In the letter, CUSIB’s co-founders Ann Noonan and Ted Lipien pointed out that CUSIB has been adamantly opposed to the BBG’s plan to end Voice of America radio and TV broadcasts in Cantonese and Mandarin to China. They expressed relief that the BBG has discarded this plan. The BBG was forced to abandon its plan due to a strong bipartisan opposition to it in Congress.

The letter also warns against efforts to undermine independence and specialization of the BBG-managed surrogate broadcasters, which include Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV. CUSIB also opposes BBG plans to de-federalize the Voice of America as leading to weakening its role of representing the voice of the American public to audiences abroad and to limiting public and Congressional oversight of VOA broadcasts.

CUSIB also calls for placing all of U.S. international broadcasting content in public domain, including programming from the surrogate broadcasters which is currently copyrighted despite being funded in full by American taxpayers. CUSIB is opposed to granting the BBG authority to actively distribute its programs in the United States but supports some modifications to the Smith-Mundt Act to clarify that all U.S. international broadcasting content is easily available to anyone in the United States who wants to use it. CUSIB is concerned, however, that active BBG involvement in marketing its programs in the United States would seriously undermine its mission abroad.

CUSIB also urged the BBG to improve its treatment of foreign-born journalists, particularly those employed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in the Czech Republic, and called attention to the unfair treatment of contract employees at the Voice of America and the International Broadcasting Bureau in the United States.

CUSIB’s executive director Ann Noonan has been long active in human rights organizations. Ted Lipien is a former acting associate director of the Voice of America who now runs Free Media Online, a media freedom NGO. CUSIB’s Advisory Board includes journalists, human rights activists, media freedom advocates, and former U.S. government officials.

###

Open ‘Thank You’ Letter to Broadcasting Board of Governors

January 17, 2011

Dear Chairman Isaacson and Board Members:

We would like to thank the Broadcasting Board of Governors, especially Chairman Isaacson and Ambassador Ashe, for extending their invitation to allow our Executive Director to attend Friday’s Board Meeting as your guest. As members of a non-governmental organization that supports media freedom and U.S. international broadcasting, we are grateful that the Board is open to consider the views of those of us involved in the pro-democracy, free press, women’s rights, religious freedom and human rights movements here and abroad. In the great spirit of transparency, thank you.

On behalf of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting, we applaud your decision to discard plans to end Voice of America’s Cantonese and Mandarin radio and TV broadcasts. The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting was adamantly opposed to this plan.

We believe in and support the distinct and special missions of both VOA and surrogate broadcasters. We hope that you will carefully consider any future proposal that might impact on the unique role of VOA’s radio and television broadcasts as a powerful voice of the American people and our elected and non-elected representatives and spokesmen. We also hope that the independence of surrogate broadcasting will be preserved. De-federalization of the Voice of America would weaken its pro-human rights impact abroad and make it less representative of the views and values of American citizens. Centralization of management controls over the surrogate broadcasters could hamper their ability to specialize in human rights reporting and divert resources from those who are the most knowledgeable about the countries and regions to which they broadcast. Please consider these issues carefully.

Any reorganization proposals you may be putting forward should not diminish in any way full public ownership, control, and effective oversight over U.S. international broadcasting. Americans and their elective representatives need to have even greater input than now into how American policies, values and opinions are presented abroad. We are concerned that the BBG reorganization plan may limit transparency and accountability.

In support of transparency and openness, the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting advocates for public ownership of all content produced by publicly funded U.S. international broadcasters. We believe strongly that all such content, not just from VOA but also from the surrogate broadcasters, should be in public domain. We urge you to make this change as soon as possible with regard to the surrogate broadcasters. Their output is currently copyrighted even though it is entirely paid for by American taxpayers.

We support efforts to clarify the Smith-Mundt Act to state that anyone in the United States, as well as abroad, is free to use this content free of charge and to make sure that it is made available to those who may want it regardless of where they live.

We are strongly opposed, however, to any active marketing of such content by the Agency within the United States. We believe that this would seriously distract you from your primary mission of providing news to audiences overseas.

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting supports BBG journalists and other employees whose hard work and dedication help countless millions of people receive uncensored news. We urge you to address the issue of unequal treatment of foreign workers at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who are denied by a decision of the BBG some of the protections of the Czech labor law. This issue is now before the European Court of Human Rights. We are also concerned that a large number of contract employees at the Voice of America and the International Broadcasting Bureau are denied basic employment benefits and protections.

We would like to invite each of you to visit our website, www.CUSIB.org, and read the letter from one of the world’s top China watchers, Dr. Willy Lam, who wrote about the importance of VOA broadcasts. Please also watch the video we have posted that was recorded by volunteers of Women’s Rights in China at considerable risk to their own lives. This video shows how critical these broadcasts are to the most vulnerable, the most oppressed, and the poorest in the world. Please do not forget about them and about the Internet censorship they face – even as you rightfully try to expand your reach using new media.

It was an honor for our Executive Director to meet the Board Members who attended Friday’s meeting, and we will remain hopeful that you will welcome us to attend your next meeting.

Sincerely,

Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting
Ann Noonan, Executive Director
Ted Lipien, Director
www.cusib.org
contact@cusib.org

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has released what it calls “the framework of its new strategic plan to enhance the global impact of U.S. international broadcasting through innovation and integration.” Apparently, not even BBG members have seen a copy of the full plan, which was developed by the executive staff, but what has been published Tuesday in Washington raises many doubts about the direction of U.S. international broadcasting. Here are some of Free Media Online concerns:

1. Absentee Board During the crucial time in the development of the strategic plan, most BBG members did not show up regularly for board meetings. Starting July 2010, only three BBG members (Ashe, Isaacson, Mulhaupt) have a perfect attendance record. Others were often absent, which may indicate low level of their interest and involvement in what should have been a period of close scrutiny of numerous staff reports and recommendations regarding the strategic plan.

This raises the question whether the BBG bureaucracy has received proper guidance and supervision from the absentee, part-time Board and to what extent the plan reflects the staff’s own bureaucratic interests, which may be incompatible with the expectations of Congress and the American people.

2. No Cost Estimate There is nothing in the plan that would tell Congress and the American people how much it is going to cost U.S. taxpayers. Other than making unsupported and unrealistic claims of expected gains in audience reach, there is also nothing in the plan to indicate what the United States would gain from its implementation in terms of program impact and savings, if any.

3. Failed Management Team The strategic plan was developed by the same BBG executives who proposed to terminate all Voice of America radio and satellite television transmissions to China on October 1, 2011, the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This proposal was criticized by human rights activists in China and in the U.S. It was rejected by Democrats and Republicans in committees both in the House and the Senate.

The same team had proposed and the previous Board had approved the termination of VOA radio and television to Russia, a decision that — despite strong objections from key members of Congress — was implemented in 2008, just 12 days before Russian armed forces invaded and occupied part of the Republic of Georgia. The team that developed the strategic plan opted for the Internet-only program delivery for VOA in China despite Beijing’s effective Internet censorship and blocking of VOA websites.

4. No One to Explain America to the World The framework of the BBG strategic plan ignores Public Law 94-350, which requires the Voice of America (VOA) “to present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and [also to] present responsible discussion and opinion on these policies.”

5. VOA Ignored; Its Employees Considered a Liability The BBG’s new mission statement: “To inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy” also fails to reflect Public Law 94-350′s mandate that in addition to providing news, VOA “will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.”

Nor does the new mission statement confirm that “VOA news will be accurate, objective and comprehensive.” In fact, the BBG plan seems to favor de-federalizing the Voice of America, which runs the risk of giving the job of explaining America to the world to inexperienced, poorly-paid and poorly-trained contract employees. The BBG management team has been accused of exploiting contract employees and has been rated in employee surveys as one of the worst in the entire federal system. The issue of employee morale and the poor treatment of contract employees was raised last month at the BBG public meeting by BBG member Ambassador Victor Ashe.

6. News Agency Mission Incompatible with Broadcasting Mission Abroad The BBG’s strategic objective: “To become the world’s leading international news agency by 2016, focused on the agency’s mission and impact” appears highly unrealistic and has the potential of detracting from the mission of specialized news reporting and analysis for individual countries and regions.

7. Unrealistic Goals The BBG’s performance goal “To reach 216 million in global weekly audience by 2016″ also appears highly unrealistic — unless the BBG plans to include the U.S. audience in the count or to change its audience measurement methodology, and even then reaching the set goal is extremely unlikely.

8. Program Content and Program Quality Ignored The framework of the strategic plan focuses on audience reach and technology but completely ignores program content, program quality and impact issues.

9. Costs of New Media Exaggerated; TV and Radio Broadcasting Ignored While the plan rightly focuses on innovation, BBG executives tend to greatly exaggerate the costs of the Internet and new media, which are largely free and used by millions of individuals and institutional content providers, while the number of international broadcasters is limited. The BBG executive staff has been eager to eliminate satellite television and radio broadcasting to key areas of the world and has shown no concern that under their plan 750 million Chinese citizens would have no access to any VOA programs and that 45 VOA Chinese Branch journalists specializing in human rights reporting would lose their jobs.

10. Domestic Distribution A Great Danger to Mission Abroad The BBG’s call to end the legal restrictions on domestic distribution of programs runs a great risk of distracting the BBG from the mission of serving America’s interests abroad. The BBG can barely manage to fulfill its mission now. The quality of many programs is woefully poor. Music has replaced news and information because VOA and other BBG broadcasters lack proper resources. Many programs have already been eliminated, dozens upon dozens of experienced journalists have lost their jobs while the BBG bureaucracy keeps growing and is likely to expand rather than shrink under the new consolidation proposal. This proposal seems a sure way toward expanding the bureaucracy even further and to shifting the focus from international audiences to U.S. political and commercial domestic concerns. The authors of the plan are disingenuous in implying that BBG program content cannot be used in the U.S. Private individuals and commercial media outlets in the U.S. can use VOA programs. The BBG is simply prohibited from actively marketing these programs in the U.S.

Overall, the framework of the BBG strategic plan lacks a clear sense of mission. Its key components will distract journalists and broadcasters from achieving impact abroad. The part-time, absentee Board members failed to scrutinize the plan, which has all the highlights of being produced by in-house bureaucrats trying to protect their jobs and to hide their failures from Congress and the American people. The least BBG members could do is to attend all of their rather infrequent public meetings, analyze closely what their staff is proposing and pay more attention to what members of Congress, independent journalists, and human rights activists are saying.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has released what it calls “the framework of its new strategic plan to enhance the global impact of U.S. international broadcasting through innovation and integration.” Apparently, not even BBG members have seen a copy of the full plan, which was developed by the executive staff, but what has been published Tuesday in Washington raises many doubts about the direction of U.S. international broadcasting. Here are some of Free Media Online concerns:

1. Absentee Board During the crucial time in the development of the strategic plan, most BBG members did not show up regularly for board meetings. Starting July 2010, only three BBG members (Ashe, Isaacson, Mulhaupt) have a perfect attendance record. Others were often absent, which may indicate low level of their interest and involvement in what should have been a period of close scrutiny of numerous staff reports and recommendations regarding the strategic plan.

This raises the question whether the BBG bureaucracy has received proper guidance and supervision from the absentee, part-time Board and to what extent the plan reflects the staff’s own bureaucratic interests, which may be incompatible with the expectations of Congress and the American people.

2. No Cost Estimate There is nothing in the plan that would tell Congress and the American people how much it is going to cost U.S. taxpayers. Other than making unsupported and unrealistic claims of expected gains in audience reach, there is also nothing in the plan to indicate what the United States would gain from its implementation in terms of program impact and savings, if any.

3. Failed Management Team The strategic plan was developed by the same BBG executives who proposed to terminate all Voice of America radio and satellite television transmissions to China on October 1, 2011, the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This proposal was criticized by human rights activists in China and in the U.S. It was rejected by Democrats and Republicans in committees both in the House and the Senate.

The same team had proposed and the previous Board had approved the termination of VOA radio and television to Russia, a decision that — despite strong objections from key members of Congress — was implemented in 2008, just 12 days before Russian armed forces invaded and occupied part of the Republic of Georgia. The team that developed the strategic plan opted for the Internet-only program delivery for VOA in China despite Beijing’s effective Internet censorship and blocking of VOA websites.

4. No One to Explain America to the World The framework of the BBG strategic plan ignores Public Law 94-350, which requires the Voice of America (VOA) “to present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and [also to] present responsible discussion and opinion on these policies.”

5. VOA Ignored; Its Employees Considered a Liability The BBG’s new mission statement: “To inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy” also fails to reflect Public Law 94-350′s mandate that in addition to providing news, VOA “will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.”

Nor does the new mission statement confirm that “VOA news will be accurate, objective and comprehensive.” In fact, the BBG plan seems to favor de-federalizing the Voice of America, which runs the risk of giving the job of explaining America to the world to inexperienced, poorly-paid and poorly-trained contract employees. The BBG management team has been accused of exploiting contract employees and has been rated in employee surveys as one of the worst in the entire federal system. The issue of employee morale and the poor treatment of contract employees was raised last month at the BBG public meeting by BBG member Ambassador Victor Ashe.

6. News Agency Mission Incompatible with Broadcasting Mission Abroad The BBG’s strategic objective: “To become the world’s leading international news agency by 2016, focused on the agency’s mission and impact” appears highly unrealistic and has the potential of detracting from the mission of specialized news reporting and analysis for individual countries and regions.

7. Unrealistic Goals The BBG’s performance goal “To reach 216 million in global weekly audience by 2016″ also appears highly unrealistic — unless the BBG plans to include the U.S. audience in the count or to change its audience measurement methodology, and even then reaching the set goal is extremely unlikely.

8. Program Content and Program Quality Ignored The framework of the strategic plan focuses on audience reach and technology but completely ignores program content, program quality and impact issues.

9. Costs of New Media Exaggerated; TV and Radio Broadcasting Ignored While the plan rightly focuses on innovation, BBG executives tend to greatly exaggerate the costs of the Internet and new media, which are largely free and used by millions of individuals and institutional content providers, while the number of international broadcasters is limited. The BBG executive staff has been eager to eliminate satellite television and radio broadcasting to key areas of the world and has shown no concern that under their plan 750 million Chinese citizens would have no access to any VOA programs and that 45 VOA Chinese Branch journalists specializing in human rights reporting would lose their jobs.

10. Domestic Distribution A Great Danger to Mission Abroad The BBG’s call to end the legal restrictions on domestic distribution of programs runs a great risk of distracting the BBG from the mission of serving America’s interests abroad. The BBG can barely manage to fulfill its mission now. The quality of many programs is woefully poor. Music has replaced news and information because VOA and other BBG broadcasters lack proper resources. Many programs have already been eliminated, dozens upon dozens of experienced journalists have lost their jobs while the BBG bureaucracy keeps growing and is likely to expand rather than shrink under the new consolidation proposal. This proposal seems a sure way toward expanding the bureaucracy even further and to shifting the focus from international audiences to U.S. political and commercial domestic concerns. The authors of the plan are disingenuous in implying that BBG program content cannot be used in the U.S. Private individuals and commercial media outlets in the U.S. can use VOA programs. The BBG is simply prohibited from actively marketing these programs in the U.S.

