In a letter addressed to Senator John F. Kerry and Richard G. Lugar, Czech Senator Jaromir Stetina accuses the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) of treating foreign journalists at RFE/RL as third-class citizens by denying them basic legal protections against unfair treatment and discrimination.

The BBG is run by a board composed of up to eight officials selected from both U.S. political parties. Appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, they are charged with managing RFE/RL and other U.S. broadcasting entities targeting foreign audiences overseas. The U.S. Secretary of State serves as an ex officio member of the BBG. Most of the BBG broadcasting units, which also include Arabic-language Alhurra television and Radio Sawa, are operated by private contractors who receive Federal funding from the BBG.

Among the BBG-managed broadcasting entities, only the Voice of America (VOA) broadcasters are U.S. Government employees. Journalistic independence of VOA broadcasters is guaranteed by a Congressional charter.

Some of the BBG members and their executive staff have been accused of eliminating VOA broadcasting services and jobs in Washington to benefit their private contractor friends and associates. Despite a strong bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Congress, including a warning statement from Senator Patrick Leahy, the BBG members and executives terminated VOA Russian-language radio programs just 12 days before the Russian military action against Georgia in 2008. They also eliminated VOA radio broadcasts to Ukraine and VOA broadcasts in Arabic.

President Obama has nominated new members of the bipartisan BBG. They now await confirmation by the U.S. Senate, but the BBG is still run by members appointed by President George W. Bush. Their executive staff includes managers who were responsible for implementing personnel practices at RFE/RL and at other privately-run U.S. broadcasting entities. The BBG has been consistently rated in government-wide U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employee surveys at the top of the worst-managed Federal agencies.

Unlike the Voice of America, most of the privately-run broadcasting entities have weak editorial controls and their journalists can be easily fired if they complain about poor journalistic practices and mismanagement. Members of Congress were shocked to learn that Alhurra Television was broadcasting statements from Holocaust deniers, but during the Bush administration, all Democrats and most of the Republicans at the BBG strongly favored private broadcasters over VOA.

Senator Stetina’s letter to Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar brings up the case of two dismissed RFE/RL employees, an Armenian journalist and a media specialist from Croatia. Their dismissal is now being reviewed by the European Court of Human Rights.

Excerpt from Senator Stetina’s letter to Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar (see full text here):

“The Czech Republic was and remains a very hospitable country to American RFE/RL. However, the Czech Republic definitely does not deserve the price it is now paying for its hospitality to RFE/RL. Legal gimmicks and court tricks aside, it is patently indecent, unfair, cynical and hypocritical to exploit for bureaucratic ends the sad fact that many highly-qualified foreign professionals working for RFE/RL are stateless persons, dissidents, political refugees who, being cut off from their native countries, are existentially dependent on their employment with RFE/RL. Placed by RFE/RL in a legal vacuum in the Czech Republic, they simply don’t risk protesting their status of having no rights.”

Media outlets in the Czech Republic and in Croatia have reported on Senator Stetina’s letter.

The BBG has long been considered one of the worst managed Federal agencies. The current Bush-era members of the bipartisan Board in charge of U.S. international broadcasting are expected to be replaced soon by President Obama’s nominees who now await confirmation by the U.S. Senate. (You would not know it if you open the BBG website.)

As new BBG members are getting ready to take their positions, the executives responsible for such journalistic and public relations disasters as airing of Holocaust denial propaganda on Alhurra television and discrimination against foreign-born journalists at Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (a case now pending before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg) have been busy making themselves look good to their soon-to-be bosses.

But rather than to improve their management style, the BBG/VOA executive staff used the well-tried method of buying votes that goes back, well, all the way to the Roman times.

“Give them bread and games and they will vote for you.”

We hasten to add that this was not an election fraud, which the last time we checked is still a felony, but a Federal survey fraud. The goal was to make the management look good in a Federal survey that measures employee satisfaction.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) relies on the accuracy and impartiality of these employee surveys to make important decisions about personnel policies. The BBG/VOA executives undermined this process not only at their own agency but for the entire Federal government. Survey results at BBG/VOA can no longer be compared to results at other U.S. government agencies which don’t engage in bribing employees to encourage them to participate.

Giving away prizes is a not-too-subtle form of influencing how employees will vote. Ironically, the same executives, who have no problem ignoring government regulations when they apply to them, have been actively engaged in firing VOA journalists for minor time-and-attendance transgressions. They treat journalists who need to work irregular hours and move around to get their stories as bureaucrats tied to their desks.

What we want to know is whether in addition to pizza, the BBG/VOA executives also provided beer. God forbid if they did, because that would also be against Federal regulations unless they granted themselves a special exemption.

If the soon-to-be active new BBG members in charge of the U.S. international broadcasting empire will not be able to change the management culture at their Agency, we suggest that they pay for regular pizza and beer parties for the BBG and VOA employees. If nothing changes under the new Board, we might as well really go back to the Roman Empire ways of keeping the masses happy.

The following commentary is from The Federalist, one of our regular bloggers who reports on the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the Voice of America (VOA).

Down The Path Called Dysfunctional

Just when you thought that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the Voice of America (VOA) couldn’t become any more dysfunctional than they already are, comes the following:

The VOA Director, Dan Austin, recently issued an email regarding the results of the 2009 Human Capital Survey. This is the annual survey mandated by Congress of Federal agencies, a snapshot of how the employees of the Federal workforce feel about the agencies they work in. In odd-numbered years, the survey is conducted by each Federal agency. In even-numbered years, the survey is conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), even though some Federal agencies, including BBG/VOA contract with OPM to conduct the survey in the even-numbered years.

At the outset, Austin crows about the increased level of participation in the 2009 survey…up to 58 percent as opposed to the 35 percent in 2008. Austin goes on to make a vague reference to “improvements” in some areas, but key issues, including leadership (i.e., Austin, the BBG and the rest of the senior agency officials) remain areas of concern.

What Austin doesn’t say in his email is that senior agency leadership offered a prize for the agency element with the most participants. That prize is…

A pizza party.

A pizza party?!?

This is quite revealing of the senior VOA leadership attitude toward the Human Capital Survey and by extension, the agency’s employees.

The attitude is quite clear: the senior leadership sees the survey as a trivial, nuisance exercise and the employee workforce as if it were a group of children.

Whatever “improvements” have been claimed in Austin’s email, it is evident that even with a sophomoric attempt at “bribing” employees with a pizza party reward, the real numbers of positive direction are insignificant…and are made even more watered down when measured against the increased participation.

The heart of any survey of this kind are what are commonly referred to as “core issues;” namely, how the execution of the agency’s mission is perceived and where the employees see themselves now and in the future. In view of the increasingly bizarre behavior of its senior officials, employees should be concerned.

The Federalist

December 2009

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the eight new appointees would replace the current BBG leadership with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who serves as an ex officio member.

The BBG manages the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. All are funded exclusively by U.S. taxpayers.

The agency with the estimated $717.4 million budget in FY 2009 and nearly 3,800 employees has been consistently rated by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, OPM, in employee surveys as one of the worst managed within the federal government. Some of the current BBG members and their executive staff tried to withhold from the U.S. Congress and journalists independent taxpayer-funded studies revealing cases of serious mismanagement at the BBG and its privatized broadcasting entities, especially Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. One of the studies described substandard journalistic practices at Alhurra, including broadcasting stattements from Holocaust deniers, and its failure to attract a meaningful audience in the Middle East.

To pay private media contractors favored by the Bush Administration, the BBG eliminated all Voice of America Arabic news programs and cut broadcasts to many other countries without free media. VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts were terminiated in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia.

Both Republicans and Democrats appointed to the BBG by President Bush approved these controversial decisions. The effort to create contractor-managed broadcasting to the Muslim world, as opposed to broadcasting by the Voice of America, which operates under a Congressional charter as a U.S. government entity with guarantees of journalistic independence, was led by former Democratic BBG members: Norman Pattiz and Edward E. Kaufman who is now a U.S. senator from Delaware. Their alliance with neoconservatives in the Bush administration was essential for carrying out plans to privatize U.S. international broadcasting. Only one current BBG member, conservative radio host Blanquita Walsh Cullum, was reported to have opposed some of the questionable management practices at the BBG, particularly the push to eliminate Voice of America broadcasts to countries without independent media.

Walter Isaacson, who upon approval by the U.S. Senate would become new BBG chairman, is president of the Aspen Institute and serves as chair of the board of Teach for America. He is the former chairman and CEO of CNN and former editor of Time Magazine. He is the author of “Einstein: His Life and Universe” and “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life”, and the co-author of “The Wise Men”.

President Obama also appointed three other Democrats:

• Michael Lynton,

• Susan McCue,

• Michael P. Meehan;

and four new Republican BBG members:

• Victor H. Ashe,

• Dennis Mulhaupt,

• Dana Perino,

• S. Enders Wimbush.

As of 9 PM November 19, the public relations documents on the BBG website have not been updated to include the White House announcement on the pending personnel changes.

End of FreeMediaOnline.org report. This report may republished with attribution.

Biographies of Democrats whom President Obama intends to nominate to the BBG (from the White House press release):

Walter Isaacson, Chair, Broadcasting Board of Governors

Walter Isaacson is President of the Aspen Institute and serves as chair of the board of Teach for America. He is the former Chairman and CEO of CNN and former editor of Time Magazine. Mr. Isaacson is the author of “Einstein: His Life and Universe” and “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life”, and the co-author of “The Wise Men”. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he was appointed vice-chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. Mr. Isaacson is a graduate of Harvard College and Pembroke College of Oxford University.

Michael Lynton, Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors

Michael Lynton is the Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. He is the former CEO of AOL Europe and Chairman and CEO of Pearson plc’s Penguin Group. Mr. Lynton is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Rand Corporation. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School and is proficient in French, German and Dutch.

Susan McCue, Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors

Susan McCue is President of Message Global, a strategic advocacy firm she founded in 2008 for social action campaigns. She was the founding President and CEO of The ONE Campaign to combat extreme global poverty, and before that was Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from 1999 to 2006. She also is currently Vice Chair of Humanity United. A New Jersey native, Ms. McCue is a graduate of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., with degrees in economics and journalism.

Michael P. Meehan, Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors

Michael P. Meehan currently serves as President of Blue Line Strategic Communications, Inc. and as Senior Vice President at Virilion, a digital media company. For over two decades, Meehan served in senior roles for U.S. Senators John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, two presidential campaigns, two U.S. House offices and congressional campaigns in 25 states. Mr. Meehan earned a B.A. in political science from Bates College.

Biographies of Republicans whom President Obama intends to nominate to the BBG (taken from the White House press release):

Victor H. Ashe, Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors

Victor H. Ashe recently served as United States Ambassador to Poland from June 2004 to October 2009. He also previously served as a Tennessee State Representative and was the longest serving Mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee. Mr. Ashe has served as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, was twice appointed to the Intergovernmental Advisory Committee and is a former member of the Americorps Board of Directors. He currently sits on the Board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Rovers Association. Mr. Ashe is a graduate of Yale University and the University Of Tennessee College Of Law in 1974.

Dennis Mulhaupt, Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors

Dennis Mulhaupt is founder and managing director of Commonwealth Partners, Inc., providing advisory services to philanthropic institutions and families. He previously served as Executive Vice President at KCET in Los Angeles, a west-coast flagship public broadcasting and media company. Earlier in his career, he was Vice President at Claremont McKenna College; Vice President for Medical External Relations at Stanford University; and Senior Associate dean in the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences at the University of Southern California. Mr. Mulhaupt received his B.A. from the University of Southern California and an M.Phil. in international relations and criminology from Cambridge University.

Dana Perino, Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors

Dana Perino is the Chief Issues Counselor for the United States at Burson-Marsteller and is a Fox News Contributor. She is the former White House Press Secretary to President George W. Bush – the first Republican woman to hold that position. Ms. Perino previously served in the United States Justice Department, was Director of Communications for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and worked on Capitol Hill for Representatives Dan Schaefer (R-CO) and Scott McInnis (R-C). She holds a M.A. in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois – Springfield and a B.A. in Mass Communications from Colorado State University – Pueblo.

