Original post:
Russia and the West: why democracy threatens Putin

Continued here:
Iran – Regime continues to wage its war against foreign media

Link:
BBC journalist goes on trial in Tajikistan

FreeMediaOnline.org Part Two — Special Report: Sound of Hope Plans to Increase Shortwave Radio to China while Voice of America Retreats  — Read Part One: No Apology for Failure

While officials of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) tell members of Congress that shortwave radio in China is dead and announce plans to terminate all Voice of America shortwave broadcasts to China in Cantonese and Mandarin, California-based Sound of Hope Radio (SOH) has announced plans to expand its shortwave programs targeting Mainland China, The Epoch Times newspaper reported. Sound of Hope Bucks the Trend and Expands Broadcasts to China | Read The Epoch Times article in Chinese.

The article cites political reasons (autocratic rule, censorship, hacking and blocking of the Internet, no free press to defend rights of citizens) and market research data (750 million without Internet access, extensive use of shortwave by China National Radio, ability to reach 230 million migrant population) used by Sound of Hope Radio to justify its decision on expanding shortwave radio while VOA and BBC are moving in the opposite direction.

Free Media Online (FreeMediaOnline.org), a California-based media freedom NGO, reported that the reasons given by Sound of Hope for expanding shortwave news broadcasting to China stand in sharp contrast with the information being provided to Congress and American public by BBG officials who want to end such broadcasts in favor of increased presence on the Internet.

As reported by The Epoch Times, SOH president Allen Zeng expressed concern about BBC and Voice of America plans to end Chinese-language radio programs. “If BBC and Voice of America are canceling their Mandarin broadcasts to China, we will be losing two important companions. Our Chinese audience may feel let down by the loss of their freedom of information. Therefore, I feel that we now shoulder an even greater responsibility.”

With a recent addition of 4.5 hours, Sound of Hope Radio broadcasts daily on average 20 hours of shortwave programming to China.

While members of Congress are getting one side of the story from BBG executives eager to end Voice of America radio to China in favor of Internet-only VOA news delivery, Allen Zeng cites audience research data in support of Sound of Hope Radio strategy for China which contradicts some of their claims. Pointing out that during the recent pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt, the regime was able to censor the Internet, Mr. Zeng said that his radio network relies on a number of program delivery channels.

The threat of the Chinese authorities censoring, hacking, and blocking the Internet has been one of the strongest arguments of the critics of the BBG’s decision to end all on-the-air Chinese radio broadcasts by the Voice of America as of October 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of communist China. Free Media Online president Ted Lipien said that “being officials of a U.S. government  agency charged by Congress with understanding and serving information needs of  audiences in nations abroad, BBG executive staff has shown remarkable political parochialism and insensitivity in choosing the birthday of communist China to end decades of Voice of America broadcasts. These broadcasts are bringing uncensored information, hope, and message of human rights to millions of Chinese living without democracy under authoritarian rule. Ending them weakens America’s prestige, influence, and support for human rights,” Ted Lipien said.

While Mr. Zeng did not directly criticize the Broadcasting Board of Governors, he was quoted as saying that the Internet is not always reliable and that for Sound of Hope Radio “a variety of news sources is necessary.”

Last week, Free Media Online and others reported that the Voice of America websites were attacked by a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army, which managed to redirect VOA web traffic to its own website showing an Iranian flag, a gun, and an anti-American message. Also in 2009, the Voice of America websites came under a successful cyber attack and were unavailable for more than two days while President Obama was making his first official visit to Russia. Ted Lipien said that “we can be certain there will be no uncensored Internet in China if there is another Tiananmen just as there is no uncensored Internet in China now. While expanding Internet presence is highly desirable, we must not forget 750 million Chinese who are not using the Internet, millions of those who will not open VOA and RFA websites for fear of being monitored by the secret police, and those who can’t find them because the Chinese authorities redirect traffic away from these websites. Listening to radio is private and safe, and while the Chinese government can jam shortwave transmissions, some of them can always get through, just as they did during the Cold War,” Ted Lipien said.

To justify their decision to end VOA radio to China, BBG officials have been telling members of Congress that, according to their sponsored research, shortwave listenership in China is practically non-existent, insisting that only 0.4 percent of Chinese survey respondents reported listening to any shortwave radio broadcasts in the previous week. In the article on Sound of Hope Radio, The Epoch Times reported, however, that due to China’s size, even China National Radio uses over 80 shortwave frequencies to achieve nationwide radio coverage, a proof that unlike BBG officials the Chinese authorities themselves don’t see shortwave as a dead medium.

Free Media Online analysts suspect that either China-based firms doing market research for the BBG are under the influence of the Chinese authorities or Chinese respondents are reluctant to tell strangers that they listen to shortwave radio, as this may indicate to the authorities that these individuals are listening to foreign broadcasts. It is highly doubtful that the Chinese government would use over 80 shortwave frequencies to reach 0.4 percent of the population.

One proof that the BBG-sponsored research may be either manipulated by the Chinese authorities or responses may be influenced by the fear of the government can be found in the claims of BBG officials to members of Congress that their recent surveys indicate past-week usage of shortwave in China at 1.1 percent in urban areas, where — as they like to point out – Internet use is exploding, vs. 0.4 percent in rural areas. One would suspect that rural residents, whom even China National Radio targets with shortwave broadcasts, would be much more fearful of the local authorities and would not provide a truthful answer even if they are shortwave radio listeners, to either domestic or foreign broadcasts. Even some of the BBG’s own mid-level analysts do not believe in these figures.

But top level BBG officials made similar claims based on faulty data to justify ending Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia in 2008 and promised greatly expanded audience reach for VOA on the Internet. However, by the end of 2009, their Internet audience reach in Russia stood at 0.1%, while their overall media reach declined by more than 80%, all of it due to going off-the-air with radio broadcasts to Russia.

Free Media Online has been warning that BBG officials want to repeat the same mistake in China. BBG officials point out that Radio Free Asia, which they also manage, will continue with shortwave broadcasts to China, but even their own data shows that now the Voice of America has much larger radio audience and greater name recognition among the Chinese.

The Epoch Timesarticle gives the number of radio sets in China at 500 million and points out that foreign shortwave broadcasts have long been the source of reliable information for the Chinese people. The article goes on to say that shortwave broadcasts were the only way the people in China received true information during the June 4 crackdown of the democracy movement at the Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Sound of Hope Radio website says that the media network is providing an alternative to China’s state controlled media with news and cultural programming and is seeking to pierce the barrier of state censorship through large-scale shortwave radio broadcasting directly to a majority of the Mainland Chinese population. Mr. Zeng told The Epoch Times that SOH has systemically invested in expanding shortwave broadcasts to China and now ranks fourth after VOA, Radio Free Asia and Radio Taiwan International among radio stations broadcasting to China from abroad. The network calls itself the largest private broadcaster to China, producing over 20 thousand radio programs each year.

According to SOH, many Chinese already listen to short wave radio and others could purchase this technology cheaply and easily, while the Internet is both expensive and available to only one-third of the population of China.

According to The Epoch Times, Allen Zeng justified increasing SOH shortwave broadcasts to China instead of decreasing them by pointing out that China is still ruled by a totalitarian regime and lacks free press that could protect the rights of the Chinese people. “They are truly in need of freedom of information, yet the Internet can only be accessed by one-third of the people,” Mr. Zeng said.

The Epoch Times article provides statistical data from the China Internet Network Information Center which show that China has 450 million Internet users and 730 million adult non-Internet users. While BBG officials tell individual members of Congress about the growth of the Internet in China and the 450 million Internet users, they fail to point out 730 million Chinese have no Internet access. The Epoch Times reports that this group consists largely of residents of rural and small and mid-size urban areas and a mobile population of up to 230 million people, including migrant workers.

According to The Epoch Times, this large group of 750 million people who either do not have access to or do not know how to use the Internet, represent the ideal audience for shortwave broadcasts.

Free Media Online applauds the decision of Sound to Hope Radio to increase broadcasts to China. At the same time, we deplore the decisions taken by the Broadcasting Board of Governors to terminate or sharply reduce on-the-air radio broadcasts to China, Russia, and other countries ruled by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

“We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by BBG officials who time after time have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Their decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week. Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien. He was a former BBG manager and until 2006 former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

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.

Excerpts from other sections of “U.S. International Broadcasting in Crisis“

• What happened to VOA audience reach in Russia as a result of the BBG decisions that are now being proposed for China? It declined by over 80 percent, just as Free Media Online had warned in 2008 that it would happen.


Voice of America

• The same executives have now managed to convince new BBG members to make the same mistake in China.
• In their confused messages to members of Congress, BBG officials often contradict themselves. While arguning in favor of eliminating VOA radio to China, they point out that only [sic] 22 out of 8635 respondents reported having ever listened to VOA, while 7 had ever listened to RFA or BBC. Well, 22 is three times more than 7. Does his proves that the Congress should by all means eliminate the radio broadcast, which according to even BBG-sponsored research, has an audience that is three times larger? We don’t think so.
• BBG executives don’t have the slightest idea how many people in nations ruled by undemocratic regimes listen to U.S. news broadcasts on shortwave. Even their own researchers point out that “these audience figures are based on surveys conducted in politically repressive environments that are generally hostile to international broadcasting. Because individuals in these countries are discouraged or even prohibited by their governments from listening to U.S. international broadcasts, actual audience numbers may be higher.”
• They tell members of Congress that keeping shortwave broadcasts to China imposes significant opportunity costs on U.S. strategic interests because the continued investment in SW depletes resources that could be invested more effective media platforms and technologies that are the choice of most Chinese citizens.
  The problem with this line of reasoning is that the current team of BBG officials has not been able to take advantage of these opportunities because they don’t know how and because the potential for expanding their Internet audience is extremely small no matter how much taxpayers’ money they plan to spend on advertising in China and Russia, which is what they do. They could not increase their Internet reach it in Russia and they will not be able to do it in China. Their Internet audience in Russia is still and will continue to be at “trace” level, as it will be in China, no matter how much money they intend to spend. They just fail to point this out to members of Congress.
• According to BBG officials, the expected savings from the proposed radio cuts will be about $8 million (about $4.9 million in personnel costs and $3.2 million in transmission costs). The real beneficiaries will no longer be Chinese-speaking human rights journalists in the United States, who will be laid off, but private contractors, including advertising agencies in China The real damage will be the loss of the ability to demonstrate continued U.S. commitment to human rights and the loss of a platform for pro-democracy supporters in China, a platform that cannot be easily blocked or silenced.
• The argument that the Chinese government would want the U.S. to continue shortwave broadcasts because they are supposedly ineffective and a waste of money is completely false. BBG officials fail to understand the desperation of those who seek information and the psychology of authoritarian governments who live in fear of being deposed with the help of outside radio, TV, and Internet. If these arguments were true, the Chinese government would not bother to jam VOA and RFA shortwave broadcasts. Tibetan monks would not have protested on Capital Hill against cuts in shortwave broadcasts to Tibet, which had been proposed earlier by the same BBG bureaucrats who are now pushing for cuts in radio broadcasting to China and who outsourced the hosting of VOA websites to outside contractors.
• The Chinese government has demonstrated its ability to block the Internet at the time most convenient for them. It does not take a genius to figure out that it will be the most inconvenient and dangerous time for the United States and for pro-democracy supporters in China. The BBG executives, who could not protect VOA websites from a cyber attack by Iranian Islamists, want the United States to take this risk.
• Depriving the Voice of America of shortwave radio capability in China is especially misquided since VOA has a bigger brand recognition among the Chinese population, and in a crisis, they are far more likely to turn to VOA for news from the United States just as they now listen more frequently to VOA radio. There is no good reason why both VOA and RFA should not keep all of their program delivery options open and to share both Internet and shortwave delivery resources. There is no advantage to only one broadcaster using radio. There is certainly no advantage to denying radio program delivery to the one broadcaster who now has a larger radio audience.

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February 28, 2011

Open Letter to Members of House Appropriations Committee

Dear Members of Congress:

This letter is to request your strong support to restore the budget for Voice of America Cantonese Service and Voice of America Mandarin Service in the FY 2012 Budget.

We object to the proposal by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which serves to manage Voice of America (VOA), to eliminate the entire VOA Cantonese Service, as well as eliminate the positions of more than half of the VOA Mandarin Service staff members.

This egregious effort to disappropriate funding from VOA will effectively eliminate the purpose of the Congressionally mandated Public Law 94-350 to the people in China who speak Cantonese and Mandarin to be provided with news broadcasts that promote freedom and democracy.

This target against Voice of America – right on the heels of PRC President Hu Jintao’s recent visit to the United States – is nothing less than a concession that will dismantle America’s commitment to broadcast news from the United States. During the same time of this funding cutback, the PRC intends to spend more than a billion dollars to enhance their propaganda goals in the United States.

This campaign against Voice of America comes during the PRC’s media crackdown on stories against Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo. It comes during a time when PRC’s media has blocked news about uprisings in Egypt and Libya. It comes during a PRC crackdown against any stories shared about the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, and all prisoners of conscience in China.

We implore you to restore the FY 2012 Budget funding for the Voice of America’s Mandarin and Cantonese Services so Voice of America can continue to fulfill its mandate to provide a balanced and comprehensive view of significant American thought and institutions; and to clearly present the policies of the United States to the people of China.

Respectfully,
Harry Wu, Laogai Research Foundation
Justin Yu, Chinese The Chinese Chamber of Commerce in New York
Ann Lau, Visual Artists Guild
Ann Noonan, Free Church for China
Bob Fu, China Aid
Anna Cheung, Alliance for Hong Kong Chinese in the US
Peggy Chane, Visual Artists Guild
Doris Chan, Visual Artists Guild
Reggie Littlejohn, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
Ganden Thurman, Tibet House
Jeremy Taylor, Free Burma Alliance
Ethan Gutmann. Recipient Tiananmem Spirit Award
Joe Brown, Pasadena NAACP
Jonathan Cao, Chinese Coalition for Citizens’ Rights
Juntao Wang, National Committee Democratic Party of China
Robert A. Senser, Human Rights for Workers
Jing Zhang, Women’s Rights in China

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The British broadcaster’s decision follows a similar move by the U.S. international radio station, the Voice of America (VOA), which was forced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — a government agency managing U.S. international broadcasts — to end on-air VOA Russian radio programs in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military incursion into Georgia. As a result of this move, VOA lost most of its pre-2008 audience in Russia. Due to criticism from media freedom activists, the Broadcasting Board of Governors in the U.S. had subsequently agreed to allow VOA to resume a 30 minute Monday through Friday online radio broadcast in Russia. The British announced that the BBC will distribute some Russian-language radio programs online.

As part of the planned budget cuts, the BBC has also announced the complete closure of five language services – Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa and Serbian languages; as well as the English for the Caribbean regional service.

