TVi urges president to address pressures exerted on channel

International Freedom of Expression eXchange: In an open letter to President Victor Yanukovich, TVi journalists expressed concern that the Security Service of Ukraine is backing the personal and business interests of its director.

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TVi urges president to address pressures exerted on channel

ARTICLE 19 and International Media Support call on new president to stand for freedom of expression

International Freedom of Expression eXchange: The president was urged to take immediate steps to ensure that Ukraine adopts a law on public service broadcasting in compliance with European and international standards.

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ARTICLE 19 and International Media Support call on new president to stand for freedom of expression

Georgian journalist barred from entering Ukraine

International Freedom of Expression eXchange: Reporter Zurab Khvistani was in Ukraine to cover the second round of presidential elections.

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Georgian journalist barred from entering Ukraine

Ukraine: despite disillusion, election confirms Orange Revolution’s achievements

Democracy Digest from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED): The eventual winner of Ukraine’s presidential election will now be determined in a second round run-off on February 7 between Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko. President Victor Yushchenko, the principal leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution, placed fifth as voters held him responsible for the subsequent political paralysis and economic crisis

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Ukraine: despite disillusion, election confirms Orange Revolution’s achievements in creating democratic space

Libel tourists ‘threatening the foundations of democracy’

Democracy Digest from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED): Will tomorrow’s election mark the latest stage in Ukraine’s Road from Democracy and signal the sad end to the Orange Revolution? If so, the results of what some anticipate as an anti-Orange election will be at least partly due to the influence of the country’s increasingly powerful oligarchs, not least Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man

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Libel tourists ‘threatening the foundations of democracy’

ARTICLE 19 and IMS call for balanced and ethical reporting during elections

International Freedom of Expression eXchange: The 17 January 2010 election will be the first presidential election in Ukraine since the Orange Revolution of 2004.

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ARTICLE 19 and IMS call for balanced and ethical reporting during elections

Politicians abuse power, attack journalists

International Freedom of Expression eXchange: Ukrainian politicians are targeting journalists and editors in order to quash criticism. A newspaper editor was recently assaulted by a member of parliament (MP) for publishing stories critical of the MP’s performance, reports the Glasnost Defence Foundation (GDF)

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Politicians abuse power, attack journalists

Voice of America Report Shows Confusion and Divisions Over Obama’s Policy Toward Russia

FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, August 13, 2009, San Francisco — A report by a senior Voice of America (VOA) correspondent, posted online today, shows a high level of confusion over the Obama Administration’s new policy of “resetting” relations with Russia. While the report by VOA’s Andre de Nesnera focuses on statements by Vice President Biden, which have “angered” Russian officials, and on apparent divisions within the Administration over Russia policy, it does not address a number of recent Russian actions and statements, which other analysts saw as a clear challenge to President Obama after his recent visit to Moscow. They included a stern videotaped warning to Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Victor Yushchenko, delivered earlier this week by President Medvedev.

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The content and the harsh tone of President Medvedev’s video message to Ukraine was in sharp contrast with a number of friendly and hopeful statements from President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, offering a “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations.

VOA report quoted a number of American analysts, including Stephen Jones, a Russia expert from Mount Holyoke College, and Robert Legvold at Columbia University, who are critical of Vice President Biden’s statements made in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. In that interview, the U.S. Vice President suggested that Russia’s economic and social weakness would force the Kremlin to make concessions to the West on key national security issues. VOA’s Andre de Nesnera did not cite any comments in defense of Vice President Biden’s statements, which he had made after his visit to Ukraine and Georgia.

The VOA correspondent asserted in his report that after Vice President Biden’s interview with the Wall Street Journal, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had tried to “head off a dispute with Moscow” during an appearance on (NBC’s) television program Meet the Press. She told the American TV network that “We want what the president called for during his recent Moscow summit. We want a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia. Now there is an enormous amount of work to be done between the United States and Russia,” said Clinton.

VOA’s de Nesnera also quotes Ronald Suny, at the University of Chicago, as saying that “the Russians have a point.” According to Ronald Suny “The Russians are extremely sensitive. They are looking for signals. They don’t know what to expect from this new government in Washington. And so they were very well pleased, it seemed, by Obama’s visit. And then the [vice president's] trip comes and these statements are made – and the Russians are now upset again. And they are asking, in a way, what are the signals? Which signals are we to take to be the real signals? And I’m as much at a loss as they are,” he said.