S. Enders Wimbush, Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors

S. Enders Wimbush is the Senior Vice President for International Programs and Policy at the Hudson Institute. He previously worked in the private sector with Booz Allen Hamilton and Science Applications International Corporation, and served as director of Radio Liberty in Munich. Mr. Wimbush founded and directed the Society for Central Asian Studies in Oxford, England, through which he created the international journal Central Asian Survey. Mr. Wimbush also served as a Senior Analyst for the Rand Corporation. Mr. Wimbush received his A.M. in International Relations from the University of Chicago and B.A. in History from the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Snjezana Pelivan

CTK, the Czech News Agency, carried a news item based on an article published in Croatia by the English-language newspaper Croatian Times, which reports on a complaint filed at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg by Snjezana Pelivan, a Croatian citizen previously employed by RFE/RL. Ms. Pelivan complained to the European court that the Czech courts had failed to safeguard her rights to non-discrimination and a fair trial guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Her employment contract was terminated by RFE/RL in June 2005 without any reason stated orally or in writing, any prior warning or previous disciplinary measures, and without severance pay because she had refused to agree in writing with her dismissal and, also in writing, to give up her right of appeal.

Most RFE/RL journalists, who come from countries without free media, have little choice but to agree to the employment terms presented to them by the management. Without signing a secrecy agreement, they would not receive their severance pay. Resulting economic hardship could leave some of them no choice but to return to their country of origin, where they could face possible persecution for their journalistic activities while employed at RFE/RL.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors allows RFE/RL to use “employment-at-will” contracts for their most vulnerable foreign workers in the Czech Republic. These contracts effectively prevent employees from seeking redress in Czech and American courts against unfair treatment. Some of them described themselves in this context as virtual modern-day indentured servants.

Anna Karapetian

Another former employee who chose not to remain silent and filed a suit in Czech courts against RFE/RL is Anna Karapetian, a journalist from Armenia. “The methods are different but the results are virtually the same,” Anna Karapetian wrote in a letter to media freedom and human rights organizations in January 2009. “In RFE/RL target countries the journalists are harassed, persecuted and forced into silence. At the Prague main office, they are harassed and left without means of livelihood and work prospects by arbitrary separations from the Radio.” Unless the BBG changes its employment policies, her case is also likely to end up at the European Court of Human Rights.

Diskriminace cizinců v Česku?
Дискриминация иностранцев на Радио Свобода в Чехии?

The controversy over the BBG’s employment practices at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is having a negative impact on the US government’s image abroad at a sensitive time in relations between Washington and some of America’s allies in Europe. Commentaries in both Czech and Russian media made references to the discrepancy between the Obama Administration’s verbal commitments and the treatment of US allies, Poland and the Czech Republic, in connection with the president’s decision to withdraw US missile defense system from Central Europe.

Ted Lipien, a former BBG and Voice of America manager who now heads media freedom nonprofit Free Media Online, said that the BBG’s treatment of foreign journalists is a shocking behavior that undermines freedom of expression and damages America’s image abroad. Free Media Online has been contacted by journalists from countries of the former Soviet Union who had been fired by RFE/RL and admitted to being forced to remain silent about management abuses to protect economic well-being of their families.

Such treatment of foreign workers is especially appalling since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been now an ex officio member of the BBG for several months, Lipien said. He added that “the US Congress should not tolerate a public entity, which gets all of its funding from American taxpayers, using secrecy agreements to cover up possible mismanagement and discrimination. Tactics, such as keeping foreign-born journalists in a highly dependent relationship by denying them the protection of American and Czech labor laws, should not be used by a US government-funded radio station to prevent the public from looking into how taxpayer money is being spent.”

FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, September 16, 2009, San Francisco — Censorship from Russia and China comes home to America in profit-oriented and staying-in-the-market-at-any-cost decisions by American businesses and sometimes even US government agencies, as FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, has been documenting and reporting.

Few of us in the media freedom community were particularly surprised that Conde Nast publishers banned an article by freelance journalist Scott Anderson from appearing in the Russian edition of the GQ magazine. The article dealt with the radioactive topic in Mr. Putin’s Russia of a possible involvement of the security service, the FSB, in deadly apartment building bombings in 1999, which the Kremlin blames on Chechen terrorists and who were the most likely perpetrators. There have been persistent though unconfirmed rumors, however, that rogue elements within the FSB may have directly or indirectly instigated some of these attacks to advance their own interests and the political career of their fellow ex-spy Vladimir Putin.

Shortly after the attacks, in which 300 people died, a bomb was defused by the local police, and the trail of evidence led to the door of the FSB, which admitted that it was part of “an ill-conceived exercise.” Similarities to the real bombings were disturbing.

Journalists have an obligation to critically examine such information to see whether it’s true or not, but in Russia this topic has been placed off-limits by the Kremlin, many journalists have been killed, their murders remain unsolved, and self-censorship is rampant. The Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, an international nonprofit organization, blames the current Russian leadership for helping to create a climate of fear among journalists in Russia.

Americans should be deeply concerned when US-owned businesses join forces with the Kremlin and Chinese communists in silencing free press. It seems that in the Conde Nast case, self-censorship affected not only the GQ edition in Russia but the GQ US website as well. These corporate executives are helping the Kremlin to bring censorship from Russia to the US and to the rest of the world.

In its efforts to publicize this problem, FreeMediaOnline.org has uncovered that it took several days for the US taxpayer-funded Radio Liberty (Radio Svoboda) to start reporting on this story on its Russian website, and we wondered why. In the meantime, independent bloggers in the US and in Russia had already translated the censored article into Russian and posted it online. Thank you for doing what we assumed was the job of Radio Liberty and the Voice of America.

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, RFE/RL, and the Voice of America, VOA, are managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, which several years ago made a strategic decision to broadcast Radio Liberty programs from within Russia. No doubt the BBG now wants to protect its capital investments and operations placed within the walking distance of the FSB headquarters in Moscow. We have criticized this worst-managed Federal agency for not protecting its Russian reporters from harassment by the secret police.

The BBG kept expanding Radio Liberty’s operations in Russia even as they were being sabotaged by the FSB. At the same time, these bipartisan political appointees — some with business links to Russia — terminated all Russian-language radio broadcasts by the Voice of America from Washington, DC. They made the move to end these VOA programs just 12 days before the Russian military launched an attack on Georgia last year.

In her op-ed column in the Washington Post, “Chipping Away At Free Speech,” Anne Applebaum wrote: “There is no law or edict that can force these companies, or any American company, to abide by the principles of free speech abroad. But at least it is possible to embarrass them at home.”

It’s the only way we can hope to prevent fearful businessmen and government bureaucrats from helping the Kremlin in spreading censorship in Russia and abroad. The more people know about this problem, the more likely we are to succeed. Please share this article with others to honor the memory of Paul Klebnikov, Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova and 14 other journalists murdered in Russia since the year 2000 for doing their jobs.

After FreeMediaOnline.org published its report pointing out limited coverage by Russian websites of both Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, VOA, both broadcasting stations devoted a lot of attention to the GQ story, albeit several days after it had been first reported by NPR on September 4, and after independent bloggers in the US and in Russia had already translated the censored article into Russian and posted it online.

We also reported that self-censorship could have been responsible for the initial lack of coverage of this story by Radio Liberty’s Russian website and that both RFE/RL and VOA have been negatively affected by program cuts and marketing strategies imposed on them by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the BBG.

FreeMediaOnline.org has received today an email from Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, RFE/RL, showing that its reporting has indeed been comprehensive, starting September 7.

From RFE/RL email:

I wanted to make sure you were aware of some of the comprehensive coverage RFE/RL’s Russian Service has been giving the story of the 10-year anniversary of the apartment bombings in Buinaksk. Much of this coverage was planned by the Russian Service well before the recent scandal that broke out after Conde Nast decided not to publish Scott Anderson’s report in its Russian edition of “GQ”. You’ll note that the Service interviewed Mr. Trepashkin, the source for Anderson’s article, on its “Facets of Time” program on September 4:

“Time of Liberty” call-in interview show:
September 4: Report and analysis on the 10-th anniversary of the blast in Buinaksk. Mumin Shakirov reporting, including Q&A with Y.Felstinskiy (co-author of the book of alternative investigation of the blasts in the Russian cities), L.Levinson (member of the parliamentary investigative commission), I.Trunov (lawyer of the victims’ families).
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1814527.html

September 7: Reports and analysis of the scandal over Russian GQ’s refusal to publish Scott Anderson’s article “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise To Power”. V.Morozov reporting including Q&A with Jane Kirtley, a professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota; Y.Zhigalkin – Q&A with Arch Puddington, Vice President of Research at rights watchdog Freedom House.
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1816239.html

September 7: V.Bode report including Q&A with L.Levinson and head of “Memorial” A.Tcherkasov. 07.09.2009
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1816711.html

September 8: Reports and analysis on the 10-th anniversary of the blast of the building on the Gurjanova street in Moscow. O.Vakhonitcheva reporting including Q&A with witnesses. 08.09.2009
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1817784.html

September 8: Reports and analysis on the 10-th anniversary of the blast of the building on the Gurjanova street in Moscow. O.Kusov report including Q&A with witnesses.

September 8: Archive report from the place of the blast of the building on the Gurjanova street in Moscow. M.Shakirov.

“Facets of Time” talk show.
September 4: 10-years from the blasts in the Russian cities: questions remained. Host – V.Kara-Murza. Guests – M.Trepashkin, independent investigator of the blasts in the Moscow buildings in 1999, V.Borshyov – member of the parliamentary investigative commission in 2002-2003, V.Bukovsky – prominent Soviet dissident and human rights activist, L.Ponomaryov – prominent Russian human rights activist.
http://origin.svobodanews.ru/content/transcript/1815530.html

September 7: Extracts from Scott Anderson’s article “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise To Power” are available on the Russian RFERL website (with a lot of reader’s comments).
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1816437.html

Several other reports providing a comprehensive look into the unexplained bombings ten years ago have been or will also be broadcast by the Russian Service, including reporting on the blasts in Moscow (13.09.2009) and in Volgodonsk (16.09.2009). All the memorial events will be covered by reports, analysis, internet journalism, commentaries, blogging and so on. The Service is also covering the public campaign in support of the Anderson’s article in Russian blogosphere (rubric “Webtalks” in “Time of Liberty”, planned 09.09.2009)

Best, Martins
————————
Martins Zvaners
RFE/RL, Inc.
tel: 202.457.6948
mob: 202.841.7712
http://www.rferl.org

CPJ blames the Russian authorities for creating a political atmosphere in which journalists who are critical of the Kremlin are marginalized, effectively barred from state-controlled national television, subjected to bureaucratic harassment, and vulnerable to attacks. The report points out that both President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have promised to address the problem, but the Committee to Protect Journalists believes that these statements do not go far enough and have not resulted in stopping or solving murders of journalists in Russia.

CPJ report states that a solution to the problem must start with the political tone set by the Kremlin, which — the international organization of journalists believes — has led to self-censorship in the Russian press, leaving issues of vital importance underreported or entirely uncovered. CPJ warns that in-depth, critical journalism is in danger of becoming extinct in one of the world’s most influential countries. CPJ advises the Russian leaders that if Russia is to pursue a democratic future it cannot allow the levers of power to be unexamined by independent journalists.

CPJ calls on President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin to condemn all attacks on the press in clear, public, and unequivocal terms and to put a stop to efforts to marginalize or criminalize critical journalism. The report said that the Russian leaders should hold top law enforcement officials accountable for solving murders and violent crimes against journalists. CPJ also called on the international community to hold Russian leaders accountable for their record on this issue by monitoring the state of the media in Russia, using political persuasion to effect change, and taking substantive action in international legal forums.