Overall, the framework of the BBG strategic plan lacks a clear sense of mission. Its key components will distract journalists and broadcasters from achieving impact abroad. The part-time, absentee Board members failed to scrutinize the plan, which has all the highlights of being produced by in-house bureaucrats trying to protect their jobs and to hide their failures from Congress and the American people. The least BBG members could do is to attend all of their rather infrequent public meetings, analyze closely what their staff is proposing and pay more attention to what members of Congress, independent journalists, and human rights activists are saying.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international media freedom NGO, visited the South Korean capital of Seoul in July to evaluate the level of media freedom and freedom of information in North Korea and published the results of this fact-finding visit, Free Media Online (FreeMediaOnline.org) reported. Entitled “North Korea: Frontiers of censorship,” it looks at the regime’s media control and censorship and the attempts being made by others to increase freedom of information.

Reporters Without Borders concluded that foreign radio stations, broadcasting on shortwave, continue to be the main source of independent information for the North Korean population. The flow of information is also reinforced by NGOs that send material and multimedia content across the border by various methods.

Read the original:
Defending freedom of information against Kim Jong-Il’s regime –RSF

The Reporters Without Borders report states that videos from North Korea collected by the South Korean NGO, North Korea Strategy Centre (NKSC), are used by Radio Free Asia (RFA), Voice of America (VOA) and other foreign media. The report focuses mainly on Seoul-based radio stations operated by North Korean refugees such as Free North Korea Radio, Radio Free Chosun and Open Radio for North Korea. RSF has been supporting these stations since 2009.

Radio Free Asia and Voice of America are also a source of uncensored daily news delivered to North Korea on shortwave. BBG Watch, a U.S. NGO which monitors the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — a U.S. government agency in charge of RFA and VOA — reported, however, that Voice of America also used what was largely North Korean propaganda video after a VOA correspondent had been allowed to travel to Pyongyang. BBG Watch criticized the Broadcasting Board of Governors for issuing a press release that promoted this VOA video report from North Korea.

Original post:
Two news reports from North Korea offer vastly different accounts

Link to the video on YouTube.

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB), a recently-formed NGO which supports free flow of uncensored broadcast news to countries without free media, also reported on the Voice of America video footage from North Korea.

Reporters Without Borders concluded that foreign radio stations, broadcasting on shortwave, continue to be the main source of independent information for the North Korean population. The flow of information is also reinforced by NGOs that send material and multimedia content across the border by various methods.

Read the original:
Defending freedom of information against Kim Jong-Il’s regime –RSF

The Reporters Without Borders report states that videos from North Korea collected by the South Korean NGO, North Korea Strategy Centre (NKSC), are used by Radio Free Asia (RFA), Voice of America (VOA) and other foreign media. The report focuses mainly on Seoul-based radio stations operated by North Korean refugees such as Free North Korea Radio, Radio Free Chosun and Open Radio for North Korea. RSF has been supporting these stations since 2009.

Radio Free Asia and Voice of America are also a source of uncensored daily news delivered to North Korea on shortwave. BBG Watch, a U.S. NGO which monitors the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — a U.S. government agency in charge of RFA and VOA — reported, however, that Voice of America also used what was largely North Korean propaganda video after a VOA correspondent had been allowed to travel to Pyongyang. BBG Watch criticized the Broadcasting Board of Governors for issuing a press release that promoted this VOA video report from North Korea.

Original post:
Two news reports from North Korea offer vastly different accounts

Link to the video on YouTube.

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB), a recently-formed NGO which supports free flow of uncensored broadcast news to countries without free media, also reported on the Voice of America video footage from North Korea.

Fox News reported — Lawmakers Scramble to Keep Voice of America On Air in China — that Congressional lawmakers are scrambling to prevent America’s international media arm from going off-air in China, arguing that a plan to shift much of its reporting to the Internet won’t do much good in a country notorious for its web censors. 

In a full bipartisan rebuke to the BBG, which manages the Voice of America and other U.S. international broadcasts, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted unanimously for an amendment, introduced by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., containing a provision that would allocate nearly $14 million exclusively for Voice of America’s Mandarin and Cantonese radio and satellite TV programs to stay on the air.

The funding must now be approved by the House Appropriations Committee and agreed to by the Senate. Fox News reported that in a bipartisan letter to the House Appropriations Committee in May, Rep. Rohrebacher and several House colleagues urged the panel to follow suit as it crafts the funding bill. They argued that the radio and satellite broadcasts remain “one of the best ways to communicate directly” with the Chinese people. 

“We believe the administration’s proposal will hinder indigenous democracy movements in China and damage the long-term security of our own country,” they wrote. “Sacrificing U.S. broadcasting abilities while China’s authoritarian regime expands its broadcasting and public diplomacy efforts in the United States is the wrong answer.” 

Speaking at a hearing on religious freedom, democracy and human rights in Asia, Sophie Richardson, Asia Advocacy Director of the Human Rights Watch told the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs that the Human Rights Watch urges the U.S. to “maintain funding not only for Tibetan language programs for RFA and VOA, but also for the Mandarin, Cantonese, and Uighur services.” Ms. Richardson said that these services “are irreplaceable means of transmitting information into and out of all regions of China.”

Speaking at the same hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hollywood actor Richard Gere, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Campaign for Tibet, also called for saving Voice of America broadcasts.

Fox News reported that “Ted Lipien, a former VOA executive who now runs Free Media Online, complained in an op-ed earlier this year that aside from the threat of censorship, two-thirds of China’s population does not even have Internet access. He accused the BBG of turning its back on human rights activists who rely on radio for information.”

In a Washington Times editorial published last March, Lipien wrote:
“The Internet is inaccessible for 750 million Chinese. A listener to VOA radio programs in China is not likely to be a Chinese with an iPhone who goes on shopping trips to New York but someone like Liu Xia, wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Kept under house arrest, she once succeeded in sending an email to a friend, in which she wrote, ‘I don’t know how I managed to get online.’ She then warned her friend, ‘Don’t go online. Otherwise my whole family is in danger.’ BBG officials turn their backs on people like Liu Xia when they claim that ending VOA radio to China would help them develop new media tools to reach a younger, Internet-using audience.” Lipien ended his Washington Times op-ed with a comment about the BBG executive staff, which claims to be able to overcome Internet censorship in China but had failed to protect VOA websites from an Iranian cyber attack:

“The ability of the BBG executive staff to make wrong decisions has been so uncanny that simply by examining their program-cutting proposals, members of Congress easily could have predicted new outbreaks of unrest and assaults on free media shortly before they happened. Congress should not allow this group of managers to commit yet another blunder with a gift to the Chinese Communist Party as it celebrates its national holiday on Oct. 1, the proposed date for ending VOA radio to China.”

Free Media Online has criticized the BBG executive staff for misleading members of Congress and the media with claims that the termination of VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China and the firing of about 40 journalists specializing in human rights reporting are needed to create online presence in China, when in fact VOA already has an active online outreach, which is limited only by the Chinese regime’s censorship of the Internet.

The idea that millions of dollars are needed to expand VOA’s online presence in China is also highly misleading, Lipien said. He pointed out that the beauty of the Internet is that it is inexpensive, as proven by millions of news websites run by individuals and NGOs.

“Only BBG executives, consistently rated year after year in government-wide surveys conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) as the worst managers in the federal bureaucracy, could claim that they need to fire 40 journalists who are experienced in reporting about human rights abuses in China so that they can give millions of dollars to consultants and private contractors, and that this will make the Voice of America more effective. The truth is,” Lipien said, “that the same BBG executives could not even protect VOA’s own websites from a successful attack by Iranian Islamists, and the idea that they can overcome Chinese censorship of the Internet is completely unrealistic.”

“What BBG executives will do,” Lipien said, “is to make easier for the Chinese cyber police, which reportedly number over 40,000, to track down human rights activists in China by forcing them to switch from safe listening to radio or watching satellite TV to using the Internet to access the VOA Chinese website, which may not even be accessible.”

Free Media Online president pointed out that the same executives sent three BBG members on a negotiating mission to Ethiopia and were responsible for censoring Voice of America programs and for the dismissal of a VOA journalist who revealed that the Ethiopian regime demanded that human rights activists be banned from VOA programs.

Link to the demonstration video 1

“The spectacle of BBG members negotiating with repressive regimes, followed by censorship of VOA programs, shows that members of Congress are absolutely right in demanding the continuation of VOA broadcasts to China and calling BBG executives incompetent,” Lipien said. The BBG is a bipartisan board comprised of nine members. Eight, no more than four from one party, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate; the ninth is the Secretary of State, who serves ex officio. In addition to Chairman Isaacson and Secretary Clinton, they include Victor H. Ashe, Michael Lynton, Susan McCue, Michael P. Meehan, Dennis Mulhaupt, Dana Perino, and S. Enders Wimbush.

A former BBG member Blanquita Cullum also observed the tendency of the current leadership to favor communicating with rulers rather than the people who listen to VOA programs because they offer uncensored information and hope. “Now is the time to increase worldwide access to information … This is not the time to pull the plug,” warned Cullum in a Washington Times editorial published last February. She accused the BBG of seeming “more intent on communicating with rulers than with the people.”

Human rights and media freedom advocates in the U.S. have been reposting this Tiananmen Anniversary video. Free Media Online urges further reposting and linking to this powerful video.

8964 from sofunny on Vimeo.

8964 from sofunny on Vimeo.

Link to the demonstration video 1

Link to the demonstration video 2

VOA Acting Director Steve Redisch

In an apparent attempt at damage control that may place him at odds with some of the BBG members, Voice of America acting director Steve Redisch also reportedly expressed support for the head of Horn of Africa Service David Arnold who was suspended from his position, apparently at the insistence of BBG member Michael Meehan. Before being nominated by President Obama to serve on the BBG, Meehan had been accused of shoving a reporter who was trying to ask a question of a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Free Media Online opposed his nomination as unsuitable for an institution created to support media freedom.

VOA journalist David Arnold

During his meeting with the Horn of Africa Service Redisch did not comment directly on the VOA programs that had already been censored and removed from the website and did not say whether they would be restored. He also did not say why David Arnold was dismissed and whether he would return to his old position. He also did not explain why a senior VOA executive called for less political reporting to Ethiopia after the BBG delegation’s talks with the Ethiopian regime and David Arnold’s dismissal. According to Addis Voice, VOA executives moved Arnold from his old position to VOA’s English Service. Addis Voice also reported that VOA journalists were forbidden from taking written notes at a recent editorial meeting of the Horn of Africa Service.

BBG Member Michael P Meehan

According to sources, Meehan was furious when he found out that Arnold told his staff about the demands of the Ethiopian regime to restrict VOA’s human rights reporting to Ethiopia. These demands were made in a meeting the regime officials had in Addis Ababa with Meehan and two other visiting BBG members, Dana Perino and Susan McCue. Subsequently, David Arnold, who had been present at the meeting with the Ethiopian regime officials, was dismissed from his position and VOA news reports based on the information he provided were permanently deleted, a move that violates the VOA Charter, VOA’s own journalistic code, and U.S. government regulations.
BBG executives accused Arnold of spreading misinformation but did not offer any explanation or corrections, which is the usual journalistic practice in news organizations. After Arnold’s dismissal, higher-level managers blocked VOA coverage of an important Ethiopian American political emigre meeting held in the Washington, DC area and were told to limit political reporting in favor of more human-interest news stories.

Free Media Online president Ted Lipien, who once served as VOA’s acting associate director, said that “Mr. Redisch’s short meeting with VOA journalists and his statements are steps in the right direction but still fall short of fully reparing the tremendous damage to VOA’s reputation as a credible news organization and the damage to the reputation of the United States and U.S. public diplomacy created by the spectacle of not just one but three Broadcasting Board of Governors’ members, negotiating secretly with the one of the most repressive regimes in Africa, which not too long ago charged VOA journalists with treason and threatened them with the death penalty.”

Free Media Online president Ted Lipien

“It is outrageous that the Broadcasting Board of Governors executives arranged such a ill-defined trip and then, apparently with active involvement of some of the presidentially-appointed BBG members, dismissed a well-respected VOA journalist and censored news reports in a clear violation of the VOA Charter. BBG officials must apologize to Voice of America listeners, restore Mr. Arnold to his previous position, and stop all attempts at censorship and intimidation of journalists, including forbidding taking notes at meetings, a practice that’s identified with communist and other dictatorships and does not belong in America. The U.S. Congress should investigate this incident and other actions by BBG members and their executive staff, especially the most recent decision to terminate Voice of America radio and TV broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese to China and to fire two dozen VOA China Branch journalists who specialize in human rights reporting.”

Lipien also said that the U.S. Congress should investigate charges, made recently by one of the most respected independent journalists who fight media censorship in Russia at great danger to themselves, that the earlier firing of VOA Russian broadcasters and programming changes imposed by the BBG have resulted in deliberate downplaying of human rights reporting and repetition of pro-Kremlin propaganda on the VOA Russian Service website.

“Censorship, self-censorship and mismanagement at the Voice of America and other broadcasting entities under the BBG’s umbrella is not likely to change until the entire BBG strategic plan, which places emphasis on expanding audiences over the mission of serving informational needs of the most oppressed, is replaced with a plan that the U.S. Congress and American taxpayers can be sure serves America’s interests in promoting freedom and democracy,” Free Media Online president Ted Lipien said.

Lipien pointed out that independent journalists in Russia, human rights defenders in China and Ethiopia, and Ethiopian Americans do not want to see the Voice of America turn into a third-rate cable channel with stories about UFOs and aliens while BBG members travel around the world at U.S. taxpayers’ expense making deals with dictatorial regimes to allow such programs to air locally because they don’t offend anyone and therefore may result in higher audience ratings. This is exactly what an independent journalist in Russia said about the VOA Russian Service website, as reported in an internal Broadcasting Board of Governors program evaluation which was ignored by BBG and VOA executives.

Dana Rohrabacher R-CA

FreeMediaOnline.org reported that the Broadcasting Board of Governors has credibility problems not only among American ethnic communities and free media advocates in the U.S. and abroad, but also increasingly on Capital Hill. In a full bipartisan rebuke to the BBG members and their executive staff, the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs passed by unanimous consent an amendment, proposed by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher R-CA, which would block the BBG’s decision to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China. A similar action would be required in the U.S. Senate to save these programs. The final outcome is not yet certain and the BBG may yet succeed in stopping VOA radio and TV to China as it did with VOA radio and TV to Russia, despite strong opposition to that move among many members of Congress.