Other American experts, however, see the Kremlin’s recent actions as highly provocative and designed to regain Russia’s former imperial control over now independent countries like Ukraine and Georgia. They also point out that nationalistic and anti-American rhetoric serves the power interests of the current Russian leadership and will continue regardless of the Obama Administration’s wish for a “reset” in the bilateral relationship.

The Voice of America is a taxpayer-funded U.S. international broadcaster managed by the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). De Nesnera’s report was translated into Russian and posted on the VOA Russian-language website. VOA no longer broadcasts, however, on-air radio and television newscasts in Russian. They were terminated by the BBG in July 2008, just 12 days before Russian troops attacked the Republic of Georgia in a territorial dispute.

Voice of America Report Biden Remarks Anger Russian Officials
By Andre de Nesnera
Washington
13 August 2009

Recent statements by Vice President Joe Biden have angered Russian officials.

Vice President Biden recently told the Wall Street Journal that – in his words – the Russians “have a shrinking population base, have a withering economy, have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years.” He then suggested that all these trends would force Russia to make concessions to the West on key national security issues.

Mr. Biden made those statements following a trip to Ukraine and Georgia. Several weeks earlier, President Barack Obama held a Moscow summit with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev – a meeting whose main goal was to reset U.S.-Russian relations on a positive footing.

Most analysts agree that was achieved. But they also say Mr. Biden’s statements represented a different kind of tone from the one that was taken by Mr. Obama in Moscow.

Stephen Jones, a Russia expert from Mount Holyoke College (in Hadley, Massachusetts), says the vice president was in a sense writing off Russia as a significant power.

“Russia, of course, is going through a very serious economic situation. Its prospects are not good in terms of the demographic situation, and the energy situation too because Gazprom is very inefficient and oil production is declining. But Russia is still enormously powerful in the region. And when Russia has its back to the wall, it can certainly pursue some very strong, even aggressive policies at times. So that sort of statement, I think, is rather exaggerated and rather naïve in many ways,” he said.

Vice President Biden’s remarks hit a raw nerve with Russian officials. Sergei Prikhodko, a senior Kremlin foreign policy adviser, said “it raised the question who is shaping U.S. foreign policy -the president or members of his team?”

Robert Legvold at Columbia University, agrees. “It has raised a lot of questions both in the Russian media and even in the western media about whether the administration is singing from the same page. And if the page they are singing from is the same, and it is the Biden message – then are we hearing from Biden what they really think and from Obama what the diplomatic gloss is that he means to put on the relationship. That, I think, has created – at least for the moment – something of a problem,” he said.

Ronald Suny, at the University of Chicago, says the Russians have a point. “The Russians are extremely sensitive. They are looking for signals. They don’t know what to expect from this new government in Washington. And so they were very well pleased, it seemed, by Obama’s visit. And then the [vice president's] trip comes and these statements are made – and the Russians are now upset again. And they are asking, in a way, what are the signals? Which signals are we to take to be the real signals? And I’m as much at a loss as they are,” he said.

Shortly after the interview was published, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to head off a dispute with Moscow during an appearance on (NBC’s) Meet the Press. “We want what the president called for during his recent Moscow summit. We want a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia. Now there is an enormous amount of work to be done between the United States and Russia,” he said.

Secretary Clinton said Moscow and Washington are working to reduce their nuclear arsenals – and are collaborating on the key issues of North Korea and Iran. “And so there is an enormous amount of hard work being done. And we view Russia as a great power,” he said.

Some analysts say Mrs. Clinton’s remarks were an attempt at damage control at a time when relations between Washington and Moscow are at a sensitive stage given the new U.S. administration and the issues facing both countries.

With Obama in Moscow, Voice of America Russian Reporters Saw Their Work Vanish

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.

WILL AMERICA’S VOICE STAY SILENCED? – Understanding Government – understandinggov.org

FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 8, 2009, San Francisco —  Understanding Government website — undestandinggov.org — has published an in-depth report on the management crisis at the Voice of America (VOA) and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which runs U.S. international broadcasting operations. The report refers to the work of FreeMediaOnline.org and GovoritAmerika.us in support of independent journalism in media-at-risk countries.

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.

