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FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, September 16, 2009, San Francisco — Censorship from Russia and China comes home to America in profit-oriented and staying-in-the-market-at-any-cost decisions by American businesses and sometimes even US government agencies, as FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, has been documenting and reporting.

Few of us in the media freedom community were particularly surprised that Conde Nast publishers banned an article by freelance journalist Scott Anderson from appearing in the Russian edition of the GQ magazine. The article dealt with the radioactive topic in Mr. Putin’s Russia of a possible involvement of the security service, the FSB, in deadly apartment building bombings in 1999, which the Kremlin blames on Chechen terrorists and who were the most likely perpetrators. There have been persistent though unconfirmed rumors, however, that rogue elements within the FSB may have directly or indirectly instigated some of these attacks to advance their own interests and the political career of their fellow ex-spy Vladimir Putin.

Shortly after the attacks, in which 300 people died, a bomb was defused by the local police, and the trail of evidence led to the door of the FSB, which admitted that it was part of “an ill-conceived exercise.” Similarities to the real bombings were disturbing.

Journalists have an obligation to critically examine such information to see whether it’s true or not, but in Russia this topic has been placed off-limits by the Kremlin, many journalists have been killed, their murders remain unsolved, and self-censorship is rampant. The Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, an international nonprofit organization, blames the current Russian leadership for helping to create a climate of fear among journalists in Russia.

Americans should be deeply concerned when US-owned businesses join forces with the Kremlin and Chinese communists in silencing free press. It seems that in the Conde Nast case, self-censorship affected not only the GQ edition in Russia but the GQ US website as well. These corporate executives are helping the Kremlin to bring censorship from Russia to the US and to the rest of the world.

In its efforts to publicize this problem, FreeMediaOnline.org has uncovered that it took several days for the US taxpayer-funded Radio Liberty (Radio Svoboda) to start reporting on this story on its Russian website, and we wondered why. In the meantime, independent bloggers in the US and in Russia had already translated the censored article into Russian and posted it online. Thank you for doing what we assumed was the job of Radio Liberty and the Voice of America.

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, RFE/RL, and the Voice of America, VOA, are managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, which several years ago made a strategic decision to broadcast Radio Liberty programs from within Russia. No doubt the BBG now wants to protect its capital investments and operations placed within the walking distance of the FSB headquarters in Moscow. We have criticized this worst-managed Federal agency for not protecting its Russian reporters from harassment by the secret police.

The BBG kept expanding Radio Liberty’s operations in Russia even as they were being sabotaged by the FSB. At the same time, these bipartisan political appointees — some with business links to Russia — terminated all Russian-language radio broadcasts by the Voice of America from Washington, DC. They made the move to end these VOA programs just 12 days before the Russian military launched an attack on Georgia last year.

In her op-ed column in the Washington Post, “Chipping Away At Free Speech,” Anne Applebaum wrote: “There is no law or edict that can force these companies, or any American company, to abide by the principles of free speech abroad. But at least it is possible to embarrass them at home.”

It’s the only way we can hope to prevent fearful businessmen and government bureaucrats from helping the Kremlin in spreading censorship in Russia and abroad. The more people know about this problem, the more likely we are to succeed. Please share this article with others to honor the memory of Paul Klebnikov, Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova and 14 other journalists murdered in Russia since the year 2000 for doing their jobs.

After FreeMediaOnline.org published its report pointing out limited coverage by Russian websites of both Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, VOA, both broadcasting stations devoted a lot of attention to the GQ story, albeit several days after it had been first reported by NPR on September 4, and after independent bloggers in the US and in Russia had already translated the censored article into Russian and posted it online.

We also reported that self-censorship could have been responsible for the initial lack of coverage of this story by Radio Liberty’s Russian website and that both RFE/RL and VOA have been negatively affected by program cuts and marketing strategies imposed on them by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the BBG.

FreeMediaOnline.org has received today an email from Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, RFE/RL, showing that its reporting has indeed been comprehensive, starting September 7.

From RFE/RL email:

I wanted to make sure you were aware of some of the comprehensive coverage RFE/RL’s Russian Service has been giving the story of the 10-year anniversary of the apartment bombings in Buinaksk. Much of this coverage was planned by the Russian Service well before the recent scandal that broke out after Conde Nast decided not to publish Scott Anderson’s report in its Russian edition of “GQ”. You’ll note that the Service interviewed Mr. Trepashkin, the source for Anderson’s article, on its “Facets of Time” program on September 4:

“Time of Liberty” call-in interview show:
September 4: Report and analysis on the 10-th anniversary of the blast in Buinaksk. Mumin Shakirov reporting, including Q&A with Y.Felstinskiy (co-author of the book of alternative investigation of the blasts in the Russian cities), L.Levinson (member of the parliamentary investigative commission), I.Trunov (lawyer of the victims’ families).
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1814527.html

September 7: Reports and analysis of the scandal over Russian GQ’s refusal to publish Scott Anderson’s article “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise To Power”. V.Morozov reporting including Q&A with Jane Kirtley, a professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota; Y.Zhigalkin – Q&A with Arch Puddington, Vice President of Research at rights watchdog Freedom House.
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1816239.html

September 7: V.Bode report including Q&A with L.Levinson and head of “Memorial” A.Tcherkasov. 07.09.2009
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1816711.html

September 8: Reports and analysis on the 10-th anniversary of the blast of the building on the Gurjanova street in Moscow. O.Vakhonitcheva reporting including Q&A with witnesses. 08.09.2009
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1817784.html

September 8: Reports and analysis on the 10-th anniversary of the blast of the building on the Gurjanova street in Moscow. O.Kusov report including Q&A with witnesses.

September 8: Archive report from the place of the blast of the building on the Gurjanova street in Moscow. M.Shakirov.

“Facets of Time” talk show.
September 4: 10-years from the blasts in the Russian cities: questions remained. Host – V.Kara-Murza. Guests – M.Trepashkin, independent investigator of the blasts in the Moscow buildings in 1999, V.Borshyov – member of the parliamentary investigative commission in 2002-2003, V.Bukovsky – prominent Soviet dissident and human rights activist, L.Ponomaryov – prominent Russian human rights activist.
http://origin.svobodanews.ru/content/transcript/1815530.html

September 7: Extracts from Scott Anderson’s article “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise To Power” are available on the Russian RFERL website (with a lot of reader’s comments).
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1816437.html

Several other reports providing a comprehensive look into the unexplained bombings ten years ago have been or will also be broadcast by the Russian Service, including reporting on the blasts in Moscow (13.09.2009) and in Volgodonsk (16.09.2009). All the memorial events will be covered by reports, analysis, internet journalism, commentaries, blogging and so on. The Service is also covering the public campaign in support of the Anderson’s article in Russian blogosphere (rubric “Webtalks” in “Time of Liberty”, planned 09.09.2009)

Best, Martins
————————
Martins Zvaners
RFE/RL, Inc.
tel: 202.457.6948
mob: 202.841.7712
http://www.rferl.org

“Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise To Power” by veteran investigative reporter Scott Anderson appears in the current U.S. issue of “GQ.” U.S. public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) reported that Condé Nast prohibited republishing of the article in any of its magazines in Russia and in other countries. According to NPR, Condé Nast also prevented the article from being posted on the “GQ” website in the U.S. The article deals with a series of bombings at apartment buildings that killed hundreds of people in Russia in 1999.

Scott Anderson relied on information from Mikhail Trepashkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who investigated the bombings. Trepashkin suggests a possible link between the bombings and Russian officials who were interested in increasing Mr. Putin’s powers in running the country. Russian officials have always denied these charges as a complete fabrication.

According to media freedom advocates, Condé Nast executives may have been afraid what would hapen to their business interests and their employees in Russia if they had allowed the article to be published in Russian.

Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, said that unsolved killings of many Russian journalists and a climate of fear among media professionals have resulted in self-censorship in Russia on a mass scale. “It is unfortunate but not surprising,” Lipien said, “that faced with intimidation by the secret police and killings of journalists by unknown assailants, even Western-owned and funded publications and institutions are practicing self-censorship in Mr. Putin’s Russia.” Ted Lipien was formerly acting associate director at the Voice of America (VOA). FreeMediaOnline.org publishes Russian-language news analysis website, ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us.

In past years, U.S.-government-funded radio stations Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) would have provided quick translations of newsworthy articles which were censored in Russia. Their funding, however, has been greatly reduced in recent years by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a Federal agency managed by a group of bipartisan political appointees, who used the savings to pay for controversial radio and television projects in the Middle East ordered by the Bush Administration.

Independent studies and surveys found these projects, such as Alhurra Television, to be both ineffective in attracting a wider audience and journalistically substandard. One such study conducted by The University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School determined that Alhurra TV has been a failure. The BBG tried to keep the Center on Public Diplomacy report secret but was eventually forced by Congressional and media criticism to make it available on its website.(http://www.bbg.gov/reports/others/uscreport.pdf)

In one of its most controversial moves, the BBG had terminated VOA radio programs to Russia in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia over a territorial dispute. Some of the BBG members and their consultants have been involved in private business deals in Russia.

The Voice of America Russian and VOA English websites did not report on the “GQ” censorship story as of Saturday evening, Sept. 05, Washington D.C. time. After a series of BBG-ordered budget and personnel cuts, the VOA Russian Service operates with only a skeleton staff, especially on weekends.

Another U.S. taxpayer-funded and BBG-managed international broadcasting station, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), had a comprehensive homepage article on this story on its English-language website, Controversial Decision By U.S. Publisher Sparks Debate On Free Speech, Censorship. But RFE/RL’s Радио Свобода (Radio Liberty) Russian-language website – svobodanews.ru – which attracts most of the Internet traffic for RFE/RL in Russia, did not report on the “GQ” controversy as of Saturday. Radio Liberty receives more funding from the BBG than the VOA Russian Service and keeps news bureaus in Russia with a large staff of local reporters. FreeMediaOnline.org reported that BBG-hired private consultants were putting pressure on Radio Liberty editors to make their radio and web content less politically controversial and more appealing to pro-Putin and anti-Western Russians. VOA website had stories on the 2009 US Open tennis matches and Labor Day celebrations but nothing on censorship at the Russian edition of “GQ.”

According to FreeMediaOnline.org media analysts, the BBG’s concern for the safety of their employees in Russia may have also contributed to self-censorship at Radio Liberty. Ted Lipien of FreeMediaOnline.org said that he’s encouraged by private Internet journalists trying to publicize this story but sees limited coverage by U.S.-taxpayer funded international broadcasters managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors as an inadequate response to the serious threats to media freedom in Russia.

Read this report on TedLipien.com>>

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FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Media analysis by Ted Lipien, August 21, 2009, San Francisco — A title of a recent report on the Voice of America Russian Service website caught my attention: “Сговор Сталина с Гитлером – «единственное средство самообороны»?” “Stalin’s Pact with Hitler – «The Only Means of Self-Defense»?”

The story posted in Russian was the VOA Russian Service translation of the English Service report from Moscow by Jonas Bernstein. When I checked the original English-language report, the title was different: “Russia Defends Stalin’s Deal with Hitler.” It was a well-written, objective and comprehensive story how the current leadership and nationalist extremists in Russia are trying to rewrite history by defending Stalin’s secret deal with Hitler that led to the start of World War II.

In the secret documents signed in Moscow by their foreign ministers, Hitler and Stalin had agreed to divide Poland and give the Soviet Union control of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and parts of Finland and Romania. Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, and the attack by the Red Army followed on September 17.