During the debate in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Brad Sherman D-CA, Congressman Connie Mack R-FL, and Congressman Chris Smith, R-NJ said that BBG “bureaucrats” should not be allowed to make the decision to cut VOA radio and TV to China.  Rep. Mack commented on the BBG’s audience research, which claims low audience figures in China for Western radio stations, but which free media advocates describe as completely unreliable: “People in China or Cuba, as you can imagine, will not jump in joy and admit it [listening to Western radio stations]. If you say yes, in China or Cuba, the government will punish you. People are afraid for their own lives. Rep. Smith pointed out that Intermedia, which the BBG uses to conduct audience research, “gets money from the BBG, and then gives money to contractors in Beijing to conduct the survey.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and other media freedom organizations have accused the Ethiopian regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in power since 1991, of imprisoning journalists, jamming Voice of America and other foreign broadcasts, and blocking many foreign and independent news websites. Citizens of Russia and China are also denied access to uncensored information by their authoritarian regimes, with which BBG members had likewise tried in the past to negotiate better local placement of U.S. news programs and eventually moved to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to these countries, opting for Internet-only program distribution. This may explain the strong reaction of the Ethiopian American community to the BBG’s latest actions following the visit of the BBG delegation to Ethiopia. The protest organizers were calling for saving the Voice of America from turning into a “Voice of China” and pointed out that the Chinese government has provided the Ethiopian regime with the equipment used to jam VOA and other Western radio broadcasts. The Ethiopian American leaders described the Voice of America Horn of Africa Service as “the only powerful source of uncensored news and views,” while pointing out that attempts at censorship transpired after the BBG visit to Addis Ababa and after the Meles regime reportedly demanded that critics of the regime be banished from participating in VOA programs.

###

The letter from the Ethiopian America community to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in PDF

Mr. Walter Isaacson, BBG Chairman
Mr. Richard M. Lobo, IBB Director
Mr. Steve Redisch, VOA Acting Director/ Executive Editor,
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
330 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20237

July 25, 2011

Dear Sirs,

First of all, we, members of the Ethiopian American community, would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the People and Government of the United States for being the leading defender of freedom, justice and democracy throughout the world. We greatly appreciate and admire the crucial works of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, whose mission is “to promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding through multi-media communication of accurate, objective, and balanced news, information, and other programming about America and the world audience overseas.”

We are writing today to request an investigation into reports of censorship at the Voice of America Horn of Africa section, which has been serving Ethiopians as the only powerful source of uncensored news and views. What is more worrying is the fact that the difficulties facing the VOA Horn of Africa section transpired after the Meles regime reportedly demanded VOA to banish a list of critics from appearing on its programs and coverage.

We find it appropriate and timely to quote from a speech H.E. Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, who happens to be one of the esteemed members of BBG, delivered last month at the African Union, Addis Ababa. Secretary Clinton rightly told African leaders:

“The status quo is broken; the old ways of governing are no longer acceptable; it is time for leaders to lead with accountability, treat their people with dignity, respect their rights, and deliver economic opportunity. And if they will not, then it is time for them to go.”

As you very well know, it is impossible to hold leaders accountable and guarantee dignity and human rights without freedom of expression and free press. The struggle of the Ethiopian people to create a nation founded on freedom, democracy, dignity, rule of law, transparency and accountability has been severely hampered by the relentless efforts by the ruling TPLF/EPRDF in Ethiopia to silence every little voice of dissent and critical view. Only within the last five years, scores of newspapers have been closed down, many journalists have been jailed and nearly one hundred of them have been forced into exile. In addition, the regime blocks news websites and blogs and intensively jams international broadcasts.
The Ethiopian government is one of the most anti-free press regimes in the world lined up and in league with Burma, Cuba, Iran and others. This has been consistently reported by credible human rights
organizations, the State Department annual human rights report and free press advocates such as the Committee to Protest Journalists (CPJ), Reporters without Boarders and International Press Institute.

Having said that, we would like to bring to your attention recent developments that have created a cloud of concern and anxiety among Americans of Ethiopian origin as well as the Ethiopian Diaspora. The Voice of America means a lot to the majority of Ethiopians who have depended on its balanced, objective and reliable reporting and programs.

It is to be remembered that three BBG Governors, Susan McCue, Dana Perino and Michael Meehan, along with four senior VOA staff members, travelled to Ethiopia, Southern Sudan and Nigeria between
June 21 to 28. On 23rd June, Mr. David Arnold , a member of the delegation and former Horn of Africa chief, appeared on VOA Amharic and shared some important information to listeners. Mr. Arnold disclosed that the government of Ethiopia had demanded VOA to ban a long list of vocal critics.

In what appears to be a very unusual move, Mr. Arnold was suspended from his position, though has now been reinstated. According to reports, there was no factual error in his statement. However, the audio as well as text archive of the report has been removed from VOA’s official website without any corrections, explanations or apologies. We would like an investigation into this matter and urge BBG to have the deleted files be resorted.

On 10th July 2011, a key public meeting, which was focused on the future of Ethiopia, was held at the Sheraton National Hotel, in Arlington, Virginia. The first of its kind, the meeting was jointly organized by Ginbot 7, the Oromo Liberation Front and Alliance for Liberty Equality and Justice in Ethiopia (ALEJE).

We understand that VOA decided not to cover the event after it was scheduled to be aired on VOA Amharic service on Monday, July 11. It also emerged that VOA has decided to give less coverage for
Diaspora and political issues. We called upon BBG not only to clarify VOA’s stand in light of the missions of VOA.

It has also come to our attention that an audio archive file that contains critical view on current problems within VOA Horn of Africa section aired on July 18 in Amharic was also deleted. We would like to urge BBG to investigate the matter and explain why these kinds of damaging measures that can dent the confidence that millions of Ethiopians have on VOA.

It is to be remembered that VOA has been a target of the Meles regime. In the aftermath of the 2005 massacre, five journalists working for VOA Amharic service were charged with high treason, “genocide” and outrage against the constitution by the Meles regime. Though the charges were dropped, it clearly showed, once again, that the Meles regime is intolerant to the free flow of information.
The jamming efforts of all independent broadcasts including the VOA have intensified after Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told reporters in March 2010 the following:

“We have been convinced for many years that in many respects, the VOA Amharic Service has copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda in its wanton disregard of
minimum ethics of journalism and engaging in destabilizing propaganda. “We have to know before we make the decision to jam, whether we have the capacity to do it. But I assure you if they assure me at some future date that they have the capacity to jam it, I will give them the clear guideline to jam it.”

With the support of the Chinese government, the regime has now built a capacity to jam shortwave radio and satellite TV signals. VOA is a victim of these repressive efforts.

We do not want VOA to be hijacked by the agenda of Ethiopia’s repressive regime. Neither do we wish to see VOA lose its vitality and service as a truly independent alternative media to the people of Ethiopia.

It is with high regard for BBG and VOA in particular, we humbly request Your Excellencies to ensure and guarantee that VOA continues to give the vital service it has been providing to the silenced people of Ethiopia consistent with its mission, the First Amendment of the United States constitution and America’s
cherished values of freedom and democracy.

We look forward to hearing from you very soon.

With highest regards,

Tamagne Beyene, Artist and Human Rights Activist
On behalf of Ethiopian American Civic, Human Rights, and Free Press Support Groups

The Letter of the Voice of America Acting Director Steve Radisch to Addis Voice

“We are the Voice of America”

By Steve Redish

I’ve been asked to react to the accuracy of the reporting about the situation involving VOA’s Horn of Africa service, so I decided now is a good time to clear up some misconceptions that have evolved over the past few weeks.

Voice of America’s Horn of Africa service will not be shying away from reporting on Ethiopian politics. Freedom House rates the Ethiopian media as “not free,” and our audiences there can rely on VOA to provide accurate, objective and comprehensive news and information about their government. VOA will provide an array of voices and opinions to allow Ethiopians to make their own decisions about what to believe and who to trust. That is our job and the job of a free media.

As well, our audiences expect VOA to provide news and information that helps them make everyday decisions about their lives. Right now, 4.5 million Ethiopians are impacted by severe drought and famine. VOA has a responsibility to its audience to provide health news and information so people can learn ways to survive under such conditions; technology news that might mitigate the situation, opening new channels of communication; business and economics information to know how much bread costs and what people can do to earn enough to buy it; education reporting that can help people find opportunities to better their lives. These are core reporting topics from a full-service international broadcaster that audiences all across VOA’s language services request most and have come to expect.

The Government of Ethiopia has presented VOA with complaints about our Horn of Africa broadcasting. We are investigating those complaints as we would any complaints from any individual or government, including the US government. When the independent review of those complaints is completed, we will present them to the Ethiopian government, and then make them public. We take seriously the responsibilities outlined in the VOA charter to serve as a reliable source of news; to be accurate, objective and comprehensive; present significant American thoughts and institutions in a balanced and comprehensive way; and present U.S. policies clearly and effectively, including responsible discussion and opinion on these policies. VOA makes decisions about news coverage based on what we believe our audiences need, not based on what any government or special interest group wants. We also make those decisions based on resources available. Budget constraints are an economic and editorial reality. But that should not be confused with self-censorship. We will not censor ourselves nor allow ourselves to be censored. We’re not the voice of the opposition or the Diaspora or the government. We are the Voice of America and will continue to provide news and information that meet our highest standards.

Steve Redisch
VOA Acting Director/Executive Editor

The latest charges of censorship at the Voice of America and the Broadcasting Board of Governors first surfaced in investigative reports by exiled Ethiopian journalist Abebe Gellaw who was recently a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution in California. He publishes the Ethiopian American news website Addis Voice. His website and many others are banned in Ethiopia.

Addis Voice reported that BBG and VOA officials have tried to silence and punish Voice of America journalist David Arnold, the chief of the Horn to Africa Service, for disclosing the Ethiopian regime’s demands for censoring VOA broadcasts made in Addis Ababa during a recent meeting with visiting BBG members. Since his exile from Ethiopia, Mr. Gellaw’s articles and interviews have been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Guardian, and the Far East Review.

In June 2011, three BBG members appointed by President Obama went to Ethiopia where they met with officials of the Ethiopian regime to discuss their complaints of anti-regime bias in VOA news programs. According to reports in Ethiopian American media, BBG members were presented a list of Ethiopian dissidents, political exiles and foreign critics whom the regime wants to ban from Voice of America radio broadcasts, apparently as a condition for lifting the local jamming of these programs. The names were included in a document describing the objections of the Ethiopian regime to VOA news reports. Addis Voice obtained the document and made it available online.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and other media freedom organizations have accused the Ethiopian regimeof Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in power since 1991, of imprisoning journalists, jamming Voice of America and other foreign broadcasts, and blocking many foreign and independent news websites.

Ethiopian American media reported that BBG officials, who apparently wanted to keep the content of their negotiations in Addis Ababa secret, suspended the chief of the Voice of America Horn of Africa Service David Arnold from his position after he had informed his VOA colleagues about the Ethiopian regime’s demands. BBG officials accused Mr. Arnold, a highly-regarded journalist with decades of reporting experience, of engaging in misinformation but later allowed him to return to work after Ethiopian American media reports brought about a storm of criticism and raised charges of censorship. According to reports in the Ethiopian American media, it is not clear, however, whether he will keep his old job and be safe from further harassment by BBG members and their executive staff.

Phone calls, faxes and emails protesting censorship of the Voice of America news, the dismissal of VOA journalist David Arnold, and the BBG’s plan to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China and to fire journalists specializing in human rights reporting can be directed to the following institutions:

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman; Howard L. Berman, Ranking Member

U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John F. Kerry, Chairman; Richard G. Lugar, Ranking Member

Committee to Protect Journalistsinfo@cpj.org

Reporters Without Bordersclc@rsf.org

Index on Censorshipenquiries@indexoncensorship.org

Mr. Arnold was part of a delegation headed by three Broadcasting Board of Governors members — Susan McCue, Dana Perino, and Michael P. Meehan.

A VOA report on the visit, which included information disclosed by Mr. Arnold, was removed from the VOA website, reportedly soon after Ethiopian officials complained about it to the BBG staff. Subsequently, VOA executives also banned news coverage from a meeting of Ethiopian political exiles which was held in Washington, D.C. area, suggesting that the BBG mission to Ethiopia continues to have an impact on the bureaucrats who are eager to please BBG members and their executive staff.

Abebe Gellaw reported that the controversy over censorship at the Voice of America took a bizarre twist last week when the Director of Africa Division forbade staffers from taking notes at a meeting she held with employees of the Horn of Africa Service. The manager in charge of VOA programs to Africa told staff to do more people-oriented programming and cut down on the number of stories focused on political affairs.

Free Media Online president Ted Lipien

“Most BBG members, nominated because of their political loyalty and private sector experience, do not know how to deal with enemies of press freedom and are all too eager to listen to dictators’ complaints against independent journalists without realizing the negative impact of their actions on victims of political repression,” Lipien said.

BBG member Michael P. Meehan

Voice of America sources have told Free Media Online that attempts to punish VOA journalists by BBG members and their staff have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among the media professionals employed by the U.S. government-funded organizations run by the BBG.

“The BBG’s attempts to discipline Mr. Arnold for doing his job as a journalist is even more outrageous in light of the fact that in 2005 the Ethiopian regime charged five journalists working for the VOA Amharic Service with treason and threatened them with the death penalty,” Lipien said. The charges were later withdrawn after pressure from the U.S. government and human rights NGOs.

“The BBG should be in business of supporting media freedom, not secretly negotiating with suppressors of free press in countries like Ethiopia, Russia, and China, and censoring and punishing its own journalists. The goal of U.S. public diplomacy ought to be reaching out to the victims of political repression abroad, not trying to improve relations with dictatorial regimes. The job of dealing with dictators should be left to professional State Department diplomats, who are hopefully both tough and experienced. The idea that political operatives and private businessmen from the U.S. can somehow persuade dictators to soften their grip on the media had been tried by naive individuals numerous times when the Soviet Union still existed and had always failed while making the life of dissidents and independent journalists more difficult and more dangerous,” Lipien said.

“Sending not one but three BBG members to Ethiopia with a large entourage to negotiate with enemies of press freedom was counterproductive and a tremendous waste of taxpayers’ money,” Lipien added. “It made the enemies of press freedom feel good and took away hope from the victims of human rights abuses and the journalists who try to defend them. If it were otherwise, BBG members and executives would not have resorted to censorship and intimidation against their own journalists.”

Lipien suggested that the BBG represents now a greater danger to journalistic independence at the Voice of America than State Department diplomats ever did when VOA was part of the now-defunct United States Information Agency (USIA). This is highly ironic — according to him — because one of the reasons the U.S. Congress created the BBG was to establish a better firewall between VOA journalists and administration officials. “While I worked as a journalist at VOA, lower-level State Department and USIA officials sometimes tried to influence our reporting but these attempts were relatively rare and we were able to ignore most of them before they escalated into a real fight. The BBG, on the other hand, has a much greater direct power over VOA journalists, as Mr. Arnold has found out, and is far less accountable. State Department diplomats were also more aware that it is illegal to interfere with journalistic independence of Voice of America reporters — something that some of the BBG members, some of their executive staffers, and some VOA managers don’t seem to understand, as strange as it may be,” Free Media Online president said.