Link to “Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia” – The Committee to Protect Journalists

FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom noprofit, has reported extensively on killings of journalists and frequent instances of intimidation and self-censorship in media outlets in Russia. The most recent murder was that of reporter and activist Natalya Estemirova, who was kidnapped and killed in Chechnya. Another recent victim was Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, editor of the Rostov-on-Don newspaper Korruptsiya i Prestupnost, who died after an assault.

Recent examples of Russia-related self-censorship that has affected US-based media outlets included the banning by the Conde Nast publishing group of an article critical of Mr. Putin from the Russian edition of the GQ magazine and the delay in reporting on this story by US taxpayer-funded Radio Liberty.

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, RFE/RL, a private entity which receives money from the US Congress through the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, has a major news bureau in Moscow and a large number of local reporters. FreeMediaOnline.org has criticized the BBG, a bipartisan Federal board consisting of political appointees, and the administrations of both President George W. Bush and President Obama, for not protecting Radio Liberty reporters from being scrutinized and threatened by the FSB, the Russian secret security service, and for severely reducing the Voice of America, VOA, broadcasts to Russia. The BBG manages VOA and RFE/RL by controlling their budgets, programs, and appointments of key personnel. Both the BBG and VOA are based in Washington, D.C. RFE/RL has its headquarters in Prague, the Czech Republic, with major presence in Russia and in other countries of the former Soviet Union, where its reporters and staff are also exposed to harassment by the secret police serving authoritarian regimes.

Link to “How Self-Censorship Works: Putin, GQ, and US Taxpayer-Supported Radio Liberty” by Ted Lipien

Link to “Independent US Bloggers Beat Voice of America and Radio Liberty in Delivering Uncensored News to Russia” by FreeMediaOnline.org

There is clear evidence that censorship at Conde Nast was aimed not only at readers in Russia but also at consumers of news media in the United States and throughout the world. The publishers of the GQ magazine not only prevented the printing in Russia of Scott Anderson’s article about Prime Minister Putin but also banned it from the Internet. It cannot be read even on the GQ’s American website.

Obviously, Conde Nast executives were afraid that they could be prevented by the Russian authorities from selling their magazines and generating future advertising revenues in Russia. Perhaps they were also concerned about their Russian employees losing their jobs, or worse, being sued for libel or physically attacked. These things have happened to other publishers and journalists in Russia, but by now most have learned their lesson. If corporate executives in New York can be so easily intimidated, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of Russian media outlets also hold on to their publishing profits and protect jobs by practicing similar self-censorship.

Americans with some knowledge of these things may have thought that at least Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, which are funded by the US Congress, are not guided by commercial concerns and are still broadcasting uncensored news to Russia quickly and extensively. If they assumed that to be true in recent years, they would be sadly mistaken.

The Russian websites of both stations completely ignored the GQ censorship story for a number of days after it broke in the mainstream US media with an NPR report on Friday, September 4. VOA and the RFE/RL Russian website waited several days to report on the story and did it only after FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, exposed their silence and pointed out that independent bloggers in the US had already translated the banned article into Russian and posted it online.

One should ask why would Radio Liberty Russian Service ignore such a story on its news website for several days and would not offer a full translation or at least extensive excerpts from the banned article?

The answer to this question lies with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan board which manages Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. The BBG made a decision several years ago to operate in Russia the same way as Conde Nast and other Western commercial media. It opened a large news bureau for Radio Liberty in Moscow, hired hundreds of local reporters, and declared that the US radios’ success in Russia will be measured by the size of their audience. There was no plan B — and there still isn’t any — to protect Radio Liberty journalists and their news operations in Russia from intimidation by the FSB and from self-censorship.

I was not surprised at all to see that no one among those responsible for editing Radio Liberty’s Russian language website wanted to be the first one to write about the GQ story involving Prime Minister Putin and the FSB. There are many stories that Radio Liberty reporters can safely write about, and they do — some of them critical of the Kremlin and the human rights situation — but many of us in the NGO community have noticed during the last few years a remarkable reluctance among some BBG members and Radio Liberty managers to publicly criticize Mr. Putin and the Russian government, even when faced with most serious violations of media freedom. The only explanation can be that they do not want to threaten their continued presence in Russia.

FreeMediaOnline.org reported for example that shortly after the brutal assassination of anti-Kremlin investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006, Radio Liberty’s Russian Service managers have expressed hope that the Kremlin will allow them to report and broadcast. These comments, which seemed clearly motivated by fear of the Russian authorities, were made despite overwhelming evidence of President Putin’s’ growing crackdown on independent media.

RFE/RL Moscow bureau chief said at the time that this optimism was based on her belief in the common sense of the current Russian leadership. Radio Liberty Russian Service director at the RFE/RL home office in Prague also expressed confidence that Radio Liberty’s future in Russia looks good. The Moscow-based manager said that the work of local Radio Liberty journalists cannot cause Russia any harm since they are Russian citizens who respect and love their country.

Members of the human rights and media freedom community in Russia and in the US were appalled by these self-serving and apologetic comments coming so close after the murder of a prominent opposition journalist. This happened after veteran journalists who had opposed BBG-imposed programming changes at Radio Liberty were either fired or forced out. BBG-hired consultants advised less emphasis on human rights, culture, and intellectual discussions and more on programs that would please an average Russian listener who is highly nationalistic and pro-Putin. Not surprisingly, after these programming changes were put into place, Russian human rights activists criticized Radio Liberty for giving extensive airtime to a Russian nationalist politician known for his racist views and warned that such programs promote violence against Africans and other foreigners. Read about a similar development at the BBG-managed Alhurra Television for the Middle East.

None of this could not have been predicted. If US taxpayer-supported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has a large number of reporters who are Russian citizens and live in Russia without any protection from their employer; if the radio station maintains extensive news gathering facilities in Russia; and if its governing body declares that the station can only be successful if it can reach a wide audience in Russia and must have a large presence there and use local media channels — the Broadcasting Board of Governors should have anticipated that under such arrangements and the corporate culture they helped to create, many Radio Liberty employees would chose their safety, their families, their jobs, their pay and benefits, and continued employment in Russia over the need to fight censorship by exposing crimes of high-level FSB and other government officials, especially if these officials have the legal power to order them to cooperate or to arrest them.

The BBG has not only failed to protect their reporters who are Russian citizens, it deprives them of some of the same protections and benefits which it grants to RFE/RL’s American and Czech employees, thus making them more likely victims of the FSB. Third-country journalists working for RFE/RL in the Czech Republic can be dismissed at any time. It’s hardly surprising that faced with a radioactive news story about Mr. Putin, they did not want to take risks that both the BBG and the Russian authorities might find for different reasons unwelcome.

The question is why the Broadcasting Board of Governors did not see this and why American taxpayers should continue to give it hundreds of millions of dollars if the NGO media freedom community and independent bloggers have to do the job that BBG-managed broadcasters have been paid to do but are afraid to do it.

As one of my contacts with links to Radio Liberty pointed out in response to my question: “Why the Russian Web Desk at Radio Liberty ignored GQ?” — “Do you really think that the present RFE/RL is more adventurous than Conde Nast, having a bureau in Moscow that can be closed at the whim of, say, pozharnika?” The last word refers to Russian fire safety inspectors whom the FSB uses to put out of business radio and TV stations that run afoul of the Kremlin.

Even though they were left far behind on this story by independent American and Russian bloggers, America still needs uncensored and effective Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. NGOs have no resources to match local languages radio and TV broadcasting by RFE/RL and VOA, nor can they speak as an authoritative voice of the US government and the American people, which VOA is by law required to do. It is unfortunate that when censorship is growing in Russia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America are not doing what American taxpayers hired them to do.

Another ironic twist to this story is that the BBG has been cutting budgets for radio and TV broadcasting in favor of Internet journalism and ignoring the fact that the FSB has a major operation designed to block offending websites in case of a political or military emergency, which they demonstrated during the Russian-Georgian war.

Of course, not everybody at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has been affected to the same degree by the FSB and the BBG broadcasting strategy. The RFE/RL English-language website, which exists largely to generate support for the station on Capital Hill, did report quickly on the GQ-Putin-FSB story. Unfortunately, this is not the website most Russians turn to for uncensored news and information.

The Voice of America’s role in this journalistic fiasco is somewhat different. VOA is based in Washington, DC and its reporters cannot be easily intimidated by the FSB. But they also cannot be fully protected from the BBG’s misguided models, which were taken from commercial broadcasting but which cannot be used to fight censorship. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has the power to do what it wants. In August 2008, it terminated all VOA Russian radio broadcasts just 12 days before the Russian military launched an military attack on Georgia. After going through BBG-ordered program and staff reductions, VOA is no longer able to sustain a 24/7 news operation and was not able to respond to the GQ censorship story in a timely and effective manner.

FreeMediaOnline.org has learned that no experienced editor was available for duty at the VOA Russian Service over the Labor Day weekend to write an in-depth report for the web on this or any other sensitive news story. After being criticized by FreeMediaOnline.org, the Russian Service managed to place on its website a short news item about Scott Anderson’s article one day earlier than Radio Liberty, but in-depth coverage had to wait until Monday and Tuesday, more than three days after the NPR story and the posting of the full article in Russian translation by independent bloggers in the US.

It is also interesting to examine what happened after criticism from Free Media Online. Russian services at both VOA and RFE/RL went overboard in reporting on the story — posting interviews with Scott Anderson (both RFE/RL and VOA) and with his main source, a former FSB officer turned critic (VOA) — but in the rush to rectify their earlier sins of omission, they were not as sophisticated as they should have been in pointing out which charges against Mr. Putin are real, which are unproven, and which may simply be advanced without any proof by Mr. Berezovsky and others among Mr. Putin’s political rivals whom he had imprisoned or forced to leave Russia.

VOA’s and RFE/RL’s subsequent reporting also lacked a measure of sophistication in explaining how the FSB could have manipulated the terrorist bombings to Mr. Putin’s advantage without any direct orders from the Kremlin. Again, independent bloggers in the US and in Russia have done a much better job than either of the Congressionally-funded US broadcasters. And again, American taxpayers should not be surprised. The US Government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been consistently rating the Broadcasting Board of Governors as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies.

FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, September 9, 2009, San Francisco — A former employee of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has asked the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to look into charges that the US taxpayer-funded radio station broadcasting to countries without free media discriminates against foreign-born journalists and other workers by denying them the same legal protections available to American and Czech employees. Snjezana Pelivan, a Croatian citizen, had challenged her dismissal by RFE/RL and filed an unlawful discrimination suit in a court in the Czech Republic, where the American radio station has its headquarters and where she was employed by RFE/RL as a marketing specialist to help place its programs on local radio stations throughout Eurasia.

The Czech court sided with RFE/RL, ruling that the station’s non-Czech and non-American employees, including many journalists who fled persecution by authoritarian regimes in their native countries, can be treated differently under the Czech law than their Czech and American colleagues. Americans and Czechs working for RFE/RL are entitled to much greater legal protections and employment benefits than citizens of other countries. Ms. Pelivan and others at RFE/RL view this as a discriminatory measure used against journalists who come mostly from poorer nations, are not familiar with American legal system, and have few other options of working as journalists in their native languages.

The picture is far different for American citizens at RFE/RL. Under an arrangement worked out with the Czech government, they enjoy some of the same privileges as US diplomats although they are not Federal workers. One of the benefits reserved for American employees at the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague is being exempt from paying Czech income taxes. RFE/RL employees who are Czech citizens are protected by liberal Czech labor laws.

The US taxpayer-supported radio station is technically a private journalistic institution, incorporated in Delaware, and receives US government grants. Ms. Pelivan had asked the Czech court to request the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to appear as a witness in her case to explain how the US government can “allow journalists from countries without democracy and free media to be treated as ’second class’ citizens when working abroad for an American radio station funded by the US Congress with a mission to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Secretary Clinton is a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a US Federal agency, which provides grants to RFE/RL and is responsible for programming and management policies at the radio station. The Czech court did not respond to her request to submit questions to Secretary Clinton.