The difference between the Russian and the English title of the VOA report seemed minor but could have a significant impact on an audience in Russia and presumably was chosen with some deliberation. “Russia Defends Stalin’s Deal with Hitler” suggests a neutral perspective. “Stalin’s Pact with Hitler – «The Only Means of Self-Defense»?” — a question asked on behalf of a U.S. Government-funded broadcasting station — gives a subtle measure of legitimacy to the Kremlin’s defense of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, even if the words «The Only Means of Self-Defense» are in quotes followed by a question mark. Behind the title of the VOA story on the Russian Service website was the statement of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, issued on August 17, saying it had declassified documents showing that the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet Union’s “only available means of self-defense.”

While the VOA report itself does not in any way support the assertion that Stalin had no other choice but to become Hitler’s accomplice in attacking Poland and occupying other countries — in fact, it quotes extensively from those who hold the opposite view — the title used by VOA’s Russian Service shows that the Kremlin’s efforts to rewrite history are achieving at least some success, and not only among nationalists in Russia.

There may also be an additional explanation why an editor in Washington chose to use a title for the audience in Russia that is both provocative and seems to cater to the prejudices of post-communists and nationalists.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan Federal agency which manages VOA, has been pressuring the Russian Service journalists to increase their audience ratings, while at the same time it has been cutting their budget to pay for broadcasting initiatives in the Middle East and other projects awarded to private contractors. In 2008, the BBG had terminated all on-air VOA Russian-language radio programs, just 12 days before Russia launched a major military attack on the Republic of Georgia over a territorial dispute. (Later, the BBG had also eliminated on-air VOA Russian television news programs and forced the Russian Service to rely solely on the Internet for program delivery. VOA websites were completely crippled by a cyber attack for at least two full days during President Obama’s recent official visit to Russia. One short radio rebroadcast in Moscow was reinstituted by the BBG, but only after strong protests from VOA journalists and media freedom advocates.)

Blaming the BBG for editorial mistakes in how VOA journalists describe the history of World War II may seem far-fetched, but another BBG-managed broadcaster, Alhurra Television, caused a major scandal and drew anger of many members of Congress by airing extensive statements from Holocaust deniers. It was an apparent effort to make Alhurra programs more acceptable to those in the Middle East who do not believe the Holocaust is a historical fact. With its programming philosophy set by BBG members, their private sector consultants and neoconservatives in the Bush Administration, Alhurra has not managed to attract a large number of viewers. BBG policies had an equally disastrous impact on VOA’s Russian Service. Largely as a result of the BBG-imposed program cuts, VOA’s audience reach in Russia has declined 98% and is now estimated at only about 0.2% annually.

VOA Russian Service journalists are under enormous pressure to expand their Internet audience, which may also explain why they chose this particular title for the news story about the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. Never mind that it’s almost like asking whether Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union or the Holocaust were also the only means of self-defense. After all, the Nazis claimed they were. Reporting about history at the VOA Russian Service has not been easy under the BBG’s “marry the mission to the market” programming philosophy.

But the Kremlin’s Foreign Intelligence Service has some reasons to cheer that their efforts to rehabilitate Stalin are having an impact. Even if it is only a title for a news story from the U.S. taxpayer-funded Voice of America, at least they managed to raise their defense of the Soviet dictator to a legitimate question.

Voice of America report from Moscow

Russia Defends Stalin’s Deal with Hitler
By Jonas Bernstein
Moscow
20 August 2009

Sunday, August 23, marks the 70th anniversary of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – the non-aggression treaty signed in 1939 by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The pact included a secret protocol dividing Eastern and Central Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. Days after it was signed, first German and then Soviet forces invaded Poland.

The anniversary’s approach has sparked a debate in Europe. Western governments condemn Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin as two equally murderous variants of totalitarianism. The Russian government calls that comparison a “distortion” of history.

On August 17, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service issued a statement saying it had declassified documents showing that the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet Union’s “only available means of self-defense.”

The spy agency’s demarche was just the latest in a series of Russian government statements that critics say appear to defend Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and justify actions he took shortly before and during World War II.

In early May, Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu introduced legislation in parliament that would make it a crime to deny the Soviet victory in World War II.

Later in May, President Dmitri Medvedev issued a decree setting up a presidential commission to counter what he called attempts to “falsify history.”

At a meeting in early July, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe passed a resolution designating August 23 – the anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – as a day of remembrance for the victims of both Stalinism and Nazism.

Russian delegates to the European security body walked out of the meeting, in protest. Russia’s Foreign Ministry denounced the OSCE resolution as “an attempt to distort history with political goals,” while Russia’s parliament called it a “direct insult to the memory of millions” of Soviet soldiers who, in the words of the parliament, “gave their lives for the freedom of Europe from the fascist yoke.”

Former independent Russian parliament Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov says what he calls the “official” Russian position on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is “extremely strange.”

Ryzhkov asks why today’s Russia, which has a democratic constitution and new democratic legitimacy, should justify the division of Europe between Hitler and Stalin.

He says that this view is now included in Russian history text books and has caused “enormous moral damage” to Russia’s reputation, particularly in the countries of Eastern Europe that were the main victims of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Ryzhkov says the only explanation for the Russian leadership’s position on the issue is what he calls “sympathy for Stalin.”

Public opinion surveys suggest many ordinary Russians share at least some of their government’s views.

A poll conducted by the state-run VTsIOM agency, following the OSCE resolution condemning Stalinism and Nazism, found that 53 percent of the respondents across Russia viewed it negatively, while 11 percent viewed it positively and 21 percent viewed it neutrally. In addition, 59 percent of those polled said the resolution was aimed at undermining Russia’s authority in the world and diminishing its contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Dmitry Furman of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Europe calls the presidential commission to counter what it deems historical falsification an “idiotic undertaking” and a “very bad idea.” He also says Stalin’s government killed as many, or even more people than Hitler’s.

But, given the suffering Russians endured after Hitler turned on Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, Furman says it is natural that many resist equating Stalinism and Nazism.

Furman says it is “very difficult psychologically” for Russians to put what they see as their “victors” in the Great Patriotic War, as they call World War II, on the same level with the vanquished Nazis.

Voice of America Report As Posted on the Russian Service Website

Сговор Сталина с Гитлером – «единственное средство самообороны»?

В воскресенье 23 августа исполняется 70 лет со дня заключения Пакта Молотова-Риббентропа. Речь идет о договоре о ненападении, подписанном в Москве народным комиссаром иностранных дел СССР Вячеславом Молотовым и министром иностранных дел Германии Иоахимом фон Риббентропом. К пакту был приложен секретный протокол о разделе Восточной и Центральной Европы на сферы влияния Советского Союза и нацистской Германии. Через неделю германский вермахт вторгся в Польшу с запада, а две недели спустя в Польшу вторглась с востока Красная армия.

Приближение годовщины пакта вызывает острые дискуссии. Западные правительства осуждают Гитлера и Сталина как вождей двух одинаково преступных форм тоталитаризма. Москва именует подобные сравнения «искажением» истории.

17 августа нынешнего года Служба внешней разведки РФ известила о рассекречивании документов 70-летней давности, призванных доказать, что заключение Пакта Молотова-Риббентропа было для СССР «единственным средством самообороны». Критики расценивают этот демарш российского разведывательного ведомства как очередной шаг Кремля, направленный на реабилитацию Сталина и оправдание его действий накануне и во время второй мировой войны.

В мае российский министр по чрезвычайным ситуациям Сергей Шойгу внес в Госдуму законопроект об уголовном наказании за отрицание победы СССР во второй мировой войне. Чуть позже президент Дмитрий Медведев учредил комиссию по борьбе с «фальсификацией истории».

В июне Организация по безопасности и сотрудничеству в Европе приняла резолюцию, объявляющую 23 августа днем памяти жертв сталинизма и нацизма. Российская делегация в знак протеста покинула заседание ОБСЕ. МИД РФ назвал резолюцию «попыткой исказить историю в политических целях», а Дума сочла ее «прямым оскорблением памяти миллионов» советских солдат, «отдавших жизнь за освобождение Европы от фашистского ига».

Существуют, однако, и другие мнения. По словам независимого российского парламентария Владимира Рыжкова «официальная» российская позиция в оценке пакта Молотова-Риббентропа звучит «крайне странно». Почему сегодняшняя Россия, имеющая демократическую конституцию, должна защищать раздел Европы между Сталиным и Гитлером, спрашивает он?

Как указывает Рыжков, подобные суждения включены в учебники, что наносит «огромный моральный ущерб» репутации России, особенно в странах Восточной Европы, ставших главными жертвами Пакта Молотова-Риббентропа. Единственным объяснением позиции российского руководства депутат Госдумы считает возможную «симпатию к Сталину».

Опросы показывают, что многие рядовые россияне разделяют, по крайней мере, некоторые оценки Кремля. Опрос, проведенный государственным агентством ВЦИОМ после принятия резолюции ОБСЕ, выявил, что 53% респондентов относятся к ней негативно, 11% – позитивно, а 21% – нейтрально. Кроме того, 59% опрошенных выразили убеждение, что резолюция нацелена на подрыв авторитета России в мире и преуменьшение ее вклада в разгром фашистской Германии.

Сотрудник Института Европы РАН Дмитрий Фурман назвал президентскую комиссию по борьбе с фальсификацией истории «идиотским мероприятием». По его словам при Сталине было убито не меньше, а, может быть, и больше людей, чем при Гитлере. Однако, учитывая страдания, перенесенные народами Советского Союза в годы гитлеровской оккупации, многим россиянам психологически трудно поставить себя – победителей в Великой Отечественной войне – на одну доску с побежденными фашистами.

FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, August 18, 2009, San Francisco — Ever since the United States Information Agency (USIA) was dismantled in a foolish post-Cold War cost-cutting move, the U.S. State Department and American diplomats abroad have not been able to present a coherent message to foreign audiences quickly and effectively. The latest example is the lame U.S. public response to the terrorist attack in Ingushetia — no phone call from President Obama to President Medvedev, just a short written statement which was not easily available. There was no statement from Secretary Clinton.

Even though the lack of a proper U.S. response was not deliberate and can be blamed on the distraction with the health care reform and just plain bureaucratic incompetence, the Russian leaders and the Russian public have a reason to wonder how badly the Obama Administration wants Russia’s support in combating terrorism and restraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Americans, on the other hand, should be concerned how professional and how effective is America’s public diplomacy, which aims to inform and influence public opinion abroad to make it more sympathetic to U.S. interests. The ultimate aim is to make America safer by strengthening and promoting security and democracy worldwide. Yet, few within the government bureaucracy in Washington seem to grasp that ineffective public diplomacy threatens America’s safety.

Prior to 1999, a cadre of foreign service officers assigned to USIA in Washington and abroad had been responsible for crafting and coordinating U.S. responses to major international and domestic news events. Overall, they did a good job in helping to win the Cold War.

During that period USIA operated separately of the State Department but was integrated into the foreign policy establishment in Washington and at U.S. embassies abroad. USIA officers knew their foreign audiences, specialized in working with local media, and made sure that whatever message the U.S. was trying to send was presented quickly and credibly using the most modern and efficient channels of communication available at the time.

Many of these skills have now been lost. The case in point is the U.S. reaction to the latest terrorist attack in Russia that killed and wounded many innocent civilians. While the White House did issue a short statement of condolences from President Obama, the statement was not posted immediately on the White House or the State Department websites, where it would have been accessible to Russian media and individual web users. There was no official photograph or video to accompany the statement. It was not translated into Russian except in a brief news item posted with some delay on the Voice of America (VOA) Russian Service website. But after recent program cuts by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages U.S. international broadcasting, VOA’s estimated annual reach in Russia through the Internet is only about 0.2%.

VOA website is better designed and more frequently updated than the State Department websites but is still far from perfect. Another U.S.-funded broadcaster, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has a superior Russian news website — more in terms of design than content — but it does not specialize in American news and faces other problems, such as American management’s discrimination against foreign-born journalists and intimidation of its reporters in Russia by the Kremlin’s secret police.