America’s Silenced Voice Abroad – A Journalist Remembers the Broadcasting Board of Governors Early Moves to Outsource Voice of America International Programs to Private Contractors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 ГоворитАмерика.us – Всесторонний Анализ Новостей из США

The following is a Voice of America report.

Miroslav Dobrovodsky

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

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

Receiving VOA Excellence in Programming Awards

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

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

Czech President and former dissident Vaclav Havel thanking VOA

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

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

As a young reporter in Bratislava, ca. 1966

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

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

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

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

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

Interviewing Alexander Dubcek

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

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

From 10.3% to 2.5% to O.2% in Just One Year — Voice of America Audience in Russia Obliterated by a Decision of U.S. Government Officials

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, March 10, 2009, San Francisco –  According to an independent study commissioned by a government agency in charge of  U.S. international broadcasts, the total annual audience reach in Russia for the Voice of America (VOA) Russian-language radio, TV, and Internet dropped from 10.3 percent in 2007 to 2.5% in 2008. It is believed to be the greatest audience loss in the history of international broadcasting in a one year period for a major media outlet which maintains its market presence.

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.

Hillary Clinton: Telling America’s Story Largely the Task of the Voice of America, But the Bush Administration Leaves VOA Barely Surviving

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, January 25, 2009, San Francisco – In answers to written questions from Senator Richard Lugar submitted during her Senate confirmation process, Hillary Clinton said that “telling America’s story is largely the task of the VOA.” What she may not have been told by her briefers is that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages the Voice of America, has completely eliminated or severely restricted VOA broadcasts to many countries in the world, thus preventing them from receiving news from the United States in vernacular languages. BBG funding for VOA English language broadcasts has also been severely reduced at the time when countries like China, Russia, Iran and India are expanding theirs.

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.

Armenian Journalist Hopes Obama Administration Will Protect Foreign Workers Rights at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, January 22, 2009, San Francisco — Anna Karapetian, a journalist from Armenia who in radio broadcasts funded by the U.S. government reported on human rights abuses in her country, is one of many people around the world who see Barack Obama’s inauguration as a hopeful beginning of a new era of change in Washington.  Ms. Karapetian hopes that with Mr. Obama’s strong commitment to protecting workers’ rights, the new administration will end the policy of a U.S. government agency which can arbitrarily fire its foreign journalists working abroad and denies them many of the basic labor law protections available to Americans citizens and residents of other democratic countries.

The policy in question was instituted by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the Federal government agency which manages privatized U.S.-funded international broadcasting stations, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Alhurra Television. Ms. Karapetian became one of the victims of the policy when she was fired from her broadcasting job at RFE/RL in the Czech Republic after almost 12 years of employment, which she describes as “impeccable,” with “very good” and “excellent” performance reviews.

Legal cases against RFE/RL’s employment practices have been filed by the dismissed employees with the Czech Supreme Court,  the Czech Constitutional Court, and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Reports critical of their treatment have appeared in Czech media and included statements of support from Czech politicians. In yet another major embarrassment for the BBG, one of the most respected world statesmen, former Czech president and human rights activist Vaclav Havel, promised to personally monitor the cases of the fired employees. 

The PR problem created by these cases and the damage to America’s image abroad can be traced back to the actions of a relatively small group of unelected U.S. government officials. Less than ten men and women, selected by the leadership of their political parties, appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, serve at any one time on the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors. Most of them are political loyalists and private businessmen without much foreign policy and human rights advocacy experience.

During the eight years of the Bush Administration, the BBG, which is responsible for RFE/RL’s personnel policies, greatly intensified its efforts to subcontract U.S. international broadcasting operations to privatized institutions. One of the major attractions of subcontracting was the realization by BBG members that unlike U.S. government employees, foreign workers hired abroad can be easily dismissed at any time and for any reason, or no reason at all, under the so-called “employment-at-will” doctrine. At the same time, the BBG was eliminating programs and terminating employment of American journalists working at the Washington-based Voice of America, which it also manages, while transferring Federal funding to these privatized stations.

