by Quo Vadis
 
Year after fiscal year, members of Congress in bipartisan fashion, question the  plans of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and its powerful Executive Staff to eviscerate the Voice of America. Since 1999, the Broadcasting Board of Governors has governed the units responsible for U.S. international broadcasting including the Voice of America, Radio/TV Marti and the grantee organizations:  RFE/RL, RFA (Radio Free Asia) and for the past several years, MBN (Middle East Broadcasting Network).
 
All sorts of reasons for dismantling VOA are presented.  The latest reasoning goes like this: the Chinese government jams VOA Mandarin and Cantonese broadcasts. In fact, the BBG people have demonstrated to congressional aides what jamming in China does to the signal.  Ergo, the broadcasts should be shut down.  Their solution?  The Internet, leaving out the critical fact that the Chinese government has complete control of the Internet thanks to its most efficient cyber-army.  Thankfully, Congress understood these facts when it decided to negate the BBG’s attempts last year to drastically cut VOA Mandarin and Cantonese radio and TV broadcasts to China. That did not deter the BBG Executive Staff from narrowing the reduction plan, now proposing to cut the VOA Cantonese Service in FY2013.
 
Another argument presented by the BBG in its jaunts to the Congress is:  since Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can read much of the Standard/Classical Chinese script, the BBG should cease Cantonese broadcasting.  The BBG and its Executive Staff neglect to mention that in their spoken forms, the Mandarin and Cantonese languages are totally different.  Therefore, by closing VOA Cantonese as they have been proposing for years, the BBG would effectively eliminate communications with over 60 million Cantonese-language speakers in China, including the residents of Hong Kong.
 
Using that curious reasoning of the BBG and its Executive Staff regarding jamming, one wonders how world history might have changed if the present BBG had governed international broadcasting during the long years of the Cold War? What would have happened if the VOA and RFE/RL had stopped its broadcasts to the countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR when jamming was extensive?   Would the Berlin Wall have fallen?  Would Lech Walesa have created the Solidarity movement?  Would the Republic of Georgia and the Baltic countries have had the chance at independence from the Soviet Union? Would the names of Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek been known to the Czechoslovak people?
 
During the Cold War, in-country monitoring of broadcasts in those areas conclusively showed that there were significant lapses in the effectiveness of the Soviet and Eastern European jammers to fully obliterate the signals (quite a common thing that happens in shortwave broadcasting). Past Directors of the VOA  during the Cold War understood the issues of radio reception and the ability of shortwave to elude jamming, especially outside the cities. They would never have proposed the cessation of U.S. broadcasts to critical areas as the BBG is doing now.  And if by chance they had, there would have been some intervention by the U.S. Information Agency which at one time had a prioritized list of countries for which U.S. broadcasts, in the interests of national security, were essential.
 
Concrete evidence since the ’89 fall of the Berlin Wall with the subsequent liberalization in countries escaping the Soviet yoke shows that listening to VOA broadcasts, in spite of attempts at signal jamming, was extensive throughout the USSR and Eastern Europe. Using the faulty logic of today’s BBG and its Executive Staff in cutting broadcasts because of jamming, U.S. international broadcasting would have lost what many have called its finest hour.
 
And then, there’s that sticky question of shortwave radio that the BBG and its Executive Staff keep saying is out-of-date and passe.  Ironically, their own research shows that over a billion people in the world tune in regularly to shortwave radio and that shortwave is necessary in countries with vast land stretches like Russia which encompasses nine time zones as well as China or Brazil.  Their own statements verify that the bulk of their present audience listens via radio.  Their conclusion?  But, of course, heave shortwave radio broadcasts and close the Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station in Greenville NC.  Due to opposition from BBG member Victor Ashe and intervention by North Carolina Congressman Walter B. Jones, the Greenville facility has been saved for now.
 