There was no mention Monday of the terrorist attack or the U.S. reaction to it on the official State Department Blog, the U.S. Embassy Moscow website or the Open America website created by the Embassy in Moscow to communicate with the Russian public. There was also nothing posted about this tragic incident on the Russian-language America.gov website edited in Washington by the State Department’s public diplomacy team. This website is notoriously late in posting news-related U.S. government statements and articles. Not that the web team at the White House has done a much better job as far as Russia is concerned. It took the White House 10 days to post a video from President Obama’s trip to Russia.

The video, produced in the style of early Cold War propaganda newsreels, was already overtaken by other events when it was posted ten days after President Obama’s visit, and there was no Russian translation to accompany the images. It was not posted on the U.S. Embassy Moscow website.

Evgeny Morozov, originally from Belarus, who is a fellow at the Open Society Institute in New York, has some very interesting insights about new media and public diplomacy. He wrote in Foreign Policy that “watching American diplomats embrace new media for the purposes of public diplomacy has been a very awkward experience (not as painful as watching my 82-year-old grandpa learn how to use Skype, but at times it has come pretty close). By shifting their outreach campaigns to Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, the government may be trying to do the impossible, i.e. to plant carefully worded and controlled messages on platforms that sprang up precisely to avoid the kind of influence that the State Department seeks to exert via them.”

His last point is certainly worth pondering. The U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, a career diplomat who speaks fluent Russian, has made good attempts to communicate directly with the Russian people through radio and television interviews, but the Kremlin controls access to those television and radio networks which enjoy the highest ratings because of their nation-wide coverage. Ambassador Beyrle also has his own blog, in which he makes use of video and his Russian-language skills. Compared to the official State Department Blog, which has little useful information and even less analysis, in addition to relying heavily on AP images — which are not in public domain — his blog is far more informative and focused.

Whether or not Evgeny Morozov is right that the benefits of the Internet for official public diplomacy are to some degree utopian, U.S. taxpayers deserve that their money used for their government’s efforts of communicating with foreign audiences be wisely spent. Even if U.S. diplomats are ill-equipped to take advantage of the new social media, they can still use the Internet to present and explain foreign policy questions.

But U.S. Embassy and State Department websites and blogs are not only poorly designed, they are also infrequently updated and rarely offer public domain photographs and other useful materials. Foreign journalists cannot rely on them for timely and objective information, in-depth analysis, and free resources, such as ready-for-posting photo images and broadcast quality video and audio.

They can also no longer rely for the same on the Voice of America. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, which was created when USIA was dismantled, eliminated VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia last summer. The BBG denied VOA resources to serve as a multimedia source of comprehensive information about U.S-Russian relations and American society and did not protect the VOA website from cyber attacks. During President Obama’s official visit to Moscow, the VOA website was out of commission for at least two full days.

Instead of demanding that the Russian security services stop threatening radio and TV stations using VOA news programs and that the Russian authorities should treat VOA the same way the Russian state broadcasters Radio Russia and Russia Today TV are treated in the U.S., where they are free to place their programs on cable and individual stations, the BBG responded to the secret police intimidation by eliminating on-air VOA radio and TV broadcasts. An NGO website, GovoritAmerika.us, launched in 2008, edited by volunteers and not connected with the U.S. government, offers now the only one-source access with direct links to both U.S. government and non-government U.S.-Russia-related news materials, but the website receives no public funding, which prevents it from expanding its coverage.

Even with currently available resources, the Obama Administration could have done a much better job in communicating its sympathy and support for the Russian people in the aftermath of the latest deadly terrorist attack if it had mobilized its public diplomacy team. If the Obama White House and the State Department had decided on their public diplomacy message and given a proper briefing for Vice President Biden, it might have helped him avoid making comments in the Wall Street Journal interview suggesting that Russia is a second-rate country — comments that the Russians found highly insulting, and rightly so — while at the same time the Russian leadership has taken a number of highly provocative steps, vis-a-vis the U.S. and Russia’s nearest neighbors, which suggest that their interest in President Obama’s call for a “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations is not nearly as strong as his. (Vice President Biden’s staff has been much better in updating White House website stories and posting photographs on his trips abroad than President Obama’s public affairs team, which shows the importance of foreign policy and public diplomacy experience some of them acquired while working in the U.S. Senate.)

Not all of Vice President Biden’s comments were ill-advised from the public diplomacy perspective. Robert Amsterdam, an international lawyer who represents Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an imprisoned political foe of Prime Minister Putin, wrote in a recent article in the Huffington Post that by “creating manageable confrontations, especially with Europe, the United States, and the former Soviet states, the Kremlin is attempting to govern outwardly, diminishing pressures for greater accountability in their domestic shortcomings, and helping to stir up nationalism and support for the regime.” Under these circumstances, communicating with the Kremlin and the Russian public requires a great deal of sophistication.

All of this calls for a quick overhaul of U.S. public diplomacy. The State Department has a new public diplomacy chief, Under Secretary Judith McHale — her predecessor, James K. Glassman, appointed by the Bush White House, terminated VOA Russian radio and TV in his previous position as the BBG chairman — but there still is no Obama Administration plan and no structure to that would help the U.S. to respond with a coherent and well-delivered message to such developments as the recent terrorist attack in Russia, the Kremlin’s threats against Georgia and Ukraine, or the Russian media’s reaction to Vice President Biden’s Wall Street Journal interview.

Concerned by these shortcomings, several members of Congress, including Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), are trying to revive support and funding for professionally conducted U.S. public diplomacy. Senator Lugar introduced S. Res. 49 on February 13, 2009, expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the importance of public diplomacy. He also wrote an oped for ForeignPolicy.com on this topic. Another U.S. Senator, Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), has called for abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors. He introduced legislation that would establish the National Center for Strategic Communications, an agency similar to the now defunct U.S. Information Agency. Senator Patrick Leahy (D -Vermont) has tried to stop the BBG from eliminating U.S. broadcasts in foreign languages but his efforts have been ignored by most of the Board members and their executive staff. Only one BBG member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum — the only journalist serving on the Board — opposed cuts in U.S.-funded broadcasting to Russia and other media-at-risk countries.

Whether these and other calls for reforming U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting will be answered and result in meaningful legislative changes will depend on the cooperation from the Obama White House. New media, international broadcasting, and public diplomacy cannot solve all the problems the U.S. is facing abroad, but a little bit of expertise in these areas and good management can be very helpful. Otherwise, pro-democracy activists and authoritarian regimes will continue to wonder what the Obama Administration wants and what it can do. It would help if the Administration could agree on what that message should be and how it should be delivered.

The Russians may conveniently assume that Vice President Biden’s unfortunate comments about their country’s second-rate status were deliberate, and may think the same about the non-response in Washington to the terrorist attack in Ingushetia. But as someone who has observed the U.S. foreign policy establishment first-hand, I can say that most of it can be blamed on carelessness, incompetence, and the simple fact that most of the State Department and U.S. diplomats based abroad are on vacation in August. But in addition to that, the structural problems of U.S. public diplomacy are real and demand immediate attention from the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages VOA, stopped all on-air Voice of America radio and television broadcasts in Russian just 12 days prior to the Russian military attack on Georgia last summer. Largely as a result of this action, VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia dropped by 98% to an estimated level of just 0.2%, which was the prior reach of VOA in Russia on the Internet.

VOA Capital Hill correspondent Dan Robinson reported that “Lawmakers are concerned about obstacles in places like China, Iran and Russia to the free flow of information and independent reporting. The role U.S. government-funded broadcasters play in overcoming these barriers was the main focus of a Europe subcommittee hearing.

Members of Congress have condemned Iranian government restrictions on the Internet, and criticized steps by the Chinese government to tighten surveillance of Internet traffic, and government pressure on radio, television and print outlets in Russia.

Referring to the impact of technology amid post-election turmoil in Iran, the panel chairman Democrat Robert Wexler said VOA and RFE/RL play a crucial role as ’smart power tools’ as the U.S. faces foreign policy challenges, anti-Americanism, and efforts by governments to suppress media.” more

Voice of America director Danford Austin:

“In Russia, we are now a multi-media web-based service produced for a country where Internet usage is growing rapidly,” said Danforth Austin. “At a very critical juncture in U.S.-Russia relations, this strategy allows audiences to increase their understanding of American policies, politics and culture and American views of Russia. It also frankly galvanizes conversation among its audience through utilization of these so-called Web 2.0 tools.” more

The anecdotal and largely meaningless statistics for Russia, which the VOA director selected for presentation to Congress, were designed to draw attention away from the real issues: how many Russians have access to the VOA website in Russia (about 0.2% annually); the lack of any significant interaction by the small number of VOA site visitors; the departure of talented TV and radio journalists; inability to take advantage of TV and radio broadcasting in response to changes in U.S.-Russian relations; the lack of any significant impact on the political discussion and media scene in Russia. VOA Capitol Hill correspondent Dan Robinson:

“Critics say the decision by the non-partisan Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) which oversees U.S. international broadcasting to end Russian-language radio and television broadcasts in favor of an Internet-focused approach damaged efforts to maintain the flow of news to people in the country.”

VOA director offered a rather lengthy and somewhat confusing explanation of the shutdown of the VOA website during President Obama’s visit to Russia:

“The Denial of Service (DoS) cyber-attack against the VOA web site on July 5 was part of a wide scale attack that targeted Korean and US government sites, financial sites, and some news sites. VOA’s core computer systems were never affected and there was no loss of any agency information technology asset. The voanews.com web site is hosted off-site, and all public traffic to it was affected, most severely from the Asia-North America axis, with local access problems elsewhere, such as within Russia. The attack prevented many users from reaching the site (and all the other targeted sites) for several hours until Korea, the suspected source of the attacks, was cut-off by many of the Internet Service Providers (ISP). As the suspect machines were quarantined by Korean ISPs and others, the attacks slowed and Korea access was re-established. VOA traffic from Asia since has reached near normal levels and non-Asian traffic is completely back to normal levels. Our production systems are behind firewalls and intrusion detection systems, which functioned well, and both servers and desktop machines are updated with security patches at least once per day. Working with our web distribution contractors, we now have predictive systems in place that can isolate the source of DoS attacks much more promptly.”

In simple words, the testimony can be reduced to a few facts: despite warnings from VOA journalists, members of Congress, and media freedom organizations like FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG ended all VOA radio and TV Russian-language broadcasts to Russia last summer opting for the Internet-only program delivery strategy. Shortly after VOA radio in Russian went of the air, Russian troops attacked Georgia. The BBG refused urgent appeals from VOA journalists to resume these broadcasts. Within a relatively short period, VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia dropped by about 98%, and is now well below 1%. The BBG failed to provide security for the VOA website. The VOA website was unavailable in Russia during President Obama’s visit not just on June 05 but for at least two full days.

The Russian media largely ignored President Obama’s major speech to the graduates of the New Economic School in Moscow, in which he defended democratic institutions and media freedom while calling for bringing an end to the Cold War mentality in US-Russian relations. VOA was both silent and invisible in Russia during the speech. And even if its website had not been blocked, the lead U.S. international broadcaster no longer has the capability to engage with the Russian media in serious interactive TV and radio broadcast journalism. The Obama White House, which still lacks a public diplomacy team and direction, did not do much better. It released a video promoting the speech 10 days after it was delivered. The video had not been translated into Russian.

With VOA Left Voiceless, Obama Fails to Reach Russian Public

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

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

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

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

Posted by Katherine Brandon

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the highlights of the President’s trip to Moscow earlier this month. See images of his trip, and listen to the President speak at the New Economic School. You can read the whole speech here.

END OF WHITE HOUSE MATERIAL

White House Video From Russia Released 10 Days Late, Without Russian Translation, And A Message Overtaken By Events

Pro-democracy intellectuals in Russia and political leaders from the former Soviet block countries, who had lived under communism and were exposed to communist propaganda, would probably see the White House video as dangerously naive.

FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, July 17, 2009, San Francisco — The White House posted on its website today carefully produced video highlights from the President’s visit to Russia, exactly ten days after Barack Obama delivered a major speech on the future of U.S.-Russian relations. The address to the graduates of the New Economic School, which Natalia Bubnova, a public affairs specialist at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, described as a “silent speech,” was not carried live by the Kremlin-controlled national television networks and received relatively little media coverage in Russia, where journalists are increasingly threatened by the Kremlin’s secret police and the local mafia of business and government leaders. Many Russian journalists have been murdered by unknown assailants, and the few remaining semi-independent media outlets practice self-censorship to protect themselves from official reprisals.

But if the White House video was designed to inform and inspire the Russian public about the President’s commitment to a new start in U.S.-Russian relations, it was not only released ten days too late to be of any news value to journalists and media consumers. It also came without a Russian translation, and its overly optimistic message presented in the style of old Soviet era propaganda films would have been inappropriate for the skeptical Russian audience. Barack Obama would have done much better in communicating his message of change to the Russian people if the White House handlers had arranged during his visit for a series of extensive live interviews with audience participation on national TV networks in Russia and had insisted that his speech also be carried live on the same television channels, which are controlled by the Kremlin. When it comes to overcoming media control in Russia, some of the Cold War diplomatic tactics are still needed.

The limited media outreach during the Moscow visit was in sharp contrast with the White House public relations effort to publicize the President’s earlier speech in Cairo, Egypt, in which Barack Obama called for a new beginning in America’s relationship with Muslim communities around the world. The Cairo speech was released by the White House in Arabic and other foreign languages, both in text and in video, as soon as it was delivered. The media blitz after the Cairo speech seems to have been, however, a one-time effort, which the Obama Administration seems not capable of sustaining due to a severe shortage of experienced public diplomacy and media specialists.

Other than the lack of proper structures and resources, the public diplomacy experts at the White House and the State Department also seem to have some difficulty realizing that their focus should be on providing timely and objective information in foreign languages to local media outlets and media consumers rather than taking full ten days to produce a short upbeat video, as the one released today, that looks and sounds much more like a government-generated propaganda film of World War II and Cold War vintage. Had the video been released immediately after the speech, Russian journalists may have been able at least to take advantage of its outstanding visual composition and provide an appropriate text and translation. Ten days later, in its English-language version, it is largely unusable. Its release now is also counterproductive, as its core message has been overtaken by recent events in Russia and the region.

Normally, the Voice of America (VOA), the U.S. government-funded international broadcaster, would have carried live a major presidential speech in Moscow and provided a Russian translation. VOA would have also offered live commentaries by independent U.S. experts. These would be broadcast on satellite radio and television from VOA studios in Washington, D.C. Some of the programs might have also been replayed live or broadcast later on those stations in Russia that would still be willing to defy the Russian secret police and maintain an affiliate relationship with VOA. The VOA Russian broadcast would have also been transmitted on short-wave radio frequencies, which cover great distances and are not as easy to jam as a single website, although they attract a very limited number of listeners unless there is a major crisis and a government blockade or heavy censorship of all other media.

Unfortunately, the Federal agency in charge of the Voice of America, the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), terminated in 2008 all live VOA Russian-language radio and television programs, both high-tech satellite and low-tech short-wave, just 12 days before Russia’s sudden military attack on the Republic of Georgia over a territorial dispute. Since then, the BBG has refused urgent pleas from VOA journalists to resume these broadcasts as a response to the last summer’s Russian-Georgian war and the still deteriorating human rights and media situation in Russia.

The Voice of America Russian Service was left only with a poorly-designed and unprotected website and a 30 minute Monday through Friday pre-recorded radio segment on a weak AM station in Moscow, which was restored only after protests from media freedom advocates over a period of many months. To make things much worse, during Barack Obama’s historic first presidential visit to Russia, the Voice of America website went blank for at least two full days as a result of a suspected North Korean cyber attack. The website was back online after President Obama left Russia, but even then the audio program on the web was not updated for over a week. The BBG/VOA web team was not aware of the problem for several days. Instead of a recording of President Obama’s speech with a Russian translation, visitors to the VOA website were offered a week-old audio newscast. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), another U.S. taxpayer-funded international broadcaster also managed by the BBG, did cover the Obama visit, but RFE/RL is based in Prague, the Czech Republic, and in Moscow, and its Russian speaking reporters do not specialize in analyzing U.S. foreign policy from an American perspective. RFE/RL reporters based in Russia are also vulnerable to threats from the Russian secret police.

Even if the Voice of America website were available during President Obama’s visit to Russia, it would not have included full texts in Russian, video, and audio of all the presidential speeches delivered in Moscow. BBG officials responsible for terminating live VOA Russian radio and TV programs had also directed the Russian Service to focus their energies on producing short and entertaining news stories for the web in order to drive more visitors to the VOA website.

English and Russian texts of most of President Obama’s speeches in Moscow — but not audio or video files — were posted rather quickly on the State Department’s news and information website, America.gov, and on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Summaries of President Obama’s speeches and links to full texts were also available on GovoritAmerika.us, a Russian-language news analysis website created by volunteers associated with the San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit FreeMediaOnline.org. Some of them are former VOA journalists who are concerned about media censorship in Russia and the restrictions imposed by the BBG on the Voice of America Russian broadcasts.

One of the drawbacks of waiting ten days to produce a video from a presidential trip is that new events can quickly overtake the video’s message. The same is true for producing a video that is much more oriented toward promoting a particular propaganda theme rather than offering factual information in a timely manner.

The White House video was heavily focused on hailing a new beginning in the bilateral relationship between Washington and Moscow and making a clean break with the Cold War models. Unfortunately for the public relations specialists who produced it, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev directly challenged their theme and President Obama when he visited South Ossetia earlier this week and said that Moscow would continue to back the breakaway Georgian region, which Russia recognized as independent despite strong objections from the United States and most other nations. Then, as a further sign that the situation in Russia was not moving in the direction desired by the Obama Administration, a respected human rights activist, Natalya Estemirova, was abducted and brutally murdered in Chechnya. Both the U.S. State Department spokesman and the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, have condemned the murder. The White House has also condemned the killing, calling it “especially shocking” that it happened a week after President Barack Obama met with activists, including those from the human rights group Memorial, of which Ms. Estemirova was a member.

Because of these events in Russia, this may have not been the best time to release the already much outdated video. Also, a group of pro-American intellectuals and political leaders from former Central and East European countries, including former Polish president Lech Walesa and former Czech president Waclav Havel, has just published an open letter to the Obama Administration, warning President Obama of Russia’s return to what they call a “revisionist power pursuing a 19th century agenda with 21st century tactics.” The letter refers to “nervousness in our capitals” over energy blockades, media manipulation and other methods Russia has used to undermine the region’s ties with Western Europe and the United States.

The White House media team may deserve some credit for much more timely postings of official photographs, texts of presidential speeches and at least some videos during President Obama’s first visit to Moscow. After his initial meeting in London with President Medvedev in April 2009, the official photograph of the two presidents was not made available on the White House website for several days. The website was only infrequently updated during the entire U.S. presidential trip to Europe last April.

President Obama has a highly talented team of photographers and web designers lead by Pete Souza, but his public affairs and public diplomacy advisors seem to be lacking critical journalistic skills and are suffering from what could only be described as too much of a hero worship to be able to produce timely and credible materials for the media and news consumers. (They even put “hero” as part of the name for web images with President Obama, which anybody visiting the White House website can see by right-clicking on these photos in order to download and save them.)

These White House advisors, if they are indeed advising the president, clearly lack the journalistic, public diplomacy and foreign policy experience to find the right balance in describing and presenting his message to Russia and the rest of the world. They are, unfortunately, repeating the mistakes of the Bush White House by confusing U.S. domestic political campaign advertising with public diplomacy abroad. Pro-democracy intellectuals in Russia and political leaders from the former Soviet block countries, who had lived under communism and were exposed to communist propaganda, would probably see the White House video as dangerously naive.

Perhaps then, it’s not so bad after all that the video with the highlights of President Obama’s trip to Russia was released several days too late and without foreign language captions. Hopefully for the Obama Administration, it will not receive much publicity in the region formerly dominated by the Soviet Union and still feeling threatened by Russia’s autocratic leaders. If it does, it will only contribute to the nervousness about the U.S. policy and intentions.

About Ted Lipien

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

He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). The book, which describes Pope John Paul II’s views on feminism, also includes evidence of the importance of Western radio broadcasts during Karol Wojtyla’s life in communist-ruled Poland and in the first ten years of his papacy. The book also has references to the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by journalists covering the Polish pope.

About FreeMediaOnline.org

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

About GovoritAmerika.us

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

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

Прочитайте речь на русском языке.

ГоворитАмерика.us Всесторонний Анализ Новостей из США – Link to GovoritAmerika.us Home

View Photos in Full Screen

Выбор ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us. Вы можете скопировать и использовать эту статью. You can copy and use this report. Подписка на рассылку ГоворитАмерика.us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBG lacks strategic vision and fails to plan for emergencies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Ted Lipien

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

About FreeMediaOnline.org

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

About GovoritAmerika.us

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

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

VOA Internet Office Director Michael Messinger said visits to the agency’s website were down by about 40,000 a day. He said although difficult to pinpoint, the attack appears to have originated in South Korea. He said the attack has caused a “significant disruption” to the VOA servers.

Some VOA journalists suspect that the 40,000 figure appears as an attempt to vastly minimize the extent and the seriousness of the problem, considering that most Internet users around the world were not able to see the VOA website for a number of days. According to sources within VOA, officials in charge of the agency’s websites did not immediately inform their superiors, the oversight Board and other U.S. international broadcasting entities about the catastrophic Internet failure at the Voice of America.

A spokesman for the San Francisco-based media freedom organization, FreeMediaOnline.org, said that the inability of the Voice of America to reach Internet users over a number of days in countries like Iran, Russia and China represents a devastating flaw in U.S.-funded independent international journalism and public diplomacy. Ted Lipien, president and founder of FreeMediaOnline.org, said that the latest crisis exposed critical shortcomings in the policies of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, which manages VOA and was rated by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies.

In recent years, the BBG has come under severe criticism for eliminating radio broadcasts to a number of countries, including Russia, Ukraine and India. In 2008, the BBG adopted an Internet-only strategy for VOA in Russia, ignoring warnings members of Congress and media freedom organizations that such a strategy posed a national security risk and further undermined media freedom.

While other U.S. government agencies were also affected by the latest cyber attack, most managed to keep their websites operational or restored them quickly to full use. The VOA websites in English and in many other languages have been now largely unavailable for more than two days.

According to Ted Lipien, the Broadcasting Board of Governors has had a long record of major strategic blunders. In the summer of 2008, the BBG terminated all VOA radio and television broadcasts to Russia. The radio went silent just 12 days before Russia invaded parts of the Republic of Georgia in a territorial dispute. The then BBG chairman, James K. Glassman, who later became President Bush’s last Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, refused urgent pleas from VOA journalists to restore radio broadcasts to the war zone in Georgia and to Russia. He was supported by a senior Democratic BBG member, Edward E. Kaufman, a former Senate aide to Joe Biden who is now a U.S. senator from Delaware.

The BBG’s decision caused an unprecedented 98% drop in VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia. The Voice of America Russian website was largely unavailable during the last full day of President Obama’s visit to Russia during which he met with the Russian opposition leaders. The official Russian TV channels, which are controlled by the Kremlin, provided no live coverage or extensive reporting on President Obama’s comments on human rights and media freedom.