Lipien also said that compounding the problem is the incompetence of the entrenched BBG executive staff, which feeds the eagerness of BBG members, derived from their private sector experience, to make deals with dictators to establish local program placement in the hope of increasing audience ratings. This is a failed strategy, which the BBG staff also uses to justify eliminating VOA radio and TV broadcasts to countries like China and Russia when their local program efforts inevitably fail, Lipien observed. He listed as examples of the most spectacular failures of the BBG executive staff giving airtime to Holocaust deniers, ending VOA radio programs to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military attack on the Republic of Georgia, their refusal to resume these programs, planning to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China on the anniversary of the establishment of the communist regime in Beijing, and their decision to send BBG members to negotiate with dictators who only stay in power because of their repression of free media.

In a move that is likely to endanger human rights activists, the BBG executive staff has been advocating Internet-only VOA news delivery to China despite Beijing’s effective Internet censorship and its ability to discover identities of individuals trying to access Western news websites. BBG bureaucrats with links to private sector contractors have been making promises of piercing China’s Internet firewall and yet have been unable to protect Voice of America’s own websites from successful attacks by hackers, most likely from China and Russia.

The Ethiopian American organizers of the protest rally against the Broadcasting Board of Governors are warning that the BBG wants to turn the Voice of America into the Voice of China. The rally is scheduled for 9 AM, Monday, July 25, in front of the Voice of America building at 330 Independence Avenue, S.W. in Washington, D.C. just below the Capital Hill. Free Media Online is asking members of Congress to investigate the charges of censorship by BBG members and to protect Voice of America journalist David Arnold and his colleagues from further reprisals.

This report was originally published by FreeMediaOnline.org San Francisco, CA, USA, July 24, 2011.

The latest charges of censorship at the Voice of America and the Broadcasting Board of Governors first surfaced in investigative reports by exiled Ethiopian journalist Abebe Gellaw who was recently a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution in California. He publishes the Ethiopian American news website Addis Voice. His website and many others are banned in Ethiopia.

Addis Voice reported that BBG and VOA officials have tried to silence and punish Voice of America journalist David Arnold, the chief of the Horn to Africa Service, for disclosing the Ethiopian regime’s demands for censoring VOA broadcasts made in Addis Ababa during a recent meeting with visiting BBG members. Since his exile from Ethiopia, Mr. Gellaw’s articles and interviews have been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Guardian, and the Far East Review.

In June 2011, three BBG members appointed by President Obama went to Ethiopia where they met with officials of the Ethiopian regime to discuss their complaints of anti-regime bias in VOA news programs. According to reports in Ethiopian American media, BBG members were presented a list of Ethiopian dissidents, political exiles and foreign critics whom the regime wants to ban from Voice of America radio broadcasts, apparently as a condition for lifting the local jamming of these programs. The names were included in a document describing the objections of the Ethiopian regime to VOA news reports. Addis Voice obtained the document and made it available online.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and other media freedom organizations have accused the Ethiopian regimeof Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in power since 1991, of imprisoning journalists, jamming Voice of America and other foreign broadcasts, and blocking many foreign and independent news websites.

Ethiopian American media reported that BBG officials, who apparently wanted to keep the content of their negotiations in Addis Ababa secret, suspended the chief of the Voice of America Horn of Africa Service David Arnold from his position after he had informed his VOA colleagues about the Ethiopian regime’s demands. BBG officials accused Mr. Arnold, a highly-regarded journalist with decades of reporting experience, of engaging in misinformation but later allowed him to return to work after Ethiopian American media reports brought about a storm of criticism and raised charges of censorship. According to reports in the Ethiopian American media, it is not clear, however, whether he will keep his old job and be safe from further harassment by BBG members and their executive staff.

Phone calls, faxes and emails protesting censorship of the Voice of America news, the dismissal of VOA journalist David Arnold, and the BBG’s plan to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China and to fire journalists specializing in human rights reporting can be directed to the following institutions:

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman; Howard L. Berman, Ranking Member

U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John F. Kerry, Chairman; Richard G. Lugar, Ranking Member

Committee to Protect Journalistsinfo@cpj.org

Reporters Without Bordersclc@rsf.org

Index on Censorshipenquiries@indexoncensorship.org

Mr. Arnold was part of a delegation headed by three Broadcasting Board of Governors members — Susan McCue, Dana Perino, and Michael P. Meehan.

A VOA report on the visit, which included information disclosed by Mr. Arnold, was removed from the VOA website, reportedly soon after Ethiopian officials complained about it to the BBG staff. Subsequently, VOA executives also banned news coverage from a meeting of Ethiopian political exiles which was held in Washington, D.C. area, suggesting that the BBG mission to Ethiopia continues to have an impact on the bureaucrats who are eager to please BBG members and their executive staff.

Abebe Gellaw reported that the controversy over censorship at the Voice of America took a bizarre twist last week when the Director of Africa Division forbade staffers from taking notes at a meeting she held with employees of the Horn of Africa Service. The manager in charge of VOA programs to Africa told staff to do more people-oriented programming and cut down on the number of stories focused on political affairs.

Free Media Online president Ted Lipien

“Most BBG members, nominated because of their political loyalty and private sector experience, do not know how to deal with enemies of press freedom and are all too eager to listen to dictators’ complaints against independent journalists without realizing the negative impact of their actions on victims of political repression,” Lipien said.

BBG member Michael P. Meehan

Voice of America sources have told Free Media Online that attempts to punish VOA journalists by BBG members and their staff have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among the media professionals employed by the U.S. government-funded organizations run by the BBG.

“The BBG’s attempts to discipline Mr. Arnold for doing his job as a journalist is even more outrageous in light of the fact that in 2005 the Ethiopian regime charged five journalists working for the VOA Amharic Service with treason and threatened them with the death penalty,” Lipien said. The charges were later withdrawn after pressure from the U.S. government and human rights NGOs.

“The BBG should be in business of supporting media freedom, not secretly negotiating with suppressors of free press in countries like Ethiopia, Russia, and China, and censoring and punishing its own journalists. The goal of U.S. public diplomacy ought to be reaching out to the victims of political repression abroad, not trying to improve relations with dictatorial regimes. The job of dealing with dictators should be left to professional State Department diplomats, who are hopefully both tough and experienced. The idea that political operatives and private businessmen from the U.S. can somehow persuade dictators to soften their grip on the media had been tried by naive individuals numerous times when the Soviet Union still existed and had always failed while making the life of dissidents and independent journalists more difficult and more dangerous,” Lipien said.

“Sending not one but three BBG members to Ethiopia with a large entourage to negotiate with enemies of press freedom was counterproductive and a tremendous waste of taxpayers’ money,” Lipien added. “It made the enemies of press freedom feel good and took away hope from the victims of human rights abuses and the journalists who try to defend them. If it were otherwise, BBG members and executives would not have resorted to censorship and intimidation against their own journalists.”

Lipien suggested that the BBG represents now a greater danger to journalistic independence at the Voice of America than State Department diplomats ever did when VOA was part of the now-defunct United States Information Agency (USIA). This is highly ironic — according to him — because one of the reasons the U.S. Congress created the BBG was to establish a better firewall between VOA journalists and administration officials. “While I worked as a journalist at VOA, lower-level State Department and USIA officials sometimes tried to influence our reporting but these attempts were relatively rare and we were able to ignore most of them before they escalated into a real fight. The BBG, on the other hand, has a much greater direct power over VOA journalists, as Mr. Arnold has found out, and is far less accountable. State Department diplomats were also more aware that it is illegal to interfere with journalistic independence of Voice of America reporters — something that some of the BBG members, some of their executive staffers, and some VOA managers don’t seem to understand, as strange as it may be,” Free Media Online president said.

Lipien also said that compounding the problem is the incompetence of the entrenched BBG executive staff, which feeds the eagerness of BBG members, derived from their private sector experience, to make deals with dictators to establish local program placement in the hope of increasing audience ratings. This is a failed strategy, which the BBG staff also uses to justify eliminating VOA radio and TV broadcasts to countries like China and Russia when their local program efforts inevitably fail, Lipien observed. He listed as examples of the most spectacular failures of the BBG executive staff giving airtime to Holocaust deniers, ending VOA radio programs to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military attack on the Republic of Georgia, their refusal to resume these programs, planning to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China on the anniversary of the establishment of the communist regime in Beijing, and their decision to send BBG members to negotiate with dictators who only stay in power because of their repression of free media.

In a move that is likely to endanger human rights activists, the BBG executive staff has been advocating Internet-only VOA news delivery to China despite Beijing’s effective Internet censorship and its ability to discover identities of individuals trying to access Western news websites. BBG bureaucrats with links to private sector contractors have been making promises of piercing China’s Internet firewall and yet have been unable to protect Voice of America’s own websites from successful attacks by hackers, most likely from China and Russia.

The Ethiopian American organizers of the protest rally against the Broadcasting Board of Governors are warning that the BBG wants to turn the Voice of America into the Voice of China. The rally is scheduled for 9 AM, Monday, July 25, in front of the Voice of America building at 330 Independence Avenue, S.W. in Washington, D.C. just below the Capital Hill. Free Media Online is asking members of Congress to investigate the charges of censorship by BBG members and to protect Voice of America journalist David Arnold and his colleagues from further reprisals.

Join Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama  administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

The video shows a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against  the Broadcasting Board of Governors  (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China. 

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG claims that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

VOA journalists protest against BBG's decision to end their radio and TV news broadcasts to China.

Join Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and Voice of America Director Dan Austin have told Congress that their plan to end VOA radio broadcasts to China in Mandarin and Cantonese as of October 1, 2011, which — by the way — is the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party, will allow them to improve and expand Internet and new media presence for VOA in China.

The VOA Chinese Branch journalist in this video exposes the misleading nature of this argument. As she correctly points out, the VOA Chinese Branch already has a vibrant multimedia presence in China. The problem is that the Chinese government censors and blocks VOA websites and is likely to do it even more effectively in the future. BBG and VOA executives will also not admit that their decision to end VOA radio to Russia in 2008, which — by the way — happened just 12 days before the Russian military attack on the Republic of Georgia, has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach for VOA in Russia between 2007 and the end of 2009. The promised audience gains from the Internet in Russia did not materialize.

The BBG and the VOA director have a profound misunderstanding of what VOA audience in China is, what it should be, and how to reach it.

Their audience are not young, rich Chinese who go on shopping tripts to the U.S. and can access the Internet outside of China or buy a subscription to Newsweek. Their audience are the Chinese whose basic rights are being violated, those under house arrest, 750 million Chinese without Internet access. Yet, these BBG and VOA executives think they know better and want to fire 40 plus experienced VOA Chinese Branch journalists who specialize in human rights reporting and replace them with contractors who supposedly know how to produce slick content for the Internet.

But, as we know, the Internet is censored in China and can be blocked completely if the Chinese authorities decide to do it at the most convenient time for them and the worst time for pro-democracy activists and for the United States.

BBG and VOA executives could learn something from the wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. During a five-minute reprieve from the usual Internet isolation imposed on her, Liu Xia wrote a friend that she is “miserable.”

“Can’t go out. My whole family are hostages,” Liu Xia wrote, as The Washington Post’s Keith B. Richburg reported last month. “I don’t know how I managed to get online,” she also wrote. “Don’t go online. Otherwise my whole family is in danger.”

The BBG and VOA executives could also learn something from Freedom House: “”In July, police in Xinjiang forcibly suppressed a peaceful demonstration in Urumqi by Uighurs, sparking an outbreak of violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese. The authorities responded with mass arrests and an almost complete shutdown of internet access, international phone service, and text messaging in the region that remained in effect for several months.”

BBG and VOA executives could also learn something from VOA reporters. From a VOA reporter Heda Bayron: “Freedom of expression in China is already severely curtailed. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and many foreign broadcasters, like the Voice of America, are blocked, as are many foreign news Web sites.”

For more information see Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook.

View Voice of America Journalists Protest Ending of VOA Radio to China, Part Five

View Part Four

View Part Three

View Part Two

View Part One

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

These videos show a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China.

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG and Voice of America Director Austin makes a claim that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

###

From Free Media Online.org

“We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials who oversee the Voice of America (VOA) and want to terminate all on-the-air uncensored news radio broadcasts to China on October 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party. Time after time, BBG officials have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and failed to grasp the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Their earlier decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach, and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience there, just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week.

Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien.

Ted Lipien is a former BBG manager and (until 2006) former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

VOA journalists protest against BBG's decision to end their radio and TV news broadcasts to China.

View Part Four

View Part Three

View Part Two

View Part One

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

The video shows a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China.

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG and Voice of America Director Austin makes a claim that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

###

From Free Media Online.org

“We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials who oversee the Voice of America (VOA) and want to terminate all on-the-air uncensored news radio broadcasts to China on October 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party. Time after time, BBG officials have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and failed to grasp the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Their earlier decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach, and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience there, just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week.

Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien.

Ted Lipien is a former BBG manager and until 2006 former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

VOA journalists protest against BBG's decision to end their radio and TV news broadcasts to China

Join Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook

Sign a petition on http://voashortwave.org

View Part Three

View Part Two

View Part One

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

The video shows a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China.

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG and Voice of America Director Austin makes a claim that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

###

From Free Media Online.org

“We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials who oversee the Voice of America (VOA) and want to terminate all on-the-air uncensored news radio broadcasts to China on October 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party. Time after time, BBG officials have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and failed to grasp the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Their earlier decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach, and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience there, just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week.

Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien.

Ted Lipien is a former BBG manager and until 2006 former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

Sign a petition on http://voashortwave.org

Join Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and Voice of America Director Dan Austin have told Congress that their plan to end VOA radio broadcasts to China in Mandarin and Cantonese as of October 1, 2011, which — by the way — is the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party, will allow them to improve and expand Internet and new media presence for VOA in China.

The VOA Chinese Branch journalist in this video exposes the misleading nature of this argument. As she correctly points out, the VOA Chinese Branch already has a vibrant multimedia presence in China. The problem is that the Chinese government censors and blocks VOA websites and is likely to do it even more effectively in the future. BBG and VOA executives will also not admit that their decision to end VOA radio to Russia in 2008, which — by the way — happened just 12 days before the Russian military attack on the Republic of Georgia, has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach for VOA in Russia between 2007 and the end of 2009. The promised audience gains from the Internet in Russia did not materialize.

The BBG and the VOA director have a profound misunderstanding of what VOA audience in China is, what it should be, and how to reach it.

