Here is the original post:
France – RSF releases press freedom index for 2011/2012

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.

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Russia – Terror, threats and corruption: report of RSF fact-finding visit to Russian Caucasus

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.

Read the rest here:
Tajikistan – Journalist faces 16 years in jail if convicted on defamation charges

See original here:
Uyghurs’ slight, elderly leader is no ‘existential threat’ to China

Read more:
Azerbaijan – Stepping up harassment of media, Nakhchivan expels reporter

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.

See original here:
Europe and Central Asia – OSCE urged to prioritise protection of journalists in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine

Continued here:
Belarus – Irina Khalip handed suspended two-year prison term

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.

A Chinese free labor union leader like Poland’s Lech Walesa could be declared expendable by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages U.S. international broadcasting operations, because he has no Internet and no higher education, is older than 30 and is poor.

Government executives who advise part-time presidential appointees at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) would want you to believe that silencing Voice of America radio to China is a great political and technological idea that is bound to displease the communist regime in Beijing. The savings would be used to expand Internet presence, or so they claim.

But theirs is a misguided proposal that would harm both the United States and pro-democracy forces abroad. It sends a strong signal to authoritarian regimes that Americans either don’t care about human rights or don’t know how to defend them. Not surprisingly, the Chinese communists already have greeted the BBG announcement as a defeat for America.

Read The Washington Times op-ed: LIPIEN: Don’t silence Voice of America radio to China

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.

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

###

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.

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.

###

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
 
###
 
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.

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.

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

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Belarus – Two more independent journalists jailed

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Hungary – Journalists question Hungary’s leadership of Europe as media law provokes outrage

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

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Belarus – Crackdown on the press continues, with journalists arrested, sentenced

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.

Read more:
Belarus – Writer and former Belarusian PEN President, Vladimir Neklyaev, arrested and beaten