In her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, Ms. Pelivan wrote that the Czech court ruling empowers American management of RFE/RL to practice in the Czech Republic arbitrary terminations of its foreign employees without a need to justify such actions in any court of law. She expects that the European Court of Human Rights will ask the government of Croatia, her native country, to support her suit against the Czech Republic and RFE/RL. Croatia is entitled to present to the court in Strasbourg written comments and participate in hearings concerning the rights of its citizens.

Anna Karapetian

A similar unlawful discrimination case filed by a former RFE/RL journalist Anna Karapetian, an Armenian citizen, is still pending before Czech courts. Both Snjezana Pelivan and Anna Karapetian have petitioned U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder to open a criminal civil rights investigation into RFE/RL employment practices in the Czech Republic. Their petition notes that “actions of RFE/RL, financed by U.S. taxpayers money as a tool of American public diplomacy, make a mockery of its Mission Statement… ‘to promote democratic values and institutions… strengthen[ing] civil societies by projecting democratic values… [and]provid[ing] a model for local media…”

Both women have received excellent performance evaluations prior to their dismissals. Both claim that the RFE/RL management has not provided them with a clear explanation for their firings and tried to get them to agree not to discuss publicly their treatment at the radio station in Prague. They were not charged with violations of any work rules and were considered model employees.

The employment policies promoted by the BBG at Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty in the Czech Republic are believed to be part of a larger effort to privatize US international broadcasting and to limit the role of the Washington, DC-based Voice of America (VOA), which is a Federal government international radio also managed by the BBG. Federal workers at the Voice of America told FreeMediaOnline.org that during the last two years they have noticed an alarming number of veteran VOA journalists, employed in areas which the BBG wants to downsize, being dismissed for minor disciplinary violations. They suspect that these personnel practices have been adopted by the BBG executive staff from employment policies at RFE/RL and at some of the other BBG-managed private broadcasting entities. VOA journalists also report continued attempts by the BBG to replace Federal VOA employees, who do have some job security protections, with private contractors who can be dismissed at any time without any explanation. These practices are common at most of the BBG’s privately-run broadcasting stations. The current BBG Executive Director Jeff Trimble came from RFE/RL, where his jobs included Acting President, Counselor to the President for Programs and Policy, Director of Policy and Strategic Planning, and Director of Broadcasting.

In a government-wide survey of employees conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the BBG has been consistently rated as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies. In addition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the bipartisan board currently has four other members: Joaquin F.Blaya, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, and Steven J. Simmons. Despite its bipartisan membership, most of the Democrats serving on the board, including former members Norman Pattiz and now US Senator from Delaware Ted (Edward E.) Kaufman, strongly supported privatization of US international broadcasting and downsizing of the Voice of America.

Norman Pattiz, chairman and founder of radio industry giant Westwood One, and Ted Kaufman, who took over Vice President Biden’s Senate seat and was at one time his chief of staff, were the primary authors of the Bush Administration’s plans for Alhurra Television privatized broadcasting to the Middle East and were responsible for the elimination of the Voice of America’s highly-regarded Arabic Service. A study conducted by The University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School determined that Alhurra TV has been a journalistic failure and is unable to attract a wider audience. The BBG tried to keep the Center on Public Diplomacy report secret but was eventually forced by Congressional and media criticism to make it available on its website.(http://www.bbg.gov/reports/others/uscreport.pdf)

Kaufman and a former BBG Republican Chairman, James Glassman, who was President Bush’s last Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, were primarily responsible for terminating Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian army attacked Georgia in August 2008. Only one board member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, the only working journalist among the current BBG members, was reported to be opposed to programming cuts at VOA and was said to have criticized some of the controversial BBG decisions at closed board meetings. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, she was outvoted by other Republicans and all Democrats. There have been unconfirmed rumors that the Obama Administration wants to replace most of the current BBG members. Republican leaders in Congress would have to be consulted which Republican BBG members should stay or be replaced.

Link to unedited English translation of the ICCEE (Information Center Caucasus-Eastern Europe) Press Release, Prague, the Czech Republic September 9, 2009. ICCEE is a nonprofit organization which publishes in Europe Europe Orer (”Europe Days”), an Armenian news magazine.

ICCEE Press Release in Russian: Американское «Радио Свобода» и его страна пребывания Чехия обвиняются в Европейском суде по правам человека в национальной дискриминации

As the Markov’s case illustrates, Russian spy and security services have a long history of recruting, intimidating and sometimes murdering journalists and others who have run afoul of the Kremlin. This concern was largely forgotten during the Yeltsin years when the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a mismanaged Federal US agency in charge of US government-funded international civilian broadcasting, placed Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty – RFE/RL) Russian language facilities and staff at a large news bureau in Moscow right under the nose of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

Some of us who had worked in Russia at the time observed a marked increase in the intimidation and infiltration of the Russian media by the FSB right about the time Mr. Putin, a former KGB spy, consolidated his power. Seeing how FSB officers forced owners of private radio statios to stop using news programs from the Voice of America and Radio Liberty, we wondered what kind of threats they were making in confidential conversations with Radio Liberty reporters and other employees who are Russian citizens living in Russia. It was difficult to get more information about the extent of FSB media manipulation because Russian law prevented Russian citizens approached by the state security services from disclosing these contacts. Still, some of our Russian friends told us in confidence about being visited and threatened by the secret police.

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was based in Munich, West Germany, and RFE/RL journalists were not allowed to travel to the Soviet Union as a measure of protection against arrest, intimidation and possible recruitment by the KGB. As the Cold War ended, the BBG moved RFE/RL headquarters to Prague, the Czech Republic, and decided it was safe to have a larger number of employees and news gathering operations based in Russia.

Whether this is still a safe option has been brought into question by a number of recent events in Russia, including murders of prominent anti-Kremlin journalists. Obviously a news organization like Radio Liberty can no longer operate without some presence in Russia if it wants to be an effective news source, but many of us have argued that the BBG should have taken strong measures to protect its Russian employees from intimidation by the FSB and to make sure that Radio Liberty programs are not subject to self-censorship.

That self-censorship brought on by intimidation and justifiable fear of the FSB has affected Radio Liberty’s Russian radio and web content seems obvious to many of us who are monitoring these programs and reports for the web originating by RFE/RL staff in Moscow and in Prague. The most recent example was Radio Liberty’s failure for a number of days to post on its Russian-language website any in-depth reports about the banning in Russia of Scott Anderson’s “GQ” magazine article, which was highly critical of Mr. Putin and accused the FSB of instigating terrorist attacks to help his rise to power.

Russian officials strongly deny the charges that FSB agents have been involved in any terrorist attacks, but the topic remain a taboo for journalists in Russia who want to keep their jobs and stay out of trouble with the authorities. This might explain why Conde Nast, the publisher of “GQ” kept Scott Anderson’s article out of the Russian edition and why it took days for Radio Liberty’s Russian editors to notice the story.

Anyone curious about the workings of the Soviet and now Russian secret police the impact of fear on journalists should read a very well-documented book Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings who for 15 years was the Director of Security for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL in Munich, Germany, and later was a security and safety consultant for RFE/RL in Prague until 1998. He has also published online an article about the murder of Bulgarian journalist Georgi Markov in London in 1978.

The Murder of Georgi Markov: The Mystery Remains

Thirty-one years ago this week, on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré, who lived and worked in London, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge.

Georgi Markov had been a prolific and successful literary figure in Bulgaria before defecting to the West in 1969. He settled in England and became a broadcast journalist for Radio Free Europe, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), and the German international broadcast service Deutsche Welle.

Markov had a large listening audience in Bulgaria, who listened to his prime-time Sunday-night broadcasts over Radio Free Europe. He dared to tell his audience that Bulgarian President and Communist Party chief Todor Zhivkov wore no clothes.

In June 1977, Communist Party Chairman Zhivkov chaired a Politburo meeting, and stated he wanted the activities of Markov stopped. The Interior Minister reacted and requested KGB assistance in the killing of Markov. Though he wanted Markov killed, he wanted no trace to Bulgaria. The Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, agreed to the assassination, as long as there would be no trace back to the Soviets. Thus, the Bulgarians and Soviets were operating under a double case of “plausible denial. “

A former KGB general has publicly admitted his role and the role of the KGB in supplying the Bulgarian intelligence service with both the weapon and the poison. Purportedly, the highly secret KGB laboratory known as the “Chamber” developed both the weapon, concealed in a US-manufactured umbrella, and biotoxin ricin impregnated in a wax-coated pellet the size of a pinhead.

Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcast uncensored news and commentary to people living in communist nations. As critical elements of the CIA’s early covert activities against communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Munich-based stations drew a large audience despite efforts to jam the broadcasts and ban citizens from listening to them. This history of the stations in the Cold War era reveals the perils their staff faced from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania and other communist states. It recounts in detail the murder of writer Georgi Markov, the 1981 bombing of the stations by “Carlos the Jackal,” infiltration by KGB agent Oleg Tumanov and other events. Appendices include security reports, letters between Carlos the Jackal and German terrorist Johannes Weinrich and other documents, many of which have never been published.

While the two radio stations funded by US taxpayers to broadcast news for audiences abroad largely ignored the story, independent bloggers in the US volunteered to translate the article into Russian in a grass-root effort to combat press censorship. A popular New York news site Gawker posted their translations under the Russian title: “Вы можете прочитать запрещенную статью GQ про Путина здесь” (”Hey, you can read the forbidden GQ article about Putin here”)

US public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) reported Friday that Condé Nast prohibited republishing of the article, “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power” by veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson, in any of its magazines outside of the US, including Russia. According to NPR reporter David Folkenflik, Condé Nast also prevented the article from being posted on the “GQ” website in the U.S. The NPR report “Why ‘GQ’ Doesn’t Want Russians To Read Its Story,” quotes from a July 23 e-mail sent by one of the company’s top lawyers.

“Condé Nast management has decided that the September issue of U.S. GQ magazine containing Scott Anderson’s article ‘Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power’ should not be distributed in Russia,” the lawyer wrote.

According to NPR, Condé Nast “ordered that the article could not be posted to the magazine’s Web site. No copies of the American edition of the magazine could be sent to Russia or shown in any country to Russian government officials, journalists or advertisers. Additionally, the piece could not be published in other Condé Nast magazines abroad, nor publicized in any way,” NPR correspondent David Folkenflik reported.

Gawker has called the actions of Condé Nast executives “an act of publishing cowardice.” In addition to protecting their business interests in Russia, Condé Nast executives may have also been concerned about the safety of their Russian employees. Journalists who had written articles critical of the Kremlin have been murdered in recent years by unknown assailants. Most journalists in Russia practice self-censorship and because of the atmosphere of fear would not dare to write articles highly critical of Prime Minister Putin. Russian and Western-owned media outlets are also concerned that cyber attacks will disable their websites if their reporting displeases the Kremlin and its security services, which are known for being able to launch such attacks.

The censored “GQ” article deals with a series of bombings at apartment buildings that killed hundreds of people in Russia in 1999. The anti-terrorist campaign that followed the attacks helped Vladimir Putin to consolidate his power. In writing his article, Scott Anderson relied on information from Mikhail Trepashkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who investigated the bombings. Trepashkin suggests a possible link between the bombings and Russian officials who were interested in increasing Mr. Putin’s powers in running the country. Russian officials have always denied these charges as a complete fabrication and blame the bombings on Chechen terrorists.

After issuing its appeal for help, Gawker was posting parts of the Russian translation of the article as soon as they received them from volunteer translators. Gawker reported that the translation was completed by Sunday afternoon.

The speed with which independent bloggers in the US responded in making the text of the censored article available to Internet users in Russia was in stark contrast to how this story was handled by the two main US-government funded broadcasters responsible for delivering news in Russian. The Russian-language websites of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and the Voice of America (VOA) did not post any in-depth reports about the censorship controversy and neither provided any online excerpts from the article.

This has been the latest example of serious problems at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages both VOA and RFE/RL. The BBG terminated Voice of America Russian radio broadcasts in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military launched an attack on Georgia over a territorial dispute. The BBG has also cut funding for the VOA Russian Service staff still assigned to maintain a news website. Largely as a result of these moves, VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia has registered a 98% decline and is now estimated to be only 0.2%.

