New York, October 31, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the imprisonment of two Tibetan writers, one of whom was sentenced after a year of detention without trial, according to reports.

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Tibetan writers imprisoned in China

All Americans, including members of Congress, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video.  It shows a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against  the BBG decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China. 

Journalists from Voice of America Question Decision to Stop VOA Mandarin and Cantonese Radio Broadcasts to China

FreeMediaOnline.orgPart Three: BBG’s Internet Only Strategy Loses Audience and Fails in Russia — Read Part One: No Apology for Failure — Read Part Two: Special Report: Sound of Hope Plans to Increase Shortwave Radio to China while Voice of America Retreats

Inside-the-Beltway parochialism and arrogance toward the needs of their audience have continued to define the management style of BBG and VOA executives. The agency’s rank-and-file employees — including among others the staff of the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) — know it all too well. In government-wide employee surveys, the Broadcasting Board of Governors has been consistently rated as one of the worst-managed among all federal agencies. Yet the same BBG executives keep their jobs year after year. They now advise new BBG members, selected by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate, on how to best manage U.S. international broadcasting. Deprived of good outside expert advice in a very complex and specialized field of international broadcasting and public diplomacy, the new BBG members rely on the same group of BBG managers. Inside sources have told Free Media Online that even the new Republican members of the BBG went along with the staff’s recommendations to cut VOA radio broadcasts to China.

What members of Congress and U.S. taxpayers should know and be concerned about is that the very same BBG executives who have failed to protect the Voice of America websites, not once but twice from being hacked and shut down for hours and days, are now proposing to eliminate completely all on-the-air VOA radio broadcasts to China and to reduce Radio Free Asia shortwave radio programs as well. Nearly three years ago, at the height of Mr. Putin’s attack on independent media, they had ignored warnings from members of Congress and human rights activists and terminated all on-the-air VOA radio broadcasts to Russia. It happened just 12 days before the Russian military staged an attack on the territory of the Republic of Georgia. The same officials had also proposed earlier to reduce radio broadcasts to Tibet. Fortunately in this case, the Congress stepped in to save these critical programs after hearing from Tibetan human rights activists and observing sit-in protests by Buddhist monks on Capital Hill.

The results of the BBG radio pullback in Russia have been disastrous on many levels, including establishing a bad anti-human rights precedent, diminished audience reach, and diminished impact. In October 2007, VOA’s weekly reach in Russia was 1.7 percent, both through radio and TV, but mostly through radio. RFE/RL’s weekly reach stood at that time 0.9 percent. What did BBG bureaucrats do? They got together with some of the former members of the BBG, confused enough of the other former members, and denied radio program delivery to a U.S. broadcaster who had a larger radio audience in Russia.

Even after Russian troops entered the territory of the Republic of Georgia 12 days later, BBG executives kept rejecting urgent requests from VOA journalists to allow them to resume radio broadcasts to Russia and the war zone in Georgia. In fact, they also planned to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia, but the war put these plans on a temporary hold.

Their reaction then, as it has been as now after the Iranian cyber attack, is very telling about what these bureaucrats care more about: their audience or their bureaucratic games. Only after Free Media Online and other free media advocates had exposed their manipulations in Russia, one former Republican BBG member Blanquita Cullum eventually managed to persuade enough of her colleagues to allow the VOA Russian Service to resume a limited 30-minute radio news broadcast Monday through Friday. This drastically shortened VOA broadcast to Russia still generates far much larger audience than the Internet. RFE/RL managed to hold on to its audience in Russia through radio despite Mr. Putin’s relentless attacks on independent and foreign media.

But overall, U.S. international broadcasting audience reach in Russia has declined significantly after July 2008. This happened not because of Mr. Putin, who had already done his damage and did not have to do more, but because of what a group of entrenched BBG executives decided to do to make the Voice of America less effective in Russia. Now they want to do the same thing to the Voice of America in China.

Members of Congress and U.S. taxpayers may be wondering why a group of bureaucrats within the BBG and some of its members would want to make U.S. international broadcasting as a whole less robust in countries like Russia and China and less threatening to the local regimes. The answer is not easily apparent, but it is well known to those who have worked at the BBG and know the organization from within.