It is comforting to know that there are many in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, who do understand what the VOA mission is all about, including Congresswoman Betty McCollum. In her remarks at a subcommittee hearing several years ago, Congresswoman McCollum stressed the strategic importance of radio in delivering the message of America to the world.  She also pointed out that VOA is a vital part of the public diplomacy toolbox, a comment that no doubt aggravated the BBG Executive Staff who deny that any such function exists for VOA.  Broadcasting employees could only wish that her belief in the value of VOA broadcasts would be shared, in some way, by the BBG Executive Staff.
 
Video:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHdpodoVxUE
 
Judging by the BBG’s concerted attacks upon the Voice of America, the remarks of Congresswoman McCollum and the bipartisan opinion of a majority of the U.S. Congress regarding the importance of VOA broadcasts are alien to the BBG Executive Staff whose actions reveal their determination to throw this once-effective 70-year-old institution on to the trash heap of history.
 
 
 

by Quo Vadis
 
The recent and most devastating Reduction-in-Force proposed by Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in the FY-2013 budget is the latest in a series of frontal attacks against the basic mission of the Voice of America.   For FY-2013, the BBG has stepped up the pace of these annual onslaughts proposing to cut almost 200 broadcasters from an ever-shrinking staff, sapping the strength of America’s voice to the world and draining what’s left of the morale of its broadcasters. At the same time, the BBG is busy feathering its bureaucratic nest with the number of past, present and future management positions exploding.
 
Time and again, over the last few years, the BBG, on the recommendation of its Executive Staff, has marched in lockstep up to Capitol Hill with its proposals to cut  important and vital VOA language broadcasts, including English. Only through the direct intervention of the Congress have VOA broadcasts been spared. But like a toddler in a perpetual temper tantrum, the Executive Staff of the BBG persists in its relentless anti-VOA animus trying to prove to Congress that they, like the Enron folk, are “the smartest guys in the room.”
 
Let’s take a swing through the past starting with 2007, when the BBG proposed closing a number of services including Cantonese, Croatian, Georgian, Greek, Thai and Uzbek for FY2008.  In addition, the BBG planned to cut 14 hours of radio broadcasts in English, plus ending radio in Hindi, Russian and to the Balkan countries.  Reductions were proposed for broadcasts in Portuguese to Africa, Tibetan, and Ukrainian.
 
Nothing doing, said the Congress. The decision was helped along by an unprecedented bipartisan letter to save the VOA in March 2007 signed by eleven (11) former Voice of America Directors who served over the years under both Republican and Democratic administrations.  (see letter at link: http://www.publicdiplomacy.org/78.htm)
 
Fast forward to the final version of the appropriations bill for FY2008, in which the Congress overturned the BBG’s slash-and-burn plan with the following language:  

Language Service Reductions.- The Committee recommendation supports continuing broadcasting which the administration proposed for language service reductions in fiscal year 2008, particularly Albanian, Bosnian, Cantonese, Croatian, English, Georgian, Kazakh, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, South Slavic, Tibetan, Thai, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

 
True to form, the powers that be at the BBG paid no attention to the will of the Congress which picks up the tab for U.S. broadcasting and proceeded to cut radio/TV broadcasts to Russia in July of ’08, just three weeks before Russian troops invaded Georgia.  The VOA Georgian Service narrowly escaped the same fate thanks to the efforts of a Congresswoman who headed the Congressional Georgian Caucus.
 
Even though rebuffed in the appropriations for FY2008, the Executive Staff of the BBG was at it again the very next year. In the FY 2009 budget process, the BBG  requested implementation of the FY2008 cuts which the Congress prevented them from doing the previous year.
 
“Nay,” said the Congress in a bipartisan vote.
 
The House version of the 2009 appropriations bill included the following language:  

The Committee recognizes VOA for its essential contribution to United States public diplomacy.  The VOA’s English-language radio programming is especially important since it provides accurate, objective and comprehensive news to a potential English-speaking audience of 1.6 billion people worldwide.