Commenting on the latest cyber attack against the Voice of America website, Ted Lipien of FreeMediaOnline.org said that the Internet plays a critical role in bringing information to countries under government censorship, but he added that the BBG made a serious mistake when it ended on-air VOA radio programs in Russian. “If North Korean hackers can shut down the VOA website, security services of other countries can easily do the same, especially in time of a major international crisis. It may be coincidence that the suspected North Korean cyber attack happened during President Obama’s historic visit to Moscow, but Internet users in Russia were effectively prevented from learning from the Voice of America about the U.S. president’s meeting with Russian opposition leaders. The democratic opposition in Russia criticizes President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, a former KGB spy, of stifling independent media,” Lipien said. He urged the Obama Administration to provide the Voice of America with funding to adopt a multimedia program delivery strategy to countries like Russia and to make its websites less vulnerable to cyber attacks in the future.

Ted Lipien is a journalist, media marketing expert and a former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

The Humpty Dumpty Strategic Plan at the Broadcasting Board of Governors

by The Federalist

Let us refresh our memories…

Last year, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) made the decision to eliminate all Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Russia. Not long afterward, Russia invaded the Georgian Republic in a dispute over border provinces. To this day, there are no direct VOA on-air radio broadcasts to all of Russia.

Not long after the initial uproar over this decision, senior VOA officials stopped by the VOA Russian Service to pompously declare that all of VOA would be like the Russian Service in five years…meaning that VOA would be reduced to a collection of Internet websites as part of the Broadcasting Board of Governors/the International Broadcasting Bureau’s glorious “strategic plan.”

Arrogant, pompous and stupid to a fault.

Since then, it has been determined, through BBG’s own research conducted by an independent contractor, that the audience in Russia for VOA programs has been drastically reduced as a result of taking radio and TV programs off the air.

On Wednesday, July 08, 2009 US Government officials announced that a major cyber attack was directed against Federal government websites and others, including those of major financial institutions and multimedia organizations like The Washington Post.

Lo and behold, sources have indicated that many – perhaps – all VOA websites were put out of commission for a substantial period of time. While other Federal agencies and news organizations were quickly able to fend off these cyber attacks, the Voice of America website was out of commission for hours and was still not working late Wednesday afternoon EST.

It is unclear who orchestrated these attacks, although speculation appears to be focused on North Korea.

Let’s speak plainly:

The people in charge of BBG, IBB and VOA represent for American public and taxpayers a dangerous combination of arrogance and incompetence. Those responsible for creating and embracing this porous strategic plan should be fired. Period. It is well known to the agency’s workforce just how inept and incompetent these people are. The seriousness of the problem can be seen in the results of the US Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) Federal Human Capital Survey. The agency (BBG) is dead last among comparable Federal agencies and has been hovering around the bottom for the past five years…seemingly content to be populated by a group of senior managers, protecting their big salaries and completely corrosive in their handling of critical government resources. Because the mission of US international broadcasting is all important at the time of terrorist threats and growing anti-Americanism in countries like Russia, this is a very serious lapse for US national security.

The shortcomings of the BBG strategic plan are painfully obvious. The officials running the agency choose to ignore the threat.

This threat itself is no mystery. The ability to disrupt strategic communications was aptly demonstrated by the Russian security services during the Kremlin’s conflict with the Georgian Republic.

This threat is so significant that both the outgoing Bush Administration and the incoming Obama Administration were both briefed on the subject and its possible consequences to communications systems as well as computer systems. These systems are integrated with various parts of US domestic infrastructure, including power plants, power grids, air traffic control systems and nearly anything that his heavily reliant upon computers.

Be assured that the executive staff of the BBG do not want the public to know just how badly they have mangled this aspect of the US international broadcasting operations. Their primary concern seems to be to protect their bloated salaries. It has been commonly said that the Voice of America and other BBG-managed broadcasting entities run in spite of the bungled decisionmaking of the senior management, but VOA journalists and IBB broadcasting engineers can only so much to limit the damage of the BBG’s Humpty Dumpty strategic plan.

It is reckless and irresponsible for a Federal agency to leave itself extremely vulnerable to these cyber attacks and not have a real strategic plan built on the redundancies found in the right combination of radio, television and the Internet.

To be certain, the self-aggrandizers of the BBG/IBB/VOA will try to make the argument that they are saving enormous sums of money by going all-Internet, all the time. On the other hand, since the decisions of these officials have caused substantial reductions in the audiences for these programs, to the extent that VOA no longer has a substantial audience penetration in places like Russia, the argument can then be turned around and the case made to close the agency altogether.

These cyber attacks seems to be beyond the comprehension of the less-than-competent self-promoters of the BBG/IBB. The hackers probe for weakness and vulnerabilities and they found them in the VOA website. They are precursors of worse things to come. And all the while, the senior IBB/VOA management appears to be sitting back hoping that no one will notice.

Well, we did.

And now that you know, it is incumbent upon the Obama administration to do some serious housecleaning of the BBG/IBB/VOA management structure.

Nothing less will do.

The Federalist
July 2009

Vienna, June 26 – Despite reports about the expansion of Internet use in Russia, more than half of that country’s urban residents over age 12 have never gone online, and more than a third have never used a computer, global figures which set Russia apart from Western countries but ones that conceal deep divisions within the Russian Federation in the electronic world.

Those are just some of the findings offered in a 144-page report released this week that was prepared by the Public Opinion Foundation on the basis of interviews with 34,000 people in 1920 cities and towns of the Russian Federation. The report itself is available at bd.fom.ru/pdf/int0309.pdf; for a summary, see lenta.ru/articles/2009/06/25/report/.

The Lenta.ru commentary suggested that when variations among various educational and regional groups in Western countries are reported, the Western press speaks “digital divides.” But these divides are so much deeper in Russia, the news agency says, that it is better to refer to them as a digital “gulf” or “abyss.”

Not only have 54 percent of Russia’s urban residents over 12 never gone online, but ten percent of this group say they have never heard of the Internet. Moreover, of those who are not going online now, a third of the population says that it has “neither the desire, nor the possibility” to do so. And only eight percent of those not online say they plan to be this year.

Equally striking are two other general findings: Thirty-six percent of the sample said they had never used a computer, but in contrast to the situation only a few years ago, those who do go online are more likely to do it at home rather than at work, something that reflects greater connectivity and probably affects how Russians use this medium.

While the survey found Internet use to be relatively high in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in the other parts of the country, the Public Opinion Foundation study found that penetration of this technology was relatively low, averaging only 11 percent or significantly less, although in this area too there were some interesting divides as well.

Perhaps the most intriguing is that more than a quarter – 28 percent – of those who go online in the Southern Federal District – which includes the North Caucasus — do so via their mobile telephones, a reflection of the shortage of landlines in that region but a pattern that makes the Internet potentially more important as a means of connecting people opposed to the regime.

Moreover, this finding is a classical example of the way in which those who participate in this and other technical worlds may skip a stage, going directly from snail mail to cell phones rather than through all the stages that the countries which pioneered the current communications revolution have gone through.

Another intriguing example of such a leap from one level of communications technology to a much more advanced one came this week with the announcement of a launch of an Internet TV service for the Finno-Ugric peoples, groups historically poorly served by native language television in the past. (www.raipon.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=131:-lr&catid=1:2009-03-11-15-49-27).

Half – 46 to 53 percent – of those who do use the Internet use it for e-mail and social networking, but what struck the researchers at the Public Opinion Foundation as important is that 53 percent of those going online said they did not express their own opinions, and 52 percent did they did not listen to the opinions of others expressed in Internet forums.

And in a finding that also divides Russians from many other peoples around the world, only 25 percent of Russians said that their lives would be significantly changed if they no longer had access to the World Wide Web, and nearly as large a share said that their lives would not be affected at all if they could no longer go online.

Such experiences and attitudes suggest that Russians are not as passionately affected by or committed to the Internet as many have assumed on the basis of uncritical extrapolations from American or West European experience where the Internet has been integrated into and plays a far larger role in the life and work of a larger part of the population.

And these Russian patterns also suggest both that Moscow would face far less opposition if they move, as the parliament of Kazakhstan did this week, to seriously restrict access to the web and that outsiders should not view the Internet as being as important a transforming force or influential player as all too many now do.

FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 27, 2009, San Francisco –  Friday, May 22, was the last day at the Voice of America (VOA) for Bill Skundrich, one of the most respected and popular U.S. radio and television journalists broadcasting to Russia.  He left VOA for a new job at the Department of Homeland Security.

Bill Skundrich’s colleagues describe him as an extraordinarily talented journalist and hard working manager who was holding the Russian Service together in one of the most difficult times in VOA’s history. They told FreemediaOnline.org that he was leaving his job at VOA with great deal of regret.

A native of Pittsburgh, Skundrich studied Russian language and literature in college. His mastery of the language led to his selection as a member of the U.S. debate team that went to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Later, he worked at VOA for 25 years occupying broadcasting and managerial positions. He produced programs for radio, television, and more recently also for the Internet. His colleagues describe him as a thoughtful and inspiring leader who was able to bring together people with opposing viewpoints to work on common goals.

Bill Skundrich is one of many talented journalists who have left their jobs at the broadcasting entities managed by the BBG, which in 2008 had terminated VOA Russian-language radio programs. The broadcasts went silent just 12 days before the Russian military incursion into Georgia last summer. At the height of the conflict, BBG members had refused urgent requests from VOA journalists to resume radio broadcasts to the war zone and to other traditional VOA audiences in Russia and in many of the former Soviet republics.

BBG officials maintain that their decision was designed to focus limited resources on improving VOA’s Internet presence in Russia, but as a result of the termination of on-air radio and television broadcasts, VOA experienced an unprecedented 98 percent drop in its audience reach in Russia.  By effectively barring VOA from airwaves in Russia, the BBG added to the restrictions already imposed by the Russian authorities on Western broadcasters. No other international broadcaster has ever seen such a dramatic decline.

The BBG management practices have resulted in one of the worst employee morale in the entire federal government, as measured by the Federal Human Capital Survey conducted annually by the Office of Personnel Management. The survey, which polls workers at 37 agencies, found the BBG to be last in three categories (leadership and knowledge management, results-oriented performance, and talent management). The BBG is 36th, only one short of being the worst, in job satisfaction.

One of Bill Skundrich’s former VOA colleagues said that the BBG is “incredibly short-sighted not to hold on to him for dear life.” “There’s no one there who can touch him for talent, organization and general know-how,” said a former VOA manager, speaking about Bill Skundrich’s departure from the Voice of America.

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.

WILL AMERICA’S VOICE STAY SILENCED?

07. May 2009
An Understanding Government report

By Mitchell Polman

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

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

America’s voice in Russia fades to silence

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

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

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

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

“Runet” – the Internet in Russia

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

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

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty gains while VOA loses

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

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

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

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

Reaction from inside and outside Russia

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

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

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

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

Former VOA Staff Calling for Service Restorations

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

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

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

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

Voices of discord at VOA Russian service?

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

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

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

The future of the BBG

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

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

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

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

 FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog,  GovoritAmerika.us, April 6, 2009, San Francisco –During President Obama’s most recent visit to Europe, the White House website was rarely updated with news reports and photos and had no new entries at all on Sunday, April 5 when the President was visiting Prague, the Czech Republic, where he made an important foreign policy speech in which he called for a nuclear free world. The very few new postings and photos on the White House website during the trip appeared often many hours and sometimes days after similar important events took place.

For at least a couple of days after President Obama’s meeting with Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, there was no official photo of the two leaders on the White House website. The meeting took place in London April 1,  ahead of the G20 summit. During President Obama’s trip to Europe, the slide presentation on the White House website prominently featured photo’s from Vice President Biden’s earlier trip to Latin America. The State Department website did not post any official photos from Secretary Clinton’s meetings during the most recent European trip.