A Russian Service journalist, who wants to remain anonymous because VOA broadcasters are not authorized to speak to outside media, told FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, that many experienced journalists have left or have been forced out. The source said that there was nobody available Friday who would have been capable of producing an in-depth report on this story. According to the same source, none of the managers was able to write a report since they don’t speak Russian at all or not well enough to be able to post to the web. The management, according to this source, has hired some private contractors to maintain the Russian Service website and produce video clips, but they are incapable of professional reporting in Russian. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has rated the Broadcasting Board of Governors as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies. The broadcaster said that the few remaining Russian-speaking professional journalists at VOA are completely demoralized.

Radio Liberty, based in Prague, the Czech Republic, and in Moscow, has many more reporters and still receives much greater funding than the Russian Service of the Voice of America, which is based in Washington, D.C. FreeMediaOnline.org contacts familiar with RFE/RL believe that Radio Liberty reporters and managers are also practicing self-censorship because of justifiable fear that they or their family members might become targets of reprisals from the Kremlin’s secret police. Many RFE/RL reporters are Russian citizens living in Russia and those working at RFE/RL headquarters in Prague have family members in Russia and travel there frequently. The RFE/RL English-language website did carry an extensive report on the “GQ” story and issues of censorship, but the English site is not widely read in Russia and its main purpose is to help generate more Congressional support and funding for RFE/RL. What matters in Russia, FreeMediaOnline.org analysts said, is what appears on the Russian-language Radio Liberty website.

Not unlike the management’s interference with journalistic freedom at Condé Nast, both RFE/RL and VOA have been pressured by BBG strategic planners and private consultants, some of whom had business operations in Russia and links to BBG members (some of the BBG members involved in these decisions also had business interests in Russia) to make their reporting less critical of the Kremlin (the phrased used by the consultants was “anti-Russian”) in an effort to gain a wider audience among those Russians who are anti-Western and pro-Putin. A former director of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service Mario Corti, Italian journalist, management consultant for a major electronic media outlet in Russia and author of books about Russian culture, was forced out for resisting these pressures. Radio Liberty’s audience in Russia has declined significantly since his departure and the change of programming philosophy.

The non-Russian management’s editorial pressure on the Voice of America Russian Service journalistic staff to offer more popular culture programming was also evident in the web content produced over the Labor Day weekend. While the “GQ” censorship story was barely mentioned, VOA website had more than one story about Michael Jackson, a story about US Open tennis matches, and even a story about retirement reforms in the US.

Only a few years ago, it would have been highly unusual for Voice of America and Radio Liberty not to broadcast in-depth reports about such a significant case of press censorship and not to offer extensive excerpts from the banned article. Media freedom activists familiar with the BBG’s strategy and management in recent years are not surprised, however, that independent bloggers and other volunteers are now having to do the work previously done by US government-funded broadcasters who still receive millions of US taxpayers money every year.

Largely in response to the BBG-ordered program cuts and restrictions in news coverage for Russian-speaking audiences, FreeMediaOnline.org volunteers have launched a Russian-language multi-source news analysis website GovoritAmerika.us. The website, which receives no public funding, has provided links to the Russian translation of the “GQ” article banned in Russia.

“Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise To Power” by veteran investigative reporter Scott Anderson appears in the current U.S. issue of “GQ.” U.S. public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) reported that Condé Nast prohibited republishing of the article in any of its magazines in Russia and in other countries. According to NPR, Condé Nast also prevented the article from being posted on the “GQ” website in the U.S. The article deals with a series of bombings at apartment buildings that killed hundreds of people in Russia in 1999.

Scott Anderson relied on information from Mikhail Trepashkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who investigated the bombings. Trepashkin suggests a possible link between the bombings and Russian officials who were interested in increasing Mr. Putin’s powers in running the country. Russian officials have always denied these charges as a complete fabrication.

According to media freedom advocates, Condé Nast executives may have been afraid what would hapen to their business interests and their employees in Russia if they had allowed the article to be published in Russian.

Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, said that unsolved killings of many Russian journalists and a climate of fear among media professionals have resulted in self-censorship in Russia on a mass scale. “It is unfortunate but not surprising,” Lipien said, “that faced with intimidation by the secret police and killings of journalists by unknown assailants, even Western-owned and funded publications and institutions are practicing self-censorship in Mr. Putin’s Russia.” Ted Lipien was formerly acting associate director at the Voice of America (VOA). FreeMediaOnline.org publishes Russian-language news analysis website, ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us.

In past years, U.S.-government-funded radio stations Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) would have provided quick translations of newsworthy articles which were censored in Russia. Their funding, however, has been greatly reduced in recent years by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a Federal agency managed by a group of bipartisan political appointees, who used the savings to pay for controversial radio and television projects in the Middle East ordered by the Bush Administration.

Independent studies and surveys found these projects, such as Alhurra Television, to be both ineffective in attracting a wider audience and journalistically substandard. One such study conducted by The University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School determined that Alhurra TV has been a failure. The BBG tried to keep the Center on Public Diplomacy report secret but was eventually forced by Congressional and media criticism to make it available on its website.(http://www.bbg.gov/reports/others/uscreport.pdf)

In one of its most controversial moves, the BBG had terminated VOA radio programs to Russia in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia over a territorial dispute. Some of the BBG members and their consultants have been involved in private business deals in Russia.

The Voice of America Russian and VOA English websites did not report on the “GQ” censorship story as of Saturday evening, Sept. 05, Washington D.C. time. After a series of BBG-ordered budget and personnel cuts, the VOA Russian Service operates with only a skeleton staff, especially on weekends.

Another U.S. taxpayer-funded and BBG-managed international broadcasting station, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), had a comprehensive homepage article on this story on its English-language website, Controversial Decision By U.S. Publisher Sparks Debate On Free Speech, Censorship. But RFE/RL’s Радио Свобода (Radio Liberty) Russian-language website – svobodanews.ru – which attracts most of the Internet traffic for RFE/RL in Russia, did not report on the “GQ” controversy as of Saturday. Radio Liberty receives more funding from the BBG than the VOA Russian Service and keeps news bureaus in Russia with a large staff of local reporters. FreeMediaOnline.org reported that BBG-hired private consultants were putting pressure on Radio Liberty editors to make their radio and web content less politically controversial and more appealing to pro-Putin and anti-Western Russians. VOA website had stories on the 2009 US Open tennis matches and Labor Day celebrations but nothing on censorship at the Russian edition of “GQ.”

According to FreeMediaOnline.org media analysts, the BBG’s concern for the safety of their employees in Russia may have also contributed to self-censorship at Radio Liberty. Ted Lipien of FreeMediaOnline.org said that he’s encouraged by private Internet journalists trying to publicize this story but sees limited coverage by U.S.-taxpayer funded international broadcasters managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors as an inadequate response to the serious threats to media freedom in Russia.

Read this report on TedLipien.com>>

Выбор ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us. Вы можете скопировать и использовать эту статью. You can copy and use this report. Подписка на рассылку ГоворитАмерика.us.

Translation: “Radio Liberty – The Liberty of Mendacity”
Published on August 16, 2009 in Da Russophile

Anatoly Karlin: “One of my readers, Fedia Kriukov, kindly pointed me to a LiveJournal blog post by Ksenia Larina from August 13th, 2009. She’s been working with the liberal “Echo of Moscow” radio station since 1991 and her husband, Rinat Valiulin, had accepted a position with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty in February 2009. In uncompromising language, she reveals her husband’s unpleasant experiences with RFERL in Радио Свобода – свобода подлости (Radio Liberty – The Freedom of Mendacity).

Her impression is that a once-respectable institution has degenerated into a nest of self-serving nepotism, neo-Soviet bureaucracy and US managerial fecklessness. Coming hard on the heels of Mario Corti’s revelations about its plummeting popularity, corruption and retreat from journalistic independence, RFERL will have an increasingly difficult time justifying the tens of millions of dollars of American taxpayer money going into supporting it.”

This article TRANSLATION: Ksenia Larina on “Radio Liberty – The Liberty of Mendacity” is available in pdf format.

TRANSLATION: Ksenia Larina on “Radio Liberty – The Liberty of Mendacity” (LJ post)
(http://xlarina.livejournal.com/117110.html; accessed August 15, 2009)
Translated by Anatoly Karlin.

FreeMediaOnline.org,  Free Media Online Blog,  GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, June 26, 2009, San Francisco – Ronald Reagan’s strong response to the imposition of martial law  against the independent Solidarity trade union in Poland in 1981 was distinctly different from President Barack Obama’s nuanced comments about the crackdown on demonstrators in Iran in the aftermath of the disputed Iranian presidential elections. While President Obama may have wanted to show his appreciation of the subtleties of Iranian politics, his public statements projected around the world a sense of confusion and weakness instead of showing firm American support for human rights and democracy.   

Intellectually, President Obama is right that the current situation in Iran is not the same as the communist crackdown on Solidarity in Poland in the 1980’s and may require a different policy response from the way President Reagan dealt with communist regimes. But the right course of improving communications with the Muslim world, set by President Obama’s speech in Cairo, was undermined by his initial refusal to speak out strongly against violations of human rights in Iran. He may have lost some of the earlier respect among supporters of democracy in the Middle East and weakened his position vis-a-vis America’s most determined enemies.

President Obama is right that President George W. Bush had made monumental mistakes by his unsophisticated and interventionist approach to the Muslim world while appeasing other authoritarian rulers, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Public diplomacy mistakes by the Bush Administration are too numerous to list, but U.S. international broadcasting initiatives during the last eight years serve as a good example. The Bush-appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) eliminated all Voice of America (VOA) highly-respected Arabic news programs and created Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV, which are viewed in the Middle East and by independent experts in the U.S. as propaganda stations that lack journalistic standards, credibility and audience. Alhurra had broadcast unchallenged statements by Holocaust deniers at a conference in Tehran organized by no other than President Ahmadinejad. The BBG  had also eliminated Voice of America Russian radio programs just 12 days before the Russian army invaded the disputed parts of the Republic of Georgia. Democrats serving as members of the bipartisan BBG, including former BBG member Edward E. Kaufman, who has replaced Vice President Joe Biden as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, had been instrumental in helping the Bush Administration to make and implement many of the misguided decisions that have replaced objective journalism by the Voice of America with crude propaganda that damages America’s reputation and interests abroad.

President Obama is right in offering a new style of public diplomacy in the Middle East and throughout the world. He did not go to Alhurra to give his first interview targeted for the Middle East but chose an Arab TV network instead. Unfortunately, he still does not have around him enough good advisors who could help shape all of his public statements on human rights and freedom of expression issues, especially in times of crisis, so that he and his Administration do not appear at times as being intimidated by dictators of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s kind or appear naive and impulsive like President Bush.

As someone who was in charge of Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Poland during the Solidarity period, I agree that the two situations — the imposition of the martial law in Poland in December 1981 and the crackdown on demonstrations in Iran in June 2009 – are not identical. They both required, however, from the President of the United States a quick and decisive public response that would not be misinterpreted by foreign leaders and public opinion. Unfortunately, President Obama did not pass this latest test with flying colors.

Undoubtedly, he is a highly intelligent leader and hopefully capable of making right assessments and decisions. His reading of the situation in Iran may be in some ways correct, but his initial public response to this latest crisis was insufficient and quite wrong. He may have been told that workers and intellectuals in Iran are not as united against the religious regime as the Poles were against the communists in the 1980s. America was never seen by the vast majority of the Polish people as a threatening imperial power; Russia was. On the contrary,  most Poles saw America as an only major ally that could help them free themselves from communism and Soviet domination. And unlike the religious authorities in Iran, the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II were on the side of striking workers, protesting intellectuals and students.

