantees its journalistic independence and imposes strict standards of programming accuracy and balance.

BBG’s private broadcasting entities such as Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa lack the same degree of editorial and fiscal controls as VOA. This lack of oversight, however, has made them vastly preferable to VOA among most BBG members who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the US Senate. It allows them and their staff to more easily impose their personal programming ideas and to find jobs and contracting assignments for their former and current associates in the private and public sectors.

During the Bush Administration, Republicans and Democrats appointed to the BBG joined forces to support privately-run US broadcasting to the Muslim world and completely shut down Voice of America Arabic broadcasts.

The strongest supporters of outsourcing US international broadcasting to private contractors were Norman Pattiz and Edward “Ted” E. Kaufman, both Democrats. They no longer serve on the BBG. Kaufman, a close friend of Vice President Biden, now holds Biden’s former US Senate seat in Delaware. Pattiz, the founder and chairman of Westwood One, America’s largest radio network company, has been a major contributor to the Democratic Party, but both he and Kaufman had worked closely with the Bush White House in creating Alhurra and Radio Sawa.

The same BBG political appointees and executives have put in place a commercial, ratings-driven programming policy which resulted in pandering to popular but often extremist, anti-American and anti-democratic audience viewpoints in semi-authoritarian countries like Russia and in the Middle East. A Russian human rights organization has accused Radio Liberty of spreading racist views in Russia.

The BBG-managed and contractor-run Alhurra Arabic language television network aired a report denying the Jewish Holocaust. The airing of the Armenian genocide denials by the Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Russian Service can also be explained by the desire to include the views of extremist nationalists in Russia who deny that Stalin was also guilty of genocide.

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Russian Service veteran editors who had defended the human rights programming focus at RFE/RL and tried to counter extremist views were accused by BBG-appointed managers and their consultants as being out of step with the nationalistically-minded radio listeners in Mr. Putin’s Russia.

The same executives who fired these journalists were responsible for terminating Voice of America Russian radio programs in July 2008, just 12 days before Russia’s military attack on Georgia. Only one BBG member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, a Republican and the only working journalist among the Bush-era BBG political appointees, was said to have voted against terminating VOA radio programs to Russia and opposed plans of other BBG members to hire high-profile media personalities to help improve the agency’s public image. They are also responsible for personnel policies at RFE/RL which deny most foreign journalists the full protection of American and Czech labor laws. RFE/RL has its headquarters in the Czech Republic. A legal anti-discrimination case against RFE/RL and the BBG filed by former RFE/RL non-American employees is now pending before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Free Media Online president Ted Lipien, who had previously worked at the BBG and VOA, said that the airing of Holocaust and Armenian Genocide denials is an expected result of misguided policies governing US international broadcasting in recent years. These include the selection of most BBG members from among political party operatives and loyalists who lack experience in journalism, foreign affairs, and media freedom and human rights activism. One of the current candidates to the BBG nominated by President Obama is Michael P. Meehan, a Democratic Party operative who has been accused of physically attacking a journalist who tried to ask questions of the former Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts.

According to Ted Lipien, the surrogate broadcasting model worked well during the Cold War when the goal was to undermine the local regimes by providing news not available from communist media sources. At that time, surrogate broadcasters such as RFE/RL were well managed, first by CIA personnel, and later by professional journalists dedicated to defending freedom of expression and other human rights and democratic values.

Lipien said that most of the recent BBG members could not grasp that their surrogate broadcasters, such as Alhurra, are still perceived by the audience as speaking on behalf of the United States when they air Holocaust and Armenian Genocide denials.

In the past, officials in charge of US international broadcasting were able to provide both leadership and effective management at these surrogate stations, but the BBG has failed to do that for more than a decade, Lipien said.

Members of the BBG have also not grasped that the surrogate broadcasting model is largely inappropriate for the Internet age and for audiences, which — unlike the Cold War audiences in Eastern Europe — are not supportive of American values and foreign policy objectives. According to the Free Media Online president, the Congress would do better by providing support for truly independent free media outlets abroad and the United States and by allowing the Voice of America to represent the full spectrum of responsible U.S. opinions. A station like Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty could still play a useful journalistic role in promoting free and democratic media in some countries if the BBG stops interfering with its programming policy and allows RFE/RL to put in place effective editorial controls, Lipien said, but he added that this seems unlikely unless the BBG itself undergoes major reforms.

“The BBG is the most worthless organization in the federal government,”

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, told The Cable in an interview. “It’s full of people who know nothing about media or foreign policy. All they are doing is spending money and somebody’s got to look into it.” Read more in The Cable, Foreign Policy magazine blog.

‘I am not happy . . . but it is good that I get famous,’ Georgian Cyxymu says of the onslaught that brought down Twitter and crippled Facebook and other online services.

The Los Angeles Times and other American newspapers reported that the massive cyber attack last week, seen by security experts as aimed at silencing a single blogger in the country of Georgia, instead made him a global celebrity.

LAT reporter David Colker wrote that “Cyxymu, as he is known on his mostly anti-Russia blog, has been the subject of news reports worldwide ever since he was identified as the target of the attack that took down Twitter for hours and crippled other popular online services.” more from LAT

A comment from Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom NGO:

This LAT report sheds a new light on the decision made by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to end all on-air Voice of America (VOA) Russian radio and television broadcasts and its planned termination of VOA Georgian radio broadcasts. Despite protests from members of Congress and human rights and media freedom organizations, the BBG in fact terminated Russian-language VOA radio broadcasts at the end of July 2008, only 12 days before Russian troops attacked Georgia. (BBG officials did not have enough time before the outbreak of the Russian-Georgian war to end VOA radio to Georgia, but they still stopped on-air VOA television broadcasts to Russia shortly after the war started.)