Screenshot of the White House website on Sunday, April 5, 2009, 9PM EST shows that it had not been updated for more than 24 hours while President Obama was visiting Prague, the Czech Republic and making an important foreign policy speech.

It appears that the Obama Administration officials were not prepared for the usual public and media outreach expected from the White House during presidential trips abroad. They also could not count on much support from the State Department. During the previous two administrations, U.S. government’s public relations functions abroad, also referred to as public diplomacy, were eliminated or outsourced to private contractors.

The United States Information Agency (USIA), which was responsible for public diplomacy, and could have provided guidance to the new White House staff, was abolished in 1999. USIA’s international broadcasting functions were moved to the newly created Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), and its exchange and non-broadcasting information functions were given to the newly-created Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy. Many U.S. diplomats with experience in media relations were assigned to other diplomatic and administrative positions and much of their expertise has been lost.

During the Bush Administration, the BBG, rated in a recent Office of Personnel Management (OPM) survey as the worst-managed Federal agency, and a succession of political appointees at the State Department, increasingly relied on private contractors to conduct U.S. government’s public relations and international broadcasting functions, often with disastrous results.

Charlotte Beers, Bush’s first appointee as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, was a former Madison Avenue advertising executive. She launched a privately produced magazine targeted at Arab youth and TV commercials featuring American Muslims speaking about the tolerance and happiness of life  in the United States. Both initiatives, which cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars, were complete flops.

Bush’s last appointee to this position, James K. Glassman, was responsible in his earlier function as the BBG chairman for ending Voice of America (VOA) Russian-language radio broadcasts just 12 days before Russia’s military incursion into the Republic of Georgia last summer. As a result of the BBG’s decisions under his chairmanship, VOA’s audience reach in Russia registered an unprecedented 98% drop in just one year. (From 7.3% in 2007 to  est. 0.2% in 2009.)

One bright spot during President Obama’s European trip was the effort by some of the U.S. embassies to provide media with background information and official copyright-free photos that were missing from the main State Department website. The U.S. missions in London and Prague offered extensive photo galleries and additional useful materials for journalists.

Screenshot of the State Department's official blog on Monday, April 6, 2009, 3AM EST shows that it has not been updated since Friday while Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama continued their European trip.

View U.S. Embassy in Prague Photo Gallery

The State Department website and the websites of the U.S. embassies in the other countries visited by President Obama provided only basic information and copyrighted AP photographs. The State Department’s official Dipnote Blog was not updated Saturday, April 4, or Sunday. April 5, and on previous days offered mostly AP photos.

State Department officials in Washington are not accustomed to working on weekends. During Secretary Clinton’s earlier visit to Europe, it took several days before the State Department website posted an official photo from her meeting in Geneva with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. 

Unfortunately for foreign journalists and bloggers who may have expected a copyright-free photo and more background information from the State Department website, the Clinton-Lavrov meeting also took place just before the weekend. Because of budget cuts and other restrictions imposed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Russian Service of the Voice of America did not have money to send its reporter to Geneva to cover the meeting. It did mange, however, to send a reporter to Europe with President Obama and provided timely coverage. The performance of the White House and the State Department in terms of information delivery and public diplomacy during President Obama’s European trip on the other hand left much to be desired.

Выбор ГоворитАмерика.usGovoritAmerika.us. Вы можете скопировать и использовать эту статью. You can copy and use this report.

The commentary was written to show that in a flagrant disregard for U.S. foreign policy and human rights interests,  the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) nearly killed the Russian Service and other VOA broadcasting units. Due to the BBG’s actions, the Voice of America no longer has any Arabic-language programs and its broadcasts to many countries have been silenced. The BBG prevents the Russian Service from broadcasting live radio and TV and deprives it of resources to do any kind of serious reporting work, even for the Internet.

VOA sources tell FreeMediaOnline.org that the Service is barely able to assign one journalist to work an eight hour shift on weekends and can spare at most two or three to work the evening shift only Monday through Friday.  Journalistic positions remain unfilled, the service has no director, and the manager in charge of Internet programming  does not speak Russian and has no experience in Russian affairs.

FreeMediaOnline.org was told that the service had no money to send a reporter with Secretary Clinton. VOA Russian Service journalists cannot broadcast live radio and TV programs and therefore cannot cover live news conferences — all because of the BBG-imposed restrictions. VOA English Service has also been deprived of resources and is unable to provide extensive coverage of Russia and U.S.-Russian relations.

FreeMediaOnline.org has developed a special website, GovoritAmerika.us - ГоворитАмерика.us, in an attempt to help VOA’s Russian Service distribute their limited output and to provide additional U.S.-Russia-related news and analysis from various other sources in the United States to compensate for the restrictions placed on VOA by the BBG. None of it is sufficient, however, to repair the damage stemming from the BBG’s actions.

As FreeMediaOnline.org had predicted, the Internet-only strategy, forced on on the Russian Service by the BBG, has caused its annual audience reach to drop from 7.3% (2007) to 0.2% (est.2009) — a staggering and historically unprecedented 98% decline. All other major international broadcasters, including the BBC World Service, managed to hold on to their audiences in Russia in 2008 despite Mr. Putin’s restrictive media policies. None followed the BBG’s lead in completely terminating on-air Russian-language radio and TV broadcasts. What Mr. Putin could not fully achieve, the BBG did it for him. The United States no longer has a credible voice in Russia.

On top of that, BBG officials produced market research showing that Russian audiences like Mr. Putin, don’t want to hear criticism of human rights abuses, and want less politics. VOA Russian Service journalists were told to be less critical and focus more on nonpolitical Internet reporting that would attract more visitors to their site . This is an example of the total misunderstanding of VOA’s mission and the reasons for the public funding for U.S. international broadcasting.

The VOA Russian Service has been starved of resources, given an impossible task and set up to fail, but the BBG and the VOA management would rather blame a team of dedicated journalists rather than the officials who ended VOA radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian invasion of Georgia and refused to resume them.

Here are some excerpts from a note sent today by a VOA Russian Service broadcaster:

We are accused of bad editorial judgement, poor quality of our reporting and all other possible sins. Never mind that we are starved to death financially and in other resources including manpower, and literally barred from the air.

….management WANTED us to report more on culture because “independent monitors” in Russia said so in the program review.

How much of further damage undermining the Russian Service can we endure? I don’t know…

No in-depth reports from the Voice of America or high-resolution photos from the State Department, but one can now find sexy images on the VOA Russian website. The Clinton-Lavrov meeting and the First Lady’s visit to the State Department revealed  a sorry state of U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting.

It took hours after Secretary Clinton and her Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Lavrov had finished their joint press conference in Geneva before the Voice of America (VOA) Russian and English websites posted  brief reports about the meeting.  These reports were not much longer than a summary of a wire service story that one may find in a local American newspaper. A foreign audience expecting detailed coverage and in-depth analysis with multiple viewpoints from Washington would be greatly disappointed.

The Voice of America is the primary U.S. international broadcaster charged with providing news and information about the United States in English and foreign languages, but its funding and programs to many parts of the world, including Russia, have been slashed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). If foreign audiences turned to the State Department or the White House websites for timely information and analysis about the state of Russian-American relations and the Obama Administration’s support for human rights abroad, they would have been equally disappointed.

VOA’s English Service relied on a stringer in Switzerland to file her report on the Clinton-Lavrov meeting. VOA Russian Service apparently did not have money send a reporter to Geneva.  If the Russians wanted a different perspective — a view from Washington — there was no instant analysis from American experts on the VOA website after the Geneva meeting about the changing relationship between Washington and Moscow under President Obama. One also did not find any transcripts of post-meeting interviews with U.S. and Russian officials or independent experts, because none were conducted.

That Voice of America still exists and was able to report on the meeting at all is in itself a miracle. In its spearheading of costly and counterproductive propaganda initiatives for the Middle East and privatization of U.S. international broadcasting assets, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages the Voice of America, terminated all VOA Arabic programs and slashed many other VOA broadcasts. It funded instead private entities, such as Radio Sawa and Alhurra Arabic television. Government and media investigations revealed that money moved from VOA to fund these initiatives provided more opportunities for employees of these private entities and for private contractors to engage in questionable journalism and financial fraud.

In supporting Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television, Democrats favoring private contractors joined forces with neoconservative Republican BBG members (the Board is by law bipartisan) to deprive more and more Voice of America services of their ability to accurately present American news and values to the world. Last summer, the BBG eliminated VOA radio programs to Russia, just 12 days before the Russian invasion of Georgia.

Drained of resources, the Voice of America is no longer able to practice journalism that would interest and satisfy  a seriously-minded audience in countries like Russia. VOA Russian Service journalists were instructed instead to develop their now miniscule Internet audience by learning from market research and marketing techniques outlined in documents provided to FreeMediaOnline.org by VOA officials who want to remain anonymous.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that  the BBG-commissioned market research in Russia — which showed that Russian focus groups like Mr. Putin, don’t like to hear stories about human rights violations, and are tired of political media reporting — is beginning to have an impact at VOA. A recent VOA Russian Service report, “What American women think about Sexx,” about an exhibit of American women-artists in Moscow, was not only full of titillating images but also far longer and far more detailed than the news report filed after the Clinton-Lavrov meeting.

Such misuse of market research is a prime example of the many failures of U.S. international broadcasting. But equally serious are public diplomacy mishaps at the State Department, which were also revealed during the Clinton-Lavrov meeting and at a later ceremony in Washington to honor women who fought for human rights.

Wanting to dramatize the Obama Administration’s desire to “push the reset button” on U.S.-Russian relations, at the Geneva meeting Secretary Clinton presented Foreign Minister Lavrov with a red plastic button with a Russian word “ПЕРЕГРУЗКА” printed on top. The wording turned out, however, to be an embarrassing mistake. Lavrov pointed out that the word used means “overload” or “overcharge,” not “reset.” The correct was ПЕРЕЗАГРУЗКА.

FreeMediaOnline.org has learned that Secretary Clinton hit on the “reset button” idea in Geneva with her team. According to one source, the translator hadn’t gotten there yet, and someone who said he spoke Russian well suggested what word to use.

If the State Department still had experienced and competent public diplomacy officers, they would have made sure that Secretary Clinton’s idea, which was not bad from a PR perspective, would not be mishandled. At the very least, they would have called the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the official State Department translators section,  or any Russian journalist – but apparently no one did. One former VOA Russian Service broadcaster observed that she has never seen Lavrov, who usually looks very dour, smile so much as he made fun of the mistake in the presence of Mrs. Clinton and her team.

While VOA’s coverage of the Clinton-Lavrov’s meeting was minimal at best, for several days after the meeting the State Department website provided no information in text form on what was discussed and no usable photos. In yet another embarrassing mistake, the State Department posted a photo, which stayed on the site over the weekend, claiming to show Secretary Clinton greeting Foreign Minister Lavrov, when in fact the person with her on the photo was somebody else.

The State Department did, however, post a long video of the Clinton-Lavrov press conference rather promptly.  The Bush Administration public diplomacy team at State greatly favored the use of video, probably because it requires little additional effort to post on the website. But a long video of the press conference without a translated transcript is of little use to foreign journalists who work under tight deadlines, may have limited knowledge of English,  and may not have high-speed Internet access. They simply won’t bother to spend time reviewing the video, taking notes, and reporting.

In the past, the Voice of America might have carried such a bilateral press conference live in its Russian-language radio program and provide instant commentary on the event. Even without live shortwave radio delivery, which was eliminated by the BBG, VOA Russian Service could have put an audio transmission from the press conference on the Internet  and post a written transcript within minutes. But BBG officials made sure that VOA no longer has resources to send a Russian Service reporter abroad or to provide such coverage.