But while the situation in Iran in 2009 is in some ways different from Solidarity’s struggles in Poland in the 1980s, the need for moral support for pro-democracy Iranian reformers is now just as urgent as support for Lech Walesa was for the Reagan White House.  To achieve their goals,  the reform-minded, largely urban Iranians who are behind the street protests could learn from Solidarity’s success in Poland by sticking to their non-violent posture. They could also follow the example of Solidarity’s intellectual advisers, who had shaped the alliance with the Polish industrial workers, by making a similar effort in reaching out to the poor, highly religious, and anti-Western rural voters who tend to support President Ahmadinejad and the clerical regime.

Even in Poland, where conditions were more favorable to creating a democratic society, the solidarity-building process between intellectuals and workers was long and arduous. It took several decades before the Polish society finally united to a sufficient degree against the communist rule. Strong but not overly aggressive statements from President Reagan, and radio broadcasts by the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, had helped the Poles in their struggle for freedom.

President Obama’s speech in Cairo, offering a new approach in dealing with the Muslim world, was a great public diplomacy success and was  seen in the region as a new beginning. Unfortunately, public diplomacy experts at the White House and the State Department were not able to show a similar sophistication when a sudden crisis developed in Iran. President Obama’s overwhelming public concern how his comments in support for the protesting Iranians might be perceived by anti-Western, anti-democratic, and pro-clerical forces was clearly not the right response and opened him to criticism from his Republican opponents.

The White House could have taken a lesson or two from President Reagan on how to articulate a strong public diplomacy message that strikes the right balance between legitimate policy concerns and the impact of presidential statements on public opinion.  It’s good for the president of the United States to be aware of all the subtleties of foreign policy, but in some situations speaking publicly about them sends a wrong message to both supporters and enemies of democracy. Reagan knew how to use public comments to project a strong and confident image abroad while still being able to practice diplomacy when it served America’s interests and the cause of freedom.

In responding to the crackdown on Solidarity In 1981, President Reagan expressed America’s unqualified support for freedom without any concern that he would be criticized in Moscow and Warsaw for interfering in Poland’s domestic politics or trying to undermine the Polish communist regime’s close links with the Soviet Union. He was still able to engage later in successful negotiations with Soviet and Polish communist leaders when they were already critically weakened by America’s resolve to support freedom. Reagan was decisive but not intellectually inflexible like President George W. Bush. His was the right approach, and history has proved him right.

President Reagan’s Address to the Nation About Christmas and the Situation in Poland, December 23, 1981

I urge the Polish Government and its allies to consider the consequences of their actions. How can they possibly justify using naked force to crush a people who ask for nothing more than the right to lead their own lives in freedom and dignity? Brute force may intimidate, but it cannot form the basis of an enduring society, and the ailing Polish economy cannot be rebuilt with terror tactics.

Poland needs cooperation between its government and its people, not military oppression. If the Polish Government will honor the commitments it has made to human rights in documents like the Gdansk agreement, we in America will gladly do our share to help the shattered Polish economy, just as we helped the countries of Europe after both World Wars.

President Obama’s reaction to street demonstrations in Iran was markedly different in an interview with Harry Smith of CBS News, June 19, 2009.

CBS News Harry Smith: Let’s move on to the news of the day.  The Ayatollah Khamenei gave his speech today, gave his sermon.  He said that the election in Iran was, in fact, legitimate.  He said, “The street demonstrations are unacceptable.”  Do you have a message for those people in the street?

President Obama:  I absolutely do.  First of all, let’s understand that this notion that somehow these hundreds of thousands of people who are pouring into the streets in Iran are somehow responding to the West or the United States, that’s an old distraction that I think has been trotted out periodically.  And that’s just not going to fly.

CBS News Harry Smith: People in this country say you haven’t said enough, that you haven’t been forceful enough in your support for those people in the street, and which you say? 

President Obama: To which I say the last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States. That’s what they do. That’s what we’ve already seen. We shouldn’t be playing into that. There should be no distractions from the fact that the Iranian people are seeking to let their voices be heard.

Now, what we can do is bear witness and say to the world that the, you know, incredible demonstrations that we’ve seen is a testimony to, I think what Dr. King called the the arc of the moral universe. It’s long but it bends towards justice.

President Obama is right that the United States should not be seen as directly interfering in domestic Iranian politics, as this may hurt pro-democratic forces. But there is a big difference between actual interference and strong public statements in support of human rights abroad, especially in a crisis situation. Regardless of what President Obama says or does not say, Ahmadinejad’s supporters will still claim — as they have – that the United States is creating unrest in Iran. But if President Obama had taken a more Reagan-like approach in his public statements, while still maintaining diplomatic flexibility – supporters of human rights around the world would not be discouraged and enemies of freedom would not see him and the United States as confused by the events in Iran and weak against dictators. If the president’s public diplomacy advisers knew what they were doing, this would not have become an issue for the new administration. It is possible to have a sophisticated public diplomacy strategy in the Middle East without appearing too cautious in support of democracy and freedom of expression.

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980’s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia. He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

Wojtyla's Women by Ted Lipien

About FreeMediaOnline.org

FreeMediaOnline.org is a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide. 

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

BBG officials initially had told the VOA Russian Service that their requests to resume radio broadcasts were a “non-starter” even after Russia invaded Georgia. Only after weeks of protests, including reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG finally allowed VOA to produce a short audio program for the Internet, updated only Monday through Friday. This program is rather difficult to find on the VOA website. We made it available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us website managed by FreeMediaOnline.org.

FreeMediaOnline.org,  Free Media Online Blog,  GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, June 04, 2009, San Francisco – President Obama’s recent announcement of a new Global Engagement Directorate that will combine ”diplomacy, communications, international development and assistance” was short on specifics how this new structure might change the focus of U.S. public diplomacy and broadcasting initiatives. That’s hardly surprising, considering that the White House has to deal with many other seemingly more pressing problems. But when the Administration finally starts making hard decisions on global engagement, a greater appreciation of history and foreign cultures could help return some sanity and accountability to these programs. The President and the Senate also have to make better choices in selecting key officials responsible for international communications and avoid the temptation to use propaganda rather than dialogue and journalism in communicating with the Muslim world.  Such officials should be appointed and confirmed based on their qualifications as foreign policy analysts and international media experts rather than selected because of political loyalty or the size of their political contributions. Finally, there is no reason why American taxpayers should continue to fund many of the programs created during the Bush Administration that at best don’t work and often damage America’s image abroad. 

Propaganda Is Out, Journalism and Culture Is In – We Hope

If the White House is serious about avoiding past mistakes,  what’s clearly needed in communicating with the rest of the world is a more sophisticated approach that draws on what is best in American diplomacy, culture and objective journalism. Much will depend on what kind of people are put in charge of representing America to the world. They should appreciate what’s best in American culture.  The Administration should look for people who would be in the same league as Edward R. Murrow, who was President Kennedy’s choice to head the now defunct United States Information Agency (USIA), or John Chancellor, President Johnson’s choice to head the Voice of America (VOA) in the days when the White House appreciated the experience of professional journalists. 

The last thing America needs is leaving public diplomacy in the hands of obscure political loyalists who make private business deals on taxpayer-paid trips abroad and help their  business associates get hired as government consultants at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages, or more accurately mismanages, U.S. international broadcasts. It’s hard to imagine that the late Armand Hammer, a U.S. business tycoon who made profitable trade deals with Lenin and Stalin, would have been put in charge of U.S. broadcasting during the Cold War, or that the late Edward E. Murrow would be discussing  private business deals with President Putin’s associates on a trip to Moscow if he were now in charge of these broadcasts. But such  apparent conflicts of interest and other abuses were common at the Broadcasting Board of Governors during the Bush Administration. The BBG has been consistently rated in government surveys as one of the worst managed Federal agencies. Read The Washington Post column by Joe Davidson: Employee Poll Makes VOA’s Parent the Worst Place to Work.

Under President Bush, political appointees selected to run State Department’s public diplomacy programs and U.S. international broadcasting were political operatives, advertising executives and mirror entrepreneurs who proved their value to the White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress with political contributions and loyal support. (The BBG is by law bipartisan and must include members of both parties, thus both the Bush White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress share the blame for selecting these individuals.) They were rewarded with jobs for which they were completely unsuited and unprepared.

It is not surprising, therefore, that during the past ten years, Under Secretaries of State for Public Diplomacy and members of the BBG have brought once sophisticated cultural and broadcasting programs to a new low level of simplistic and counterproductive propaganda. They promoted advertising and marketing campaigns that admittedly may sometimes produce desired results in a U.S. domestic business setting but turned out to be ineffective and outright offensive when applied to public diplomacy and international broadcasting. And that’s exactly what these political appointees who lacked any substantive experience in foreign policy, human rights and journalism, have done in trying to communicate America’s message to foreign audiences, especially in the Middle East.

Bring “American” Brand Back

BBG consultants declared “America” as a brand name not to be used in the Middle East and came up with a GM-like collection of new names and new private broadcasting initiatives, each one costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars. Since their creators lacked an even basic understanding of Arab culture and refused to listen to advice from area experts, there was no chance that they could be successful. And by all accounts, they were not. They should have asked themselves why the British, who after all perfected serious radio journalism for audiences abroad, did not feel the need to dilute the BBC World Service brand with new stations under many different names. 

Returning to a more sophisticated approach, using high-level cultural diplomacy and serious news broadcasts, may not be easy, as much of the knowledge and experience of previous decades has been destroyed and will take time to  rebuild. The only thing left of sophisticated news analysis and cultural programs once available on the Voice of America are old audio and text files of interviews with important cultural figures in the Arab world. They have been archived by the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, where some U.S. diplomats and local Egyptian employees still understand their value. It’s this kind of understanding and cultural sensitivity that needs to be brought back. Link to Egyptian Treasures from VOA on the U.S. Embassy Cairo website.

The BBG eliminated all VOA Arabic language programs to create privately-run Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. The programming philosophy of these stations, developed by former BBG member Norman Pattiz, a Democrat  – who despite being then Senator Joe Biden’s protege worked closely with neoconservatives in the Bush Administration – specifically rejected anything cultural in U.S. international broadcasting above the level of Brittney Spears. BBG members claimed that their market research supported programming derived from Hollywood and popular culture. Their professional background, however, made it impossible for them to conduct a sophisticated analysis that would take into consideration Middle Eastern history, cultural sensitivities, and political implications of their programming choices.

The Obama Administration would do well by quickly reversing many of the BBG’s decisions of the past decade. Correcting these mistakes would greatly improve America’s image abroad and save U.S. taxpayers’ money. “American” brand  should be brought back by making the Voice of America again a primary U.S. international broadcaster. VOA broadcasts and Internet site in Arabic should be restored as soon as possible.

Sources of Failure

How did U.S. international broadcasting go from a series of great successes during the Cold War to disastrous results in the Middle East in the last decade? While the simplistic worldview adopted by the Bush Administration bears some of the blame, the BBG and its members have made a bad situation far worse than it had to be.  These well meaning but completely miscast individuals, most of them with backgrounds in small domestic U.S. businesses, took a Cold War concept of surrogate broadcasting — which in any case was totally unsuitable for the Middle East – and compounded their error by removing from it one element that had made the original surrogate broadcaster – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty –  vastly successful in broadcasting to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. That element was a high level intellectual and cultural program content developed by local journalists, writers, artists, and intellectuals — not  U.S. advertising experts and political loyalists based in Washington, D.C.

Not satisfied with silencing Voice of America broadcasts in Arabic, the BBG members and their private consultants destroyed cultural uniqueness and effectiveness of RFE/RL Russian broadcasts and terminated VOA radio to Russia just a few days before the Russian army invaded Georgia. FreeMediaOnline.org reported that only one BBG member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum — the only working journalist on the Board – had the courage to to oppose these cuts and spoke out against other abuses, including an ultimately unsuccessful effort by a former BBG chairman James K. Glassman to hire Paula Zahn as the Board’s high profile spokesperson while VOA broadcasts to critical countries were being eliminated. Paula Zahn declined the job offer as a private contractor that would have cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. James K. Glassman, who ended up as President Bush’s last Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, refused to resume VOA Russian radio broadcasts during the Russian-Georgian conflict.