Internal BBG documents described the Internet as the optimium program delivery platform for Russia. During President Obama’s historic trip to Russia earlier this summer, the entire Voice of America website was completely crippled for at least two full days by another cyber attack. Instead of using new media and Web 2.0 applications to enhance a sensible and cost-effective multimedia program delivery strategy, the BBG granted the Russian security services full victory in their efforts to limit the access of Western broadcasters to a mass media audience in Russia. In the meantime, Russian state broadcasters, such as Russia Today TV, continued to expand their presence in the American media market without any restrictions.

After Barack Obama’s electoral victory, the Voice of America Russian Service no longer had the necessary technical and human resources to try to reclaim its role as a major on-air radio and television broadcaster capable of conducting interactive live discussion programs with state or independent broadcasters in Russia. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), also managed by the BBG, was allowed to keep its Russian-language radio broadcasts, but RFE/RL does not specialize in American news and most of its Russian staff is based in Russia within easy reach of the secret police operatives assigned to keep an eye on, and if necessary, to intimidate independent journalists.

The current annual audience reach for VOA in Russia is estimated at only 0.2%, which represents a recent 98% decline, largely as a result of the BBG’s actions. The Broadcasting Board of Governors is a bipartisan body which manages U.S. international broadcasting. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, only one BBG member voted against ending on-air VOA radio and television programs to Russia.

With VOA Left Voiceless, Obama Fails to Reach Russian Public

President Obama’s foreign policy thus far has been marked by an emphasis on public diplomacy. As a result, successfully engaging foreign publics has become a top priority of his administration. The President himself has taken an active role in this effort, delivering several high-profile speeches to audiences around the world. His July 7th oration in Moscow, which focused on the importance of media freedom and human rights, was one such occasion.

But Obama’s message failed to reach his intended audience- the Russian public. On Russian television, which is tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Obama’s remarks were largely ignored, receiving hardly any air-time.

To make matters worse, a crippling cyber-attack had rendered the international websites of Voice of America (VOA) useless. As a result, VOA, the federally-funded broadcast service congressionally mandated to provide objective, accurate news to foreign audiences, was utterly incapable of offering the Russian public unbiased coverage of the President’s speech. VOA’s loss of web-based capabilities might have been less damaging if not for the fact that its oversight, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, decided in 2008 to completely do away with VOA’s Russian language radio and television broadcasts into the country.

VOA has demonstrated its ability to circumvent anti-American state-media and deliver objective news programming, most notably in Iran following the June 12th election. However, the internet-only approach in Russia, and the inability to provide sufficient security for this service, allowed Kremlin-controlled media to undermine Obama’s attempt to connect with the Russian public. Unless the Obama Administration takes the necessary steps to ensure the vitality of VOA and similar programs, our nation’s outreach to foreign publics will continue to be rebuffed by unreceptive governments.
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NEWS FLASHES FROM RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY

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.

 FreeMediaOnline.org

Jeff Trimble was said to have worked with Senator Biden’s  Senate staff over the summer to quickly and quietly implement the shutting down of VOA radio to Russia in late July without alerting other members of Congress. Many in Congress have been strongly opposed to this move on national security grounds and see it as a blow to media freedom in Russia. 12 days after the VOA program went off the air, Russian troops attacked Georgia. Since then, Vice President Cheney visited both Georgia and Ukraine. President Bush announced a $1 billion aid package to Georgia.

Jeff Trimble is a former acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which would benefit from the shutting down of VOA Russian-language and Ukrainian-language programs. RFE/RL is incorporated in Senator Biden’s home state. One of the BBG members, Edward E. Kaufman, was formerly Senator Biden’s chief of staff. 

Jeff Trimble and another BBG member, Jeff Hirschberg, who is also a director of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, had traveled to Russia in previous years and conducted negotiations with Russian officials and associates of President and now Prime Minister Putin. They reportedly discussed the status of RFE/RL large news bureau in Moscow, which still operates despite the closing down of most independent Russian broadcasters. Most of the major electronic media outlets in Russia are now in the hands of Mr. Putin’s associates and other media is subject to secret police monitoring and intimidation.

FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien has warned that  Prague and Moscow-based RFE/RL cannot be a replacement for VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts from Washington, D.C. The Moscow Human Rights Bureau, a pro-democracy NGO, has recently criticized Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for giving extensive airtime to an extremist politician who is known for making racist comments about immigrants and other groups. Last year, shortly after the murder of independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the head of RFE/RL bureau in Moscow had  publicly expressed  her confidence in “the common sense of the Russian leadership.” Human rights activists also criticized RFE/RL for airing these comments shortly after the brutal murder the most prominent journalist who was critical of Mr. Putin.

Ted Lipien has also warned that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists working and living in Russia are subject to intimidation by the Russian secret police and that their  safety and their work has been put in  severe jeopardy by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Lipien has called for immediate restoration of VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts as a matter of great urgency for U.S. national security and public diplomacy.

According to FreeMediaOnline.org president, if the BBG vote takes place on Thursday as expected, the BBG members will be on record as either supporting or opposing the restoration of VOA radio programs at a time of growing nationalism and militarism in Russia.  They will have a chance to reverse their earlier decisions made before the Russian attack on Georgia. If they don’t, the shutting down of VOA Russian radio broadcasts could become an election campaign issue because of Senator Biden’s presumed role in that decision, and is likely to be examined in Congressional hearings this fall.