One of the functions of the now defunct United States Information Agency, which was responsible for public diplomacy, was to make sure that foreign media promptly received accurate U.S. government information about important meetings with foreign leaders, as well as copyright-free photographs, audio recordings and videos, which foreign journalists could then use at no cost and without any restrictions. After USIA was disbanded, no one at the State Department seems to want this responsibility or has a budget to carry out such functions, while the Broadcasting Board of Governors deprived VOA of resources to do serious journalistic work for countries like Russia. The State Department, which took over USIA’s public diplomacy functions, has not made arrangements for employees to work on weekends or at night to perform such trivial functions as taking photos, posting transcripts of press conferences, and uploading accurately identified, royalty-free images.

The vast majority of images on the State Department and Voice of America websites come from the Associated Press and cannot be reused by foreign media outlets unless they are also AP customers. They are useless to citizen journalists working for such websites as GovoritAmerika.us, which was launched by FreeMediaOnline.org– a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit — to compensate for program cuts and restrictions imposed by the BBG on the Voice of America.  The website provides Russian-language information from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources and relies on copyright-free photos from U.S. government and other websites.

The meeting in Geneva took place Friday, March 6.  On Tuesday, March 10,  a single official photo showing Secretary Clinton presenting Foreign Minister Lavrov the red button with the embarrassing inscription  – this time Mr. Lavrov properly identified  – finally appeared on the State Department site. It also took four days for the transcript of the press conference to be posted by the State Department.

A similar problem reappeared a few days later during an important human rights event sponsored by the U.S. government. First Lady Michelle Obama went to the State Department to honor foreign women who risked their safety to defend human rights in their  native countries, including Russia and Uzbekistan. Despite the unprecedented nature of the First Lady’s participation in such an event, neither the State Department nor the White House website posted any good quality, high-resolution photos of Secretary Clinton and Michelle Obama presenting the 2009 Women of Courage Awards to these human rights activists. Yet another opportunity for effective public diplomacy was wasted by U.S. government officials. At least in this case, the Voice of America Russian Service deserves credit for finding enough resources to post a more detailed story.

The most recent mishaps show that the U.S. government no longer has the knowledge of how to manage U.S.-funded international broadcast journalism and public diplomacy. The Bush Administration’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, James K. Glassman,  was a great believer in using private Internet contractors to conduct public diplomacy on behalf of the U.S. government with the help of video and the latest interactive technology. He and other Bush appointees failed to understand, however, that technology cannot be a substitute for an in-depth understanding of foreign cultures and substantive experience in public diplomacy, journalism, and human rights issues.

As a former chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Glassman was responsible for terminating VOA Russian radio and TV programs and refused to resume them even after the Russian attack on Georgia. He assured journalists in VOA’s Russian Service that his preferred Internet-only strategy  would work and was not concerned that no other major international broadcaster wanted to give up completely Russian-language radio and TV on-air programs.

All international broadcasters except VOA managed to maintain their audience reach in Russia in 2008 despite Mr. Putin’s continued efforts to restrict foreign and independent domestic media reporting. The British broadcaster BBC has reduced funding for its radio programs to Russia –   for which it has come under criticism, and there are calls for an investigation — but it has not completely eliminated live Russian-language radio broadcasting.  While relying more on the Internet and developing its Web-based reporting, BBC Russian Service has recently introduced a  weekend news program in its newly refreshed radio schedule. VOA is barely able to fund a skeleton Web team to work on weekends and  it no longer has funding for anything resembling regularly scheduled live radio and TV programming to Russia.

With the elimination of live Voice of America’s Russian-language radio and TV programs, VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia registered a dramatic 98% decline, from 10.3% to 0.2% (estimated based on 2008 data). Despite offering more sex and less politics, it was most likely the largest single audience decline in international broadcasting history for any major media outlet that has not completely left the market but merely changed its program content and program delivery strategy.

It seems that the legacy established by the officials eager to promote primitive propaganda and privatization of government functions still hangs over the State Department and the Voice of America.  These government bureaucrats know very little about journalism, public diplomacy, and effective use of the Internet. Instead of taking advantage of the latest innovations in interactive Internet technology to promote American views and ideas abroad, they tarnished America’s image by  leaving vital government PR functions in the hands of greedy and incompetent private contractors.

Several members of Congress, including Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), are trying to revive support and funding for professionally conducted U.S. public diplomacy. Senator Lugar introduced S. Res. 49 on February 13, 2009, expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the importance of public diplomacy. He also wrote an oped for ForeignPolicy.com on this topic. Another U.S. Senator, Sam Brownback (R-Kansas),  has called for abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors. He introduced legislation that would establish the National Center for Strategic Communications, an agency similar to the now defunct U.S. Information Agency. Senator Patrick Leahy (D -Vermont) has tried to stop the BBG from eliminating U.S. broadcasts in foreign languages but his efforts have been ignored by the Board members and their executive staff.

Whether these and other calls for reforming U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting will be answered and result in meaningful legislative changes will depend on the cooperation from the Obama White House. Perhaps the mishandling of the meeting in Geneva and  the inability to take a full PR advantage of Michelle Obama’s presence at an important human rights event at the State Department will encourage the Administration to look seriously into this problem. If nothing is done to reform public diplomacy and international broadcasting, the job of explaining America to the world will remain in the hands of incompetent government officials and private contractors working without any guidance, coordination or supervision.

About Ted Lipien

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

About FreeMediaOnline.org

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

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

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.

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

Closed Down American Centers and Crippled Voice of America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dubious Market Research in Russia Results in Attempts at Censorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBG Eliminated Voice of America Arabic Broadcasts

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

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

Denying the Holocaust at U.S. Taxpayers’ Expense

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

Misleading Administration and Congress

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

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

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

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

Supporting Privatized Entities More Important to BBG than Representing America

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBG Deserves Greater Scrutiny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Federal Human Capital 2008 Survey (FHCS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Ted Lipien

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

Wojtyla's Women by Ted Lipien

About FreeMediaOnline.org

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

About GovoritAmerika.us

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

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

Mistakes Repeated

by The Federalist

On January 20, 2009, as the United States inaugurated Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, the Associated Press reported that Hamas was holding victory rallies in Gaza amid the ruins from its recent combat with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

The idea of Hamas victory rallies may seem ludicrous to some.  However, it is consistent with the ideology of annihilation.  Standing atop a pile of rubble, with destruction all around and over an estimated one thousand civilians killed is seen as a victory because one has survived the onslaught.

It should also be noted that Hamas is not leading the discussion about the cost of its latest intentional provocation of conflict with Israel.  Instead, it is the United States, United Nations and Saudi Arabia that are talking of the cost of reconstruction of Gaza neighborhoods and will no doubt provide the funds.

To all appearances, Hamas’ interests are to reconstitute its forces and prepare the next stage of its conflict with Israel.  It bears no sense of responsibility for the death and destruction inflicted upon Gaza and the Palestinians.  Destruction is a means to an end.  It reinforces anger and rage.  It helps to sustain Hamas’ recruitment needs as it pursues its endless cycle of violence against Israel.  Hamas is in the business of violence and conflict.  It has no plan to sustain nonviolent infrastructure.  Peace means no Hamas or certainly a Hamas of less political potency.

At the same time, polling in the state of Israel shows an alarming trend that the Israeli public feels that there will never be peace between their country and the Arab world.  This is a dangerous turn of events.  It speaks to a narrowing of options, a state of perpetual conflict and reliance upon an increasingly powerful military response to the jihadists in a densely populated region of the world, raising the potential for further noncombatant casualties.

Hillary Clinton is on the job as the new Secretary of State.  There is an acknowledgement that restoring American prestige and image is an important goal of the Obama presidency.  Carrying out this task falls to whoever Secretary Clinton has in the position of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

Early indications are that Mrs. Clinton may be leaning toward Judith McHale, a longtime Clinton supporter, Democratic campaign contributor and senior executive with Discovery Communications.

Regardless of who fills this post, it should be understood from the outset that public diplomacy should not be equated with a marketing or advertising campaign.  Democracy is not an easily packaged commodity. We have to demonstrate the framework for democracy, what it is founded upon, what is required to sustain it and how we make it work.  We are advocating a way of life and governance as an alternative to a paradigm that has a long history and a perpetual cycle of violence.

Also important is the realization that we are dealing with confronting an ideology of annihilation manifest in a worldwide, loosely confederated network of terrorists and jihadists.

It seems that US government has an almost Pavlov-like reaction to public diplomacy that sees the task in a marketing or advertising environment.  Taking this approach does not get to the substance of the core issue at hand and will leave us with less than sterling results.

The best piece of advice for the Obama administration’s public diplomacy initiative is to see the world as it is, rather than as we wish it to be.  Public diplomacy should be seen as a facilitator of positive outcomes rather than a shill in a marketing ploy.  We must have a new vision that breaks our own cycle of mistakes repeated.

The Federalist 2009

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.

FreeMediaOnline.org bloggers described the “Democracy Video Challenge” contest as crude propaganda. One blogger, who grew up in Eastern Europe under communism and later worked as a journalist in the United States, wrote that asking young people to produce videos about democracy and offering them a free trip to the United States as a prize seems reminiscent of similar contests about the virtues of communism that school students behind the Iron Curtain had to enter to meet propaganda goals.

Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, commented that this particular contest has been part of a much larger effort by the Bush Administration’s political appointees who tried to privatize the conduct of public diplomacy by granting lucrative contracts to advertising firms and web development companies. “They generally know very little about foreign policy and foreign cultures. Many of their ideas and programs have embarrassed the United States and contributed to the growth of anti-Americanism abroad,” Lipien said.

FreeMediaOnline.org bloggers also pointed out that these experiments in propaganda advertising were undertaken at the expense of traditional public diplomacy programs supported by American taxpayers, such as exchanges for foreign journalists and serious international news broadcasting by the Voice of America (VOA). These programs have been effective over many decades but were reduced during the Bush Administration to pay for various advertising schemes and the use of private contractors.

The Department of State was not the only U.S. government entity affected by experiments in advertising and privatization. The Bush Administration’s last Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James K. Glassman, supported a privatization effort  at the Voice of America, the official but journalistically independent U.S. government supported international broadcaster,  that resulted in weakening and in some cases ending substantive American radio and web journalism directed at audiences abroad.

While he was the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages U.S. international broadcasting, Glassman and other BBG members voted to end VOA radio news programs to many countries, including Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Glassman ordered instead more Internet video production, which requires high speed Internet access in areas usually known for poverty, corruption and conflict. He refused to allow VOA Russian Service journalists to resume emergency radio broadcasts to the war zone during the Russian-Georgian conflict last summer.

But in a move that may signal change under Secretary Clinton, the State Department web site, which has been partially and quickly redesigned after President Obama took office, no longer shows on the home page a prominently displayed image announcing the “Democracy Video Challenge” contest. It now shows under the heading of “FOREIGN POLICY HIGHLIGHTS” a link to  a different online video contest, “My Culture + Your Culture,” which seems more in line with traditional public diplomacy programs carried out by American diplomats as opposed to content developed by advertisers and private contractors.

But to participate in the “My Culture + Your Culture”  contest, visitors are taken to ExchangesConnect web site, which — as in the case of the “Democracy Video Challenge” web site –  also does not look at all like a U.S. government official site but rather like a site run by a nongovernmental enterprise. ExchangesConnect is copyrighted (unlike official U.S. government web sites, which are not copyrighted) and has all the indications of  being operated by a private contractor. There is a small notice, however, that ExchangesConnect is administered by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. Much of the propaganda effort during the Bush Administration, both at State and at the BBG, was designed to hide any connection to the U.S. government in a naive belief that foreign audiences would not notice.

In the same area of the State Department web site’s home page with information about the cultural video contest, visitors are also informed about the “Ask The Ambassador” online forum that lets them interact with U.S. Ambassadors around the world. It tells visitors that when a chat is announced, questions submitted online are answered by State Department officials and posted to the website so that others many benefit from the discussion. Unfortunately, there was no announcement of any new online discussions.