In the process of expanding their power, BBG members deprived  foreign journalists working for their surrogate broadcasters of any measure of independence and authority, which was one of the key elements of success of U.S. broadcasts during the Cold War. At the same time, they failed to provide clear editorial and policy guidelines — another key element that previous American management teams were usually able to put in place successfully by working in partnership with foreign journalists. Those who dared to oppose BBG’s misguided ideas were fired or found their programs eliminated. To cover up their mistakes, the BBG forced foreign employees to sign secrecy agreements and refused to make public independent studies showing the failure of their projects in the Middle East. Read  Report Calls Alhurra A Failure on ProPublica.org.

By all accounts, the broadcasting  Board has been an unmitigated disaster. Some of the abuses are only now beginning to come to light. BBG-approved personnel policies at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which discriminate against foreign-born journalists,  may soon come before the European Court of Human Rights. Close links between the BBG Democrats and neoconservatives in the Bush Administration have proven that the Board does not protect U.S. international broadcasters from political interference with program philosophy and program content.  

The Obama Administration has a choice of abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors and closing down Alhurra Television and other private broadcasting entities created during Bush years. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have a common interest in saving taxpayers money, which are now being wasted on ineffective and duplicate programs.

Alhurra Television and the BBG, however, has some powerful supporters, mostly among Democrats who helped to create Alhurra, including former BBG member Senator Edward E. Kaufman, D-DE, a protege of Vice President Biden.  Read ProPublica.org: Alhurra Bleeding Viewers, Poll Finds, But Spending is Up.

One of the key members of the Obama Administration who may have a say in what happens to the BBG and Alhurra is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She is an ex officio member of the BBG, although she does not attend its meetings. She is usually represented at these meetings by a senior State Department official. While President Obama wisely avoided giving interviews to Alhurra, Secretary Clinton was recently interviewed by the network. Secretary Clinton is a friend of BBG member D. Jeffrey Hirschberg. He was one of the Democrats who worked closely with the Bush White House to create Radio Sawa and Alhurra. Hirschberg, a director of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, was also said to be responsible for terminating VOA radio broadcasts to Russia shortly before the Russian invasion of Georgia.

Other than Senator Kaufman and perhaps also Secretary Clinton, Alhurra, which means “The Free One,” seems to have now far fewer supporters, especially among members of Congress. ProPublica.org reported that outraged members of Congress threatened to withhold funding after the network aired a report on a Holocaust deniers conference in Tehran. According to ProPulica.org, “the reporter who covered the conference told viewers that Jews had provided no scientific evidence of the Holocaust.”

As a former acting associate director of the Voice of America (VOA),  I am certain that VOA, the only American-brand broadcaster and a target of numerous BBG program cuts, is capable of providing news and representing America in a credible and responsible manner that will not embarrass the United States. It’s unlikely that VOA would give airtime to Holocaust deniers, as did Alhurra editors and anchors, who apparently felt they had no choice but to follow the BBG dictum of giving the audience what it wants based on market research. Although VOA has had various problems with its broadcasts over the years, it follows much more strict editorial and fiscal standards than the BBG’s favored private broadcasting entities and their contractors.

In some cases, private broadcasting entities and surrogate broadcasters can be effective if they have the right programming philosophy,  proper management and  sufficient autonomy combined with sufficient oversight.  Ultimately, much will depend on the quality and experience of the people the Obama Administration puts in charge of these programs. Their understanding how we can communicate with other nations by presenting what’s best in our culture and intellectual tradition will determine whether these programs will be successful in the future.

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980’s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia. He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

About FreeMediaOnline.org

FreeMediaOnline.org is a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide. 

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

BBG officials initially had told the VOA Russian Service that their requests to resume radio broadcasts were a “non-starter” even after Russia invaded Georgia. Only after weeks of protests, including reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG finally allowed VOA to produce a short audio program for the Internet, updated only Monday through Friday. This program is rather difficult to find on the VOA website. We made it available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us website managed by FreeMediaOnline.org.

NEWS FLASHES FROM RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY

In a nutshell, the station [Radio Liberty] has abandoned its uniqueness, its identity, its face.

Mario Corti Those among the old KGB and the new FSB , who see the U.S. as an enemy rather than a valuable and generous partner of Russia, could only be enormously happy with such leaders in charge of U.S. international broadcasting as the current U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive team. They have no reason to worry or need to do anything themselves to undermine U.S.-funded broadcasts; it is being done for them by these American government officials who are now trying hard to hide their mistakes from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

Directors of language services at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. taxpayer-funded international broadcaster with headquarters first in Munich, Germany and now in Prague, the Czech Republic, enjoyed at one time a great deal of authority. They often disagreed over programming issues with the radio station’s American management and on numerous occasions their arguments prevailed. Their expert knowledge of their countries and their cultures was widely respected.

In 1956, the head of Radio Free Europe’s Polish Service, Jan Nowak Jezioranski, successfully resisted pressures to call for a violent overthrow of the communist regime in Poland, knowing that such a call would inevitably lead to a Soviet Army invasion. In 1996, many years after leaving RFE/RL, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. He was able to survive his many battles with his American bosses because ultimately they realized that his knowledge of Poland was more sophisticated than theirs.

In better years, language service directors like Jan Nowak could arrange face-to-face meetings with individual members of RFE/RL’s previous oversight body, the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), who actively sought their opinions on programming issues and acted as advisers rather than as micromanaging CEOs.

Rank and file journalists working at RFE/RL were also unafraid to voice their dissent as their rights and fair treatment were protected by German labor laws and membership in professional unions.

A drastic change in this tradition of dialogue and tolerance of dissent occurred in the 1990s with the creation of a new oversight agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the move of RFE/RL from Germany to the Czech Republic, and the arrival of a new American management team selected by the BBG. Using a communist era Czech law still on the books, BBG and RFE/RL lawyers worked hard to find ways to deny their journalists in the Czech Republic the right to form an effective union. Foreign journalists employed by RFE/RL were deprived of many of the protections of both Czech and American labor laws.

The most dramatic change, however, occurred in the status of RFE/RL language service directors. They lost practically all of their previous authority and direct access to BBG members. The new RFE/RL management insisted that they must report only to them and follow an entirely new programming philosophy developed by a key Board member Norman Pattiz for Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. These were the two new private broadcasting networks for the Middle East which Mr. Pattiz, a Democrat, created in close cooperation with the Bush White House. His preferred talk show and music format, which he imposed on Middle Eastern broadcasting while terminating all Voice of America Arabic programs with their more serious news and cultural content, as well as his authoritarian radio management style more suitable for the competitive American market than for a multicultural journalistic institution with a mission of supporting freedom of expression, was also being forced on RFE/RL.

If language service directors resisted these changes, their new American bosses were more than ready to fire them or to eliminate their broadcasts altogether, and many lost their jobs and their programs. They were further humiliated by having to sign secrecy agreements to receive their severance pay. It is highly ironic that this condition was being imposed by a publicly-funded institution that claims to promote openness and transparency in the countries to which it broadcasts. The main purpose of this policy, it seems, was to hide management mistakes from the Administration, the U.S. Congress, and American public. Dissent over programming issues that could help identify waste of taxpayers money and problems, such as airing statements by Holocaust deniers on Alhurra Television, was ruthlessly stamped out at the stations under BBG’s management, including RFE/RL.

The consequences of the new BBG management style were disastrous in terms of journalistic integrity, mission effectiveness and audience ratings for RFE/RL, as they were for BBG broadcasting in the Middle East and for the Voice of America (VOA) in Washington, D.C., which is also managed by the BBG. BBG decision to terminate all Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia, just 12 days before the Russian incursion into Georgia last summer, resulted in an unprecedented 98 percent drop in VOA’s audience reach in Russia, from 7.3% in 2007 to 0.2% in 2009 (est.).

Soviet jammers of VOA and RFE/RL shortwave radio signals during the Cold War and media restrictions imposed more recently by the Kremlin had not been nearly as effective in silencing U.S. broadcasts in Russia as BBG’s own actions, supposedly based on solid audience research. Only one BBG member, Blanquita Welsh Cullum, a Republican,  was said to have voted against ending VOA radio programs to Russia and her attempts to resume these broadcasts after the conflict in Georgia flared up were reportedly blocked by other BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans. In the latest Federal Human Capital Survey, the BBG was once again rated by its employees at the very top of the list of the worst-managed federal agencies.

After the move of RFE/RL headquarters to Prague, language service directors and rank and file journalists quickly lost almost all of their previous independence and authority. With each passing year, they became more and more silent. Visits to Prague by BBG members started to resemble meetings of the Soviet Central Committee. Uncomfortable looking Board members sitting on a podium in a long row in the former communist Parliament building gave inconsequential answers to a small number of questions allowed from the audience of employees fearful of losing their jobs and having to go back to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and other countries governed by authoritarian regimes.

Even more disturbing for supporters of media freedom, however, were frequent firings of famous journalists, writers and artists who were some of the intellectual giants of international broadcasting. One of those fired was Mario Corti, the former head of RFE/RL’s Russian Service, a distinguished Italian journalist, writer, and analyst of Russian politics, society, and culture, admired  among his colleagues for his intellect and the courage to stand up to the RFE/RL management and the BBG. Another was a famous former Soviet dissident Tengiz Gudava, who after his expulsion from the USSR became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Tengiz Gudava was truly a renaissance man. He had a doctorate degree in biophysics, was a journalist, poet, novelist, and musician. He was also a passionate defender of human rights, for which he had spent five years in a Soviet labor camp. He and Mario Corti were both fired by RFE/RL for resisting programming changes demanded by the station’s American managers and the BBG.

Last month, Tengiz Gudava was killed in Prague under still unexplained circumstances. It does not appear at this time that his death was related to his work as a journalist, but because of Tengis Gudava’s dissident status and his sharp criticism of Radio Liberty’s new programming philosophy, Mario Corti broke his long silence about the circumstances of the conflicts they both had with the station’s management and about their firing. Mario Corti gave an interview to a Georgian-American journalist Ia Merkviladze, which was published in online Russian-language magazine in New York City «Мы здесь», and also spoke with FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, where he sits on the board of directors.

 

FreeMediaOnline.org interview with Mario Corti

 

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Both you and the late Tengiz Gudava had worked at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as journalists for many years, and you also as director of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service. What did you learn about his death and what can you tell us about him as your friend and a fellow journalist?

MARIO CORTI: Unfortunately, his tragic death is still shrouded in mystery. I grieve, especially for his family.

Tragedy has surrounded many Radio Liberty employees. I have already experienced several deaths of my former Radio Liberty colleagues, among them those who died in undetermined circumstances. There was also a personal tragedy in Tengiz’s life. He totally identified himself with his job at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Because of this, he suffered when he was deprived of his much loved work, his extremely popular and much needed program about relations between various nationalities of the former Soviet Union. Tengiz was able to establish a real dialogue on the air. He built bridges between different cultures and religions.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: What other Radio Liberty journalists died in mysterious circumstances? Could there have been a link between their journalistic work and their tragic deaths?

MARIO CORTI: Certainly there was a link between a bomb placed at RFE/RL headquarters in Munich back in the 1980s and RFE/RL journalistic activities. Fortunately, no one had died in that attack, but a telephone operator had her face seriously burnt. What made the most impression on me, also because at the time I was the acting director of the Russian Service, was the murder of Molly Riffel-Gordin. She was the anchor of “Contacts”, a very popular program she hosted under the pseudonym of Inna Svetlova. She was shot in her face on July 25 1997 while on her way from the central train station to the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague. Czech and German police worked on the case, which still remains unsolved.

Another tragic although not violent death happened on April 5, 2000. On his way home from work Alexander Batchan died of a heart attack. He was a well known journalist who had previously worked for the Voice of America and had recently moved to RFE/RL. And he was only 47.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Georgian journalist Ia Merkviladze who interviewed you wrote that when he left Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tengiz Gudava was angry and upset and accused RFE/RL management of KGB-ness. What made Mr. Gudava voice such accusations?