Neither VOA nor BBC have been able to maintain a significant radio audience in Russia due to the actions of the FSB, the Russian security service, which forced radio stations using VOA and BBC programs to stop local rebroadcasts. The FSB also used the same tactics against the BBG-funded U.S. broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

While destroying their ability to develop a significant audience in Russia, the FSB stopped short, however, of driving Western broadcasters out of the country altogether. In an apparent effort to avoid retaliation, which would have been in any case highly unlikely, and to maintain their ability to distribute Russia Today satellite television news (RT) and the Voice of Russia (VOR) programs on local channels in the West, the Russian authorities allowed VOA, BBC, and RFE/RL to continue using low-power AM transmitters, which provided only limited and poor reception in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Despite the weak signal, the Russian authorities have been demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from the BBC and the BBG each year for the use of these transmitters.

Other than the Internet, the only other option to distribute news programs in Russia outside of the control and interference from the FSB is through the use of outside-based high-power shortwave and AM radio transmitters or through the use of satellite delivery of audio and video. Audiences to shortwave radio broadcasts have been declining sharply in recent years. Still, shortwave broadcasts are the only reliable medium for distributing radio programs, especially during political emergencies. The Russian security services sabotaged and blocked websites in Georgia during the 2008 military incursion and the Belarus KGB blocked social media sites and sabotaged human rights NGO websites during the pro-democracy protests last December.

Satellite TV is also a more secure way of delivering news to Russian-speaking audiences, but neither the BBC nor the BBG, which runs the Voice of America, have been willing to invest in developing regular satellite TV news programming in Russian. The BBG had terminated regularly-scheduled VOA satellite TV newscast in Russian several years ago while allowing the VOA Russian Service to produce short video news reports for placement on YouTube. The BBC Russian Service also produces video news reports for online placement.

Ted Lipien, former acting associate director of the Voice of America who now runs media freedom NGO Free Media Online (FreeMediaOnline.org), said that the BBC decision to end its Russian-language radio programs will further weaken independent journalism in Russia, Belarus, the Caucasus, and in Central Asia at the time when the local secret police agencies are more determined than ever to control the flow of news and information in an effort to maintain the power of dictatorial, authoritarian, and corrupt regimes. Unfortunately, neither the BBC nor the Broadcasting Board of Governors in the U.S. had reacted forcefully when the Russian authorities systematically limited their ability to distribute programs in Russia in cooperation with independent Russian broadcasters, most of whom have since been driven off the air or forced to follow the Kremlin line, Lipien said.

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From the BBC press release:

BBC World Service will cease all radio programming – focusing instead, as appropriate, on online, mobile and television content and distribution – in the following languages: Azeri, Mandarin Chinese (note that Cantonese radio programming continues), Russian (save for some programmes which will be distributed online only), Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Ukrainian.

From the BBC Russian Service website:

Русская служба Би-би-си перенесет вещание в интернет

Русская служба Би-би-си существенно сократит количество радиопрограмм и будет вещать исключительно через интернет.

BBC Press Release

BBC World Service cuts language services and radio broadcasts to meet tough Spending Review settlement

Date: 26.01.2011

Category: BBC; World Service

BBC World Service gave details of its response to a cut to its Grant-in-Aid funding from the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office today.

BBC World Service is to carry out a fundamental restructure in order to meet the 16 per cent savings target required by the Government’s Spending Review of 20 October last year.

To ensure the 16 per cent target is achieved and other unavoidable cost increases are met BBC World Service is announcing cash savings of 20 per cent over the next three years. This amounts to an annual saving of £46m by April 2014, when Grant-in-Aid funding comes to an end as BBC World Service transfers to television licence fee funding, agreed as part of the domestic BBC’s licence fee settlement announced on the same day.

In the first year, starting in April 2011, the international broadcaster will be making savings of £19m on this year’s operating expenditure of £236.7m (2010/11).

The changes include:

five full language service closures;
the end of radio programmes in seven languages, focusing those services on online and new media content and distribution; and
a phased reduction from most short wave and medium wave distribution of remaining radio services.
BBC Global News Director Peter Horrocks said: “This is a painful day for BBC World Service and the 180 million people around the world who rely on the BBC’s global news services every week. We are making cuts in services that we would rather not be making. But the scale of the cut in BBC World Service’s Grant-in-Aid funding is such that we couldn’t cope with this by efficiencies alone.

“What won’t change is the BBC’s aim to continue to be the world’s best known and most trusted provider of high quality impartial and editorially independent international news. We will continue to bring the BBC’s expertise, perspectives and content to the largest worldwide audience, which will reflect well on Britain and its people.”

BBC World Service also plans spending reductions and efficiencies across the board, targeted in particular in support areas where there will be average cuts of 33 per cent.

BBC World Service also expects to generate additional savings from the new ways of working after the move to the BBC’s London headquarters at Broadcasting House in 2012, and also by the transfer of BBC World Service to television licence fee funding in April 2014.

Under these proposals 480 posts are expected to close over the next year.

By the time the BBC World Service moves in to the licence fee in 2014/15 we anticipate the number of proposed closures to reach 650. Some of these closures may be offset by new posts being created during this period.

It is expected that audiences will fall by more than 30 million from the current weekly audience of 180 million as a result of the changes this year.

The changes have been approved by the BBC Trust, the BBC Executive and, in relation to closure of services, The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, William Hague, as he is required to do under the terms of the BBC’s agreement with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The changes in detail are:

Full language service closures
There will be the complete closure of five language services – Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa and Serbian languages; as well as the English for the Caribbean regional service.

End of radio programming
BBC World Service will cease all radio programming – focusing instead, as appropriate, on online, mobile and television content and distribution – in the following languages: Azeri, Mandarin Chinese (note that Cantonese radio programming continues), Russian (save for some programmes which will be distributed online only), Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Ukrainian.

Reductions in short wave and medium wave radio distribution
There will be a phased reduction in medium wave and short wave throughout the period.

English language short wave and medium wave broadcasts to Russia and the Former Soviet Union are planned to end in March 2011. The 648 medium wave service covering Western Europe and south-east England will end in March 2011. Listeners in the UK can continue to listen on DAB, digital television and online. Those in Europe can continue to listen online or direct to home free-to-air satellite via Hotbird and UK Astra. By March 2014, short wave broadcasts of the English service could be reduced to two hours per day in Africa and Asia.

BBC World Service will cease all short wave distribution of its radio content in March 2011 in: Hindi, Indonesian, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili and the Great Lakes service (for Rwanda and Burundi).

These radio services will continue to be available for audiences by other means of distribution such as FM radio (direct broadcasts and via partners); online; mobiles and other new media devices.

Short wave broadcasts in remaining languages other than English are expected to end by March 2014 with the exception of a small number of “lifeline” services such as Burmese and Somali.

English language programmes
There will be a new schedule for World Service English language programming – a focus on four daily news titles (BBC Newshour, BBC World Today, BBC World Briefing, and BBC World Have Your Say); and a new morning programme for Africa. There will be a new daily edition of From Our Own Correspondent; and an expansion of the interactive World Have Your Say programme.

There will be a reduction from seven to five daily pre-recorded “non-news” programmes on the English service. This includes the loss of one of the four weekly documentary strands. Some programmes will be shortened. Titles such as Politics UK, Europe Today, World Of Music, Something Understood, Letter From…, and Crossing Continents will all close. There will also be the loss of some correspondent posts.

Audience reduction
Audiences will fall by more than 30 million as a result of the changes announced on 26 January 2011. Investments in new services are planned in order to offset further net audience losses resulting from additional savings in the 2012-14 period.

Professional Services
There will be a substantial reduction in an already tight overhead budget. Teams in Finance, HR, Business Development, Strategy, Marketing and other administrative operations will face cuts averaging 33 per cent.

Job losses
Under these proposals 480 posts would be declared redundant; of these 26 posts are currently unfilled vacancies. BBC World Service is proposing to open 21 new posts. Therefore the net impact of these proposed changes could result in up to 433 posts being closed this financial year against a total staff number of 2400.

By the time the BBC World Service moves in to the licence fee in 2014/15 we anticipate the number of proposed closures to reach up to 650. Some of these closures may be offset by new posts being created during this period.

Notes to Editors
BBC World Service is currently an international multimedia broadcaster delivering 32 language and regional services, including: Albanian, Arabic, Azeri, Bengali, Burmese, Cantonese, English, English for Africa, English for the Caribbean, French for Africa, Hausa, Hindi, Indonesian, Kinyarwanda/Kirundi, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mandarin, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese for Africa, Portuguese for Brazil, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Somali, Spanish for Latin America, Swahili, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, and Vietnamese.

It uses multiple platforms to reach its weekly audience of 180 million globally, including shortwave, AM, FM, digital satellite and cable channels. Its news sites, which received 7.5 million weekly visitors in November 2010, include audio and video content and offer opportunities to join the global debate. It has around 2,000 partner radio stations which take BBC content, and numerous partnerships supplying content to mobile phones and other wireless handheld devices. For more information, visit bbcworldservice.com. For a weekly alert about BBC World Service programmes, sign up for the BBC World Agenda e-guide at bbcworldservice.com/eguide.

BBC World Service is part of BBC Global News. BBC Global News brings together BBC World Service – funded by Grant-in-Aid by the UK Government; the commercially funded BBC World News television channel and the BBC’s international facing online news services in English; BBC Monitoring – which is funded by stakeholders led by the Cabinet Office, and a range of public and private clients; and BBC World Service Trust – the BBC’s international development charity which uses donor funding. No licence fee funds are currently used in any of these operations.

BBC World Service Press Office

KEYNOTE: Walter Isaacson at RFE’s 60th Anniversary Reception from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Vimeo.

A transcript of the speech is available here.

Mr. Isaacson, who has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of TIME, made these comments at the 60th anniversary celebration for Radio Free Europe (RFE), which he credited with contributing to the end of the Cold War. 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.

Mr. Isaacson received a rebuke for his comments from Russia Today Television, Russia’s TV broadcaster targeting foreign audiences, which he specifically mentioned in his speech.

“We can’t allow ourselves to be out-communicated by our enemies,” Mr. Isaacson said in his speech at the Radio Free Europe anniversary celebration. “You’ve got Russia Today, Iran’s Press TV, Venezuela’s TeleSUR, and of course, China is launching an international broadcasting 24-hour news channel with correspondents around the world [and has] reportedly set aside six to ten billion [dollars] — we’ve to go to Capitol Hill with that number — to expand their overseas media operations.”

The BBG, with an annual budget of $757.5 million (estimated in FY2010), oversees all U.S. civilian international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), 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.

The BBG has been ridden with scandals and its employees consider it one of the worst places to work at within the U.S. federal government. One of the most blatant examples of editorial mismanagement at the BGG was the airing of statements by Holocaust deniers by Alhurra Television.

Former BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans (by law the BBG must be bipartisan), have been accused by Agency employees and others of favoring private contractors, including some of their former associates, at the newly created stations such as Alhurra. Unlike the Voice of America, which is subject to strict U.S. government fiscal regulations and operates under a Congressional Charter mandating specific editorial standards, these stations are privately-run and face less fiscal and editorial scrutiny while still using federal government funds.

To get more money to run semi-private broadcasting operations at Radio Sawa and Alhurra, the same former BBG members, with the exception of Blanquita Cullum, voted to end or reduce VOA radio broadcasts in Arabic, Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian, and Tibetan. BBG executives ended VOA radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military incursion into Georgia in July 2008.

Ms. Cullum’s 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 charged that not even the Voice of America is free from serious editorial errors.

Senator Coburn has publicized examples of VOA broadcasts to Iran which, he charges, undermine U.S. policy and gave 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.”

Commenting on Mr. Isaacson’s speech, Free Media Online president Ted Lipien said that the current BBG chairman is right about the need to strengthen America’s ability to communicate with foreign audiences and to counter disinformation. “I’m disappointed, however, that Mr. Isaacson is calling for spending more U.S. taxpayer money without also promising a serious effort to fundamentally reform his dysfunctional agency,” Lipien said.

Ted Lipien, a former BBG manager and former acting associate director of the Voice of America, pointed out that about half of the BBG’s current budget is wasted on unnecessary bureaucracies created by former BBG members.

“The BBG’s current organizational chart is a glaring example how branding of U.S. international broadcasting has been hopelessly diffused among a number of stations, each one with its own bureaucracy but most lacking a journalistic tradition, name recognition, credibility, and effectiveness” Lipien said. He pointed out that the BBC World Service attracts a higher weekly global audience, 180 million people, compared with the BBG’s questionable claim of 171 million, while spending far less money ($434 million versus $757.5 for the BBG).

“There is not enough money to run effectively even one U.S. international broadcasting station, such as the Voice of America, much less operating several stations at the same time. Some of these BBG-managed private entities broadcast to the same countries as VOA, and each one of them has its own set of administrators and private consultants whose salaries and frequent international travels are paid for by U.S. taxpayers. (The Broadcasting Board of Governors will meet on Wednesday, October 13, 2010, in Prague, Czech Republic. The BBG members and their staff will stay at luxury hotels in Prague and will be entertained by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at a cost to U.S. taxpayers that would not be tolerated if RFE/RL were subject to the same regulations as U.S. government agencies in Washington, DC. American executives working at RFE/RL in Prague pay neither U.S. nor Czech taxes while denying basic labor law protections to most foreign-born RFE/RL journalists employed in the Czech Republic.) It would not occur to the British to create unnecessary competition for the BBC and to weaken its brand. The British public would not stand for such a foolish waste of tax money,” Lipien said.

Ted Lipien also said that the BBG has made a fundamental mistake of using an otherwise highly successful model of World War II and Cold War surrogate radio broadcasting — which was designed to undermine and help to replace Nazi and Communist regimes — by trying to apply the same model to the post-Cold War international media environment. While it made sense during World War II and the Cold War to have a number of different U.S.-funded broadcasters — some of which were run by highly-skilled CIA officers who tightly controlled program content — operating the same way now using private contractors who work without proper fiscal and editorial controls is highly wasteful and, most of all, lacks credibility and effectiveness,” Lipien said.

“During WWII and the Cold War, we were broadcasting to audiences which were strongly pro-American and lacked access to other sources of uncensored information. We are now trying to reach audiences which hold strongly negative views about the United States and usually have access to other media sources. Countering disinformation, censorship, and killings of journalists in countries like Russia requires a different set of managerial skills than broadcasting to the Soviet Union or to China before her emergence as a major economic power.”

“Surrogate broadcasting, if properly managed, can still be useful for a small number of countries, such as Cuba or North Korea, but in most cases it is now counterproductive, especially in the Arab world. Audience surveys conducted during the Cold War showed that even then audiences in Eastern Europe thought that surrogate broadcasting, while highly appreciated, was less trustworthy then the Voice of America programs, although they viewed the latter as sometimes naive about life under communism,” Lipien said.

“Mr. Isaacson made a number of good points in his speech, but it was not clear from his comments whether the money he wants will not be wasted by career BBG bureaucracts and their private contractors and consultants. Together with most of the former BBG members, with the notable exception of Blanquita Cullum, they are responsible for seriously weakening America’s brand and credibility in international broadcasting,” said Ted Lipien, president of Free Media Online, a California-based nonprofit which supports independent journalism worldwide.