 
The U.S. Senate concurred. In its appropriations bill for FY 2009, the Senate wrote: 

The Committee provides $693 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an increase of $23 million above the FY08 enacted level and $ 6 million below the request.  The bill provides funding for broadcasting in languages which the Administration proposed to eliminate in FY09, such as Russian, Uzbek, Tibetan and to the Balkans, where freedom of speech remains restricted and broadcasting is still necessary.

 
 
Same old, same old reduction proposals for FY 2010, but this time less drastic: Croatian, Greek (a perennial target) and Hindi.  In spite of the outcry from listeners in India, BBG executives  closed down VOA Hindi radio/TV broadcasts, arguing that VOA English could substitute for those language broadcasts.  Reductions were also proposed to Radio/TV Marti newscasts and on that basis, the BBG conducted an illegal RIF of 23 employees which was overturned in 2011 by an Arbitrator.  Since the Agency has appealed the Arbitrator’s decision on restoring the fired Marti employees, that situation is still in limbo.
 
Interestingly enough, although the availability of VOA English broadcasts was used as a justification to close VOA Hindi in 2010,  the BBG proposes to cut VOA English programs to the area in FY2013.
 
It didn’t get any better in 2011 with the BBG’s proposed reductions for FY2012. A huge battle erupted last year to save the VOA China radio/TV programming in Mandarin and Cantonese as the BBG proposed closing down the radio/TV broadcasts and transferring their functions to the Internet, which is totally blocked in China and policed by a 50,000+ person cyber-army.
   
In a decisive maneuver, an amendment was proposed for the FY2012 House Appropriations bill by Congressman Rohrabacher and approved unanimously in a bipartisan vote by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee:. 

Limitation: Of the funds authorized to be appropriated to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, 13.76 million is authorized to be appropriated only for Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese language radio and satellite television broadcasting.  Such funds may not be used for any other purpose.

 
Although the U.S. Congress once again came to the rescue of VOA,  the victory was bittersweet because the BBG, like the Energizer Bunny, was cranking up for the legendary Big One in its FY2013 budget plans with the most sweeping Reduction-in-Force ever proposed for VOA.
 
Battle-weary broadcasting employees are still determined to fight to the end whatever that end may be and have turned again to the Congress to petition for redress of grievance.
 
Congressional staffers often ask VOA employees why they think that the BBG is so intent on cutting the Voice of America.  The only answer seems to be that the BBG and its Executive Staff must truly believe that they, and not the Congress or VOA broadcasters, are “the smartest guys in the room.”  Exactly what the executives at Enron in their corporate arrogance thought as well.
 
​​​​​​​
 
 

by Quo Vadis

An early April Fools’ joke?  Classes in “outer beauty” as part of “Taking care of yourself from the inside out” in an Agency whose employees face a sweeping loss of 200+ positions in the upcoming Reduction in Force (RIF)?  Surely someone jests.  

Could this be some misguided bizarre attempt to improve morale by bringing in brigades of Cosmetic Consultants from high-end, chi-chi area stores to an Agency where morale is already at rock bottom and sinking, if that’s possible?  Are packets of shiny lip gloss and eye shadow color palettes and technicolor nails and the newest blush brush demonstrated by imported make-up mavens from Nordstrom’s and Macy’s the answer to the VOA morale problem?  

Who are these strange out-of-touch people who occupy  suites on the third floor that evidently believe that the prospect of losing your job calls for cosmetic and not job consultants?  

Could it be a variant of Marie Antoinette’s infamous “let them eat cake” in answer to a plea for bread? 

Or could this be the BBG/IBB saying, in essence: let them have lip butter in parfait pink and delicious Airbrush mousse as their cryptic answer to VOA employees wondering why their jobs are being eliminated for reasons that don’t make any sense? 

Hope it’s not the BBG’s final Alice-in-Wonderland act before tossing what they view as rank-and-file flotsam down the rabbit hole.   