Their audience are not young, rich Chinese who go on shopping tripts to the U.S. and can access the Internet outside of China or buy a subscription to Newsweek. Their audience are the Chinese whose basic rights are being violated, those under house arrest, 750 million Chinese without Internet access. Yet, these BBG and VOA executives think they know better and want to fire 40 plus experienced VOA Chinese Branch journalists who specialize in human rights reporting and replace them with contractors who supposedly know how to produce slick content for the Internet.

But, as we know, the Internet is censored in China and can be blocked completely if the Chinese authorities decide to do it at the most convenient time for them and the worst time for pro-democracy activists and for the United States.

BBG and VOA executives could learn something from the wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. During a five-minute reprieve from the usual Internet isolation imposed on her, Liu Xia wrote a friend that she is “miserable.”

“Can’t go out. My whole family are hostages,” Liu Xia wrote, as The Washington Post’s Keith B. Richburg reported last month. “I don’t know how I managed to get online,” she also wrote. “Don’t go online. Otherwise my whole family is in danger.”

The BBG and VOA executives could also learn something from Freedom House: “”In July, police in Xinjiang forcibly suppressed a peaceful demonstration in Urumqi by Uighurs, sparking an outbreak of violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese. The authorities responded with mass arrests and an almost complete shutdown of internet access, international phone service, and text messaging in the region that remained in effect for several months.”

BBG and VOA executives could also learn something from VOA reporters. From a VOA reporter Heda Bayron: “Freedom of expression in China is already severely curtailed. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and many foreign broadcasters, like the Voice of America, are blocked, as are many foreign news Web sites.”

For more information see Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook.

View Voice of America Journalists Protest Ending of VOA Radio to China, Part Five

View Part Four

View Part Three

View Part Two

View Part One

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

These videos show a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China.

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG and Voice of America Director Austin makes a claim that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

###

From Free Media Online.org

“We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials who oversee the Voice of America (VOA) and want to terminate all on-the-air uncensored news radio broadcasts to China on October 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party. Time after time, BBG officials have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and failed to grasp the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Their earlier decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach, and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience there, just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week.

Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien.

Ted Lipien is a former BBG manager and (until 2006) former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

Sign a petition on http://voashortwave.org

Join Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook

View Part Four

View Part Three

View Part Two

View Part One

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

The video shows a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China.

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG and Voice of America Director Austin makes a claim that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

###

From Free Media Online.org

“We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials who oversee the Voice of America (VOA) and want to terminate all on-the-air uncensored news radio broadcasts to China on October 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party. Time after time, BBG officials have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and failed to grasp the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Their earlier decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach, and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience there, just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week.

Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien.

Ted Lipien is a former BBG manager and until 2006 former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

Join Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook

Sign a petition on http://voashortwave.org

View Part Three

View Part Two

View Part One

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

The video shows a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China.

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG and Voice of America Director Austin makes a claim that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

###

From Free Media Online.org

“We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials who oversee the Voice of America (VOA) and want to terminate all on-the-air uncensored news radio broadcasts to China on October 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party. Time after time, BBG officials have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and failed to grasp the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Their earlier decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach, and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience there, just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week.

Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien.

Ted Lipien is a former BBG manager and until 2006 former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

Join Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook

Sign a petition on http://voashortwave.org

View Part Two

View Part One

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

The video shows a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China.

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG and Voice of America Director Austin makes a claim that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

###

From Free Media Online.org

“We believe that members of Congress and the American public are being grossly mislead by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials who oversee the Voice of America (VOA) and want to terminate all on-the-air uncensored news radio broadcasts to China on October 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Chinese Communist Party. Time after time, BBG officials have shown their inability to understand market research in closed societies and failed to grasp the desperation of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

Their earlier decision to cut VOA radio broadcasts to Russia has resulted in over 80% drop in audience reach, and they have shown their inability to expand Internet audience there, just as they could not protect VOA websites from a successful Iranian cyber attack last week.

Members of Congress and American taxpayers should demand from BBG officials to explain why they want to eliminate radio broadcasts by the Voice of America, which has more listeners in China than Radio Free Asia and BBC; why they want to ignore 750 million Chinese; and what they plan to do during any future Tiananmen event in China when the regime in Beijing will completely block or censor the Internet at the most convenient time for them and the most inconvenient time for the U.S. government and pro-democracy supporters in China,” said Free Media Online president Ted Lipien.

Ted Lipien is a former BBG manager and until 2006 former acting associate director of the Voice of America.

Join Save Voice of America Radio to China Group on Facebook

Sign a petition on http://voashortwave.org

All Americans, including members of Congress, who support free press and human rights, should watch this disturbing but highly informative video about the Obama  administration’s plan to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to China on Oct. 1, 2011, which happens to be the national holiday of the Communist regime in Beijing.

The video shows a group of remarkable journalists from the Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese radio, TV, and Internet services directing pointed questions to VOA Director Dan Austin and making persuasive arguments against  the Broadcasting Board of Governors  (BBG) decision to end all on-the-air radio news broadcasting in their languages to China. 

It’s now up to the U.S. Congress to save VOA from the BBG’s effort to destroy the Voice of America as a broadcasting organization. VOA radio broadcasts to Russia had already been terminated by the BBG in 2008, resulting in an over 80% drop in audience reach.

The BBG and Voice of America Director Austin makes a claim that Internet-only program delivery strategy prepares VOA for the future by targeting new media and a younger audience when in fact BBG’s own research shows that it has been a failure in Russia and is not likely to reach a vast new audience.

VOA Chinese Service journalists point out that the BBG with the support of VOA Director Austin are terminating VOA radio broadcasts that have a larger audience in China and higher name recognition than Radio Free Asia (RFA) and BBC. The BBG plans to give VOA shortwave frequencies to RFA. One cannot be but impressed with professionalism and expert knowledge of these journalists when they point out to Director Austin that 750 million of Chinese have no Internet access and that the regime in Beijing can block and censor Internet access for those who have it. Director Austin keeps repeating that the strategy will bring a new audience when in fact — as the members of his Chinese services point out — they already have extensive Internet presence. They also pointed out to him and it was obvious from his answers that neither he nor the BBG has a plan to deal with any future blocking of the Internet in China.

Director Austin insisted that the Chinese government is unlikely to block the Internet completely, but as one of the VOA Chinese Branch journalist pointed out, he saw his friends being killed next to him in 1989 on the Tienanmen Square and has no doubt that the Chinese government is fully capable of doing everything possible to prevent the free flow of information if its authoritarian rule is threatened. He also pointed out that while shortwave radio transmissions can be jammed in some limited areas, it is the only way of securely communicating with the Chinese people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voice of America

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

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

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

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

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

###

February 28, 2011

Open Letter to Members of House Appropriations Committee

Dear Members of Congress:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

This report was first published by TedLipien.com, Truckee, CA, March 2, 2011.

In this series of analyses for Free Media Online (FreeMediaOnline.org) — U.S. International Broadcasting in Crisis– Ted Lipien, former Voice of America acting associate director, examines recent Broadcasting Board of Governors’ decisions, with a focus on the latest controversial plan to completely eliminate Voice of America on-the-air radio broadcasts to China.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voice of America

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

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

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

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

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

###

February 28, 2011

Open Letter to Members of House Appropriations Committee

Dear Members of Congress:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Voice of America

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

###

February 28, 2011

Open Letter to Members of House Appropriations Committee

Dear Members of Congress:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

Instead of the VOA website, site visitors saw an Iranian flag, a gun, and an anti-American message, as captured in the image above. Even more appalling was the cavalier attitude with which officials of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. federal agency which manages the Voice of America, responded to the attack. It was a typical cover-my-behind reaction and an attempt to minimize its significance and impact around the world. Just imagine if CNN, ABC, or Fox News went completely silent for several hours or even days. If  BBG officials have their way, this is what will happen in China to the Voice of America. It had already happened to VOA in Russia for at least two days in 2009. There was no apology from the BBG to the American people on whose behalf the Voice of America distributes news and communicates with the rest of the world.

The BBG and VOA response to last week’s cyber attack (see the press releases below) showed how little these officials care about their audience and their own employees. It also raised serious questions about their judgment and their ability to manage government resources. Above all, it exposed once again the folly of their latest proposal to Congress to eliminate Voice of America radio to China in favor of news and information delivery based solely on — you guessed it — their new Internet platforms. They claim they would design, manage, and protect them from cyber attacks. And — as they also claim — they would make the Chinese government’s attempts to filter or block the Internet ineffective. Really? I don’t think so.

Instead of apologizing to Internet users and Voice of America journalists for failing to prevent the attack, BBG and VOA executives tried to minimize their responsibility and in character with their management style attempted shift the blame to an outside contractor. They acted as if they were not the ones authorized by Congress and paid by American taxpayers to protect critical U.S. government communications assets from such attacks. The cyber attack was not their fault, BBG and VOA bureaucrats implied in their press releases.

These highly-paid civil servants were quick to point out that the attack happened at Network Solutions, a private contractor, which — by the way — they themselves chose to host their websites. But the fact that they selected and trusted a private contractor was conveniently omitted. Thanks to BBG and VOA executives trying to protect their behinds, now every hacker in the world knows where VOA websites are hosted. If the White House, State Department, or Pentagon websites were out of commission for five hours or two days and pointing to an Islamist propaganda flash video, one would expect that some officials would be fired or replaced. But don’t expect this to happen at the BBG unless the new Board members get their act together and start seeking advice outside of their current executive staff.

The cyber attack could have been easily anticipated and prevented by taking some basic precautions and through more responsible emergency planning. We at Free Media Online could have told them that Network Solutions servers are not secure enough for critical U.S. government online operations. Our own websites have been hacked twice at Network Solutions in the past year. In the aftermath of these attacks, we received almost no customer service and had to repair the damage on our own. That’s what happens if critical operations are outsourced to private contractors.

The ultimate irony is that the same officials who could not protect VOA websites from an attack by Iranian Islamists are now lobbying Congress to give them about $50 million to develop ways of preventing the Chinese government from censoring the Internet, which BBG officials describe as anti-Internet contravention strategies. Good luck with that if the same BBG management team is put in charge of this money, which the Congress had originally given to the State Department. It will be yet another hoax perpetrated on American taxpayers.

This, by the way, is not the first successful cyber attack on the Voice of America. In 2009, hackers shut down VOA websites for more than two days. This happened during President Obama’s first official visit to Russia. At that time, BBG and VOA officials also tried to minimize the damage and managed to avoid taking any responsibility for their carelessness and mismanagement.

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

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

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

Voice of America

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

###

February 28, 2011
 
Open Letter to Members of House Appropriations Committee
 
Dear Members of Congress:
 
This letter is to request your strong support to restore the budget for Voice of America Cantonese Service and Voice of America Mandarin Service in the FY 2012 Budget.

We object to the proposal by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which serves to manage Voice of America (VOA), to eliminate the entire VOA Cantonese Service, as well as eliminate the positions of more than half of the VOA Mandarin Service staff members.
 
This egregious effort to disappropriate funding from VOA will effectively eliminate the purpose of the Congressionally mandated Public Law 94-350 to the people in China who speak Cantonese and Mandarin to be provided with news broadcasts that promote freedom and democracy.
 
This target against Voice of America – right on the heels of PRC President Hu Jintao’s recent visit to the United States – is nothing less than a concession that will dismantle America’s commitment to broadcast news from the United States.  During the same time of this funding cutback, the PRC intends to spend more than a billion dollars to enhance their propaganda goals in the United States.
 
This campaign against Voice of America comes during the PRC’s media crackdown on stories against Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo. It comes during a time when PRC’s media has blocked news about uprisings in Egypt and Libya.  It comes during a PRC crackdown against any stories shared about the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, and all prisoners of conscience in China.
 
We implore you to restore the FY 2012 Budget funding for the Voice of America’s Mandarin and Cantonese Services so Voice of America can continue to fulfill its mandate to provide a balanced and comprehensive view of significant American thought and institutions; and to clearly present the policies of the United States to the people of China.
 
Respectfully,
Harry Wu, Laogai Research Foundation
Justin Yu, Chinese The Chinese Chamber of Commerce in New York
Ann Lau, Visual Artists Guild
Ann Noonan, Free Church for China
Bob Fu, China Aid
Anna Cheung, Alliance for Hong Kong Chinese in the US
Peggy Chane, Visual Artists Guild
Reggie Littlejohn, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
Ganden Thurman, Tibet House
Jeremy Taylor, Free Burma Alliance
Ethan Gutmann. Recipient Tiananmem Spirit Award
Joe Brown, Pasadena NAACP
Jonathan Cao, Chinese Coalition for Citizens’ Rights
Juntao Wang, National Committee Democratic Party of China
Robert A. Senser, Human Rights for Workers
Jing Zhang, Women’s Rights in China
 
###
 
BBG PRESS RELEASE

Iranian Cyber Army Claims Credit for Cyber Attack on VOA and Interference of U.S. International Broadcasting Increases

February 23,2011 | Washington, DC

Note: This press release is updated to include reports of the Iranian Cyber Army taking responsibility for the hacking and news of an attack on the RFE telephone system.

The Iranian Cyber Army has taken credit for a cyber attack on the Voice of America, according to reports by Iranian state media outlets Press TV and Fars News Service. VOA suffered a web Domain Name System (DNS) attack, while VOA’s Persian News Network (PNN) and RFE Radio Farda programs have faced increased satellite signal interference, and RFE faced a “denial of service attack” on its telephone systems in an effort to keep Iranians from contacting Radio Farda.

As popular protests unfold across the Middle East and audiences for U.S. international broadcasting surge, efforts to interfere with the networks have increased.

“Our broadcasters are at the forefront of reporting the most tumultuous events we have seen unfold since 1989,” said Walter Isaacson, chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) which oversees all U.S. international broadcasting including the Alhurra TV, VOA and RFE. “It is a testament to their vital role that they are subject to the work of hackers and signal interference.”

On Monday, February 21, an unknown party hacked the Voice of America’s primary domain name (VOANews.com), and other related domains, redirecting visitors to a website claiming to be run by a group called the “Iranian Cyber Army.” Yesterday, Iran’s Press TV reported a statement by Ali Saeedi Shahroodi, an official with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claiming, “The hacking of a VOA homepage by the Iranian Cyber Army … shows the power and capability of the Corps (IRGC) in the cyber arena.” Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency also credited the Iranian Cyber Army, in a February 22 report, explaining that the attack was in response to VOA’s reporting on events in Iran.

The attack did not affect internal systems or servers, nor was any data lost or compromised. The BBG is working with appropriate authorities to investigate further.

“There’s a saying that a hit dog hollers – that can be applied to whoever tried to cut off access to VOA News by attacking the domain provider on Monday. The fact that the sites were redirected to the Iranian Cyber Army certainly raises an eyebrow or two,” said Dana Perino, a member of the BBG. “Technology is chipping away at the stranglehold on free and fair information inside Iran. VOA and RFE are strongly committed to providing the news at it happens in a variety of ways so that every Iranian that can get access to the free media can benefit from our journalists’ reporting.”