Anyone curious about the workings of the Soviet and now Russian secret police and the impact of fear on journalists should read a very well-documented book Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings who for 15 years was the Director of Security for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL in Munich, Germany, and later was a security and safety consultant for RFE/RL in Prague until 1998. Mr. Cummings has also updated with new information and photos his previously published online article in Historytimes.com about the 1978 Georgi Markov murder in London.

The Murder of Georgi Markov: The Mystery Remains.

In the Markov’s case, the Bulgarian interior minister requested KGB assistance in the killing of the journalist. Russian spy and security services have had a long history of recruting, intimidating and sometimes murdering journalists and others who have run afoul of the Kremlin. This concern was largely forgotten during the Yeltsin years when the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a mismanaged Federal US agency in charge of US government-funded international civilian broadcasting, placed Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty – RFE/RL) Russian language facilities and staff at a large news bureau in Moscow right under the nose of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

Markov’s murder happened during the Cold War, but in more recent years the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and of numerous other journalists in Russia, as well as the assassination in London of former KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who became a vocal critic of Mr. Putin, have brought into focus the question of how safe it is in the post-Cold War world to criticize Russian leaders, especially for journalists living in Russia, but also for anybody living in the West who has ties to Russia. You can read more about the dangers faced by Radio Liberty journalists in the September 2009 FreeMediaOnline.org article The Murder of Georgi Markov: The Mystery Remains – Are Radio Liberty Journalists Now Safe?

As the Markov’s case illustrates, Russian spy and security services have a long history of recruting, intimidating and sometimes murdering journalists and others who have run afoul of the Kremlin. This concern was largely forgotten during the Yeltsin years when the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a mismanaged Federal US agency in charge of US government-funded international civilian broadcasting, placed Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty – RFE/RL) Russian language facilities and staff at a large news bureau in Moscow right under the nose of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

Some of us who had worked in Russia at the time observed a marked increase in the intimidation and infiltration of the Russian media by the FSB right about the time Mr. Putin, a former KGB spy, consolidated his power. Seeing how FSB officers forced owners of private radio statios to stop using news programs from the Voice of America and Radio Liberty, we wondered what kind of threats they were making in confidential conversations with Radio Liberty reporters and other employees who are Russian citizens living in Russia. It was difficult to get more information about the extent of FSB media manipulation because Russian law prevented Russian citizens approached by the state security services from disclosing these contacts. Still, some of our Russian friends told us in confidence about being visited and threatened by the secret police.

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was based in Munich, West Germany, and RFE/RL journalists were not allowed to travel to the Soviet Union as a measure of protection against arrest, intimidation and possible recruitment by the KGB. As the Cold War ended, the BBG moved RFE/RL headquarters to Prague, the Czech Republic, and decided it was safe to have a larger number of employees and news gathering operations based in Russia.

Whether this is still a safe option has been brought into question by a number of recent events in Russia, including murders of prominent anti-Kremlin journalists. Obviously a news organization like Radio Liberty can no longer operate without some presence in Russia if it wants to be an effective news source, but many of us have argued that the BBG should have taken strong measures to protect its Russian employees from intimidation by the FSB and to make sure that Radio Liberty programs are not subject to self-censorship.

That self-censorship brought on by intimidation and justifiable fear of the FSB has affected Radio Liberty’s Russian radio and web content seems obvious to many of us who are monitoring these programs and reports for the web originating by RFE/RL staff in Moscow and in Prague. The most recent example was Radio Liberty’s failure for a number of days to post on its Russian-language website any in-depth reports about the banning in Russia of Scott Anderson’s “GQ” magazine article, which was highly critical of Mr. Putin and accused the FSB of instigating terrorist attacks to help his rise to power.

Russian officials strongly deny the charges that FSB agents have been involved in any terrorist attacks, but the topic remain a taboo for journalists in Russia who want to keep their jobs and stay out of trouble with the authorities. This might explain why Conde Nast, the publisher of “GQ” kept Scott Anderson’s article out of the Russian edition and why it took days for Radio Liberty’s Russian editors to notice the story.

Anyone curious about the workings of the Soviet and now Russian secret police and the impact of fear on journalists should read a very well-documented book Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings who for 15 years was the Director of Security for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL in Munich, Germany, and later was a security and safety consultant for RFE/RL in Prague until 1998. He has also published online an article about the murder of Bulgarian journalist Georgi Markov in London in 1978.

The Murder of Georgi Markov: The Mystery Remains

Thirty-one years ago this week, on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré, who lived and worked in London, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge.

Georgi Markov had been a prolific and successful literary figure in Bulgaria before defecting to the West in 1969. He settled in England and became a broadcast journalist for Radio Free Europe, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), and the German international broadcast service Deutsche Welle.

Markov had a large listening audience in Bulgaria, who listened to his prime-time Sunday-night broadcasts over Radio Free Europe. He dared to tell his audience that Bulgarian President and Communist Party chief Todor Zhivkov wore no clothes.

In June 1977, Communist Party Chairman Zhivkov chaired a Politburo meeting, and stated he wanted the activities of Markov stopped. The Interior Minister reacted and requested KGB assistance in the killing of Markov. Though he wanted Markov killed, he wanted no trace to Bulgaria. The Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, agreed to the assassination, as long as there would be no trace back to the Soviets. Thus, the Bulgarians and Soviets were operating under a double case of “plausible denial. “

A former KGB general has publicly admitted his role and the role of the KGB in supplying the Bulgarian intelligence service with both the weapon and the poison. Purportedly, the highly secret KGB laboratory known as the “Chamber” developed both the weapon, concealed in a US-manufactured umbrella, and biotoxin ricin impregnated in a wax-coated pellet the size of a pinhead.

Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcast uncensored news and commentary to people living in communist nations. As critical elements of the CIA’s early covert activities against communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Munich-based stations drew a large audience despite efforts to jam the broadcasts and ban citizens from listening to them. This history of the stations in the Cold War era reveals the perils their staff faced from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania and other communist states. It recounts in detail the murder of writer Georgi Markov, the 1981 bombing of the stations by “Carlos the Jackal,” infiltration by KGB agent Oleg Tumanov and other events. Appendices include security reports, letters between Carlos the Jackal and German terrorist Johannes Weinrich and other documents, many of which have never been published.

In a nutshell, the station [Radio Liberty] has abandoned its uniqueness, its identity, its face.

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

Directors of language services at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. taxpayer-funded international broadcaster with headquarters first in Munich, Germany and now in Prague, the Czech Republic, enjoyed at one time a great deal of authority. They often disagreed over programming issues with the radio station’s American management and on numerous occasions their arguments prevailed. Their expert knowledge of their countries and their cultures was widely respected.

In 1956, the head of Radio Free Europe’s Polish Service, Jan Nowak Jezioranski, successfully resisted pressures to call for a violent overthrow of the communist regime in Poland, knowing that such a call would inevitably lead to a Soviet Army invasion. In 1996, many years after leaving RFE/RL, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. He was able to survive his many battles with his American bosses because ultimately they realized that his knowledge of Poland was more sophisticated than theirs.

In better years, language service directors like Jan Nowak could arrange face-to-face meetings with individual members of RFE/RL’s previous oversight body, the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), who actively sought their opinions on programming issues and acted as advisers rather than as micromanaging CEOs.

Rank and file journalists working at RFE/RL were also unafraid to voice their dissent as their rights and fair treatment were protected by German labor laws and membership in professional unions.

A drastic change in this tradition of dialogue and tolerance of dissent occurred in the 1990s with the creation of a new oversight agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the move of RFE/RL from Germany to the Czech Republic, and the arrival of a new American management team selected by the BBG. Using a communist era Czech law still on the books, BBG and RFE/RL lawyers worked hard to find ways to deny their journalists in the Czech Republic the right to form an effective union. Foreign journalists employed by RFE/RL were deprived of many of the protections of both Czech and American labor laws.

The most dramatic change, however, occurred in the status of RFE/RL language service directors. They lost practically all of their previous authority and direct access to BBG members. The new RFE/RL management insisted that they must report only to them and follow an entirely new programming philosophy developed by a key Board member Norman Pattiz for Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. These were the two new private broadcasting networks for the Middle East which Mr. Pattiz, a Democrat, created in close cooperation with the Bush White House. His preferred talk show and music format, which he imposed on Middle Eastern broadcasting while terminating all Voice of America Arabic programs with their more serious news and cultural content, as well as his authoritarian radio management style more suitable for the competitive American market than for a multicultural journalistic institution with a mission of supporting freedom of expression, was also being forced on RFE/RL.

If language service directors resisted these changes, their new American bosses were more than ready to fire them or to eliminate their broadcasts altogether, and many lost their jobs and their programs. They were further humiliated by having to sign secrecy agreements to receive their severance pay. It is highly ironic that this condition was being imposed by a publicly-funded institution that claims to promote openness and transparency in the countries to which it broadcasts. The main purpose of this policy, it seems, was to hide management mistakes from the Administration, the U.S. Congress, and American public. Dissent over programming issues that could help identify waste of taxpayers money and problems, such as airing statements by Holocaust deniers on Alhurra Television, was ruthlessly stamped out at the stations under BBG’s management, including RFE/RL.

The consequences of the new BBG management style were disastrous in terms of journalistic integrity, mission effectiveness and audience ratings for RFE/RL, as they were for BBG broadcasting in the Middle East and for the Voice of America (VOA) in Washington, D.C., which is also managed by the BBG. BBG decision to terminate all Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia, just 12 days before the Russian incursion into Georgia last summer, resulted in an unprecedented 98 percent drop in VOA’s audience reach in Russia, from 7.3% in 2007 to 0.2% in 2009 (est.).

Soviet jammers of VOA and RFE/RL shortwave radio signals during the Cold War and media restrictions imposed more recently by the Kremlin had not been nearly as effective in silencing U.S. broadcasts in Russia as BBG’s own actions, supposedly based on solid audience research. Only one BBG member, Blanquita Welsh Cullum, a Republican,  was said to have voted against ending VOA radio programs to Russia and her attempts to resume these broadcasts after the conflict in Georgia flared up were reportedly blocked by other BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans. In the latest Federal Human Capital Survey, the BBG was once again rated by its employees at the very top of the list of the worst-managed federal agencies.

After the move of RFE/RL headquarters to Prague, language service directors and rank and file journalists quickly lost almost all of their previous independence and authority. With each passing year, they became more and more silent. Visits to Prague by BBG members started to resemble meetings of the Soviet Central Committee. Uncomfortable looking Board members sitting on a podium in a long row in the former communist Parliament building gave inconsequential answers to a small number of questions allowed from the audience of employees fearful of losing their jobs and having to go back to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and other countries governed by authoritarian regimes.

Even more disturbing for supporters of media freedom, however, were frequent firings of famous journalists, writers and artists who were some of the intellectual giants of international broadcasting. One of those fired was Mario Corti, the former head of RFE/RL’s Russian Service, a distinguished Italian journalist, writer, and analyst of Russian politics, society, and culture, admired  among his colleagues for his intellect and the courage to stand up to the RFE/RL management and the BBG. Another was a famous former Soviet dissident Tengiz Gudava, who after his expulsion from the USSR became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Tengiz Gudava was truly a renaissance man. He had a doctorate degree in biophysics, was a journalist, poet, novelist, and musician. He was also a passionate defender of human rights, for which he had spent five years in a Soviet labor camp. He and Mario Corti were both fired by RFE/RL for resisting programming changes demanded by the station’s American managers and the BBG.

Last month, Tengiz Gudava was killed in Prague under still unexplained circumstances. It does not appear at this time that his death was related to his work as a journalist, but because of Tengis Gudava’s dissident status and his sharp criticism of Radio Liberty’s new programming philosophy, Mario Corti broke his long silence about the circumstances of the conflicts they both had with the station’s management and about their firing. Mario Corti gave an interview to a Georgian-American journalist Ia Merkviladze, which was published in online Russian-language magazine in New York City «Мы здесь», and also spoke with FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, where he sits on the board of directors.

 

FreeMediaOnline.org interview with Mario Corti

 

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Both you and the late Tengiz Gudava had worked at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as journalists for many years, and you also as director of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service. What did you learn about his death and what can you tell us about him as your friend and a fellow journalist?

MARIO CORTI: Unfortunately, his tragic death is still shrouded in mystery. I grieve, especially for his family.

Tragedy has surrounded many Radio Liberty employees. I have already experienced several deaths of my former Radio Liberty colleagues, among them those who died in undetermined circumstances. There was also a personal tragedy in Tengiz’s life. He totally identified himself with his job at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Because of this, he suffered when he was deprived of his much loved work, his extremely popular and much needed program about relations between various nationalities of the former Soviet Union. Tengiz was able to establish a real dialogue on the air. He built bridges between different cultures and religions.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: What other Radio Liberty journalists died in mysterious circumstances? Could there have been a link between their journalistic work and their tragic deaths?

MARIO CORTI: Certainly there was a link between a bomb placed at RFE/RL headquarters in Munich back in the 1980s and RFE/RL journalistic activities. Fortunately, no one had died in that attack, but a telephone operator had her face seriously burnt. What made the most impression on me, also because at the time I was the acting director of the Russian Service, was the murder of Molly Riffel-Gordin. She was the anchor of “Contacts”, a very popular program she hosted under the pseudonym of Inna Svetlova. She was shot in her face on July 25 1997 while on her way from the central train station to the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague. Czech and German police worked on the case, which still remains unsolved.

Another tragic although not violent death happened on April 5, 2000. On his way home from work Alexander Batchan died of a heart attack. He was a well known journalist who had previously worked for the Voice of America and had recently moved to RFE/RL. And he was only 47.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Georgian journalist Ia Merkviladze who interviewed you wrote that when he left Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tengiz Gudava was angry and upset and accused RFE/RL management of KGB-ness. What made Mr. Gudava voice such accusations?

MARIO CORTI: Naturally, he was puzzled as to why he and his program were taken off the air. Among other things, he pointed out that some RFE/RL employees were graduates of the university which trained children of party members and nomenklatura for careers as Soviet diplomats and KGB officers. But from my perspective, the push for a drastic change in Radio Liberty’s programming philosophy came primarily from the new American management at RFE/RL, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees RFE/RL, and from their private consultants. They were responsible for eliminating popular programs and taking off the air highly respected and admired radio personalities, including Tengiz Gudava and others.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Until now you were publicly silent about your dispute with the American management at Radio Liberty. What else did you tell about it to the Georgian journalist who interviewed you after Tengiz Gudava’s death?