In the national interest, the BBG’s self-proclaimed value-added experts should be mandated to take classes in make-up removal to expose the real face of the BBG/IBB.  It’s high time the Congress and the taxpayers see who they really are. 

Life at VOA is starting to look a bit like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.  “There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter.”  

Link to Video.

###

From: IBB Notices Administration 
Subject: House Announcement: Taking care of Yourself – 1 PM Today VOA Briefing Room
Date: March 20, 2012 10:16:54 AM PDT
To: IBB Staff 

Taking care of yourself from the inside out (outer beauty)
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Location: VOA Briefing Room
 
Nordstrom’s Cosmetic Consultants will be here with their Spring Collection.

Macy’s and other cosmetic consultants are invited.

by Quo Vadis 

In November 2011, at a forum sponsored by the Public Diplomacy Council and reported on by Adam Clayton Powell III, participants heard that the newest 2011 VOA audience figures showed an increase of 22 million for the international broadcasting audience in comparison with 2010.  Good news, of course, and fast on the heels of a brand-spanking-new Strategic Plan unveiled just a month prior and authored by the IBB spokesman at the forum, the Director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Performance Measurement of the United States Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

In those 2011 VOA audience figures, “the biggest success on the planet” is how the IBB spokesman described U.S. broadcasting in Afghanistan.  Evidently, the data showed three-quarters of the entire country watches or listens to American broadcasts. Additionally, 400,000 Afghans subscribe to BBG text messaging services. According to available research data, less than half of the population in Afghanistan has a TV and only a tiny minuscule has access to the Internet. Therefore, it would not be difficult to deduce that radio, for the time being, is by far the most powerful medium in the country to reach potential listeners.
 
In reaction to the news about the impact and popularity of U.S. broadcasting in Afghanistan, the BBG/IBB in its FY-2013 budget submission decided to cut those evidently powerful VOA radio broadcasts to Afghanistan while proposing to release eight seasoned VOA broadcasters. In so doing is the Agency, as some wonder, transferring the functions away from VOA’s federal employees to the RFE/RL surrogate grantee, thereby opening up the back door to de-federalization?   

That non-sequitur in deciding to cut VOA Afghan broadcasts in spite of their importance and popularity is rivaled by the announcement in the FY-2013 budget that VOA will cut most of its English-language broadcasts to the world including China and the Middle East. This decision ignores the fact that according to some, English is or should be the official language of the United States, remains the language of diplomacy, culture, and commerce in the world as well as being the second language of choice for millions of people around the globe from Albania to Zambia. One can only wonder if the BBC, plus Radio Canada International and Radio Australia, perhaps inspired by the daring VOA example, will soon cut its English-language broadcasts to the world as well. 

At the Public Diplomacy forum, there came a “medium is the message” a la Marshall McLuhan moment when the IBB spokesman stated: “Impact cannot be reduced to audience, but you cannot have impact without audience,” adding that broadcasting needs to look at specific audiences – not just traditional elites, but young people and women.” Actually, the Voice of America has been doing that for many years, informing audiences with the latest news and commentary and tailoring its back-half features to the diverse interests of its listeners with programming aimed at a cross-section of the listening audience: farmers, students, teachers, engineers, politicians, elites, business people, young/old, men/women, rich and poor. In its music programs, the VOA of the not-too-distant past  broadcast the full spectrum of American music: opera and classical music, country, Broadway, folk, pop, rock, hip-hop, blues, jazz and never concentrated solely on rock and pop music, as in Radio Sawa to the Middle East, as if that were the only musical genre produced in America.

Beyond audience growth, another goal of the Strategic Plan, said its author, is for VOA and other U.S. broadcasters to embrace user content and use material created by listeners and viewers. According to the IBB spokesman at the forum, the “value added” by U.S. international broadcasting would be checking and verifying the accuracy of material submitted by the audience. Unfortunately, the “check-and-verify” concept was challenged by the recent gaffe of the VOA Russian website which published a completely fictitious interview supposedly with a leader of the anti-Putin dissident movement in Moscow, Alexei Navalny, who announced to the world that the VOA interview was totally bogus and conducted via cyberspace with an impostor. “Value added” is a slippery slope, indeed.