Last week RFE’s Radio Farda faced a variation of a “denial of service” attack on its phone lines with a flood of automated calls aiming to clog its answering machines. Calls played just over one minute of a looped recording of speeches and sermons in Persian before hanging up.

Since February 13, there has been intermittent but frequent interference of VOA PNN and Radio Farda satellite signals with programming in Persian for audiences in Iran.

As of the morning of February 21, there has been a continuous service interruption on one satellite channel carrying VOA’s PNN. PNN is carried on three other satellite paths as well as online, including its popular TV satire, “Parazit.” Millions of the show’s fans use proxy servers to access the program through social media sites like Facebook and YouTube. Similarly, Radio Farda’s website has seen an approximate 50 percent increase in web traffic over the past two weeks.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency, supervising all U.S. government-supported, civilian international broadcasting, whose mission is to promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding through multimedia communication of accurate, objective, and balanced news, information, and other programming about America and the world to audiences overseas. BBG broadcasts reach an audience of 165 million in 100 countries. BBG broadcasting organizations include the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti).

###

VOA PRESS RELEASE

Press Release
Hacking and Signal Interference of U.S. International Broadcasting

Washington, D.C. — February 22, 2011 — As popular protests unfold across the Middle East, U.S. international broadcasting faces increased satellite signal interference and a web Domain Name System (DNS) attack.

“Our broadcasters are at the forefront of reporting the most tumultuous events we have seen unfold since 1989,” said Walter Isaacson, Chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) which oversees all U.S. international broadcasting including the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE). “It is a testament to their vital role that they are subject to the work of hackers and signal interference.”

On Monday, February 21, an unknown party hacked the Voice of America’s primary domain name (VOANews.com), along with numerous related domains registered with Network Solutions. Web users were directed to a website claiming to be run by a group called the “Iranian Cyber Army.”

“There’s a saying that a hit dog hollers – that can be applied to whoever tried to cut off access to VOA News by attacking the domain provider on Monday. The fact that the sites were redirected to the Iranian Cyber Army certainly raises an eyebrow or two,” said Dana Perino member of the BBG. “Technology is chipping away at the stranglehold on free and fair information inside Iran. VOA News is strongly committed to providing the news as it happens in a variety of ways so that every Iranian that can get access to the free media can benefit from our journalists’ reporting.”

This was a Domain Name System (DNS) attack redirecting the VOANews.com website. This was not a breach of internal systems or servers. No data was lost or compromised as a result of this event. An investigation is underway to determine who is responsible.

Since February 13, there has been intermittent but frequent interference of VOA’s Persian News Network (PNN) and RFE’s Radio Farda satellite signals with programming in Persian for audiences in Iran.

As of the morning of February 21, there has been a continuous service interruption on one satellite channel carrying VOA’s PNN. PNN is carried on three other satellite paths as well as online including a popular TV satire, Parazit. Millions of the show’s fans use proxy servers to access the program through social media sites like Facebook and YouTube. In the last month, Facebook recorded more than 20 million impressions on Parazit’s page.

This report was originally published on TedLipien.com, Truckee, CA, February 28, 2011 — In this series of analyses for Free Media Online (FreeMediaOnline.org) — U.S. International Broadcasting in Crisis — Ted Lipien, former Voice of America acting associate director, examines recent Broadcasting Board of Governors’ decisions, with a focus on the latest controversial plan to completely eliminate Voice of America on-the-air radio broadcasts to China.

FreeMediaOnline.org Part One — No Apology for Failure.

FreeMediaOnline.org Part One — No Apology for Failure

Like everyone else in the free media advocacy community, I was appalled by the Iranian Cyber Army’s attack last week on VOA websites. The staging of the attack did not come as a surprise. The Iranian Islamists, security services of China and Russia, and other enemies of free media around the world are engaging in cyber attacks and harass independent media all the time. The appalling thing about the Monday attack was not that it was launched but that it was allowed to succeed and lasted several hours.

Instead of the VOA website, site visitors saw an Iranian flag, a gun, and an anti-American message, as captured in the image above. Even more appalling was the cavalier attitude with which officials of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. federal agency which manages the Voice of America, responded to the attack. It was a typical cover-my-behind reaction and an attempt to minimize its significance and impact around the world. Just imagine if CNN, ABC, or Fox News went completely silent for several hours or even days. If  BBG officials have their way, this is what will happen in China to the Voice of America. It had already happened to VOA in Russia for at least two days in 2009. There was no apology from the BBG to the American people on whose behalf the Voice of America distributes news and communicates with the rest of the world.

The BBG and VOA response to last week’s cyber attack (see the press releases below) showed how little these officials care about their audience and their own employees. It also raised serious questions about their judgment and their ability to manage government resources. Above all, it exposed once again the folly of their latest proposal to Congress to eliminate Voice of America radio to China in favor of news and information delivery based solely on — you guessed it — their new Internet platforms. They claim they would design, manage, and protect them from cyber attacks. And — as they also claim — they would make the Chinese government’s attempts to filter or block the Internet ineffective. Really? I don’t think so.

Instead of apologizing to Internet users and Voice of America journalists for failing to prevent the attack, BBG and VOA executives tried to minimize their responsibility and in character with their management style attempted shift the blame to an outside contractor. They acted as if they were not the ones authorized by Congress and paid by American taxpayers to protect critical U.S. government communications assets from such attacks. The cyber attack was not their fault, BBG and VOA bureaucrats implied in their press releases.

These highly-paid civil servants were quick to point out that the attack happened at Network Solutions, a private contractor, which — by the way — they themselves chose to host their websites. But the fact that they selected and trusted a private contractor was conveniently omitted. Thanks to BBG and VOA executives trying to protect their behinds, now every hacker in the world knows where VOA websites are hosted. If the White House, State Department, or Pentagon websites were out of commission for five hours or two days and pointing to an Islamist propaganda flash video, one would expect that some officials would be fired or replaced. But don’t expect this to happen at the BBG unless the new Board members get their act together and start seeking advice outside of their current executive staff.

The cyber attack could have been easily anticipated and prevented by taking some basic precautions and through more responsible emergency planning. We at Free Media Online could have told them that Network Solutions servers are not secure enough for critical U.S. government online operations. Our own websites have been hacked twice at Network Solutions in the past year. In the aftermath of these attacks, we received almost no customer service and had to repair the damage on our own. That’s what happens if critical operations are outsourced to private contractors.

The ultimate irony is that the same officials who could not protect VOA websites from an attack by Iranian Islamists are now lobbying Congress to give them about $50 million to develop ways of preventing the Chinese government from censoring the Internet, which BBG officials describe as anti-Internet contravention strategies. Good luck with that if the same BBG management team is put in charge of this money, which the Congress had originally given to the State Department. It will be yet another hoax perpetrated on American taxpayers.

This, by the way, is not the first successful cyber attack on the Voice of America. In 2009, hackers shut down VOA websites for more than two days. This happened during President Obama’s first official visit to Russia. At that time, BBG and VOA officials also tried to minimize the damage and managed to avoid taking any responsibility for their carelessness and mismanagement.

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

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

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


Voice of America

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

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February 28, 2011
 
Open Letter to Members of House Appropriations Committee
 
Dear Members of Congress:
 
This letter is to request your strong support to restore the budget for Voice of America Cantonese Service and Voice of America Mandarin Service in the FY 2012 Budget.

We object to the proposal by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which serves to manage Voice of America (VOA), to eliminate the entire VOA Cantonese Service, as well as eliminate the positions of more than half of the VOA Mandarin Service staff members.
 
This egregious effort to disappropriate funding from VOA will effectively eliminate the purpose of the Congressionally mandated Public Law 94-350 to the people in China who speak Cantonese and Mandarin to be provided with news broadcasts that promote freedom and democracy.
 
This target against Voice of America – right on the heels of PRC President Hu Jintao’s recent visit to the United States – is nothing less than a concession that will dismantle America’s commitment to broadcast news from the United States.  During the same time of this funding cutback, the PRC intends to spend more than a billion dollars to enhance their propaganda goals in the United States.
 
This campaign against Voice of America comes during the PRC’s media crackdown on stories against Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo. It comes during a time when PRC’s media has blocked news about uprisings in Egypt and Libya.  It comes during a PRC crackdown against any stories shared about the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, and all prisoners of conscience in China.
 
We implore you to restore the FY 2012 Budget funding for the Voice of America’s Mandarin and Cantonese Services so Voice of America can continue to fulfill its mandate to provide a balanced and comprehensive view of significant American thought and institutions; and to clearly present the policies of the United States to the people of China.
 
Respectfully,
Harry Wu, Laogai Research Foundation
Justin Yu, Chinese The Chinese Chamber of Commerce in New York
Ann Lau, Visual Artists Guild
Ann Noonan, Free Church for China
Bob Fu, China Aid
Anna Cheung, Alliance for Hong Kong Chinese in the US
Peggy Chane, Visual Artists Guild
Doris Chan, Visual Artists Guild
Reggie Littlejohn, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
Ganden Thurman, Tibet House
Jeremy Taylor, Free Burma Alliance
Ethan Gutmann. Recipient Tiananmem Spirit Award
Joe Brown, Pasadena NAACP
Jonathan Cao, Chinese Coalition for Citizens’ Rights
Juntao Wang, National Committee Democratic Party of China
Robert A. Senser, Human Rights for Workers
Jing Zhang, Women’s Rights in China
 
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BBG PRESS RELEASE

Iranian Cyber Army Claims Credit for Cyber Attack on VOA and Interference of U.S. International Broadcasting Increases

February 23,2011 | Washington, DC

Note: This press release is updated to include reports of the Iranian Cyber Army taking responsibility for the hacking and news of an attack on the RFE telephone system.

The Iranian Cyber Army has taken credit for a cyber attack on the Voice of America, according to reports by Iranian state media outlets Press TV and Fars News Service. VOA suffered a web Domain Name System (DNS) attack, while VOA’s Persian News Network (PNN) and RFE Radio Farda programs have faced increased satellite signal interference, and RFE faced a “denial of service attack” on its telephone systems in an effort to keep Iranians from contacting Radio Farda.

As popular protests unfold across the Middle East and audiences for U.S. international broadcasting surge, efforts to interfere with the networks have increased.

“Our broadcasters are at the forefront of reporting the most tumultuous events we have seen unfold since 1989,” said Walter Isaacson, chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) which oversees all U.S. international broadcasting including the Alhurra TV, VOA and RFE. “It is a testament to their vital role that they are subject to the work of hackers and signal interference.”

On Monday, February 21, an unknown party hacked the Voice of America’s primary domain name (VOANews.com), and other related domains, redirecting visitors to a website claiming to be run by a group called the “Iranian Cyber Army.” Yesterday, Iran’s Press TV reported a statement by Ali Saeedi Shahroodi, an official with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claiming, “The hacking of a VOA homepage by the Iranian Cyber Army … shows the power and capability of the Corps (IRGC) in the cyber arena.” Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency also credited the Iranian Cyber Army, in a February 22 report, explaining that the attack was in response to VOA’s reporting on events in Iran.

The attack did not affect internal systems or servers, nor was any data lost or compromised. The BBG is working with appropriate authorities to investigate further.

“There’s a saying that a hit dog hollers – that can be applied to whoever tried to cut off access to VOA News by attacking the domain provider on Monday. The fact that the sites were redirected to the Iranian Cyber Army certainly raises an eyebrow or two,” said Dana Perino, a member of the BBG. “Technology is chipping away at the stranglehold on free and fair information inside Iran. VOA and RFE are strongly committed to providing the news at it happens in a variety of ways so that every Iranian that can get access to the free media can benefit from our journalists’ reporting.”

Last week RFE’s Radio Farda faced a variation of a “denial of service” attack on its phone lines with a flood of automated calls aiming to clog its answering machines. Calls played just over one minute of a looped recording of speeches and sermons in Persian before hanging up.

Since February 13, there has been intermittent but frequent interference of VOA PNN and Radio Farda satellite signals with programming in Persian for audiences in Iran.

As of the morning of February 21, there has been a continuous service interruption on one satellite channel carrying VOA’s PNN. PNN is carried on three other satellite paths as well as online, including its popular TV satire, “Parazit.” Millions of the show’s fans use proxy servers to access the program through social media sites like Facebook and YouTube. Similarly, Radio Farda’s website has seen an approximate 50 percent increase in web traffic over the past two weeks.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency, supervising all U.S. government-supported, civilian international broadcasting, whose mission is to promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding through multimedia communication of accurate, objective, and balanced news, information, and other programming about America and the world to audiences overseas. BBG broadcasts reach an audience of 165 million in 100 countries. BBG broadcasting organizations include the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti).

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VOA PRESS RELEASE

Press Release
Hacking and Signal Interference of U.S. International Broadcasting

Washington, D.C. — February 22, 2011 — As popular protests unfold across the Middle East, U.S. international broadcasting faces increased satellite signal interference and a web Domain Name System (DNS) attack.

“Our broadcasters are at the forefront of reporting the most tumultuous events we have seen unfold since 1989,” said Walter Isaacson, Chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) which oversees all U.S. international broadcasting including the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE). “It is a testament to their vital role that they are subject to the work of hackers and signal interference.”

On Monday, February 21, an unknown party hacked the Voice of America’s primary domain name (VOANews.com), along with numerous related domains registered with Network Solutions. Web users were directed to a website claiming to be run by a group called the “Iranian Cyber Army.”

“There’s a saying that a hit dog hollers – that can be applied to whoever tried to cut off access to VOA News by attacking the domain provider on Monday. The fact that the sites were redirected to the Iranian Cyber Army certainly raises an eyebrow or two,” said Dana Perino member of the BBG. “Technology is chipping away at the stranglehold on free and fair information inside Iran. VOA News is strongly committed to providing the news as it happens in a variety of ways so that every Iranian that can get access to the free media can benefit from our journalists’ reporting.”

This was a Domain Name System (DNS) attack redirecting the VOANews.com website. This was not a breach of internal systems or servers. No data was lost or compromised as a result of this event. An investigation is underway to determine who is responsible.

Since February 13, there has been intermittent but frequent interference of VOA’s Persian News Network (PNN) and RFE’s Radio Farda satellite signals with programming in Persian for audiences in Iran.

As of the morning of February 21, there has been a continuous service interruption on one satellite channel carrying VOA’s PNN. PNN is carried on three other satellite paths as well as online including a popular TV satire, Parazit. Millions of the show’s fans use proxy servers to access the program through social media sites like Facebook and YouTube. In the last month, Facebook recorded more than 20 million impressions on Parazit’s page.

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

Voice of America Chinese Service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senator Richard Lugar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This report was first published by FreeMediaOnline.orgTruckee, CA, USA, February 21, 2011.