MARIO CORTI: I told her that I did not leave Radio Liberty voluntarily. The RFE/RL management first removed me from my position as director of the Russian Service, and then fired me. After my removal, I could have left slamming doors, especially since I refused to accept my severance pay when I was told to leave. RFE/RL has a policy of offering severance pay combined with secrecy agreements to dissident journalists to stifle public criticism of management decisions and any future discussion of the management’s mistakes. I could have gotten my ”hush money” had I only agreed to conditions which I considered as highly improper, even indecent, not only in relation to me but to other RFE/RL journalists and the reputation of the radio station itself, as well as the image abroad of America and American institutions.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: It seems that despite your disputes with the RFE/RL management, you, Tengiz Gudava and other journalists who had been fired were motivated by a strong desire to save the radio station’s mission as you saw it.

MARIO CORTI: I told the Georgian journalist that I have always had, and still have, great respect and awe for this venerable institution. Its mission is indeed more noble than the judgment and behavior of some individuals who unfortunately happened to work there. I refer here to some of the former American managers. In addition to firing me, they used the pretext of “restructuring” the Russian Service to get rid of  highly talented and experienced journalists who also disagreed with their programming ideas. Unfortunately, the late Tengiz and Serge Iourienen were also among those who had been let go at that time. Another distinguished RFE/RL journalist Lev Roitman, who was also highly critical of the changes being imposed on the Russian Service, left of his own volition.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Can you be more specific as to the circumstances that led to your departure from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty?

MARIO CORTI: It all started with a sudden change in the upper management of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty ordered by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. Suddenly Jeff Trimble appeared, replacing the very professional Bob Gillette as Radio Liberty Director. Mr. Gillette, a former Los Angeles Times correspondent, was a great journalist and a true gentleman. Then Tom Dine, replaced the competent and very engaged Kevin Klose, a former Washington Post correspondent in Moscow, as the president of the entire corporation. They, in turn, brought their own people and placed them within the organization.

Jeff Trimble, whom Tom Dine called his “eagle,” turned out to be the engine of reform. Neither man had much familiarity with radio journalism and, in my opinion, they did not fit into the radio station milieu. They could never understand that Radio Liberty had its own special culture. At the very mention of the word “tradition” they laughed.

American managers who supported me and the Russian Service were themselves marginalized or forced out by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Fortunately, they went on to other distinguished careers in the private and public sector. After leaving RFE/RL and the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which is part of the BBG, Kevin Klose was hired for a high level executive position at National Public Radio (NPR). Bob Gillette has worked in promoting responsible journalism and media freedom in the Balkans.

As for the team that the BBG brought in to replace them, after some years at RFE/RL Tom Dine returned to lobbying in the United States. Only Jeff Trimble is still associated with U.S. international broadcasting. He eventually replaced Tom Dine and served as RFE/RL’s acting president and is now the executive director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. He was reportedly instrumental in implementing the BBG’s decision to terminate all Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian-Georgian war last summer. This move has also led to a tremendous decline in employee morale as well as a historically unprecedented drop in VOA audience ratings in Russia. According to one estimate, the audience reach declined 98 percent in less than a year.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: How did you describe Mr. Dine’s and Mr. Trimble’s role at Radio Liberty to the Georgian journalist?

MARIO CORTI: They wanted to leave their own footprint in order to justify their existence to the BBG. Since they were “new” themselves, they thought this meant they should do something different, i.e., “new” in response to the demands from the BBG. In the final analysis, what really happened was just “change for the sake of change,” but it had a profound impact on Radio Liberty’s mission and the talented and dedicated journalists who worked there.

They searched for a formula for success, which they found in Moscow “talk” radio stations such as “Ekho Moskvy”. I don’t want to be misunderstood, “Ekho Moskvy” is a great station and provides a valuable service under somewhat difficult circumstances. But in my opinion, the thinking on the part of RFE/RL’s American managers was simple and superficial: since radio stations like Ekho Moskvy were successful, that meant to the RFE/RL managers that their formula should be copied, especially since it corresponded in some ways with Norman Pattiz’s idea of a successful commercial radio station. To them, this was “new.” To me and others who have known Russia for a long time and worked there sometimes for many years, it was a completely misguided idea.

For once, Moscow stations always had and still have FM frequencies, which Radio Liberty could not obtain then from the Russian authorities and still cannot get them now. It was vital for Radio Liberty to expand distribution of its programs in Russia in other ways, which is not a simple task given the political conditions, but that’s what they needed to focus on. Unfortunately, they had no idea where to start, and yet they didn’t  want to listen to any advice.

Instead of dealing with the real problem of program delivery, program distribution, cooperation with independent media, and media restrictions in Russia, they decided to take the easy but pernicious path of reforming the Russian Service from within, because it was easy and they could not think of anything else to do. Their idea was to change Radio Liberty’s broadcasting in form and content as if this alone could solve the problem of program distribution and prevent a fall in audience ratings. As it turned out, their strategy only made audience ratings fall even faster to a level much lower than ever before, which I’m sure is not what the U.S. Congress and U.S. taxpayers expected from the BBG, but that’s what they got.

The BBG now tries hard to keep this information secret and blames media restrictions in Russia, which do account for some drop in audience ratings for RFE/RL and VOA but cannot be blamed for the dramatic declines resulting from BBG-ordered programming and program delivery changes. For one thing, RFE/RL is still on the same AM frequency in Moscow, but the number of listeners there has been consistently dropping.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: What were some of the ideas which were advanced by the consultants hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors and implemented by the RFE/RL’s top management?

MARIO CORTI: They wanted to concentrate broadcasting on Moscow and St. Petersburg — mainly Moscow. “Forget about the regions,” they told us. They also wanted more talk shows and — this may sound hilarious to those who know something about radio broadcasting in the Soviet Union — to rely on the old Soviet era UKV (Ultra Short Wave) frequencies, which were designed to prevent Soviet citizens from using their radio sets to listen to Western FM stations in border areas, where such signals could be heard. Knowing that UKV receivers were no longer being produced and the band was being phased out, I vigorously objected to their claims that Ultra Short Wave broadcasts were a good alternative, but I think it was one of RFE/RL’s managers who suggested that there are North Korean radio receivers which can pick up these frequencies and are still being sold in Russia. The idea that broadcasting on Soviet era frequencies being phased out can be a reasonable solution was rather typical for the team of RFE/RL managers and their BBG-hired consultants, who were undoubtedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their recommendations.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Did did you make any alternative recommendations to Mr. Dine and Mr. Trimble?

MARIO CORTI: Besides continuing some of the general goals set by my predecessor, the highly admired and respected journalist and manager Yuri Handler, I decided to decentralize Radio Liberty broadcasting, getting away from Moscow-centrism and expanding the network of correspondents in the regions. It seemed to me that people in Moscow knew little of what was happening in the regions, and listeners in the regions highly valued the attention paid to their concerns. I expanded the St. Petersburg bureau and opened a bureau in Ekaterinburg.

Since we did not have at the time and still do not have an FM frequency, I thought that we should rely on medium wave (AM) frequencies as part of a multi-platform program delivery strategy, which would also include traditional shortwave frequencies, Internet,  television, and cooperative projects with independent journalists and media. AM frequencies were more available, some with good signal quality, and had a good geographical reach unlike UKV. In Moscow we had our own license for a medium wave frequency. I found a similar solution in St. Petersburg, which would have allowed us to transmit our signal to the whole north-west of Russia, where most of the population lives. The management again didn’t listen to our recommendations. I also talked to them about the Internet and digital broadcasting. Now it’s commonplace, and tomorrow, will be even more so. They laughed at these ideas and said that BBG consultants knew better what would work and what would not.

I should mention that shortly before my removal as Russian Service director our audience reach in Russia, as reported by the audience research organization contracted by the Broadcasting Board of Governors,  peaked at around six percent, a figure well beyond what RL was able to achieve since. It was then that the new American management decided to put its plan into action and break with the culture, traditions and intellectual sophistication of the radio’s Russian Service. They abandoned the foundations laid by Yuri Handler together with Kevin Klose. They were determined to transform Radio Liberty into more of a “chat” radio, a clone of Ekho Moskvy and Radio Sawa. Again, Ekho Moskvy is a good station, but the RFE/RL management had no way of achieving the necessary signal strength and program distribution, and on top of that they had pretensions to be a real competitor to Ekho Moskvy — something that was totally unreasonable given their interference with programming and the political conditions in Russia. And so on and so forth. Later on, the management closed down the Ekaterinburg bureau and greatly reduced the St. Petersburg bureau staff. When Radio Liberty in St. Petersburg was taken off UKV, the Soviet era frequency pushed by the BBG consultants, nobody had listened to it for a long time. No one, it seems, had access to those “fantastic” North Korean receivers.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: The BBG-ordered research also showed that a focus on human rights and high culture in Radio Liberty programs to Russia was passe and should be replaced. You pointed out that some of the consultants who presented this research had links to former BBG member Norman Pattiz, the chief architect of Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television broadcasts to the Middle East. Were you pressured to change Radio Liberty’s Russian programs to make them conform to the style of Radio Sawa?

MARIO CORTI: One of the reasons given for my removal was that I “resisted changes”. After my removal, the RFE/RL management put their own people in management positions in the Russian Service to carry out their plans. They shut down many cultural programs, including the brilliant and popular broadcasts by Sergei Iourienen. They also shut down serious analytical programs, “Commentators at a Roundtable,” as well as Paramonov’s show (which they later reinstated), shut down Savitsky’s popular program on jazz (recently reinstated). They changed the format of other shows, expanded the number of talk shows, and so on.

In a nutshell, the station has abandoned its uniqueness, its identity, its face. Although not nearly as drastic as the BBG’s new format formula for Russia, a similar process was going on and is still going on in Great Britain at BBC’s Russian Service, which has resulted in vehement protests from a lot of respected people, including famous British academics.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: In your interview with a Georgian journalist you said that Tengiz Gudava and other journalists who were associated with Radio Liberty did not know the full picture of your battles with RFE/RL’s new American management. You also said that with people like that in charge of RFE/RL, “KGB-FSB can sleep soundly.” What did you mean by that?

MARIO CORTI: Let me put it this way. Jeff Trimble and Tom Dine were unhappy with the work of the Russian Service. In particular, Jeff Trimble was unhappy with the Russian Service newscast. I was unhappy too, but for different reasons, I wanted to make it more relevant to people most deprived of access to uncensored information, those who are particularly vulnerable in Russia today.

At one point Trimble – based on a study of our news made by his assistant Michele DuBach who later was appointed by him as Director of Broadcasting – even announced his decision to close our news service. He did not carry it out because he was afraid of a mass rebellion in the Russian Service. To bolster their position in favor of a possible future attempt to get rid of RL Russian Service news, he and Tom Dine ordered outside research. They first applied to the famed Annenberg School of Journalism, which — by the way — recently issued a study highly critical of  BBG’s proud creation Alhurra Television for practicing substandard journalism and lacking audience and effectiveness — a study which the BBG executive staff tried hard to suppress until they were ordered to release it by the Obama Administration.

In the case of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service, they didn’t get the negative result they really wanted. The international group of journalists put together by this respected institution [the Annenberg School of Journalism] to evaluate the RL Russian Service came to a generally positive and encouraging conclusion about our performance. I can imagine their surprise when reading the study issued by the Annenberg School of Journalism they discovered that the single most praised feature of our broadcasts was the Russian Service newscast. Then, the management decided to obtain research from Russia on the image of the Russian Service programs among the listeners in Russia. Here again, they miscalculated. The results of this research were also very positive for us.

So here you have three Russian Service success stories in a row: a positive evaluation by the Annenberg School of Journalism, the positive image study, and the peak of around six percent in our audience reach in Russia. So what did RFE/RL management and the BBG do at this point? They hired someone who had previously worked for BBG member Norman Pattiz — it was the latter who had the brilliant idea of creating Sawa Radio and Alhurra Television — and they got exactly the results Jeff Trimble had originally wanted to get. Based on these results, they proceed to “reform” the Russian Service. Great programs were eliminated, audience ratings immediately dropped. I would point out that similar  BBG “reforms” at VOA last year produced an even greater, 98 percent drop in audience reach in Russia; millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been wasted. It’s shameful how the  generosity of the American people in support of much needed broadcasting that promotes understanding between nations and cultures is being abused by these officials.

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

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: When Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was based during the Cold War in Munich, West Germany, RFE/RL employees had full protection of the German labor law. The BBG and RFE/RL management used a communist era Czech law to deprive foreign journalists working for them in Prague of some of these basic protections. Do you think that this policy is designed to make journalists more dependent on the management and to stifle independent journalism and criticism at RFE/RL? Are these journalists vulnerable, in your opinion?

MARIO CORTI: Obviously they are vulnerable. Back in Munich many were members of the German journalists unions while others belonged the Newspaper Guild in New York. Nothing like this is true now. Now, according to the RFE/RL new Policy Manual, EEO regulations do not apply to non-American employees. And a Czech Court recently ruled that Czech labor law regulations do not apply to non Czech employees working for RFE/RL. So RFE/RL is allowed to do with its non American and non Czech employees — and they are the majority — whatever it wants, whether it’s right or wrong. They don’t have to worry about any legal consequences. What they don’t realize, however, is that employees without any rights will have little loyalty and little reason to alert the management to possibly fatal journalistic and programming mistakes if voicing dissent can result in them losing their jobs. Hopefully, the European Court of Human Rights, to which some former employees are turning now, or the Obama Administration will soon put a stop to this shameful treatment by RFE/RL and the BBG of its foreign journalists and other  foreign workers.

FreeMediaOnline.org allows republication of its interviews with attribution and link to our site.

 

More about Mario Corti

Mario Corti was born in Italy but his parents took him to Argentina, where he developed a lifelong interest in Russia. Later on he became a fluent Russian speaker and writer. Living in Italy in the 1970s, he was active in defense of human rights in the Soviet Union and published Russian samizdat books, articles and documents.

From 1979 until 2005, he worked at the U.S.-funded international broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He became the head of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service but left the station together with other veteran journalists over a programming dispute with the American management. He is an author of numerous books and articles, many of them published in Russian. Dreif, a book written in Russian about philosophy and culture, was published in Russia and Ukraine in 2002. His book, Salieri i Mozart, on the relationship between the two composers, was published in Russian in 2005. His articles on human rights and Soviet dissent have appeared in several languages in many countries. He speaks Italian, Rusian, English, German, Spanish, and French and has a working knowledge of several other European languages. Dividing his time between Italy and Russia, he now works as a freelance journalist and a consultant for a media group based in Saint Petersburg.

 

More about Tengiz Gudava

Tengiz Gudava, who had a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was a former dissident who organized music concerts in support of human rights in the Soviet Union and spent five years in a labor camp before being expelled to the West in 1987. He joined Radio Liberty and wrote and produced popular programs in defense of human rights for Russian and Georgian shortwave broadcasts.

Gudava was a harsh critic of the current Russian leadership. After he was dismissed from RFE/RL in 2004, he also posted on his personal website biting criticism of Radio Liberty’s new management and programming philosophy. On the night of April 15, Gudava left his Prague apartment on foot to buy cigarettes. He was found unconscious on a road in a secluded area about a 20 minute drive from his home. Police attributed his death to a car accident but could not explain how he ended up in a strange location a long distance away from his apartment in Prague.