One questioner at the PD forum said he could not find the phrase “public diplomacy” anywhere in the Strategic Plan.  “Correct,” said the Strategic Plan author, the reason being:  “Objective journalists by and large, don’t subscribe to the idea that they are changing people’s attitudes,” continuing that “attitudinal and behavioral change is the hope, but not a direct goal.”  And the explanation finished with:  “we don’t do the advocacy piece. Good things will come from good journalism.”  

Crystal-clear.  Forget the WHAM (Winning Hearts and Minds) factor.

That comment is in sharp contrast to the words of the distinguished public diplomacy expert, Walter Roberts, whom many credit with being one of the founding fathers of VOA. At the recent 70th birthday celebration of VOA, Walter Roberts stated: As the information revolution proceeds, diplomacy will become much more public diplomacy and public diplomacy cannot exist without international broadcasting. When I predict that in 30 years the Voice of America will exist, I also predict that Deustche Welle will also exist, that the BBC will exist because international broadcasting is a vital part of public diplomacy.”

Although public diplomacy was indeed omitted in the latest Strategic Plan, former BBG Chairman, Walter Isaacson, placed international broadcasting at the center of our national security. In his remarks when the Strategic Plan was unveiled, Mr. Isaacson said: “Our media outlets – VOA, RFE/Radio Liberty, Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa, RFA, and Radio/TV Marti – are a vital, cost-effective national security asset, whose impact is felt by some 166 million people weekly across the globe where critical U.S. interests are at stake.”

That difference of opinion is reflected in the current state of affairs at the BBG/IBB where there is an obvious disconnect about the true mission of international broadcasting between upper management and some middle-managers together with most of the rank-and-file.  Over the past few years, that disconnect is also obvious with the U.S. Congress which has consistently overruled the plans of the BBG/IBB in the national interest and the interests of national security.

The VOA ensemble trudges on and plays its heart out in spite of who happens to be the leader or conductor at any given time. Many directors embraced their duties conducting the VOA ensemble with enthusiasm, earning respect and admiration; others were indifferent or perceived the employees as a bothersome and unruly bunch, preferring to keep interaction to a minimum. Regardless of whether the Director was a gem or a lemon or whether upper management knew the score or didn’t, the broadcasting band continued to play on and does so now until such time as its voice will be silenced.

Not much different from the musicians in this video playing Dance of the Comedians from Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” with the irrepressible rascal, Victor Borge, at the podium.

Link to Video

Getting a BBG Birthday Cake

THE VOA ANNIVERSARY WALTZ:  LA DANSE MACABRE?

by Quo Vadis

For the past 10-15 years, as annual budget time nears, there’s a haunting presence in the halls of the Voice of America, call it, if you will, Mme La Guillotine furtively hovering in the background as broadcasters wonder whether this year it will be all over and they will be declared extinct like the dodo bird, a faded blip on the international broadcasting scene. A small cabal from the Executive Staff on the third floor of the Cohen Building, known as Valhalla to rank-and-file, stride to and fro with furrowed brows from meeting to meeting buttressed by bulging binders and glowing Power Point presentations, as they ponder the fate of the VOA language services in what some think is a macabre reenactment of the thumbs-up or down of Roman Coliseum days.