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

Voice of America Chinese Service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senator Richard Lugar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Русская служба Би-би-си существенно сократит количество радиопрограмм

The Russian Service of the BBC, which provides news and information to Russian-speaking audiences not only in Russia but also in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Ukraine and the Baltic States, will end its on-air radio broadcasts as part of a budget cutting move. The BBC announcement was made shortly after the violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in Belarus and the terrorist attack in Moscow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

From the BBC press release:

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

From the BBC Russian Service website:

Русская служба Би-би-си перенесет вещание в интернет

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

BBC Press Release

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

Date: 26.01.2011

Category: BBC; World Service

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

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

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

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

The changes include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The changes in detail are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBC World Service Press Office

This report was first published by FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, January 26, 2011.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

From the BBC press release:

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

From the BBC Russian Service website:

Русская служба Би-би-си перенесет вещание в интернет

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

BBC Press Release

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

Date: 26.01.2011

Category: BBC; World Service

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

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

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

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

The changes include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The changes in detail are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBC World Service Press Office

Free Media Online (FreeMediaOnline.org) applauds the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the initiative’s participants for organizing this effort to express solidarity with the people of Belarus.

According to Free Media Online president Ted Lipien, this public diplomacy action is in many ways similar to the American expressions of support for the Polish people after General Jaruzelski’s imposition of martial law in Poland in December of 1981, except at that time President Ronald Reagan, the White House staff, the State Department, and the now defunct United States Information Agency (USIA) were all in the forefront of numerous U.S. government and private sector efforts to expose human rights violations and publicly condemn the communist regime in Warsaw. The absence of high-profile figures of the Obama administration in this latest action in support of democracy in Belarus is quite telling and confirms that East-Central Europe and defense of human rights abroad are a much lower priority for President Obama, said Lipien.

We are disappointed that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not join other world leaders, former statesmen, and dissidents who took time from their busy schedules to record their messages of support and solidarity with Belarus.

Read the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s announcement here.

To listen to the solidarity reading on Radio Svaboda [Radio Liberty Belarus Service], click here.

TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, December 27, 2010 — On the day the U.S. Senate voted to approve the new arms reduction treaty with Russia, I found an article on the State Depatment’s website, America.gov, which gave a long list of the START treaty’s benefits lauded by the Obama administration but failed to note any of the objections from some key Republican lawmakers and other critics. I posted a short comment that a website devoted to public diplomacy, with a name that implies that it represents the views of the entire American government and the American public, should try to present a more balanced perspective and mention some of the difficulties in getting the U.S.-Russian agreement approved by the Senate.

Within only a few minutes my comment was removed. After successfully challenging censorship for more than 30 years by bringing balanced news to communist-ruled Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and other countries, I was finally successfully censored by my former employer, the United States government.

While I was in charge of the Voice of America radio broadcasts to Poland during the Jaruzelski regime crackdown on Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement, I managed to ignore a few minor attempts by State Department officials to censor VOA news content. Of course, the same government is now censoring members of the U.S. Congress, so the removal of my comment seems hardly significant but is typical for this administration. After leaving my last government position of acting associate director of the Voice of America, I founded and began working for Free Media Online, an NGO promoting independent journalism worldwide, which explains my continuing interest in government censorship, propaganda and public diplomacy.

The current problem with having effective U.S. public diplomacy is largely due to the recent breakdown of domestic consensus on important values and foreign policy issues that existed during the Cold War, but bureaucratic inertia and incompetence also play a very large role. As a journalist, former government employee, manager, and executive, I had a direct knowledge of the inner-workings of the Voice of America, the now defunct United States Information Agency, the State Department, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors. I have never seen U.S. public diplomacy in such a crisis as it is now, not even during the George W. Bush administration.

One could ask how the United States government can engage in shaping public opinion abroad if the President publicly accused Republican senators of playing politics with the START treaty? Even if it were partly true for some lawmakers, such a public accusation reported to the entire world is unprecedented, especially since Senator McCain and other prominent Republicans raised some serious questions about START and President Obama’s overall approach to dealing with the authoritarian rulers in the Kremlin. This kind of public rebuke of U.S. lawmakers is almost equivalent to members of Congress criticizing the administration while on their trips abroad. It’s simply not done and it is terrible public diplomacy.

But regardless of how bitter or divided are the current foreign policy debates in the United States, there can be no effective public diplomacy if the administration is afraid to or does not want to tell foreign audiences what Americans really think and say about foreign and domestic issues. Censoring members of Congress by State Department officials is particularly outrageous, but in some cases even professional journalists employed by the U.S. government practice self-censorship or promote the administration’s policies, because they agree with them, without regard for full accuracy and balance.

I have checked the Voice of America’s recent coverage of the START treaty debate and found that the VOA English Service devoted about 90 percent of its online START news content to views in support of the treaty. While a VOA spokesperson described my claim as incorrect, a text analysis of all recent online VOA English Service stories on this subject can be easily done by anyone using an word count application. By law, the Voice of America, which is funded by American taxpayers to communicate with audiences abroad, is required to offer balanced news coverage.

I’m not arguing that public diplomacy cannot be effective when there is no strong domestic consensus on foreign policy. But to be effective, especially if there is no broad consensus, it must be conducted professionally by individuals and organizations devoted above all to promoting long-term U.S. national interests. Public diplomacy is sometimes described as strategic communications, which implies pursuing U.S. strategic interests, which may not be the same as short-term foreign policy goals of a particular administration. They may later turn out to be misguided. This should be a primary lesson for all current and future State Department officials engaged in public diplomacy.

It is unlikely however, that an effective organizational setup can be established within the U.S. government for formulating implementing long-term public diplomacy goals or that the current structures can be reformed without strong pressure from the U.S. Congress and the American public.

Public diplomacy and international broadcasting have not been a high priority issue in the United States after the end of the Cold War. There is a small chance, however, that this may change as a result of old and new foreign policy blunders, revelations by Wiki Leaks, but especially due to new activism on behalf of individuals and organizations using new media, if such citizen initiatives achieve a certain momentum and attract the attention of sympathetic members of Congress.

We can be fairly sure that the public diplomacy and international broadcasting bureaucracy is not going to reform itself from within without constant public and Congressional scrutiny, which fortunately is increasing due to the power of social media. In addition to the lack of domestic political consensus on foreign policy, one of the other key obstacles to overcome is the incompetence of government bureaucrats. It has now reached new levels even at the State Department and the White House.

Another major difficulty to overcome by the same bureaucrats who are part of the problem is the revolution in quick dissemination of news, including the leaking of secret government communications by Wiki Leaks and others. Very few U.S. government officials in charge of public diplomacy have the necessary training and experience in journalism and new media. Again, without public criticism and pressure, they are not likely to change their way of conducting public diplomacy.

Why are U.S. government officials unable to stop embarrassing foreign policy and public diplomacy blunders? We no longer have at the highest levels independently-minded Foreign Service officers like Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane who resigned to register his protest against the sellout of Poland to Stalin by President Roosevelt and the lack of proper response to the fraudulent post-war Polish elections by the Truman administration.

In fact, not a single highly-paid U.S. diplomat or White House official managed to prevent President Obama from insulting our Polish allies when he made his announcement of the cancellation of the Bush missile defense plan in Central Europe on the anniversary of the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union. No advisor was also able to convince President Obama that his refusal to meet Dalai Lama at the White House, in an apparent effort to please the communist leaders in China, would send a powerfully negative signal to human rights and democracy activists around the world and to America’s democratic allies. And when the Voice of America fails to deliver news to Belarus during the recent crisis, the bureaucrats who terminated VOA Russian radio broadcasts issue a self-congratulatory press release.

Numerous public diplomacy blunders of this kind raise questions about the ability of U.S. government officials to advise presidents and to manage strategic communications with the outside world. While the current president and his administration seem particularly incompetent, the George W. Bush administration did not fare much better in public diplomacy abroad, although it managed to develop a successful pro-Iraq war propaganda at home — propaganda that was not effectively challenged by the American media. There is a solution, however, to this problem. It involves a much greater reliance on independent analysis, courage to challenge political appointees, applying journalistic standards of fairness and balance, and a greater appreciation of the sophistication of foreign audiences.

The START treaty debate is a good example of how public diplomacy should have worked but did not. Telling the Russian public and the Kremlin through VOA and America.gov that the START treaty enjoyed widespread support and its approval by the Senate was a piece of cake was not only factually wrong. It was also bad public diplomacy and bad for long-term U.S. interests. It mislead foreign audiences and it may make the Russian leaders even more inclined to make further demands on the Obama administration for additional concessions. It assumed that foreigners who are consumers of U.S. government-generated news and information are morons with no access to alternative sources of information.

I’m not saying that the Obama administration could not have still bragged about being able to get the Senate’s approval for the treaty, but a balanced message would have been far more credible and, for some East and Central Europeans, somewhat more reassuring. It would have been educational for the majority of the Russian public which supports Prime Minister Putin’s KGB-like tactics in dealing with the opposition, independent journalists, and leaders like President Obama. The impression left by the State Department’s America.gov website and the Voice of America is that nothing much matters to the Obama White House than making deals with the Kremlin, not even the discovery of sleeper Russian agents in the U.S., their hero welcome in Russia by Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev, and a statement by a Kremlin insider that assassins are being sent to America to track down and kill a former Russian spy who betrayed them.

Telling the whole truth and even stressing the objections to the treaty would have been a good lesson in American domestic politics for the Russians and their leaders. It could have sent also a signal to worried U.S. allies in East-Central Europe that the American people and their representatives in Congress are beginning to pay a close attention to President Obama’s foreign policy and that his political future is now in doubt after the 2010 congressional elections.

The public diplomacy message, as it was delivered by the State Department and independently through the Voice of America news, could only be described as boring and naive journalism, almost an insult to the intelligence of foreign audiences. It was not much different from Kremlin-style propaganda. Considering that foreign media are apparently one of the target audiences for the America.gov website, it’s highly doubtful that any foreign journalist would use such one-sided material. It also made a mockery of the State Department’s promotion of objective journalism and media freedom abroad. The Voice of America did not do not much better in that respect.

What could make U.S. public diplomacy abroad more effective? We could start by offering better education in diplomatic history in American high schools and colleges. Perhaps then we could elect presidents who would have some knowledge of history and were able to gain some meaningful foreign policy experience. The same goes for selecting the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of Defense. One could very well ask where were Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates when President Obama was getting ready to make his missile defense announcement? Did none of them study European history? If they were too busy to advise President Obama on the timing of one of the most significant foreign policy announcements of his presidency, where was the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith A. McHale?

The next step is the selection of future U.S. diplomats. The testing standards should be set much higher and candidates should be checked for their willingness to raise effective objections to bad and naive decisions of their superiors, even at the cost of their careers.

Making public diplomacy independent of the State Department, as it was more of less during the Cold War when the United States Information Agency (USIA) was charged with managing direct communications with foreign audiences, would help, assuming it was led by a high-profile, independent and experienced professional with direct access to the President and the Secretary of State.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which has mismanaged the Voice of America for years, should be abolished and journalistic independence and standards at VOA and other government-funded U.S. international broadcasters significantly strengthened under some type of public monitoring and oversight.

The Congress should above all insist that the U.S. foreign policy establishment accept the fact that when there is no clear domestic consensus on foreign policy and other issues, U.S. officials in charge of communicating directly with audiences abroad be required to present a balanced message. A balanced message and telling the whole truth is in the long run more credible and better for promoting American interests abroad than one-sided government propaganda.

I have seen tremendous bitterness of Polish media, politicians, and average citizens as a result of President Obama’s policies toward East-Central Europe and Russia. While some blamed specifically President Obama, most of it has been directed against “the Americans” and “the United States.” Very few Poles tried to distinguish between President Obama’s particular assumptions about the Russian leaders and America’s long term support for democratic values and nations like Poland which are victims of bullying by authoritarian regimes of their much bigger neighbors.

Part of the new public diplomacy message could be that U.S. foreign policy mistakes, such as the sellout of Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta, are eventually discovered and reversed because the American people are not going to stand for policies that go against basic American values, once they know the full facts. History teaches that they won’t. But my friends in Central and Western Europe tell me that it may take new U.S. administrations decades to reverse the damage done to relations with America’s European allies by President Obama’s so far futile attempts to curry favors with the Kremlin at the expense of solid American friends in the region.

I don’t really expect the State Department to come up with a sophisticated message that promotes President Obama’s goals while explaining historical and strategic objections to his policies. America.gov could, however, try to pay slightly more attention to the critics of the Obama administration. The Voice of America could, with even fewer problems, offer in-depth, objective and balanced reporting because its journalistic independence is guaranteed by the Congress. Unfortunately, the BBG terminated all VOA broadcasts and online reporting to Central Europe long time ago. It also ended VOA Russian radio programs in 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia.

This brings me to my final point on additional and alternative ways of conducting U.S. public diplomacy abroad. I don’t expect much action from the Obama administration, and even under the best circumstances, the U.S. government bureaucracy is not likely to be able to overcome its internal barriers to promoting effectively and without political bias long term, strategic U.S. interests.

While it was difficult for citizen public diplomacy to be effective during the Cold War due to the high costs of communicating and overcoming communist censorship, the Internet makes it possible now to achieve some form of limited direct communication with the public in most foreign countries. Individuals and organizations in the United States can help to expose foreign policy and public diplomacy mistakes, demand action, and in some cases communicate directly with audiences abroad.

Unfortunately, however, citizen diplomacy is not the complete solution to the current problem. Statements and actions by NGOs do not have, again in most cases, the same impact as communications on behalf the of the U.S. government, and NGOs simply lack the resources available to federal agencies. So whether we like it or not, NGOs cannot completely replace the U.S. government in this area of foreign policy. Greater scrutiny and reform of the U.S. public diplomacy establishment must therefore become a goal of all individuals and organizations concerned with the state of America’s relations with her allies and the rest of the world.

Related posts:

1. US Public Diplomacy Failure to Reach Out to the Russians After Terrorist Attack in Ingushetia – FreeMediaOnline.org (Free Media Online Blog)
2. Sen. Voinovich criticizes Obama for public diplomacy disaster
3. Misleading foreign audiences – America.gov or America.STATE – U.S. Senate Ratifies New START Treaty
4. Walesa on Obama’s Missile Diplomacy – American Diplomacy Failed Obama in Poland Update
5. Voice of America English programs go the way of Voice of Russia, says former VOA journalist

 Sourced from: TedLipien.com

In reality, citizens in Belarus found most independent media websites inaccessible. Global Voices, a free media NGO reported, quoting Lenta.ru, that the Belarus government blocked all major social media (Gmail, Twitter, LiveJournal, Facebook) as well as opposition media outlets “Charter 97“, “Belarus Partizan“, and “Solidarity.” Problems with the internet and limited access to social media and opposition websites in Minsk were being reported throughout the day, said the media NGO. According to Global Voices, the government decided to block social media in order to prevent mass mobilization after the elections and following protests.