Surrogate broadcasters, who had generally performed much better than the Voice of America during the Cold War, in some cases are not doing as well now in the Middle East and elsewhere, where the Cold War surrogate broadcasting model was not appropriate to begin with or is no longer appropriate. They are, however, still needed in some countries and do extremely well in some of them. But instead of supporting both surrogate and VOA broadcasting — since each has a slightly different mission — through efficient management, or even better by reforming the entire bureaucracy and combining some of these services to save taxpayers’ money — these clever bureaucrats found an easy way to protect the jobs of their friends, associates, and private contractors. Making the Voice of America less effective as a radio broadcaster protects the future of some of the surrogate radios, even if it make no fiscal sense and the overall audience reach and impact are sacrificed in the process.

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

The dramatic drop in audience reach and effectiveness can be seen and calculated using the BBG’s own sponsored research. While the BBG audience data from countries ruled by authoritarian regimes is not reliable, for the purposes of this analysis only, it shows an unmistakable trend. Here is how percentage drops are calculated from the BBG data. VOA’s audience reach in Russia in October 2007 was 1.7%. According to the BBG’s latest available data, VOA’s weekly reach in Russia for both radio and Internet is only 0.3%. Subtract 0.3 from 1.7 and you get 1.4 drop. Then you want to find out 1.4 is what percent of 1.7, so divide: 1.4 / 1.7 = 0.82. As a result of the BBG’s decision to cut VOA radio to Russia, VOA’s weekly reach declined by roughly 82%.

Members of Congress should take note that instead of paying the salaries of American citizens and residents — all highly experienced journalists, specializing in human rights reporting — BBG officials eliminated their jobs and used some of the savings to pay advertising agencies in Russia to promote use of VOA websites. As we can see from the BBG’s own data, this approach did not work. It’s likely that some of these agencies are controlled by the Russian security agencies, just as some of the research companies that the BBG is using in countries like Russia and China are probably closely monitored and manipulated by the secret police. I would venture a guess that they can produce any audience research results for the BBG that their security services would request.

Figures obtained from international broadcasting surveys done in countries like Russia and China should not be taken at face value. The actual radio reach in these countries is most likely higher than the BBG data suggests — although not nearly as high as it was in Poland during the Cold War — but there is no reason to doubt that the drop in audience reach, as suggested by the BBG data, is real. The unprecedented drop in audience reach in Russia cannot be denied, even if the numbers of radio listeners are higher than what the BBG is reporting.

We have also pointed out that if the BBG had completely ignored our protests and not restored a limited VOA radio broadcast to Russia, the percentage drop in audience reach would have been even more devastating. VOA’s weekly Internet reach in Russia is only 0.1%. Subtract 0.1 from 1.7 and you get 1.6 drop. Divide 1.6 /1.7 = 0.94. If the BBG executives had it their way and there was no outside pressure that forced them to make a limited concession, VOA would have experienced a 94% decline in audience reach in Russia.

Voice of America

The same executives have now managed to convince new BBG members to make the same mistake in China.