Some Services are plagued with this recurrent nightmare year after year as grating as a needle stuck in the groove of a scratched LP or maddening as the events in the film, Groundhog Day.  One of them is the VOA Georgian Service, doomed and then redeemed not once but many times. The Service was first saved from extinction by a VOA Director after a persuasive presentation by the service members together with a panel of knowledgeable experts.  In succeeding years, that pesky Mme La Guillotine persisted in prowling around the parameters of the Georgian Service. In ’08,  they were again on the chopping block but were saved, this time by the intervention of two gutsy Congresswomen, one who chaired the Congressional Georgian Caucus and believed that the Republic of Georgia was of great geo-political importance to the United States, a seemingly foreign concept to those making the decisions on diminishing the Voice of America. Fast forward to 2011 when VOA Georgian celebrated its 60th year of broadcasting with the well-deserved congratulatory messages and celebration. With those cheers for VOA Georgian achievements still a fresh memory, the fate of the Service once again hangs in the balance with severe cutbacks proposed in 2012, keeping only two employees who will be expected to produce high-quality TV and Internet – a recipe for potential failure.

In the ’08 proposed closures which Georgia barely escaped thanks to swift action by Congress, VOA Tibet was also scheduled to go off the air but escaped like its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who had been forced into exile to India many years before.  Last year, the VOA Tibetan Service, created by law in 1991, celebrated its 20th anniversary at festivities replete with kudos and toasts to its accomplishments. The very next year, perhaps because of the anniversary curse, third-floor executives announced that VOA Tibetan radio broadcasts, described by the Dalai Lama as a crucial lifeline to the outside world for his oppressed people, would be off the air leaving TV and internet. BBG executives are evidently oblivious to the fact that only exiled Tibetans in India can see VOA Tibetan TV since transmissions are effectively blocked within the country just as Chinese authorities prevent any internet access.  One of those fabled and familiar “oh well” moments.

Speaking of the bad-luck connection between VOA anniversaries and disaster, the Russian Service celebrated its 60th anniversary with much hoopla only to be unceremoniously shut down a year later in August of ’08 two weeks before the invasion by Russia of neighboring Georgia.  Ignoring the specific written advisory of Congress that radio/TV broadcasts to Russia be continued, the BBG transferred VOA Russian to internet only with the inevitable result that it lost its listeners, prestige and reach. Four years later, we see an aggressive Russia caught in the vise of an autocratic Putin and his plutocracy with unprecedented-since-the Cold-War venomous anti-American attacks issued from its ruling circles as our U.S. ambassador frantically strives to connect via Twitter.

The revolving-door scenario is repeated with the VOA Greek Service year after year: dumped and then resurrected, closed and then opened like a barn door in a windstorm.  Appeals to Congress and support from American Hellenic organizations kept turning the tide but again this year the Red Queen refrain – Off with their heads – is heard as the Greek Service faces closure for mysterious reasons known only to a select few perhaps in the secluded holy monasteries of Mount Athos.

The VOA China Branch narrowly dodged the infamous VOA anniversary curse last year when the U.S. Congress overruled the BBG‘s plans to cut radio/TV broadcasts to China and transfer its communication functions solely to InterNet which is almost totally blocked by China’s formidable cyber army. The Branch properly celebrated its 70th anniversary not in the confines of the VOA building but in the Rayburn Building of the U.S. Congress.

In March, the VOA celebrated its 70th anniversary with a glowing tribute to its influence and impact throughout the world over seven decades with congratulations from the U.S. President, the Secretary of State, video greetings from the Dalai Lama and Burmese activist Aung Suu Kyi, all kinds of hosannahs from near and far, from inside and outside the building.

Knowing the track record of anniversary celebrations preceding extinction, one can only wonder if the BBG knows something that VOA employees do not?

Moral of the story?  Beware of management emissaries from Valhalla bearing cake.

The following is a guest commentary which takes a look at how the Chinese authorities and a U.S. federal government agency adopted a similar approach to media use of the Cantonese language.

IF IT WALKS LIKE A DUCK AND QUACKS LIKE A DUCK, IT’S NOT A CHICKEN

News Commentary by Quo Vadis

In a statement issued  February 13, 2012 announcing its budget request for 2013,  the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) trumpeted sweeping cuts of English and language broadcasts and a reduction of almost 200 jobs at its flagship station, the Voice of America, this year celebrating its 70th, and as many believe, its final anniversary.  
 