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, March 25, 2009, San Francisco –  Miro Dobrovodsky, one of the best journalists who came to the U.S. from Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War to escape media censorship in their native countries, sent me an email pointing out that the process of silencing the Voice of America had started several years before the latest actions of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)  aimed at further outsourcing and privatizing of U.S. international broadcasting.  His email was a reminder that Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine are only among the latest countries, to which VOA broadcasts were targeted by the BBG for elimination so that U.S. taxpayers’ money could flow more easily to private contractors and the private Alhurra Television network for the Middle East favored by BBG members, both Republicans and Democrats.

The BBG’s marketing strategy in the Muslim world has already been declared a failure in an academic study and by many independent journalists and Middle East experts. President Obama wisely avoided Alhurra in sending his first televised message to Arabic-speaking audiences. (Among other scandals, Alhurra Television gave extensive coverage to statements by Holocaust deniers who met at an international conference in Tehran.)

Miro reminded us that before the BBG took VOA radio broadcasts to Russia and Ukraine off the air last year — an action that in Russia caused an unprecendented 98% decline in annual audience reach from 10.3% in 2007 to 0.2% in 2009 (est.) –  the bipartisan board several years earlier had ended VOA broadcasts to the three Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) and seven other Central and East European nations. They were among the first victims of the BBG’s intense dislike of the Voice of America and its mission of representing America to the world in a serious, objective and authoritative manner.

In their eagerness to please neoconservative ideologues ignorant and disdainful of Arab and Islamic culture, BBG members were not really concerned who would credibly speak for America in the Middle East or anywhere else, and if they were, they had absolutely no idea what works and what does not outside of their narrow Washington and commercial perspective. As a result of their actions, VOA could not offer a platform to present President Obama’s first message to the Arab audience because — as incredible as it may sound — the Voice of America no longer has any Arabic-language programs. BBG members made sure that all such VOA programs were eliminated. They should have known but were unable to comprehend that Alhurra, as designed by them, could not possibly be a credible news source in the Middle East.

The Voice of America became a target for the BBG because it was subject to far more stringent federal regulations and journalistic standards than the privatized broadcasters also being funded by U.S. taxpayers. Contractors and associates of BBG members could not only find better employment opportunities at these private entities than at the Voice of America but, with only some exceptions, these private broadcasters were also far less likely to resist simplistic marketing and propaganda ideas generated by the BBG members themselves.

Miro Dobrovodsky and other East European journalists at VOA got a bitter taste of the BBG’s strategies and marketing ideas several years before they were used against VOA services broadcasting to Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and several other countries. This is what Miro wrote in his email:

“I’m sure some overactive bureaucrats will soon delete from VOA servers everything remaining from its past. They have already deleted almost everything on servers…, including some historically important files, both Czech & Slovak. And Polish. And Hungarian. And Baltic languages. And Slovene. Perhaps Russian and Ukrainian. You name it. …Norman Pattiz’s followers must look forward, not backwards. Amen.”

Norman Pattiz is a former BBG member who was instrumental in pushing for the creation of private broadcasting to the Middle East and the elimination of many VOA broadcasting services. Another former BBG member, Edward E. Kaufman, now a U.S. Senator from Delaware, led the effort to end VOA radio programs to Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia. Ironically, they are both Democrats and friends of Vice President Joe Biden. But the Republican BBG members, with only one exception, eagerly supported Mr. Pattiz’s vision of privatized broadcasting to the Muslim world and the assault on the Voice of America broadcasts. VOA Russian-language radio programs were taken off the air 12 days before Russia’s armed forces invaded Georgia last summer.

It is clear from this 2004 Voice of America report about Miro Dobrovodsky that journalists like him were not only highly respected by their overseas audiences but were also effective in establishing a dialogue with the local media and were able to accurately present American views and values. Many of the privatized broadcasters favored by the BBG are now based overseas.  Some of them, like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), operate now in part from a bureau in Moscow located within a close reach of the Kremlin’s secret police — a problem that the BBG has chosen to ignore when it made its decision to end VOA radio to Russia from Washington. Like Alhurra, RFE/RL is also trying to please its audience and the BBG’s executive staff which tells them to focus on generating higher ratings despite the Kremlin’s largely effective campaign to restrict rebroadcasts of RFE/RL, VOA, BBC, DW, and RFI programs in Russia and to silence journalists who dare to question some of the abuses of power by Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev. RFE/RL was criticized last year by a Russian human rights organization for giving extensive airtime to a Russian politician known for his racist views and verbal attacks on immigrants. The group warned that such broadcasts encourage violence.

Such compromises in pursuing higher ratings at the cost of journalistic and ethical values would have been unacceptable to VOA journalists like Miro Dobrovodsky.  I’m glad that this 2004 VOA report about his journalistic career has been saved from the delete button of the BBG bureaucrats. FreeMediaOnline.org was also able to save recordings of the last VOA on-air radio programs to Russia and Ukraine. We have also developed a Russian-language web site, GovoritAmerika.us, which offers news analysis from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources to compensate for the budget cuts and restrictions imposed on VOA by the BBG. The website is run by volunteers and receives no public funding.

 ГоворитАмерика.us – Всесторонний Анализ Новостей из США

The following is a Voice of America report.

Miroslav Dobrovodsky

 The Voice of America in late February [2004] ceased broadcasting in ten East European languages: Bulgarian, Estonian, Czech, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Rumanian, Slovenian and Slovak. Today on New American Voices, Miro Dobrovodsky, a journalist who spent 15 years directing VOA’s broadcasts to former Czechoslovakia and later to Slovakia, looks back on the work of his service, and on his own journey from Slovakia to America.

Miro Dobrovodsky, a big, burly man whose square face is framed by curly red hair and a greying red beard, says he has no doubt that VOA’s broadcasts contributed to the Velvet Revolution which brought down communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989.

Receiving VOA Excellence in Programming Awards

“Oh, definitely. Definitely. Everybody says so. We even got awards from Slovakia. I personally got the Silver Medal of Freedom from the Slovak President because of what the Voice of America did. We kept people aware that not only something different is possible, but there are people already working for it.”

In its broadcasts in Slovak to what until the so-called “Velvet Divorce” of 1993 was Czechoslovakia, Miro Dobrovodsky says VOA’s greatest contribution was providing news – news not only about what was happening in the world, but in the country itself. Under communist rule, the press was in the service of the state, and barred from reporting information about dissenting views or the activities of dissidents. So it fell to international broadcasters like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and others to provide the other side of the picture: the protests, the charters, the petitions in support of human rights and freedom.

Czech President and former dissident Vaclav Havel thanking VOA

“There were signatories for freedom. At that time, that was the kind of journalism… Under normal circumstances, it is not news if you are reading 25 names. But behind the Iron Curtain, if you read twenty-five names of people who had signed something against the regime, it was hot stuff, and a major story.”

To illustrate the importance of VOA’s news to the Slovak and Czech audiences, Mr. Dobrovodsky quotes a friend who returned from a visit to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, when it was still under the communist regime. His friend recalled that as he walked through the city night, a familiar tune – VOA’s old “Yankee Doodle” station I.D. – caught his ear:

As a young reporter in Bratislava, ca. 1966

“He said that he was walking in a new quarter of town, high-rises, you know, and at 9 PM he heard Yankee Doodle in stereo. And I said to him that we aren’t broadcasting in stereo. And he says, ‘No, no, no, but it’s August, every window is open, and when you hear it from a thousand windows, even quietly, it sounds like Yankee Doodle in stereo.’”

Journalism has been Miro Dobrovodsky’s life-long passion. He started writing at 13, and in his teens became the movie reviewer for a local weekly in northern Slovakia. His plans to study journalism were thwarted initially because his father was not a communist party member. Eventually he did graduate from Bratislava University’s Faculty of Journalism, and found a job in one of Slovakia’s foremost news magazines, Zivot. After some professional ups and downs, brought on by his own refusal to join the communist party, Mr. Dobrovodsky found himself again reporting for Zivot during what became known as the Prague Spring of 1968 – the short period of liberalization under Communist Party boss Alexander Dubcek.

“So we started very aggressively writing about subjects which over here, in the western world, are normal – to be critical even of the party, to be critical of local government. Until then it was taboo, this kind of subject.”

The Prague Spring ended on August 21, 1968, when Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia and brought liberalization to a bloody end. For two weeks, Mr. Dobrovodsky edited an underground newspaper, publishing news, pictures, and statements about what was happening in the country. He believed it was just a matter of time before the state police arrested him, so when the border to Austria opened, he fled to the West with his wife and three small children. Mr. Dobrodovsky spent several years as a refugee in Canada, where he found work as a photographer, in an oil refinery, on a car assembly line, and finally in the Slovak service of Radio Canada International. Eventually he was hired by the Voice of America and moved to Washington.

At VOA, Miro Dobrovodsky says, he found satisfying work in all aspects of journalism. He reported on news events, interviewed newsmakers, emceed programs, maintained contact with colleagues in Slovakia and other countries, participated in training a new generation of Slovak journalists, developed a network of affiliated FM stations in Slovakia that rebroadcast the VOA Slovak programs. And though he notes that the media situation in Slovakia and other East European countries has much improved, he still regrets VOA’s decision to end its broadcasts to this part of the world.

Interviewing Alexander Dubcek

“When one is following their newspapers, their journalism, they… as we all know, each story may have different pegs, or different ideas, I mean one story can illustrate many different points. And it’s still true. Nobody’s lying, not even them. For example, now when we’re talking about Iraq and Afghanistan and Al Qaeda and all that stuff, most of the stories over there they are going after casualties, and to put some, I feel, negative light on the United States. And not necessarily to pick up what is important from our point of view. In other words, we can write two lines, or seven lines, and completely differently – and this is what VOA was doing: adding to their story, our story. And it is not opinion, it is not propaganda, it’s just a different point of view, and a different mirror.”

Voice of America broadcaster Miro Dobrovodsky, who headed VOA’s Czechoslovak and later Slovak services during almost two decades of tumultuous and historic change in his native country.

The BBC World Service decision, although far less drastic than the total termination of on-air VOA radio to Russia, came under severe criticism in the UK. More than 500 people have signed a petition to the Prime Minister asking him to launch a full and independent investigation into the BBC World Service.

The Government has ignored recent calls by MPs from both sides of the House and members of the public for an investigation into the BBC World Service. There are several serious concerns about the way taxpayers’ money is being spent by the BBC.

The government has increased its Grant-in-Aid funding of the BBC World Service by about 20% over the past five years.

Despite this, the BBC axed much of its quality feature and cultural programming in favour of cheap news coverage across the World Service, significantly reduced its funding for Russian broadcasts and is in the process of offshoring South Asian language services “closer to their audiences”, to countries where intimidation of journalists is widespread.

Therefore, we call on the Prime Minister to launch a full and independent investigation into the BBC World Service.

Perhaps in response to such criticism, the BBC World Service has announced last week that it is now enhancing its radio programs to Russia:

BBC Russian launches new radio schedule with innovative weekend live news programme

Date: 13.03.2009
Category: World Service

BBC Russian service has introduced a new programme in its newly refreshed radio schedule. From tomorrow, 14 March, live weekend news and current-affairs programme, Pyatiy Etazh (Fifth Floor) will go on air every Saturday and Sunday.

Broadcast at 20.00 Moscow Time (MT) (17.00 GMT) Saturdays and Sundays from the fifth floor of Bush House – the London home of the BBC Russian service for more than 60 years – Pyatiy Etazh is a news and current-affairs programme with a difference.

As well as covering breaking news stories as they happen, the programme offers audiences a fresh view on key events and trends, seen by studio guests from various walks of life. Pyatiy Etazh is a conversation about latest developments in politics and world affairs, culture and sport, and society, with a special focus on British life.

With a different tone to the weekday news and current-affairs programmes on BBC Russian, Pyatiy Etazh aims to create an atmosphere for lively, engaging discussions. Reporters from the BBC Russian team around the world, the wider BBC as well as personalities from different areas of Russian and international life will be invited to take part with their comments and views.

The programme will have regular reviews of British press, and it will have its own webpage on bbcrussian.com where the team will stay in touch with listeners and readers about current and future programmes.

Pyatiy Etazh producer Ben Tobias says: “We want this programme to be a place where interesting conversations happen. We hope to draw out opinions that haven’t been heard before and to shed a new light on stories by looking at them through the eyes of our guests.”

On Sundays there will be regular appearances by author and broadcaster, Zinovy Zinik, known to BBC audiences as the host of the programme Westend.

Zinovy adds: “On Pyatiy Etazh we will put cultural events in the context of politics and life in general, revealing, sometimes invisible, links and connections, and joining lives and developments in stories which, I hope, will engage our audience.”

The introduction of Pyatiy Etazh is part of a wider change in the BBC Russian radio output.

Head of BBC Russian, Sarah Gibson, comments: “In an increasingly competitive environment and with fast-changing audience demands, we have decided to focus our services on what audiences primarily expect from the BBC – high quality news and current affairs, and strong analysis of global events, in whatever area of life they occur.

“But at weekends audiences want something a little different. We also know that they are very interested in British life. I think Pyatiy Etazh will bring audiences the content they expect in a format that they will enjoy.”

In other changes to the BBC Russian radio schedule, the flagship morning weekday news and current affairs programme, Utro na BBC, has been increased by half an hour to three-and-a-half hours each weekday. It now starts at 06.30 MT.

The afternoon weekday drivetime news and current affairs sequence, Vecher na BBC – which includes the hour-long BBSeva hosted by Seva Novgorodsev – will be increased in April by one hour to four hours each day (from 17.00 MT).

In the new schedule, the last hour of this sequence, from 20.00 MT, will include the BBC’s extended interactive programme, Vam Slovo.

Sarah Gibson concludes: “We are excited by these changes and believe that together they will deliver an even better service to our audience in Russia and around the world.”

BBC World Service Publicity

Unlike the British public broadcaster, the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors has so far refused all calls from VOA journalists, members of U.S. Congress, and media freedom NGOs to restore live Voice of America radio and TV programs to Russia.

But even the low figure of 2.5% does not reflect the whole severity of the decline since it represents VOA audience for the whole of 2008 and not VOA’s current reach in Russia. FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit,  estimates that the annual reach for VOA in Russia is now well below 1 percent.

According to FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien,  the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the agency in charge of VOA, is to blame for causing a 98% loss of audience in just one year. Lipien said that BBG’s actions have caused hundreds of thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars to be wasted at a time when audiences in Russia are faced with increased media censorship and need access to objective news and opinions from the United States. 

With the elimination by the BBG of on-air VOA radio and TV for Russia in the second half of last year, FreeMediaOnline.org estimates the total audience since August/September 2008 to be not much higher than 0.2 percent. InterMedia — the firm which conducted the survey – reported 0.2% as past year’s reach of VOA Russian Service website. InterMedia also reported that only a very small percentage of former VOA Russian radio listeners and TV viewers are visiting VOA website.