After her employment was terminated by RFE/RL, Anna Karapetian, mother of three minor children, found out that unlike VOA journalists employed in Washington, D.C., and unlike her American colleagues working at the RFE/RL headquarters in the Czech Republic, she did not have the protection of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Federal Civil Rights Act, and many other U.S. anti-discrimination laws. The Czech government made sure that locally-hired Czech employees would have the full protection of the Czech labor law, but at the insistence of the BBG it allowed RFE/RL to exempt foreign journalists working for RFE/RL in Prague. They were placed under the Communist-era law, still on the books, which was used to facilitate the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia after 1968.

The influential Czech, quite pro-American newspaper, “Lidove noviny” wrote in an editorial:

“Prague headquarters of RFE/RL, which pretends to be a messenger of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, behaves as an employer in such a way as if the principles it heralds are relevant “just” for the whole planet but not for what is going on inside that estimable organization itself.” Read Anna Karapetian’s Open Letter.

This legal limbo was specifically sought by the BBG and RFE/RL to prevent court challenges by foreign-based journalists against adverse personnel actions. Shocked and angered by how she was treated by her U.S. taxpayer-supported American employer, Anna Karapetian wrote in an open letter to freedom of the press and human rights organizations that non-American and non-Czech RFE/RL employees working in the Czech Republic, who often come from semi-dictatorial countries of the former Soviet Union, have “about as much legal protection as the inhabitants of Guantanamo: not in the country of their origin, not in the place of their presence, nor in the United States.”

While the BBG’s actions now appear to many as wrong and hypocritical, during the Bush Administration, both Republicans and Democrats serving on the BBG, became convinced that it would be easier for them and better for the White House’s war on terror to manage U.S. international broadcasting as a series of private businesses exempt from many U.S. government laws and regulations. These political appointees consistently eliminated programs at the Voice of America, where journalists enjoy significant independence and strong legal protections against arbitrary actions by management and were viewed as being opposed to the BBG’s and Bush Administration’s plans to transform U.S. international broadcasting. While BBG members claimed that their strategy would result in greater effectiveness and savings of taxpayers’ money, they have created multiple broadcasting units with multiple executive and administrative positions, which independent studies and media reports described as wasteful and lacking proper programming and fiscal accountability. ProPublica.org: Report Calls Alhurra a Failure

The fact that the neoconservative privatization agenda was led and implemented by a number of prominent Democrats on the BBG, including at least two  former members with close links to Vice President Biden, may not bode well for Ms. Karapetian’s hopes for significant reforms at the BBG and at RFE/RL during the Obama Administration. As a U.S. Senator, Vice President Biden was a major patron of a former BBG member, Norman Pattiz, founder of the now failing U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One, who pushed hard for the elimination of VOA broadcasting services, including its Arabic Service, and was the primary force behind the establishment of privatized stations, such as Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television for the Middle East. Many RFE/RL and VOA journalists still hope, however, that President Obama and his close advisors will pay attention to media reports of mismanagement at the BBG. 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. Broadcasting Board of Governors Rated Worst Than Ever By Its Employees and As One of The Worst Federal Agencies

During the last months of the Bush Administration,  Edward E. Kaufman, another former Democratic BBG member who is now a U.S. Senator from Delaware and was previously Joe Biden’s chief of staff, worked closely with BBG’s former Republican chairman, neoconservative Bush appointee, James K. Glassman, who later became the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. They agreed to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and India. Thanks to highly effective coordination behind the scenes by the BBG executive director, Jeffrey Trimble, who was formerly acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Board succeeded in taking VOA radio programs to Russia off the air just 12 days before the Russian military forces attacked Georgia last summer and then refused to resume them.

On December 31, 2008, the BBG also ended VOA radio program to Ukraine just hours before Russia cut off the flow of natural gas supplies to Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Only one BBG member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, the only working journalist serving on the Board, was reported to have voted against these program cuts and reportedly also opposed many of the management practices supported by other BBG members. The other current BBG members are: Joaquin F. Blaya, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, and Steven J. Simmons. The BBG web site still lists Condoleezza Rice as an ex-officio member, even though she is no longer the Secretary of State and therefore no longer sits on the Board.

Ted Lipien, president of San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit FreeMediaOnline.org, said that while privatized U.S.-funded broadcasting to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union was highly effective at times during the Cold War, “this so-called ’surrogate’ broadcasting model turned out to be totally outdated and inappropriate for providing news to the Middle East and the former Soviet republics under drastically different conditions.” Lipien pointed out that for most of the Cold War, RFE/RL journalists, who were based in West Germany, enjoyed far greater legal protections, as well as being protected from intimidation by communist security services, than the current RFE/RL journalists based in Prague and elsewhere behind the former Iron Curtain.