To get to the “Democracy Video Challenge” contest, site visitors can still stay on the State Department’s home page, but they now have to navigate under “FOREIGN POLICY HIGHLIGHTS” to a next slide.  In addition to the video contest, that slide also features a link to the “Policy Podcast,” where State Department officials discuss upcoming events and foreign policy issues.

The U.S. certainly needs more Public Diplomacy 2.0 programs that promote online discussions with American officials and use other interactive forms of communicating with foreign audiences.  The new Obama Administration has to be careful, however, what content goes into these programs.  Secretary Clinton should not allow advertising and propaganda to replace serious journalism. She should not discard well-tested public diplomacy tools in favor of gimmicks developed by private contractors whose only qualification are connections to high government officials.

Ted Lipien of FreeMediaOnline.org pointed out that one result of privatizing experiments during the Bush Administration was the airing of unchallenged statements from Holocaust deniers on the U.S.-funded Alhurra television network for the Middle East. Before that happened, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is responsible for these broadcasts, eliminated Voice of America Arabic radio programs, which had accurate and balanced news prepared by well-trained journalists. The BBG re-directed resources, previously used for serious journalism at VOA, to develop Alhurra as a private entity. It could more easily control  Alhurra as a private entity and force it to accept advertising and marketing concepts rejected by VOA journalists as incompatible with objective and balanced reporting.

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

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

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

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

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

2008 HUMAN CAPITAL SURVEY RESULTS EVEN WORSE FOR BBG

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

When A Federal Agency Goes Bad

by The Federalist

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

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has released results of its 2008 Human Capital Survey. The numbers are in for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and they are not good. In fact, they are the worst ever.

We have obtained a copy of the survey results. The negative responses are staggering. We will not recite the numbers here. However, it is more than likely that in a ranking of Federal agencies, the BBG (representing all its entities in the survey) will be at or very near the bottom among Federal agencies of comparable size…a place altogether familiar for the BBG because that is where the agency has resided in several annual surveys running.

Why is this important?

Agency employees have overwhelmingly rejected the strategic plan of the BBG and the agency’s senior managers. They do not identify with the BBG world view and rightly so, because it is grossly flawed. Here’s an example, using figures cited recently in the Washington Post:

Over 2 billion people, many of them women or girls, earn less than $2 per day.

Where do these people – often among the world’s most abused and exploited – fit into the BBG’s all-or-nothing Internet strategy? The answer is: they don’t. The BBG’s strategy should be seen for what it is: an elitist strategy designed to abandon the world’s poorest of the poor. The BBG’s strategy, developed in conjunction with its International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) staff, is intended to embrace the haves at the expense of the have-nots.

And you wonder why the US is reviled around the world? And you wonder why you see acts of desperate terrorism directed against perceived symbols of this exploitation and abuse?

Standing up to this abuse of power, agency employees have used one of the few means available to them to show the IBB/BBG for what it is. That instrument is the Human Capital Survey.

Here is what you don’t have at this agency: leadership, competence, advocacy and managers who know and identify with the employees doing the work. On those occasions when the agency functions properly, it is in spite of and not because of its senior officials.

Here is what you do have at this agency: sycophancy, ineptitude, incompetence, self-aggrandizement, self-promotion, a culture of cover-ups and deceit, spending millions of dollars on failed projects at the expense of program operations that do work; in other words, intentionally setting up good programs to fail and last but not least, intentionally terminating broadcasts to known audiences in areas on the flashpoint of broader conflicts.

The next administration is faced with a decision what to do regarding US international broadcasting. One thing is for certain: protecting the status quo, business-as-usual in this agency is unacceptable. If the Obama administration intends to make the US international broadcasting effort successful, it must rehabilitate this agency and that means removing people who are responsible for failed decision-making. It must seek out and attract a new, competent leadership to reinvigorate the agency, restore its effectiveness and help lead the effort to recover the prestige and image of the United States.

If this effort isn’t made and the corrosive environment is allowed to remain in place, the only likely outcome is a further erosion of how world’s populations view the United States. No broadcasting means silence. Silence is seen as abandonment. That silence will be filled by the jihadist message and ideology.

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

The Federalist 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.
                     Barack Obama Acceptance Speech, November 4, 2008
 

A THANKSGIVING MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA

The above quote from your acceptance speech is absolutely correct:  for years people from beyond our shores have huddled around their radios in distant forgotten corners of the world to hear America’s message. Many did so at their peril.  They still try to do so. 
 
Perhaps with that in mind, you issued a plea, on the eve of the Iowa caucus, to the people of Kenya to stop the violence that erupted in the wake of the country’s disputed presidential election. To reach the maximum number of people in your father’s homeland, you issued that plea for stability through America’s global voice to the world, the Voice of America.  And you did so on the most reliable medium to reach the greatest number of people in that area of the world: radio.
 
Unfortunately, over the past decade, that proud and inspiring global voice has become but a whisper and, in its wake, the prestige of the United States of America has plummeted.
 
How did VOA’s disintegration happen?  Dissolved during the last two administrations, there are no longer any substantive Voice of America broadcasts to much of Eastern Europe even though those countries in transition to democracy were and are in dire need of information about America and the world. 
 
Despite an outcry from thousands of listeners who depend on VOA for news and information,  there is no longer any Voice of America radio to India because the Broadcasting Board of Governors recently terminated broadcasting in Hindi. 
 
Most egregious, the people in Russia now have no radio broadcasting communication with America through VOA because the Broadcasting Board of Governors ceased all VOA Russian broadcasts on the eve of the Russian attack on Georgia in August, leaving only the Internet for the relatively small number of people who have access to computers.  Do the people of Russia still need objective and credible information from America? The answer is yes and especially now with a more emboldened and aggressive Russian leadership on the scene.
Your story, as outlined in your acceptance speech,  is America’s story.  How sad that Russians could not hear and be inspired by that story on VOA Russian radio which had carried presidential speeches live in Russian translation over many years.
 
Fortunately, through the concerted efforts of those who still care in this country, VOA radio broadcasts to Ukraine, Georgia, Tibet, and many other languages marked for elimination in September ‘08 were spared the guillotine, at least for the time being.
 
Why and how was the VOA muted?  The answer:  unfortunate mistakes by successive administrations, one Democrat, one Republican.  Since 1999, all decision-making power has been vested in the Broadcasting Board of Governors whose compounded errors have diminished the U.S. broadcasting voice to the world.
 
As your new administration embarks on possibly turbulent seas, we encourage your transition team to go beyond the rehashed, perhaps rosy facts and statistics inevitably served up by the outgoing team, just as the Bush transition team was presented with some arguable facts and figures regarding international broadcasting by the outgoing Clinton team. 
 
We hope this time around that your team will uncover the real truth. For instance,  your transition team could ask: 
 
1) Why does the Broadcasting Board of Governors resist attempts for a strategic multimedia platform combining radio, TV, and the Internet to reach the world?
 

 2) Why have 24/7 radio and TV broadcasts into the Middle East produced little or no results in a region of the world of vital strategic importance to the United States? And why does the BBG squash all negative reports about the inadequacies in U.S. broadcasting to the Middle East?
 
 3) Why does the Broadcasting Board of Governors persist in trying to curtail worldwide English-language broadcasts when research shows the emerging dominance of English in the world?
 
The members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors have made many mistakes over the past decade.  As President, you will have the unique opportunity to reverse those mistakes.  And if you do, America’s Voice can once again be heard loudly and clearly throughout the world and regain its place as the beacon of liberty to the world.
If, by some remote chance, you do say “yes, we can,” it would surely be a Happy Thanksgiving for many Voice of America employees.

QuoVadis

The BBG strategy clearly abandons the have-nots. In doing so, the BBG dismisses what we have already learned; namely, that trouble often begins in places that are “off the radar screen” and the ability of peoples in these circumstances to wage war, rebellion or terrorism. The consequences of this lesson should have been learned by the BBG on September 11, 2001. Clearly, it has not. The Federalist

Reverse Propagation

The great American showman PT Barnum is said to have made the statement that there’s a sucker born every moment. One is left to wonder who the sucker is in the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) strategic plan. This creation of staffers serving the BBG posits an all-or nothing Internet strategy in which the Internet would be the sole source for all BBG programs…audio, video and text. The BBG would eventually abandon almost all direct broadcasts by radio and television. While this would result in large savings in production and transmission costs, it would pass those costs onto the potential listener or viewer of BBG media

The BBG and the staff proponents of this plan have an “inside the Beltway” myopic view of the rest of the world. That view is high-tech driven where one has virtually instantaneous access to all forms of media. Not only does one have the access, the population set also has the per capita income (or consumer debt limitations) to purchase and maintain state-of-the-art technology.

Well beyond the Beltway, international audiences are less well situated. With a world population numbering in the billions, per capita income levels vary, the ability to purchase the technology that the BBG would require of its audience is limited as would be reliable infrastructure sources of power and energy required to operate and pay for the necessary equipment.

The BBG plan also dismisses any notion of electronic countermeasures to interfere with its Internet-driven product, measures in the 21^st century that replicate, in effect, the radio jamming of the 20^th century.

The BBG is in the formative stages of implementing this strategy. It has deliberately abandoned radio and television audiences in Russia. The decision to do so was made prior to the Russian invasion of Georgia and remains in place to this day.

An examination of the consequences of this plan is in order:

First, the BBG is no longer a serious international broadcaster. It is abandoning mass media audiences in favor of an elitist plan, reliant solely upon people of means to purchase the necessary technology and support (a personal computer with Internet broadband access and a reliable source of power). The question then becomes whether or not the societal elites have an interest in the message that the BBG is offering. The follow-on question is what interest do the societal elites in the target area have with regard to the general socio-political issues in the target area? The divisions between have and have-not in many countries are stark. What interest would the societal elites have in “sharing the wealth,” so to speak?

Second, in adopting this plan, the BBG is committing the Congress and the American taxpayer to a plan that will take decades to reach its optimum potential. This is also assuming a best case scenario, uninterrupted by war, social upheaval or natural disasters. Large segments of the world’s population live well below the poverty level. These populations struggle with ineffective or failed government infrastructures and most contend with a daily struggle over basic necessities…food, clothing, shelter, energy and potable water supplies. Where does the high-tech BBG PC and Internet-driven technology fit in? The answer is that it doesn’t…in the immediate and indeterminate future.

This strategy deliberately abandons existing and inexpensive technologies that are affordable even among struggling populations. Radio continues to be a viable medium serving mass audiences. Unlike the BBG, most serious international broadcasters maintain their radio broadcasts while using the Internet as a complement where access is available. These broadcasters have not executed a wholesale abandonment of known audiences and proven technologies as part of their integrated international broadcasting strategies.

Some historians and economists believe that the next world war will be fought between the Northern and Southern hemispheres…in short, a struggle between the haves and the have-nots. The BBG strategy clearly abandons the have-nots. In doing so, the BBG dismisses what we have already learned; namely, that trouble often begins in places that are “off the radar screen” and the ability of peoples in these circumstances to wage war, rebellion or terrorism. The consequences of this lesson should have been learned by the BBG on September 11, 2001. Clearly, it has not.

If there is one thing that is obvious from the BBG strategic plan it is this: it provides long-term career job security for its proponents on the BBG staff. In each successive budget cycle, one can be certain that the BBG will make a case for more taxpayer funds to justify and support this strategic debacle. The question then becomes whether or not the Congress will exercise proper oversight of BBG activities or succumb to yet another manifestation of “inside the Beltway” myopia. Lack of oversight has put us in the circumstances that we are in today, with a BBG that is out of step with international geopolitical realities and intentionally silencing itself to known audiences.

The Federalist 2008

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.