Global Voices also reported that Belarus users are being redirected to fake opposition websites: gazetaby.in, nnby.in, charter97.in, bchdd.in, belaruspartisan.in, euroradio.in, ucpb.in, svaboda.in. The design of all these websites is the same but the content is completely different from the original. All domains belong to “Belpak”, Belarus state-owned Internet provider.

The claims in the VOA press release seems especially suspect in light of the reports of Internet blockage and cyber attacks. Read Hal Roberts’ report from from The Berkman Center for Internet & Society INDEPENDENT MEDIA SITES IN BELARUS REPORTEDLY HIJACKED DURING ELECTION

The Voice of America could have played a major role delivering news and information to Belarus by radio, but it did not have that capability due to bad planning and mismanagement at its parent agency.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, which manages VOA, terminated VOA Russian FM, shortwave and medium wave radio broadcasts in 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia. Such radio broadcasts, especially medium wave (AM) from transmitters in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, or Estonia, which cannot be easily blocked, would have been extremely useful during the emergency in Belarus or any other type of crisis, also in Russia.

According to VOA insiders, citizen journalists were able to tell their news to a VOA reporter on the ground, but the Voice of America was unable to deliver the news back to Belarus because it lacked effective program delivery when faced with the blockage of the Internet by the regime in Minsk. If a similar emergency happened in Russia and the Kremlin decided to block the Internet, the Voice of America Russian Service would likewise be unable to deliver news to Russia. This already happened once during President Obama’s official visit to Moscow when the VOA website was unavailable for two full days due to a cyber attack.

Before, during, and after the presidential elections, the authorities in Belarus managed to establish tight control over the Internet and phone communications. VOA insiders claim that there was no significant communication between VOA in Washington and citizens in Belarus and that increased VOA Russian Service web traffic came not from Belarus but from the United States, Western and Central Europe — and from Russia, where the BBG has been spending large amounts of money advertising the VOA Russian Service website.

If there is a crisis in Russia or another Russian military attack on a neighboring country similar to the attack on Georgia, and the Kremlin blocks the Internet or launches cyber attacks, the examples of Belarus in 2010 and Georgia 2008 show that without radio the Voice of America has no means to deliver news and information in Russian to a crisis area. VOA insiders point out that it is not the VOA’s mission to provide news and information over the Internet to the United States and Western Europe.

As Global Voices pointed out, citizen reports were filed but they were not widely distributed due to the blockage of the Internet and social media. With its radio broadcasts terminated in 2008 by the BBG in favor of using the Internet and social media, the VOA Russian Service had no emergency plans for delivering its news to Belarus.

GLOBAL VOICES: Problems with the internet and limited access to social media and opposition websites in Minsk were being reported throughout the day, too (see earlier GV updates by Alexey Sidorenko – here, here, and here). Evgeny Mor (see earlier GV updates by Alexey Sidorenko – here, here, and here). Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov), who is currently in Belarus, tweeted that he couldn’t “access anything using https.” In another tweet, posted Sunday afternoon, he wrote:
I also hear that since access to Gmail in Belarus is blocked, opposition sites can’t use their mailing lists

Still, citizen media reports were being filed before, during and after the events in the center of Minsk.

The VOA press release below should be compared with the reports above and below from Global Voices. Keeping the VOA staff informed in Washington and putting news items online — something that anybody with access to a website can do — does not translate into informing an audience in Belarus. Unlike the Voice of America, Global Voices told the whole truth about its ability to deliver Internet and social media content. Individuals and NGOs did a much better job of citizen reporting from Belarus at a fraction of the cost than did the Voice of America, which has spent millions of dollars on new media. VOA’s advantage would have been in having effective, blockage-proof program delivery using AM, shortwave, and even FM radio signals from neighboring countries. Individuals and NGOs are not able to develop and maintain such program delivery. Unfortunately, the BBG and its executive staff bureaucrats eliminated VOA’s ability to respond to political emergencies in countries like Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Those reading the VOA press release should also consider the BBC news report that — with only a small fraction of people in Belarus having regular access to the internet — the authorities there are not too worried.

GLOBAL VOICES BELARUS: Belarus government blocked all major social media (Gmail, Twitter, LiveJournal, Facebook) as well as opposition media outlets “Charter 97“, “Belarus Partizan“, and “Solidarity“, Lenta.ru reported [RUS]. The government decided to block social media in order to prevent mass mobilization after today’s elections and following protests.

Voice of America Press Release

Citizen Journalists in Belarus Tell Election Story to VOA

Washington, D.C., December 22, 2010 – A new breed of citizen journalist has emerged in Belarus, and dramatic first-hand accounts of the government’s post-election crackdown are being seen and heard because of a special Voice of America effort to harness the growing power of social media.

Visits to the VOA Russian Service website rose dramatically in the aftermath of Sunday’s controversial election and the government’s suppression of dissent. More than 140,000 visits were recorded at the VOA site (http://www.voanews.com/russian/news/), which is posting eyewitness reports on a special “crowdsourcing map.”

The citizen journalist reports, received through email and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, are carefully screened and verified by VOA journalists, who have sifted through thousands since last Friday.

VOA Director Danforth Austin says the Russian Service’s carefully planned use of “crowdsourcing” is a “textbook example of how citizen journalists can help VOA provide accurate first-hand coverage of an event and complement the work of our journalists in the field.” By using new media in a thoughtful way, Austin says, “We have been able to engage in a conversation with our audience and tell the world what they are saying and experiencing.”

VOA Russian Service coverage of the Belarus election also included a dramatic interview with presidential candidate Andrey Sannikov, who was arrested and badly beaten. He and 17 other prominent Belarusian opposition leaders have been accused of inciting mass riots and face the possibility of long prison terms. No media has had access to Sannikov since his arrest.

VOA Russian Service editors say that in addition to an increase in traffic to the website, the use of social media platforms and “crowdsourcing” has also triggered an unprecedented number of references to VOA Russian content on influential Russian and Belarusian websites.

The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.  VOA broadcasts approximately 1,500 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 123 million people.  Programs are produced in 44 languages and are intended exclusively for audiences outside of the United States.

For more information, please call VOA Public Relations at (202) 203-4959, or e-mail us at askvoa@voanews.com.

Free Media Online, a California-based media freedom NGO, reported that VOA’s English-language news service’s bias against Republican positions on foreign and domestic policy issues, which has been known for years by VOA insiders and does not extend to most VOA foreign language services, has become much more blatant during the current administration, with the reporting on the START treaty being just the latest example of biased VOA English news coverage in violation of the Voice of America Charter. Free Media Online President Ted Lipien said that while some of the blame falls on VOA English Service reporters and editors, the responsibility for unbalanced reporting ultimately rests with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an independent Federal agency which oversees the Voice of America. On the START Treaty and many other news, the Voice of America English Service reporting went the way of the Voice of Russia and misleads important foreign audiences about America, its institutions and political debates, said Lipien.

A review of recent VOA English Service news reports on the proposed START treaty, conducted by Free Media Online, shows that statements and arguments in favor of the Obama Administration position on the arms control agreement with Moscow have received an overwhelming amount (more than 90 percent) of VOA Internet coverage. The Republican objections to the treaty, if they are even mentioned in VOA English-language reports, usually got no more than one or two sentences.

Some of the significant statements and interviews by former Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain, in which he has raised objections to the current wording of the treaty and President Obama’s “reset” of relations with Russia, have not been reported at all by the Voice of America, except for a few sentences in a heavily pro-START treaty VOA English service report.

It took the Voice of America Russian Service two days to post a report on the major foreign policy speech by Senator McCain at the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, in which he criticized President Obama’s approach to Russia.

Senator McCain’s speech had been posted earlier in English by GovoritAmerika.US, a largely Russian-language website sponsored by Free Media Online. Senator McCain’s Senate floor speech on the trial of the Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky and U.S.-Russia relations and his speech on the missile defense and START Treaty were not reported by the VOA English Service.

Vice President Biden’s comments in support of the treaty were, on the other hand, promptly posted Sunday on the VOA English website with no references to Republican lawmakers who made television comments against the treaty at about the same time. Links to related VOA stories on the Biden report all take readers to VOA English reports indicating widespread support for the treaty:

Obama Urges Swift Approval of START Treaty

Momentum Builds to Ratify New START

Clinton Says START Treaty is ‘Beyond Politics’

The only substantive report on the VOA English website, which includes Republican objections to the proposed START treaty, appeared Sunday evening, December 19, many hours after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, spoke against the agreement in television interviews. After months of seeing on the VOA English Service website numerous reports on the support for the proposed START treaty, VOA audiences were finally told Sunday night about “doubts that the accord might not be ratified during the final days of the current Congress.”

In addition to those already listed, all other substantive recent VOA reports on the proposed START Treaty, which have strongly supported the White House position, can be seen in “Related Links” attached to the Voice of America English report

“Clinton Says START Treaty is ‘Beyond Politics’” :

Europeans, Russia Urge US Senate to Ratify START Treaty

President Obama Challenges Republicans to Approve START Treaty

Democrats Push For Approval of Arms Control Treaty This Year

European Support for New Nuclear Treaty More Certain than Senate Ratification

Obama, Colin Powell Urge New START Approval

Biden: US Senators Will Pass START Treaty

The only VOA report with substantive statements from Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham is not listed among the related links for the Clinton/START report.

VOA language services, which employ journalists from former and current communist states and other nations ruled by dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, are generally more balanced in their original reporting. The only possible exception may be the VOA Persian Service, which has been accused by Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, and by Iranian human rights activists of being biased in favor of the Tehran regime.

Many VOA language radio services, however, have been eliminated and those still broadcasting have fewer resources, which forces some to rely on translating VOA English Service reports and multiplies the unbalanced coverage.

Due to a combination of uncritical and uncontroversial reporting and mismanagement at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the VOA English Service, with the exception of the VOA English to Africa Division which creates its own highly-targeted programs, has been losing overseas listeners at a rapid rate and in most countries its audience, often measured at a fraction of one percent, falls well below the statistical margin of error. Perhaps in response to such dismal performance, some current and former VOA English Service executives have been recently promoting the idea of combining the Voice of America with the National Public Radio (NPR).

The current Director of the Voice of America is Danforth W. Austin, but his control over the VOA English Service programs and its staff of reporters and editors appears minimal. He was hired in 2006 during the George W. Bush Administration by the previous members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages all U.S.-funded civilian international broadcasts. VOA insiders know that all the important decisions, which determine the journalistic culture at the Voice of America, are set by the BBG, which by law must be bipartisan, and particularly by its executive staff. All of the current BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans, have been nominated by President Obama.

Public Law 94-350 signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976, which governs VOA journalistic activities, says:

VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.

It also mandates:

VOA will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies.[emphasis added]

See original here:
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News media and websites censored and blocked for carrying leaked cables

Supported entirely by U.S. taxpayers through a Congressional appropriation to the BBG, RFE/RL originates radio and Internet programs from its headquarters in the Czech Republic and news bureaus throughout Eurasia. It employs hundreds of foreign nationals and broadcasts in 28 languages to 21 countries of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union, as well as to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Anna Karapetian and other former RFE/RL journalists have argued that with the approval of the BBG, the radio station has been for many years using an old Communist-era Czechoslovak law which allows it to apply special terms of employment for its contract journalists brought to the Czech Republic from other countries.

The fired RFE/RL journalists claim that by exempting them from some of the current Czech labor regulations and applying its own personnel policies, RFE/RL has been discriminating against them and denying a large group of foreign-born broadcasters some of the essential legal protections which are available to RFE/RL’s American and Czech employees.

RFE/RL insists that it is in full compliance with U.S. and Czech labor laws and from time to time must reduce employment due to shifting priorities and budget restrictions.

In court cases against RFE/RL and in articles published in the local media and posted on the Internet, the journalists complained that they could be fired at any time without being given a specific reason and an opportunity to appeal the termination of their employment. They also charged that they could not receive their severance pay if they refused to give up the right to challenge their termination in court.

Anna Karapetian, a mother of three minor children, had been fired under this procedure after 12 years of what appears to be exemplary employment at RFE/RL. She refused to sign her termination agreement and sued RFE/RL in Czech courts.

RFE/RL’s treatment of foreign-born journalists has generated a lot of negative publicity in the Czech Republic and in some of the countries to which RFE/RL directs its radio programs, including Russia.

Earlier this year, Czech senator Jaromir Stetina, deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Defense and Security, and a member of the Senate Commission on International Support for Democracy, called discrimination of RFE/RL foreign employees “patently indecent, unfair, cynical and hypocritical.” The purpose of RFE/RL programs, specified by the U.S. Congress, is to promote free flow of information and development of democracy. The fired journalists claim that discriminatory employment practices are also inconsistent with RFE/RL’s mission statement which calls for the station to serve as model for local media.

Another former RFE/RL employee Snjezana Pelivan, whose employment had been terminated in a similar manner, has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, also claiming discrimination on the basis of national origin. Prior to the latest ruling, Czech court decisions found that the firing of Ms. Pelivan and Ms. Karapetian by RFE/RL did not violate Czech laws.

In overturning Anna Karapetian’s firing, the Czech Court ruled that it had enough evidence and did not need to hear from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ms. Karapetian requested Mrs. Clinton’s testimony as an ex officio member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors which has the ultimate power over management and personnel practices at RFE/RL

RFE/RL can appeal the latest Czech court decision.

Sources:

Information Centre ICCEE CAUCASUS – EASTERN EUROPE, Prague, Czech Republic “Czech Court to American Radio Free Europe”

Информационный центр ICCEE КАВКАЗ – ВОСТОЧНАЯ ЕВРОПА (CAUCASUS – EASTERN EUROPE), Prague, Czech Republic

“Чешский суд американскому Радио Свободная Европа: В Чехии нет места американским законам. В показаниях Хиллари Клинтон нет необходимости”

An unknown hacker has posted a pornographic video on the VOA LiveJournal blog. The image seen on the VOA site showed a naked woman in a sexually suggestive pose. The post was titled “sexy.” The image was not removed from the site for at least several hours. It was seen and saved by Free Media Online at 4:16 PM PT.

This is not the first time that the Voice of America websites have experienced a cyber attack in recent years. VOA websites came under a crippling cyber attack during President Obama’s first official visit to Russia and were out of commission for several days.

In 2008, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages the Voice of America, terminated all VOA Russian programs just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia. At that time, BBG executives claimed that VOA Russian Service can reach a vast audience in Russia through the Internet by using such platforms as LiveJournal. They ignored warnings from Free Media Online and other media freedom advocates which pointed out that LiveJournal, which was purchased by a Russian company, is highly vulnerable to attacks by hackers and can be easily controled by the Russian security services. As a result of the BBG decision to terminate most VOA Russian radio and TV broadcasts, its audience reach in Russia has been drastically reduced. VOA Russian Service website draws only a few thousand visitors in Russia despite huge investments for private consultants and advertising.

FreeMediaOnline.org website has also been a target of hacker attacks in recent weeks. The source of the attacks could not be identified.

This post was originally published by FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 02, 2010, San Francisco.