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

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

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

• The article cites political reasons (autocratic rule, censorship, hacking and blocking of the Internet, no free press to defend rights of citizens) and market research data (750 million without Internet access, extensive use of shortwave by China National Radio, ability to reach 230 million migrant population) used by Sound of Hope Radio to justify its decision on expanding shortwave radio while VOA and BBC are moving in the opposite direction.
• “We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by BBG officials who time after time have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Their decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week. Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien. He was a former BBG manager and until 2006 former acting associate director of the Voice of America.
• In their confused messages to members of Congress, BBG officials often contradict themselves. While arguning in favor of eliminating VOA radio to China, they point out that only [sic] 22 out of 8635 respondents reported having ever listened to VOA, while 7 had ever listened to RFA or BBC. Well, 22 is three times more than 7. Does his proves that the Congress should by all means eliminate the radio broadcast, which according to even BBG-sponsored research, has an audience that is three times larger? We don’t think so.
• BBG executives don’t have the slightest idea how many people in nations ruled by undemocratic regimes listen to U.S. news broadcasts on shortwave. Even their own researchers point out that “these audience figures are based on surveys conducted in politically repressive environments that are generally hostile to international broadcasting. Because individuals in these countries are discouraged or even prohibited by their governments from listening to U.S. international broadcasts, actual audience numbers may be higher.”
• They tell members of Congress that keeping shortwave broadcasts to China imposes significant opportunity costs on U.S. strategic interests because the continued investment in SW depletes resources that could be invested more effective media platforms and technologies that are the choice of most Chinese citizens.
  The problem with this line of reasoning is that the current team of BBG officials has not been able to take advantage of these opportunities because they don’t know how and because the potential for expanding their Internet audience is extremely small no matter how much taxpayers’ money they plan to spend on advertising in China and Russia, which is what they do. They could not increase their Internet reach it in Russia and they will not be able to do it in China. Their Internet audience in Russia is still and will continue to be at “trace” level, as it will be in China, no matter how much money they intend to spend. They just fail to point this out to members of Congress.
• According to BBG officials, the expected savings from the proposed radio cuts will be about $8 million (about $4.9 million in personnel costs and $3.2 million in transmission costs). The real beneficiaries will no longer be Chinese-speaking human rights journalists in the United States, who will be laid off, but private contractors, including advertising agencies in China The real damage will be the loss of the ability to demonstrate continued U.S. commitment to human rights and the loss of a platform for pro-democracy supporters in China, a platform that cannot be easily blocked or silenced.
• The argument that the Chinese government would want the U.S. to continue shortwave broadcasts because they are supposedly ineffective and a waste of money is completely false. BBG officials fail to understand the desperation of those who seek information and the psychology of authoritarian governments who live in fear of being deposed with the help of outside radio, TV, and Internet. If these arguments were true, the Chinese government would not bother to jam VOA and RFA shortwave broadcasts. Tibetan monks would not have protested on Capital Hill against cuts in shortwave broadcasts to Tibet, which had been proposed earlier by the same BBG bureaucrats who are now pushing for cuts in radio broadcasting to China and who outsourced the hosting of VOA websites to outside contractors.
• The Chinese government has demonstrated its ability to block the Internet at the time most convenient for them. It does not take a genius to figure out that it will be the most inconvenient and dangerous time for the United States and for pro-democracy supporters in China. The BBG executives, who could not protect VOA websites from a cyber attack by Iranian Islamists, want the United States to take this risk.
• Depriving the Voice of America of shortwave radio capability in China is especially misquided since VOA has a bigger brand recognition among the Chinese population, and in a crisis, they are far more likely to turn to VOA for news from the United States just as they now listen more frequently to VOA radio. There is no good reason why both VOA and RFA should not keep all of their program delivery options open and to share both Internet and shortwave delivery resources. There is no advantage to only one broadcaster using radio. There is certainly no advantage to denying radio program delivery to the one broadcaster who now has a larger radio audience.

###

February 28, 2011

Open Letter to Members of House Appropriations Committee

Dear Members of Congress:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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

Voice of America Chinese Service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senator Richard Lugar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A transcript of the speech is available here.

Mr. Isaacson, who has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of TIME, made these comments at the 60th anniversary celebration for Radio Free Europe (RFE), which he credited with contributing to the end of the Cold War. When questioned by The Cable, a FOREIGN POLICY (FP) blog about his “enemies” comment, Isaacson apologized for the remark, while saying that the “enemies” he was referring to were in Afghanistan, not the several countries he mentioned.

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

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

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

The BBG, with an annual budget of $757.5 million (estimated in FY2010), oversees all U.S. civilian international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television.

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

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

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

Ms. Cullum’s fight against mismanagement at the BBG was recognized by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican from Oklahoma, in a statement placed in The Congressional Record.

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

Senator Coburn has been a consistent critic of the way the BBG manages its broadcasting operations and spends public funds. He has charged that not even the Voice of America is free from serious editorial errors.

Senator Coburn has publicized examples of VOA broadcasts to Iran which, he charges, undermine U.S. policy and gave a platform for anti-American propaganda. He has also charged that U.S. broadcasts in Arabic on Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television have also given “uninterrupted and unchallenged platforms to terrorists and other enemies of the U.S. and our allies.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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China –
More Tibetan journalists arrested in Qinghai province

“The doors of the White House should always be open to a globally-revered advocate for peaceful efforts to secure fundamental human rights,” said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House executive director. “It is hard to see how shunning the Dalai Lama will advance American interests. The Obama administration is presenting an unfortunate profile by putting human rights so conspicuously on the backburner in its relations with repressive regimes.”

Freedom House noted that already this year, the administration has given only muted support to pro-democracy activists in Iran and has withdrawn funding from independent, pro-democracy activists in Egypt. On China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier this year that human rights would not “interfere” with the U.S. dialogue with China on other global concerns. READ MORE