From the InterMedia market media report: “International Broadcasting in Russia,”  December 2008:

VOA Russian [Service] stopped airing radio and TV programs by September 2008 (video and audio segments are still aired by a small number of local stations); Internet is Golos Ameriki’s [VOA Russian Service] principal focus for reaching audiences in Russia. This caused a drop in total annual reach for Golos Ameriki from 10.3 percent in 2007 to 2.5 percent in 2008. Past-year reach for VOA’s golosameriki.us Internet site was 0.2 percent.[Emphasis added by FreeMediaOnline.org.] Other international broadcasters were able to maintain their reach, with Radio Svoboda [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)] reaching 1.0 percent of Russians weekly and 3.2 percent annually; BBC reaching 0.8 percent weekly and 3.3 percent annually; and DW [the German broadcaster] reaching 0.7 percent weekly and 2.0 annually. As with Golos Ameriki, [VOA Russian Service] only a very small portion of this reach can currently be attributed to the websites. 

In late July 2008, just twelve days before the Russian army invaded parts of Georgia in a territorial dispute,  the BBG took all VOA  Russian-language radio programs off the air and later canceled VOA Russian-language TV programs. These decisions were made without any public announcements and implemented despite protests from members of Congress, VOA journalists, and human rights organizations.

The subsequent tremendous drop in audience size (98% in just one year — an unprecedented loss of audience for an existing  media service in the history of international broadcasting) can be attributed almost entirely to decisions made by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a small group of presidentially-appointed officials representing both major political parties and their executive staff who manage U.S.-funded broadcasts for overseas audiences.  Critics of the BBG’s actions argue that these decisions have deprived VOA journalists of their ability to counter censorship in Russia by making it impossible for VOA to use multiple program delivery platforms and media products at a critical time.

VOA and other Western international broadcasters have experienced a steady loss of audience reach in Russia over a number of years as a result of the Kremlin’s restrictive media policies. But according to Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, the sudden multifold  drop in 2008 was a direct result of actions taken by U.S. government officials and cannot be attributed to any new restrictions by the Russian authorities.  Also confirming that the BBG is to blame for the sudden loss of VOA audience in Russia  was an observation in the InterMedia report that ”other international broadcasters were able to maintain their reach” last year.

Former BBG chairman,  James K. Glassman – known for his neoconservative views, support for privatization of U.S. international broadcasting assets, and great enthusiasm for the use of Internet –  personally rejected urgent requests from VOA journalists who pleaded with him last August to allow them to resume radio broadcasts to Russia and the war zone in Georgia.

BBG officials justified their actions by claiming that VOA would be in a better position to overcome Russian government media censorship if it concentrated its programming efforts exclusively on the Internet. FreeMediaOnline.org and others repeatedly warned the BBG that this strategy was extremely naive and would reward Mr. Putin’s censorship of independent media. The same critics predicted a drastic drop in audience size for VOA if the BBG implemented its plan. They also pointed out that the BBG plan called for spending money on needless projects benefiting private Internet contractors while the Russian Service would be deprived of substantive Internet content previously generated from radio and TV programs.  Read FreeMediaOnline.org report “Model Interactive Website Touted As Replacement for Voice of America Radio to Russia Attracts No Comments from Users”

This is how in an internal memo “VOA Russian Options Paper,”  written in 2008, government bureaucrats inspired by the BBG’s marketing strategies, boasted about their ability to substantially increase VOA audience size in Russia using only the Internet:

Based on the situation in Georgia and the separatist territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, VOA has investigated options to reach audiences in Russia and neighboring countries. While options exists for reaching audiences through traditional broadcast methods — AM/FM, shortwave, and television — data indicate the growing market for reaching our target audience is in new media.

FreeMediaOnline.org sent a critique of the Internet-only strategy to the BBG, but a former BBG member, Edward E. Kaufman, who is now a Democratic Senator from Delaware, reportedly blocked an effort  by another Board member to hold a vote on resuming VOA radio broadcasts to Russia. Kaufman, another Board member Jeff Hirschberg, and the BBG executive director Jeffrey Trimble are believed to have initiated the move to deprive VOA of radio and TV presence in Russia in order to benefit Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Jeff Hirschberg and Jeffrey Trimble, who was formerly acting president of RFE/RL, have personal links with RFE/RL managers in Moscow and Prague, while Senator Kaufman may have supported the move because RFE/RL is incorporated in Delaware. His former boss, Vice President Biden, was also known to be a strong supporter of the private broadcaster during and after the Cold War. Trimble and most BBG members ignored warnings that by establishing a large presence in Russia after the Cold War, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has exposed its reporters, who are Russian citizens, to intimidation and blackmail by the Russian secret police. This was not seen as a problem immediately after the end of the Cold War but after Mr. Putin’s rise to power (he is a former KGB officer) is viewed as a serious threat to RFE/RL’s journalistic independence. Read FreeMediaOnline.org report Radio Liberty Russian managers put a positive spin on Putin’s comments about the murder of a pro-democracy journalist 

 VOA’s audience reach in Russia had been previously reduced over time due to the Russian secret police interference with the affiliate stations using VOA programs but never suffered a similar one-time loss, not even from major increases of jamming of shortwave radio signals during the Cold War.  FreeMediaOnline.org had warned that eliminating VOA radio and TV in Russia would be harmful to media freedom and would send a wrong signal to the Kremlin and human rights activists.

While all major Western international broadcasters have been increasing their Internet presence, none followed the BBG’s course on relying exclusively on the Internet in Russia and dropping both radio and TV. Ted Lipien said that a proper response to the growing media censorship in Russia should have been an expansion of the number of delivery platforms rather than their reduction to a single one. Before leaving public service, he was an acting associate director of the Voice of America. To compensate for restrictions and reductions in VOA output, FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a volunteer-run GovoritAmerica.us website, which compiles Russian-language news and analysis about the United States and U.S.-Russian relations.

Journalists working in the VOA Russian Service also don’t see BBG’s actions as designed to help them but rather as being part of the same strategy that resulted in the dismantling and eventual total elimination of VOA Arabic-language programs as well VOA broadcasts in other languages. After they had created Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television, BBG members made sure that VOA no longer had any Arabic-language programs. Some VOA Russian Service journalists suspect that the BBG executive staff purposely mislead the Board about the benefits of the Internet-only option in order to justify later a complete elimination of VOA broadcasts to Russia citing low audience ratings, which they knew would result from their actions.

One of many nonprofit foreign policy organizations, which believes the BBG has seriously mismanaged U.S. international broadcasting, is the highly-respected Public Diplomacy Council. The organization, which includes former diplomats, academics and other foreign policy experts, has called on President elect Obama and Congress to take urgent action in reforming publicly-funded U.S. international broadcasting. The Council blames the BBG for ignoring strategically important target areas such as Russia, the Balkans, India and the Western Hemisphere. The Council noted that the Broadcasting Board of Governors “has taken special aim at the Voice of America” by abolishing the VOA Arabic Service and reducing its broadcasts in English to the Middle East and other regions.  The Council also criticized the BBG’s decision to terminate all VOA radio broadcasts in Russian shortly before Russia’s military attack on Georgia last summer. Read FreeMediaOnline.org report: Public Diplomacy Experts Urge Obama to Stop the Broadcasting Board of Governors from Silencing the Voice of America

Many VOA journalists, NGO media freedom activists, and former U.S. diplomats believe that the BBG, dominated by an alliance of Republican neoconservatives and Democrats who joined forces in formulating and supporting ill-conceived outreach programs vis-a-vis the Muslim world such as Alhurra and Radio Sawa,  is determined to continue expanding privatization of U.S. broadcasting resources. The latest push, which affected Russia and Ukraine and threatened Georgia, came between July and December, in the waning months of the Bush Administration, and may have been purposely orchestrated and timed to present the Obama Administration with a fait accompli.

Not satisfied with killing VOA radio in Russia, on December 31, 2008, the BBG terminated VOA radio programs to Ukraine. This action was taken just hours before Russia stopped the flow of natural gas supplies through Ukraine when that country was on the verge of a major economic and political crisis. The Ukrainian crisis has since then gotten much worse and  now seriously threatens democratic gains and pro-Western foreign policy of the government in Kiev.

Critics have been warning for years that the Broadcasting Board of Governors is outsourcing vital journalistic and public diplomacy functions to private entities and contractors who – as a direct result of BBG’s marketing policies – are unable and unwilling to reflect American opinions and values and lack basic journalistic skills. (BBG-created private broadcaster Alhurra Television for the Middle East aired comments by Holocaust deniers and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty gave extensive airtime to extremist Russian politicians known for their racist views.)  A study by researchers for the University of Southern California, who conducted a review of Alhurra broadcasts, concluded that “The quality of Alhurra’s journalism is substandard on several levels.“

Critics also accuse the BBG of ignoring such problems with these private broadcasters and of deliberately trying to dismantle the Voice of America, which operates under strict U.S. government fiscal controls and enjoys journalistic independence under a Congressional Charter. The Charter requires VOA to adhere to high journalistic standards and to accurately and objectively represent a broad spectrum of American views. According to critics, BBG officials prefer to steer money to private broadcasters, such as Alhurra and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, because these stations can be more easily controlled. They can also be used to benefit their friends and supporters with high-paying positions and private contracts.

According to these critics, the BBG executive staff knew from previous market research that  VOA’s annual reach on the Internet for its Russian-language programs in Russia was well below one percent. (Weekly reach for VOA Russian website is far lower: 0.03%.) Despite of this data, BBG officials made widely exaggerated predictions and ignored obvious warnings that the Russian security services are fully capable of blocking and manipulating the Internet. RFE/RL was not ordered by the BBG to drop its shortwave radio broadcasts and managed to hold on to its radio audience, as did the BBC  and Deutsche Welle Russian-language services — another proof that the sudden 98% drop in VOA’s reach in Russia was orchestrated by the BBG and its executive staff.

Ted Lipien of FreeMediaOnline.org said that the actions of BBG officials that have obliterated VOA audience in Russia not only harm media freedom but represent  a monumental waste of U.S. taxpayers’ money. “In just one year, these BBG officials and their staff have completely wasted 98% of a VOA broadcasting service budget,  making a free gift of  hundreds of thousands of U.S. tax dollars to Mr. Putin and other enemies of democracy and free media in Russia,” Lipien said. Even if the BBG managed to increase VOA Russian-language website’s reach by 100% each year for the next few years,  — a highly unlikely prospect — it would take about a decade to go from 0.2 percent to the 2007/2008 level registered before the BBG’s single program delivery platform strategy was put into place.

As many critics have feared, there is also evidence that the BBG’s marketing policies may have started  a process of promoting censorship and self-censorship at the Voice of America, which would be a violation of the VOA Charter and U.S. law. In an apparent attempt to increase ratings similar to what seemed to have encouraged airing of statements by Holocaust deniers on Alhurra and giving airtime to racist politicians on RFE/RL broadcasts, VOA Russian Service journalists were reportedly confronted with the BBG-commissioned market research analysis and told to avoid topics that are “confrontational” to the Russian audience. They were also reportedly ”berated” for their “hostile” and “in your face” blogging and urged  not to express their opinions in blogs.

“They want VOA’s Russian Service toothless,” was the conclusion of one VOA journalist who remains defiant but is afraid that the BBG will succeed in destroying VOA Russian-language programs as they did earlier with VOA Arabic broadcasts and many other VOA vernacular and English services. “That is the only way to characterize their demands,” this VOA Russian Service journalist wrote, ”because most of our materials will not be liked by [the] Kremlin and its agents (how do we know that [market research] monitors are not Kremlin’s loyal servers?). Welcome to the new era at VOA’ Russian Service!”

The VOA journalist did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation. VOA employees have no confidence in the BBG’s ability to manage international broadcasting.  In a recent government-wide survey, they rated their employer as one of the very worst among U.S. government agencies. Read FreeMediaOnline.org report Broadcasting Board of Governors Rated Worst Than Ever By Its Employees and As One of The Worst Federal Agencies

More comments from a VOA Russian Service journalist:

I am reading the program review materials [annual evaluation of a VOA program] now and can’t help laughing at some things. For instance, it states that “given the unfavorable media climate in Russia today, characterized by increasingly strict government control, VOA Russian has embarked on a project to develop a multi-media, interactive web site that will allow the Service to circumvent the problem of government pressures which have led to the loss of most of its affiliates.”

Translation: VOA and IBB [IBB -- the International Broadcasting Bureau] is a technical arm of the BBG] closed Russian radio and TV programs and put all eggs in one basket at a time when Kremlin is following China’s steps to establish full control of Internet.

All VOA’s independent evaluators “related concerns about ongoing difficulties associates with the functionality of video files (on our site). One suggested that incompatibility between site formats and available local technologies ( in Russia and other former Soviet states) might exacerbate this problem.”

Translation: VOA management is clueless about media infrastructure in countries other then the U.S. and wastes money, resources and talent without achieving the goals of U.S. international broadcasting.

the performance of America’s international broadcast entities has been quite successful in telling America’s story (largely the task of the VOA) — Hillary Clinton

The dismantling of VOA as America’s voice to the world became an ideological and bureaucratic goal of both the Bush Administration and of the BBG, despite the latter’s bipartisan status. After the decision to invade Iraq had been made,  the Board worked closely with neoconservatives Bush White House staffers to privatize U.S. international broadcasting by subcontracting this vital government function. The idea was to make U.S. international broadcasting more responsive in supporting the Bush Administration’s policies — something that VOA journalists, protected by their Congressional charter and committed to journalistic independence, were unwilling to offer, neither to the White House nor the BBG.

In their push to give themselves maximum control, the BBG not only eliminated jobs of  U.S.-based VOA journalists, most of them American citizens, but at the same time denied foreign journalists hired abroad job security and basic protections of American labor laws. These protections were available to VOA journalists, which made them more independent but annoyed the Bush White House and the BBG because they were unable to control them.

In carrying out its privatization plan, the BBG closed down many VOA language services, including the VOA Arabic Service, and created private entities such as Radio Sawa and Alhurra, with new multiple executive positions and contracting opportunities for favorites of BBG officials. (Some of the former Democratic BBG members, including Norman Pattiz and Senator Edward E. Kaufman, were in the forefront of implementing the neoconservative privatization agenda and the Bush White House propaganda goals in the Middle East; they were in fact more enthusiastic supporters than some of the conservative Republican members, but in the end most Republicans and Democrats supported the  Bush Administration’s plans.)

Other major international broadcasters felt no similar need to create new broadcasting entities with new names and new missions. The British Broadcasting Corporation also expanded its media coverage in the Middle East and recently launched a Persian TV channel, but it is proudly and consistently promoting the BBC brand.