Among the VOA broadcasts facing obliteration:  the Cantonese Service which has been on the air since February of 1939 when the United States began  its link with the people in China who speak Cantonese by providing them with news broadcasts and then programs to promote freedom and democracy. Its role was reaffirmed by Public Law 94-350 which established the VOA Charter. 
 
In its announcement, the BBG, as justification for its decision, stated: “as Mandarin and Cantonese are the same written language, VOA will reach Cantonese listeners on its website.”  There is a slight problem with this assertion.  

Without going into the language of linguists who use exotic-for-the-general-public words like logographic, semanto-phonetic and morphophonemic, let’s break it down in more understandable terms:  

Written Chinese uses Classical and Standard characters. Both Cantonese and Mandarin speakers can read Classical Chinese.   Standard Chinese is based on the Mandarin dialect with vocabulary drawn from Mandarin speech. Therefore, the BBG is partly correct in saying that Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can both READ the classical WRITTEN Chinese language.  However, (and it’s quite a significant “however”), written and spoken Cantonese is almost completely different from written and spoken Mandarin because Cantonese is essentially a different language in its spoken form. 
 
So, in short, according to linguists, with some variations, this is basically how it goes:
​     
Mandarin speakers can read Standard Written Chinese (Mandarin) but not Written Cantonese.

Mandarin speakers understand Spoken Mandarin but generally don’t understand Spoken Cantonese although there are some Mandarin speakers who can.

Cantonese speakers can read Written Chinese (Mandarin) and their own Written Cantonese.

Some Cantonese speakers can understand Spoken Mandarin but all understand Spoken Cantonese. 

Boiled down to more understandable terms:

A Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker can look at the exact same written text and understand what it says.  But ask them to read it out loud, and it’s the proverbial duck talking to the chicken.
 
That’s a bit different from the BBG statement which calls for a faulty and suspect conclusion to justify an action that they have taken with little or no research as to its validity and complexity.
 
Essentially, the BBG decision means that the approximately 60+ million speakers of Cantonese in mainland China which includes the large provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi  as well as the predominantly Cantonese-speaking population (7 million) of Hong Kong plus another half-million in Macau will be deprived of news and information from the United States of America. 
 
Not only information from America.  The central communist government in Beijing decided that as of March 1st of 2012, domestic radio and TV Cantonese broadcasts to the mainly Cantonese-speaking populous province of Guangdong will disappear (broadcasters will have to apply for permission to broadcast).  
 
This latest move against media use of Cantonese comes after the government proposed switching prime-time programming on Guangdong TV’s main channels from Cantonese to Mandarin in 2010. Implementation was postponed when the decision triggered mass demonstrations by Cantonese speakers, demonstrations so intense that the VOA covered them in its English-language broadcasts. 

Keeping VOA Cantonese broadcasts alive could and should be a strategic decision by the BBG in order to maintain and moreover, to increase listenership among a population now deprived of media in its own language.  
 
In the olden days of VOA, issues such as these were discussed and debated prior to implementation.  Not so now. Unfortunately, trying to point these facts out to the members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and their executive staff is akin to speaking Mandarin to a Cantonese and vice versa:  quack-quack to cluck-cluck: like a duck talking to a chicken.
 

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

A THANKSGIVING MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA

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

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

QuoVadis

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The Great Pumpkin — A Halloween Look At U.S. Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting

QuoVadis

It’s Halloween time when shadowy figures and grotesque ghosts and goblins roam the land.  Fast on the heels of All Hallow’s Eve come the U.S. presidential elections.

If, as the polls indicate, Senator Biden becomes our next vice-president, election eve, particularly for international broadcasters yet employed by the U.S. government, could conjure up some mighty frightening figures and events from the past.