In addition to eliminating U.S. jobs and severely limiting the rights of overseas-based foreign journalists, the privatization of U.S. international broadcasting during the Bush Administration also produced major fiscal and editorial scandals at the newly established private stations and at RFE/RL. Both Republican and Democratic BBG members hoped that these private entities would be far more effective than the Voice of America in delivering programs against Islamist extremism. But the loosening of programming and fiscal controls and employment protections for journalists combined with the BBG’s marketing policy designed to maximize audience size regardless of local media conditions led to numerous editorial failures at the privatized entities. At the same time,  as a result of BBG’s actions, some of them taken within the last few weeks, the Obama Administration found itself without radio broadcasts by the Voice of America from the United States to many countries around the world.

Unlike VOA journalists,  many broadcasters at the privatized stations do not have extensive experience in reporting news about the United States and American politics. Some broadcasters, especially at Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa, have been accused of lacking basic journalistic training. U.S. and international media outlets reported that Alhurra aired unchallenged statements by Holocaust deniers and RFE/RL was criticized by a Russian human rights organization for giving extensive airtime to a Russian politician known for his racist comments about ethnic minorities, Jews, and Blacks. FreeMediaOnline.org reported that the BBG also failed to protect RFE/RL journalists and other employees who are Russian citizens and work in Russia. There is strong evidence that these employees are subject to blackmail and other forms of intimidation by the Kremlin’s secret police. “U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Spreading Racist Views on Radio Liberty in Russia: What Would Barack Obama Say If He Knew…”   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

Ms. Karapetian points out in her open letter that foreign journalists employed by RFE/RL face serious risks from security services of local dictators when they work in their own countries and lack legal protections if they work at RFE/RL headquarters in the Czech Republic. But despite her accusations of mistreatment, she defends RFE/RL as a journalistic organization with a distinguished history that is still much needed by audiences in countries without free media. She also expressed concern that the personnel policies applied to foreign journalists at RFE/RL are damaging U.S. reputation abroad and give encouragement to authoritarian leaders in the former Soviet republics. According to Ted Lipien, the lack of basic job security and legal protections makes foreign journalists employed by RFE/RL far more vulnerable to threats from the security services of the countries to which they broadcast. Their family members who live in those countries are also subject to intimidation.

Ms. Karapetian ended her letter with an appeal to press freedom and human rights advocates to contact the current RFE/RL president, Jeffrey Gedmin, and urge him to put into action a statement from his recent speech that “We have as RFE/RL our intellectual and moral compass… We also need to lead by example…”. Anna Karapetian is hoping that being true to President Obama’s promise of change,  his administration will show greater respect for the rights of foreign journalists employed by U.S.-funded international broadcasters. (Some media reports use “Karapetyan” as the spelling of her last name.)

Despite the reported failures on the part of the BBG, RFE/RL continues to play a vital role in many countries and, according to Ted Lipien of FreeMediaOnline.org, can be more effective in other countries if some of the failed policies of the Board of Broadcasting Governors are reversed. The ability to tell America’s story to the world in Voice of America broadcasts, however, has been largely destroyed by the privatization policies of the BBG during the past eight years. Journalists at VOA and RFE/RL hope that the Obama Administration will institute quick reforms in the use of “soft power” in communicating with the world. America’s image abroad would be improved by restoring Voice of America broadcasts and by putting an end to the shameful practice of restricting rights of foreign journalists who work on behalf of the United States, Lipien said.

The Obama Transition Team official responsible for international broadcasting is Ernest J. Wilson III, Dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. His email address is: ernest.wilson@usc.edu.

If you wish to protest or comment on the treatment of foreign journalists working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, you may also send emails to:

Jeffrey Gedmin, RFE/RL President,  addressed to Mr. Martins Zvaners, Associate Director of Communications: zvanersm@rferl.org

Jeffrey N. Trimble, BBG Executive Director,  addressed to the BBG Office of Public Affairs, publicaffairs@bbg.gov

Broadcasting Board of Governors Rated Worst Than Ever By Its Employees and As One of The Worst Federal Agencies

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, January 15, 2009, San Francisco –

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.