Focused on privatization and advertising schemes in international broadcasting and public diplomacy, the Bush Administration and the BBG worked together to destroy the Voice of America as an internationally recognized American broadcaster and went on to create multiple brands, such as Sawa and Alhurra, with no solid journalistic traditions or clearly defined goals. The BBG corporate structure is now very similar to the multi-brand corporate structure of General Motors.

The Public Diplomacy Council, a nonprofit organization which includes former diplomats, academics and other foreign policy experts, agrees that the BBG’s policies are designed to waste U.S. taxpayers’ money.  The PDC has called on President Elect Obama and Congress to take urgent action in reforming publicly-funded U.S. international broadcasting and is proposing consolidation of all five broadcast entities into a single international network. The PDC believes that the proposed consolidation and replacing the Broadcasting Board of Governors by a new nonpartisan oversight commission would result in “cost savings aimed at making U.S. global broadcasting unmatched on the airwaves and in cyberspace.”

As it is customary during the confirmation process, Hillary Clinton’s answers to Senator Lugar’s questions were quite vague and may very well have been written based on information provided by the BBG staff. She made no reference to numerous reports about major editorial and financial scandals at Radio Sawa and Alhurra, such as airing of unchallenged statements by Holocaust deniers and giving extensive airtime to Islamist extremists and racist Russian politicians. ( These decisions were made by untrained and unmanaged contract employees in support of the BBG’s goal to achieve a mass audience in Iran and Russia. Their effort to gain higher ratings by playing up to the presumed worst prejudices of their audience was in any case unsuccessful, but it created a distorted impression of American values and damaged America’s reputation as a supporter of freedom.) 

 A study prepared by the Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, University of Southern California, which was commissioned by the U.S. government, concluded that Alhurra, Arab-language television to the Middle East managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) fails to meet basic journalistic standards and is seen by few.  Read FreeMediaOnline.org report: “U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Spreading Racist Views on Radio Liberty in Russia: What Would Barack Obama Say If He Knew…”   

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

One statement that deserves further analysis was Clinton’s assertion that “the BBG has learned that it must rely on the best market analysis to understand the unique listening habits and attitudes of the populations we seek to inform.” The BBG indeed spends tremendous amount of taxpayer money on market research, and BBG members often make claims that their decisions are driven by research.

Unfortunately, most BBG members have demonstrated that they lack both experience and judgment to apply research results to political realities in countries without free media. Senator Lugar asked a very good question whether the U.S. should try to reach a mass audience in the Middle East through entertainment programming. Perhaps understandably at this point, Hillary Clinton could not provide a clear answer.

While still working for the BBG, I became aware that BBG members and staffers were spending countless hours pouring over research data showing that the word “American” was unpopular in the Middle East and trying to come up with new names for their Middle East privatized broadcasting enterprise. They lacked knowledge, experience, and sophistication to realize that the problem was not with the word “American,” American society, or the Voice of America, but with the Bush Administration Middle East policies and their own preoccupation with marketing and advertising.

Making outdated Cold War-like assumptions about the Arab and Islamic culture, they named their TV station (Alhurra) ”The Free One.” It was utterly naive of them to believe that their audiences would be fooled by the lack of the word “American” in the name selected for the new network.

In the process of trying to disassociate their new broadcasting outlets from America, the BBG insulted Arab pride by implying that Middle East audiences were uniformly lacking basic freedoms.  It did not occur to them that this was not an East European-like audience, which truly lacked basic freedoms during the Cold War and looked to the West for help. Those in the Middle East who do not want to hear American news or the word “American” are not going to become viewers and listeners anyway, but most would rather have access to authentic American news and culture from a clearly identified source rather than rely on light-weight news and entertainment hiding behind propagandistic names from another era and another part of the world.

The new Secretary of State should inquire about some of the decisions made by the BBG during the last weeks of the Bush Administration. They included the shutting down of VOA radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military invasion of Georgia and the Board’s refusal to resume them during the crisis. The BBG also ended VOA radio broadcasts to Ukraine just hours before Russia cut off the flow of natural gas supplies to that country and the rest of Europe. The BBG also wanted to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia.

The BBG staff claims that each one of these blunders was justified by solid market research. As someone who as a former BBG employee has placed U.S.-supported programming on stations in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Russia, and Iraq, I known that some of the research results obtained in closed and repressed societies are questionable ( for example, WMD intelligence research in Iraq, another closed and repressed society). But the main problem is not the quality of the research but the inability of the BBG members and their staff to interpret the data in light of political realities on the ground.

Most political loyalists serving on the BBG lack journalistic and human rights advocacy experience and know very little what it means to live in a country without free media. They nearly always have failed to understand what American broadcasting means to both dictators and victims of human rights abuses. Unfortunately, this is not something that reading audience research reports on countries without free media can teach them.

QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD, SENATOR RICHARD G. LUGAR: Many have criticized the Bush Administration’s decision to try to reach broader audiences in the Middle East through efforts such as Radio Sawa and Al Hurra TV. Critics argue that Sawa – which relies primarily on a pop-radio format with a smattering of news – fails to deliver sufficient information to serious listeners who desire to hear unfiltered news about their country and the rest of the world. Opponents of AL Hurra – which attempts to serve as a
counter to Al Jazeera – claim that it often fails to provide sufficient counterpoints to radical and inaccurate claims made by participants on many of its programs.

141. Does the Obama Administration intend to continue funding Radio
Sawa in its current, mostly music, format? Similarly, what changes does the
Administration intend for Al Hurra?

142. Does the Obama Administration believe that the Broadcasting Board
of Governors, which oversees both Al Hurra and Radio Sawa as well as
Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, is the
appropriate vehicle to provide managerial and policy guidance to the
disparate broadcasting entities? Does the Administration seek to alter or
even replace the BBG?

HILLARY CLINTON: Let me answer these two questions together. For the most part, the performance of America’s international broadcast entities has been quite successful in telling America’s story (largely the task of the VOA), and in serving as important surrogates for missing independent media in countries where a free press and independent media have been repressed, such as Afghanistan and Burma, where RFE/RL and Radio Free Asia respectively operate. Beyond the precise content of the news, our international broadcast services demonstrate an essential lesson of free societies – the requirement of an independent media for a robust democracy.

A robust and effective BBG in turn requires a strong and unambiguous
fire wall between the professional journalists and editors at BBG, and
others in the U.S. government whether at the White House or the State
Department. I recognize this to be a fundamental requirement of
effective international broadcasting.

The BBG is an independent agency but the Secretary of State holds a
seat on the Board, through which the Department can express its views.
State also clears editorials for the VOA broadcasts. But the most
effective BBG will be one at arms length from these and other
government agencies.

Now is the time to review the Arab language services – they have grown
in listenership in recent years, and we should review their performance
and impact to determine whether Al Hurra and Radio Sawa are
achieving their full potential.

We recognize that our biggest challenge is to ensure that our messages
are listened to, considered and, we hope, acted upon by people in the
Middle East, and Muslim societies around the world. To do this
effectively, the BBG has learned that it must rely on the best market
analysis to understand the unique listening habits and attitudes of the
populations we seek to inform, and these conditions differ substantially
from one country to its neighbor. So we must start with the market, and
then devise our message accordingly, which more and more will include
new digital platforms.

 

This commentary can be republished with attribution to FreeMediaOnline.org

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

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

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

Reporters Without Borders said in its November 3rd letter that it was “dismayed” by these “shocking statements” by the council’s chairman, Nushirvan Magerramli, announcing the bans on October 31st.

Reporters Without Borders believes that if the Azeri government carries out its threat, BBC, RFE/RL, and VOA will continue to broadcast on short wave. The organization pointed out that these international broadcasters ”would be able to broadcast on short wave as happened during the Soviet era. It would only have the effect of lowering the quality of reception for listeners,” but the radios would not disappear, Reporters Without Borders said in its statement.

Voice of America journalists and media freedom organizations are concerned, however, that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan body which oversees VOA and RFE/RL, will use the excuse of the crackdown on FM rebroadcasting in Azerbaijan to shut down the production in Washington of  all VOA Azeri radio programs.

There is a precedent for such an action on the part of the BBG, which now has six members split between Democrats and Republicans. The former BBG chairman James K. Glassman,  a Republican who is now the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs,  had justified the recent termination of VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts by claiming that Mr. Putin’s campaign of closing down VOA FM affiliates made all  VOA radio vernacular language broadcasting to Russia ineffective, including short wave radio. For various political and bureaucratic reasons, most other Republican members and all Democrats serving on the BBG have supported Glassman’s position. This view has been widely rejected, however, by members of Congress of both parties, foreign policy experts, and media freedom organizations.

FreeMediaOnline.org, a media freedom nonprofit based in San Francisco, had reported that several BBG members and the BBG staff led by its executive director Jeff Trimble, a former acting president of RFE/RL, have been working behind the scenes to divert money from Voice of America broadcasts to Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine to fund  the scandal-ridden Alhurra television for the Middle East and to strengthen Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasting to Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. In cutting VOA Russian radio Trimble was said to have received support from the Senate staff of the vice-president elect Joe Biden. RFE/RL is a semi-private entity incorporated in Delaware and based in Prague, the Czech Republic. It has a large bureau in Moscow whose employees according to reports are subject to pressure and intimidation from the Russian secret police. Voice of America is based in Washington, D.C. and most of its employees work in the United States. BBG member Ted Kaufman is a former chief of staff to Senator Biden.

Read: ProPublica.org article USC Study of Alhurra Withheld From Public; Inquiries of Network’s Operation Deepen

 Despite warnings from Congress and human rights organizations, the BBG terminated VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia and also wanted to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine. VOA employees are concerned that the BBG staff will respond the same way to the most recent crisis in Azerbaijan.

The BBG has temporarily suspended its plans to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine but VOA radio programs to Russia have not resumed as they were before the Russian invasion to Georgia. The BBG staff had also prevented VOA from producing Russian-language radio programs for the web, but relented after strong criticism from Congress and media freedom organizations. Last month a half-hour radio program was placed on the VOA Russian-language website as a Monday-through-Friday broadcast.
 

Listen to the Voice of America Russian radio program for the web.

However, the audio of the VOA radio program for the Internet has not been updated for nearly a week. The day after the U.S. presidential elections it still featured a number of reports on pre-election campaign and polls. At the urgings of the former BBG chairman James Glassman and the BBG staff, the VOA Russian service is now producing short video clips for placement on its website and blogs. It is now difficult to find on the Russian-language VOA website any  in-depth analysis or even a summary of President-elect Obama’s views on Mr. Putin’s and Mr. Medvedev’s Russia and U.S.-Russian relations. There are, however, plenty of short video reports, which include brief and superficial interviews with individual American voters giving their overall impressions of the two candidates. In one of them, the service featured a young African-American voter who was a McCain supporter without explaining that the African-American community was overwhelmingly supporting Senator Obama. Glassman, an enthusiast of web contests and  other short-format for-web-video, is perhaps best known for co-writing the book Dow 36,000, published in 1999, which predicted that the stock market was greatly undervalued and would at least triple within a few years.

The production of serious analysis of U.S. politics and foreign policy had largely ended with the termination of  VOA Russian radio broadcasts in late July. Critics of the BBG strategy as pursued by Glassman and Trimble have argued that it has dangerously undermined the U.S. ability to communicate with audiences in Russia and in the former Soviet republics on serious political issues. FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien has called on the BBG to restore VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, to expand political reporting, and to refrain from any cuts in VOA and RFE/RL radio programs to Georgia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan.

No one knows with certainty if this proverb is a famous Chinese curse or not.  However, one can certainly accept the fact that these times are indeed interesting…meaning troubled…in many spheres including economics and international broadcasting.  While the fine points of U.S. international broadcasting are debated among a fairly small circle of interested participants and observers, the globalized financial markets appear to be poised on the brink of collapse.

What’s the connection?

Not long ago, a book was published with the title “Dow 36,000.”  This book was authored by James K. Glassman, the most recent chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and now the current Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

Depending on your point of view, you may want to laugh or cry.  If you are heavily invested in the stock market, other financial instruments or a disintegrating 401(k) retirement plan, it is likely to be the latter.

A book with an impressive title like Dow 36,000 is indicative of an outlook that goes beyond plain optimism and approaches the realm of fantasy.  It assumes a perfect trajectory of unbounded growth.  It does not take into account, the unknown, the unpredictable, weaknesses of human nature for greed and miscalculation or political and fundamentalist movements which specifically intend to topple our economic system and weaken our ability to project global power.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) seems to embrace the Dow 36,000 philosophy.  Similarly, the BBG makes assumptions based on best case scenarios; for example, rolling the dice on an all-or-nothing Internet-based platform for all BBG media: audio, video and text.  The opening gambit of this wildly optimistic strategic plan is seen in the Board’s unilateral decision to end direct broadcasting by the VOA Russian service.  The plan clearly requires that large costs be passed to the potential “consumers” of the BBG media offerings…a Russian population with presently limited exposure to the Internet except in its major metropolitan centers…a Russian population roiling with the rest of the world in the present global financial crisis…a resurgent nationalistic Russia which has engaged in armed conflict with the nation of Georgia…a Russia whose military campaign against Georgia was assisted by Internet countermeasures employed against Georgian and other Internet websites.

A rosy Dow 36,000 outlook dismisses the importance of history.  History repeats itself.  It is not linear.  It is cyclical.  There have been other economic downturns since the Great Depression of 1929, though not as severe…until now.  The interconnectivity of global economic systems and markets has reached a new pinnacle…meaning, in part, that a severe economic downturn is less likely to be localized and is rather more likely to be globalized.  Such are the circumstances today.

The same holds true for the euphoric, best case scenario model of BBG strategic planning for international broadcasting.  The Board is equally dismissive of historical antecedents, ignores the fact that democracy, capitalism and various other “isms” are evolutionary processes heavily influenced by circumstances specific to the experiences of certain cultures.  For example, anyone with a fundamental understanding of Russian history and the Russian psyche would be aware of the importance Russians hold for strength and leadership.  The Board lacks this form of “fortunate awareness” and clings to the arrogant and misshapen belief that the Russians will naturally embrace our perspective without regard to Russian experiences and interests.

Similar costly errors in judgment can be seen in the BBG programs to the Middle East, especially the Alhurra television project created as the result of an erroneous, superfluous vision of certain Board members regarding the depth of feelings among Arabs and Muslims regarding the substance of Middle East conflict.

In all its component parts, the BBG has become a symbol of the “ugly American,” syndrome, an assumption that the Board and only the Board knows what is best for U.S. international broadcasting.

The BBG is anything but a hallmark of U.S. government functioning at its best.  It is in many ways not much different in philosophy and action from the corporate entities and officers who have propelled US financial interests over a cliff with their own brand of arrogance and hubris.  Like those involved in the financial crisis, the Board no longer functions in the National or Public Interest and imperils both.

The Dow has fallen through “support” at 10,000.  Yes, we do live in interesting times…realities that are far from the market fiction of “Dow 36,000.”