Although known more for his verbal gaffes, Senator Biden has a foreign policy gaffe or two in his portfolio, most prominently, responsibility for the dissolution of the U.S. Information Agency in the late ’90′s and the “reorganization” of international broadcasting after the Cold War with the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act. Thanks to the Senator’s efforts, USIA, the driving force of U.S. global communications was thrust into the mother of all bureaucracies: the U.S. State Department which experts agree has stymied our public diplomacy efforts for the past decade.  With the dissolution of USIA came the unfortunate “reorganization” of international broadcasting where a comfy collection of bipartisan political appointees known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) was given the awesome responsibility of directing our country’s international broadcasting.  

This was not a one-man band endeavor. Senator Biden had the necessary support in this “reform and restructuring”  from then-Secretary of State Albright, the Clinton administration and unfortunately, Republican Senator Jesse Helms.

With a few exceptions, most of the Board appointees over the past decade have only had a scant, superficial knowledge of international affairs or global broadcasting and yet, were given the reins of directing a most important function of  U.S. public diplomacy.  Their record is dismal. Under the direction of this botch-prone Board, international broadcasting has suffered dramatic reversals and cuts, leaving in its wake a plummeting of U.S. prestige throughout the world, even in those countries historically supportive of America throughout the years. 

For participation on the Board, Senator Biden championed a leading contributor to his past presidential campaigns, a millionaire media mogul, Norman Pattiz from California, the owner of Westwood One. After his appointment by President Clinton, this self-styled “visionary” extraordinaire took Washington and the BBG by storm. 

First, Pattiz took over programming to the Middle East cauldron.  Corey Pein of the Columbia Journalism Review writes that “the real tragedy is that the VOA Arabic Service was destroyed by Norman Pattiz of Westwood One.  It is bizarre that the response of the US government to 9/11 was to fire the VOA broadcasters and dismantle the Service.” Substituting credible and professional programming by a seasoned staff with a 24/7 mindless and fruitless pop music format, Pattiz erased a loyal audience of movers and shakers in the Arab world instead trying to attract teeny-bopper fans with vacuous pop artists. News and commentary took a back seat and millions of information-starved listeners in the Arab world were left high and dry.

Armed with questionable polls and statistics, Pattiz paraded to Capitol Hill, convincing the Congress and surprisingly, the Bush administration to fund his broadcasting experiments which included expanding into a fruitless Arabic TV effort with Alhurra and then 24/7 pop format programming to Iran. To his credit, in 2002, Senator Jesse Helms expressed regrets over the changes in U.S. international broadcasting when he commented on Persian programming in a Wall Street Journal column:  “It’s difficult to believe that the Bush administration has agreed to support this shift from a proven program of serious policy discussion to a teeny-bopper music-based format.  It will likely insult the cultural sensitivities of Iranians as well as their intelligence.  Meanwhile, a brave professor sits in a jail cell awaiting execution, students plot protests and the regime struggles to hold the line against the will of the people.  And the U.S. will be spinning Britney Spears discs?”

Those who writhed under the Pattiz regime at VOA, managers and rank-and-file alike,  bid him no fond farewells in 2005 when he finally walked out the door, considering him the person who almost singlehandedly destroyed U.S. international broadcasting. Yet his legacy continues as the BBG has retained Pattiz’s flawed Middle East broadcasting concoctions, dissolving other critical VOA language services to do so even when Congress explicitly forbade the elimination of essential VOA language services in its funding legislation. The latest BBG gaffe is mind-boggling: in July 2008, the Board closed the VOA Russian Service on the eve of Russia’s invasion of the Republic of Georgia.

Will Norman Pattiz be returning to Washington and to his political colleagues on the BBG after the inauguration perhaps as Chairman of the woebegone Board?  Or will Pattiz be given an even higher position in the new administration where he can wreak even more damage? 

Only the Great Pumpkin knows.

Happy Halloween.

QuoVadis