The Federalist 2008/2

 FreeMediaOnline.org and Free Media Online Blog October 9, 2008, San Francisco – A little over two months after the Voice of America (VOA), the official U.S. international broadcaster,  had eliminated its radio programs to Russia to focus resources on its Russian-language website, the BBC Russian Service has announced an ambitious plan aimed at enhancing its Internet presence and expanding radio programming, taking both actions at the same time. In July, the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan body which manages the Voice of America, had forced VOA Russian Service journalists to abandon all radio broadcasts, both on-air and even online. It also mandated cuts in regularly scheduled VOA television programs and told VOA broadcasters to pursue a no-radio, Internet-only strategy for reaching audiences in Russia.

Facing a similar set of challenges in the Russian media market brought on by the Kremlin’s crackdown on independent journalists, the BBC World Service took a different approach and has now announced a new multiplatform and multimedia strategy for Russia, which includes the expansion of both Internet and radio programming, as well as increasing the production of video for use on the Web. According to a BBC press release,  resources will be redirected to enhance a 24/7 news coverage on its Russian-language website. At the same time, the BBC World Service announced that the flagship morning weekday news and current affairs Russian-language radio program, Utro na BBC, will be increased by half an hour, to three-and-a-half hours each day. The afternoon weekday drive time news and current affairs radio program, Vecher na BBC, will be increased, by one hour, to four hours each day. 

As the political appointees at the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors contemplated ending VOA radio broadcasts  to Russia, independent experts warned them that expanding Internet programming not only does not require the elimination of radio and TV production but heavily depends on both to provide content needed to attract more Web users.  Ignoring such advice, the BBG took VOA Russian-language radio programs off the air just 12 days before Russian troops invaded Georgia and so far has rejected pleas from Congressmen, journalists and NGOs to resume them. The VOA Russian Service broadcasters in Washington, who until recently were producing several hours of radio and television programming daily, are now underemployed but still prevented by the BBG from producing regularly scheduled radio programs even for those who would like to listen to them online.

FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit,  reported that bureaucratic politics are playing a major role in the U.S. broadcasting board’s decisions on Russia and may explain why VOA is forced to pursue a no-radio, Internet-only strategy when most experts agree that the multiplatform and multimedia approach adopted by the BBC is far more prudent and more effective. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, several BBG members as well as the BBG executive director Jeff Trimble prefer to steer money to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a semi-private radio station, which is also managed and funded by the BBG and broadcasts from Prague and Moscow.

These Washington officials are believed to want to secure RFE/RL’s position as the only radio voice in Russia funded by the American taxpayers. Their actions appear designed to achieve this goal even though, unlike VOA, RFE/RL does not specialize in explaining U.S. foreign policy and American culture, and its ability to operate independently within close reach of Mr. Putin’s secret police has come under question. FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien has called on the BBG to offer RFE/RL journalists in Russia greater protection from the Russian security services and to allow Voice of America to resume its role as the Washington-based broadcaster offering authoritative U.S. news and analysis to on-air and online radio listeners in Russia.

FreeMediaOnline.org sources report that a BBG member, Ted Kaufman, a former chief of staff to Senator Joe Biden, has a special interest in RFE/RL since the station is incorporated in Delaware, Senator Biden’s home state. Biden’s Senate staff was said to have advised the BBG officials on how to take VOA Russian radio off the air despite strong opposition to this move among many members of Congress. The BBG also wanted to eliminate VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine. It was forced to suspend its decision only after strong pressure from Congress, Georgian-American and Ukrainian-American groups. To avoid such protests, the BBG staff took steps to terminate VOA Russian radio broadcasts without making any public announcements. They did not know at the time that Russian troops would soon enter Georgia, but even afterwards they continued to resist resuming programs to Russia.

Conservative radio talk show host Blanquita Cullum, a Republican BBG member, has consistently opposed these radio cuts, but she has been outvoted each time by her Democratic and Republican colleagues. BBG’s most recent chairman, James K. Glassman, a Republican appointed by President Bush, had allied himself with Ted Kaufman and another Democratic BBG member, Jeff Hirschberg, who was a director of the U.S.-Russia Business Council.  Kaufman, Hirschberg, and Glassman, who is now the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, have been the strongest opponents of resuming VOA radio broadcasts to Russia. 

Press Releases

BBC reinforces its Russian online output

 

BBC World Service has announced changes which will further reinforce its Russian-language output. 

The main thrust of the reprioritised investment is placed on strengthening the website, bbcrussian.com, which has become the key method for delivery of all BBC content in Russian. 

The website is having a significant impact in Russia where it is easier to access than the BBC radio services, and where demand for online news is growing and becoming increasingly sophisticated.

In August 2008, at the height of the conflict between Russia and Georgia, the number of unique users of the website increased dramatically to nearly three million, and many of these new users have remained with the site in September.

The audience is also accessing other platforms online: in August 2008, traffic to online audio content doubled while demand for video jumped six-fold to nearly 2,300,000 views.

Use of news from BBC Russian via wireless handheld devices also more than doubled.

Use of forums and interactive traffic has also grown and during the recent conflict was at record levels.

Head of BBC Russian, Sarah Gibson, explains that the BBC wanted to improve its Russian-language offer to serve audiences whose media consumption habits are changing rapidly.

She says: “Our aim is to deliver a fresher, more relevant service for our audiences in Russia and the wider post-Soviet market – a trusted, high quality website with the kinds of features the audience expects, and news and current affairs programmes at key times of day, available online as well as through more traditional radio platforms.

“It’s clear that audiences like our multiplatform offer more and more, and our challenge now is to improve this offer and to give audiences more formats that they enjoy and engage with.

“That is why we are focusing resources where they will have most impact.”

Resources are being focused to enable the BBC to improve its rolling 24/7 news offer on bbcrussian.com.

The BBC will also increase the number of high-quality video reports, underpinned with original journalism from Russia. These, too, will be updated 24/7.

The BBC is also strengthening resources for bbcrussian.com during the morning peak periods and is increasing the resources for interactivity round the clock.

Reprioritisation also means boosting the Learn English section of bbcrussian.com – a tool which helps millions of Russian-speakers to master English in a simple and engaging manner.

The BBC Russian radio also changes, with re-focusing of resources on peak listening times and with more investment in flagship news and current affairs programmes.

Key daily radio programmes on short and medium wave will be expanded to make up a simpler schedule tailored for peak morning and evening drive-time audiences.

The flagship morning weekday news and current affairs programme, Utro na BBC, will be increased by half an hour, to three-and-a-half hours each day.

The afternoon weekday drive time news and current affairs sequence, Vecher na BBC – which includes the hour-long BBSeva hosted by Seva Novgorodsev – will be increased, by one hour, to four hours each day.

New weekend editions of Vecher na BBC will be launched, on both Saturday and Sunday, to take the place of current short updates.

There will be changes elsewhere in the radio schedule to fund these improvements.

The production of some short news bulletins, which were designed for Russian FM partners, will cease as the BBC no longer has these agreements.

Longer format feature programming will cease; their themes and issues will be incorporated into mainstream news and current affairs content. 

The reprioritisation also enables the BBC to develop extra newsgathering resources in Russia, resulting in increased reporting and analysis of Russian affairs.

The BBC will also increase the current affairs reporting of British cultural and social affairs, as well as reporting on the former Soviet Union, for all programmes and platforms.

Sarah Gibson sums up: “We believe that a fuller multimedia news offer will strengthen the impact of BBC Russian and that, as a result of these changes, BBC Russian will become the most trusted and influential international news provider in Russia, serving audiences in the global Russian-speaking community, across borders and platforms.”

BBC World Service Publicity

 

FreeMediaOnline.org has obtained the details of the new British broadcasting strategy for Russia, which was announced by the BBC World Service Regional Head, Americas & Europe, Nikki Clarke.

The aim of the strategy is to position the Russian service to respond to the changes in media consumption in Russia. Due to the Kremlin’s crackdown on the independent media, the BBC has had considerable difficulties in trying to secure FM distribution in the past three years and the BBC radio service is dependent on shortwave and 3 medium wave transmitters in Moscow, St Petersburg and Ekaterinburg. At the same time, consumption of the BBC Russian online site has been growing and in August, at the height of the Georgian crisis, it was at nearly 3m unique users. For September it has continued at 2.2m.

The strategy outlined by the BBC aims to allow the Russian service to focus more effectively on its online offer  while also strengthening its video and radio production.

The details of the BBC new Russia strategy:

A rolling news page – which other Russian sites use
More original video production on a 24/7 basis – more staff trained in video
More resources for interactivity on a 24/7 basis
More resources for the site in the morning peak

It will also concentrate the radio coverage on news and current affairs in the key parts of the schedule – morning and evening peak times with:

Expanded key current affairs sequences. including Utro na BBC; Vecher na BBC; Vam Slovo; BBSeva; Ranniy Chas
A new 90 minute edition of Vecher na BBC will be developed on Saturdays and Sundays

There will also be an expansion in newsgathering:

Original video reporting will be increased
Original reporting from Russia and the FSU will increase
Analysis to be increased in current affairs programmes and online
Reporting of Britain, social affairs, and British cultural affairs to be strengthened in radio programmes and online

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages U.S. international broadcasting, is also pursuing an Internet-focused strategy in Russia. Unlike the BBC, however, the U.S. broadcasting board had forced the Voice of America to terminate all on air Russian-language radio programs to the point of not allowing the VOA Russian service to produce radio broadcasts even for placement on the Internet or on a still available medium wave transmitter in Moscow. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which is also managed by the BBG, continues to broadcast radio programs to Russia on shortwave and medium wave. Members of Congress, media freedom organizations, and VOA journalists have criticized the BBG for ending Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia.

Both VOA and RFE/RL are funded by the U.S. Congress. VOA programs originate in Washington, D.C. and are more similar to BBC radio programs, while RFE/RL broadcasts radio from Prague and Moscow and focuses more on internal developments in Russia. According to FreeMediaOnline.org, a media freedom nonprofit based in San Francisco, RFE/RL reporters who are Russian citizens and live in Russia are more vulnerable than VOA and BBC broadcasters to the attempts at intimidation by the Russian security services and need more protection from the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors.  After the BBG stopped VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts, the U.S. has no radio programs to Russia specializing in explaining U.S. foreign policy and presenting in-depth radio or Interent coverage of American society and culture.

An internal BBC memo says that the changes in the British program strategy in Russia will mean the elimination of 7 positions in the Moscow bureau which are related to the news bulletins, though overall, with recent recruitment and the creation of new jobs, the headcount in Moscow will not change. In London, there will be a proposed net closure 10 positions, which the BBC management will be discussing with the staff and the unions.

The BBC management believes that the new radio-Internet-video strategy will deliver a more diverse and improved content for the Russian audiences which they cannot get from other sources and that it will continue a tradition of providing unique coverage of Russian and international affairs.

FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien described the BBC plan as far more prudent and more realistic than the plan adopted in the U.S. by the Broadcasting Board of Governors for the Voice of America.  Lipien said that unlike the BBC, the U.S. international broadcasting authority has made a strategic error that rewards Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, his close associates and other enemies of media freedom. Lipien said, however, that the proposed elimination of  several positions at the BBC Russian service in London should be a cause for concern due to the vulnerability of the reporting positions in Moscow for all international broadcasters.

The BBG’s plan also called for ending VOA radio programs to Georgia, Ukraine, India and a few other countries. After the most recent Russian military intervention in the Caucasus, the Voice of America director Dan Austin has asked the Board for permission to temporarily continue  VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine. He is said to be also considering asking the BBG to allow him to resume radio broadcasting to Russia, but he faces strong bureaucratic opposition from the Board’s executive director Jeff Trimble and his staff.

The 810khZ AM frequency in Moscow, which is leased by the BBG, is now used to rebroadcast VOA English programs. BBC and other international broadcasters also lease similar AM frequencies in Moscow. The Russian authorities have forced nearly all private radio stations to terminate similar rebroadcasting arrangements with Western public broadcasters but have not yet decided what to do with the government-controlled AM frequencies in the Russian capital. Taking a direct action against all Western broadcasters at the same time could result in bad PR for the Kremlin, which may explain why these broadcasters are still on the air in Moscow.

At least for now the 810kHz frequency is working and the Voice of America could use it to broadcast several hours of Russian-language programming daily. The BBG, however, has been steadfastly rejecting urgent appeals from VOA Russian staffers to allow them to produce a radio show that could be aired in the Russian capital. Despite the growing media censorship in Russia, these federal government employees charged with facilitating free flow of information were ordered by the BBG to limit their audio production from several hours to 10 min. daily and to become an Internet-only news provider.

VOA Russian service broadcasters say they are deeply demoralized and underemployed.  They complain that resources paid for by U.S. taxpayers are wasted while the bipartisan U.S. government Board denies radio listeners in Russia access to Russian-language news from Washington. While there is a serious risk of the AM frequency in Moscow being shut down by the Kremlin, VOA employees reported that the BBG is also preventing them from producing a regularly scheduled radio program that could be broadcast on shortwave frequencies controlled by the U.S. government. They also said that the BBG staff won’t even allow them to create a regularly scheduled extended radio broadcast that could be placed on the Web.

FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, reported that by terminating VOA radio to Russia the BBG has acted against the wishes of the majority of members of Congress from both parties but received support from the Senate staff of Senator Joe Biden. The BBG action will benefit the semi-private broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which is incorporated in Delaware and also managed by the BBG. Both Democrats and Republicans on the BBG, with the exception of only one Republican member, voted to stop VOA radio programs to Russia. One of those voting to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine,and India was Ted Kaufman, who was formerly Senator Biden’s chief of staff and is now assisting him with the vice presidential campaign. BBG executive director Jeff Trimble was formely acting president of RFE/RL and engineered the silencing of VOA radio in Russia.

According to Ted Lipien, FreeMediaOnline.org president and former VOA acting associate director, the BBG staff won’t allow VOA Russian radio programs to be aired in Moscow because it wants to protect the interests of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “This action seriously damages the ability of the American people to communicate with the people in Russia. It also undermines America’s support for media freedom,” Lipien said.

Most of Radio Liberty reporters, who under the BBG plan would be the only producers of U.S. radio programming in the Russian language, are Russian citizens working and living with their families in Russia. Ted Lipien said that in light of the Kremlin’s crackdown on the media what RFE/RL employees need most is protection from the Russian secret police and are in no position to  replace VOA in presenting American news and opinions to radio listeners in Russia. Lipien called the BBG’s decision to block the use of the AM frequency in Moscow for VOA Russian programs ”one of the most blatant acts of bureaucratic selfishness and a foreign policy blunder that rewards Mr. Putin.” 

FTM reported that “VOA has just dumped its  Russian language broadcast service (great timing but it still has a Russian language web site).” The BBC still has the Russian language radio service but no longer broadcasts in Georgian. ftm also included in its report information from FreeMediaOnline.org: “Neither VOA or its Board of Governors issued any statement that it had ended Russian language broadcasts according to Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org and acting VOA associate director until 2006.”

You can read more in ftm Tickle File.