MARIO CORTI: Naturally, he was puzzled as to why he and his program were taken off the air. Among other things, he pointed out that some RFE/RL employees were graduates of the university which trained children of party members and nomenklatura for careers as Soviet diplomats and KGB officers. But from my perspective, the push for a drastic change in Radio Liberty’s programming philosophy came primarily from the new American management at RFE/RL, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees RFE/RL, and from their private consultants. They were responsible for eliminating popular programs and taking off the air highly respected and admired radio personalities, including Tengiz Gudava and others.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Until now you were publicly silent about your dispute with the American management at Radio Liberty. What else did you tell about it to the Georgian journalist who interviewed you after Tengiz Gudava’s death?

MARIO CORTI: I told her that I did not leave Radio Liberty voluntarily. The RFE/RL management first removed me from my position as director of the Russian Service, and then fired me. After my removal, I could have left slamming doors, especially since I refused to accept my severance pay when I was told to leave. RFE/RL has a policy of offering severance pay combined with secrecy agreements to dissident journalists to stifle public criticism of management decisions and any future discussion of the management’s mistakes. I could have gotten my ”hush money” had I only agreed to conditions which I considered as highly improper, even indecent, not only in relation to me but to other RFE/RL journalists and the reputation of the radio station itself, as well as the image abroad of America and American institutions.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: It seems that despite your disputes with the RFE/RL management, you, Tengiz Gudava and other journalists who had been fired were motivated by a strong desire to save the radio station’s mission as you saw it.

MARIO CORTI: I told the Georgian journalist that I have always had, and still have, great respect and awe for this venerable institution. Its mission is indeed more noble than the judgment and behavior of some individuals who unfortunately happened to work there. I refer here to some of the former American managers. In addition to firing me, they used the pretext of “restructuring” the Russian Service to get rid of  highly talented and experienced journalists who also disagreed with their programming ideas. Unfortunately, the late Tengiz and Serge Iourienen were also among those who had been let go at that time. Another distinguished RFE/RL journalist Lev Roitman, who was also highly critical of the changes being imposed on the Russian Service, left of his own volition.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Can you be more specific as to the circumstances that led to your departure from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty?

MARIO CORTI: It all started with a sudden change in the upper management of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty ordered by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. Suddenly Jeff Trimble appeared, replacing the very professional Bob Gillette as Radio Liberty Director. Mr. Gillette, a former Los Angeles Times correspondent, was a great journalist and a true gentleman. Then Tom Dine, replaced the competent and very engaged Kevin Klose, a former Washington Post correspondent in Moscow, as the president of the entire corporation. They, in turn, brought their own people and placed them within the organization.

Jeff Trimble, whom Tom Dine called his “eagle,” turned out to be the engine of reform. Neither man had much familiarity with radio journalism and, in my opinion, they did not fit into the radio station milieu. They could never understand that Radio Liberty had its own special culture. At the very mention of the word “tradition” they laughed.

American managers who supported me and the Russian Service were themselves marginalized or forced out by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Fortunately, they went on to other distinguished careers in the private and public sector. After leaving RFE/RL and the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which is part of the BBG, Kevin Klose was hired for a high level executive position at National Public Radio (NPR). Bob Gillette has worked in promoting responsible journalism and media freedom in the Balkans.

As for the team that the BBG brought in to replace them, after some years at RFE/RL Tom Dine returned to lobbying in the United States. Only Jeff Trimble is still associated with U.S. international broadcasting. He eventually replaced Tom Dine and served as RFE/RL’s acting president and is now the executive director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. He was reportedly instrumental in implementing the BBG’s decision to terminate all Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian-Georgian war last summer. This move has also led to a tremendous decline in employee morale as well as a historically unprecedented drop in VOA audience ratings in Russia. According to one estimate, the audience reach declined 98 percent in less than a year.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: How did you describe Mr. Dine’s and Mr. Trimble’s role at Radio Liberty to the Georgian journalist?

MARIO CORTI: They wanted to leave their own footprint in order to justify their existence to the BBG. Since they were “new” themselves, they thought this meant they should do something different, i.e., “new” in response to the demands from the BBG. In the final analysis, what really happened was just “change for the sake of change,” but it had a profound impact on Radio Liberty’s mission and the talented and dedicated journalists who worked there.

They searched for a formula for success, which they found in Moscow “talk” radio stations such as “Ekho Moskvy”. I don’t want to be misunderstood, “Ekho Moskvy” is a great station and provides a valuable service under somewhat difficult circumstances. But in my opinion, the thinking on the part of RFE/RL’s American managers was simple and superficial: since radio stations like Ekho Moskvy were successful, that meant to the RFE/RL managers that their formula should be copied, especially since it corresponded in some ways with Norman Pattiz’s idea of a successful commercial radio station. To them, this was “new.” To me and others who have known Russia for a long time and worked there sometimes for many years, it was a completely misguided idea.

For once, Moscow stations always had and still have FM frequencies, which Radio Liberty could not obtain then from the Russian authorities and still cannot get them now. It was vital for Radio Liberty to expand distribution of its programs in Russia in other ways, which is not a simple task given the political conditions, but that’s what they needed to focus on. Unfortunately, they had no idea where to start, and yet they didn’t  want to listen to any advice.

Instead of dealing with the real problem of program delivery, program distribution, cooperation with independent media, and media restrictions in Russia, they decided to take the easy but pernicious path of reforming the Russian Service from within, because it was easy and they could not think of anything else to do. Their idea was to change Radio Liberty’s broadcasting in form and content as if this alone could solve the problem of program distribution and prevent a fall in audience ratings. As it turned out, their strategy only made audience ratings fall even faster to a level much lower than ever before, which I’m sure is not what the U.S. Congress and U.S. taxpayers expected from the BBG, but that’s what they got.

The BBG now tries hard to keep this information secret and blames media restrictions in Russia, which do account for some drop in audience ratings for RFE/RL and VOA but cannot be blamed for the dramatic declines resulting from BBG-ordered programming and program delivery changes. For one thing, RFE/RL is still on the same AM frequency in Moscow, but the number of listeners there has been consistently dropping.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: What were some of the ideas which were advanced by the consultants hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors and implemented by the RFE/RL’s top management?

MARIO CORTI: They wanted to concentrate broadcasting on Moscow and St. Petersburg — mainly Moscow. “Forget about the regions,” they told us. They also wanted more talk shows and — this may sound hilarious to those who know something about radio broadcasting in the Soviet Union — to rely on the old Soviet era UKV (Ultra Short Wave) frequencies, which were designed to prevent Soviet citizens from using their radio sets to listen to Western FM stations in border areas, where such signals could be heard. Knowing that UKV receivers were no longer being produced and the band was being phased out, I vigorously objected to their claims that Ultra Short Wave broadcasts were a good alternative, but I think it was one of RFE/RL’s managers who suggested that there are North Korean radio receivers which can pick up these frequencies and are still being sold in Russia. The idea that broadcasting on Soviet era frequencies being phased out can be a reasonable solution was rather typical for the team of RFE/RL managers and their BBG-hired consultants, who were undoubtedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their recommendations.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: Did did you make any alternative recommendations to Mr. Dine and Mr. Trimble?

MARIO CORTI: Besides continuing some of the general goals set by my predecessor, the highly admired and respected journalist and manager Yuri Handler, I decided to decentralize Radio Liberty broadcasting, getting away from Moscow-centrism and expanding the network of correspondents in the regions. It seemed to me that people in Moscow knew little of what was happening in the regions, and listeners in the regions highly valued the attention paid to their concerns. I expanded the St. Petersburg bureau and opened a bureau in Ekaterinburg.

Since we did not have at the time and still do not have an FM frequency, I thought that we should rely on medium wave (AM) frequencies as part of a multi-platform program delivery strategy, which would also include traditional shortwave frequencies, Internet,  television, and cooperative projects with independent journalists and media. AM frequencies were more available, some with good signal quality, and had a good geographical reach unlike UKV. In Moscow we had our own license for a medium wave frequency. I found a similar solution in St. Petersburg, which would have allowed us to transmit our signal to the whole north-west of Russia, where most of the population lives. The management again didn’t listen to our recommendations. I also talked to them about the Internet and digital broadcasting. Now it’s commonplace, and tomorrow, will be even more so. They laughed at these ideas and said that BBG consultants knew better what would work and what would not.

I should mention that shortly before my removal as Russian Service director our audience reach in Russia, as reported by the audience research organization contracted by the Broadcasting Board of Governors,  peaked at around six percent, a figure well beyond what RL was able to achieve since. It was then that the new American management decided to put its plan into action and break with the culture, traditions and intellectual sophistication of the radio’s Russian Service. They abandoned the foundations laid by Yuri Handler together with Kevin Klose. They were determined to transform Radio Liberty into more of a “chat” radio, a clone of Ekho Moskvy and Radio Sawa. Again, Ekho Moskvy is a good station, but the RFE/RL management had no way of achieving the necessary signal strength and program distribution, and on top of that they had pretensions to be a real competitor to Ekho Moskvy — something that was totally unreasonable given their interference with programming and the political conditions in Russia. And so on and so forth. Later on, the management closed down the Ekaterinburg bureau and greatly reduced the St. Petersburg bureau staff. When Radio Liberty in St. Petersburg was taken off UKV, the Soviet era frequency pushed by the BBG consultants, nobody had listened to it for a long time. No one, it seems, had access to those “fantastic” North Korean receivers.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: The BBG-ordered research also showed that a focus on human rights and high culture in Radio Liberty programs to Russia was passe and should be replaced. You pointed out that some of the consultants who presented this research had links to former BBG member Norman Pattiz, the chief architect of Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television broadcasts to the Middle East. Were you pressured to change Radio Liberty’s Russian programs to make them conform to the style of Radio Sawa?

MARIO CORTI: One of the reasons given for my removal was that I “resisted changes”. After my removal, the RFE/RL management put their own people in management positions in the Russian Service to carry out their plans. They shut down many cultural programs, including the brilliant and popular broadcasts by Sergei Iourienen. They also shut down serious analytical programs, “Commentators at a Roundtable,” as well as Paramonov’s show (which they later reinstated), shut down Savitsky’s popular program on jazz (recently reinstated). They changed the format of other shows, expanded the number of talk shows, and so on.

In a nutshell, the station has abandoned its uniqueness, its identity, its face. Although not nearly as drastic as the BBG’s new format formula for Russia, a similar process was going on and is still going on in Great Britain at BBC’s Russian Service, which has resulted in vehement protests from a lot of respected people, including famous British academics.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: In your interview with a Georgian journalist you said that Tengiz Gudava and other journalists who were associated with Radio Liberty did not know the full picture of your battles with RFE/RL’s new American management. You also said that with people like that in charge of RFE/RL, “KGB-FSB can sleep soundly.” What did you mean by that?

MARIO CORTI: Let me put it this way. Jeff Trimble and Tom Dine were unhappy with the work of the Russian Service. In particular, Jeff Trimble was unhappy with the Russian Service newscast. I was unhappy too, but for different reasons, I wanted to make it more relevant to people most deprived of access to uncensored information, those who are particularly vulnerable in Russia today.

At one point Trimble – based on a study of our news made by his assistant Michele DuBach who later was appointed by him as Director of Broadcasting – even announced his decision to close our news service. He did not carry it out because he was afraid of a mass rebellion in the Russian Service. To bolster their position in favor of a possible future attempt to get rid of RL Russian Service news, he and Tom Dine ordered outside research. They first applied to the famed Annenberg School of Journalism, which — by the way — recently issued a study highly critical of  BBG’s proud creation Alhurra Television for practicing substandard journalism and lacking audience and effectiveness — a study which the BBG executive staff tried hard to suppress until they were ordered to release it by the Obama Administration.

In the case of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service, they didn’t get the negative result they really wanted. The international group of journalists put together by this respected institution [the Annenberg School of Journalism] to evaluate the RL Russian Service came to a generally positive and encouraging conclusion about our performance. I can imagine their surprise when reading the study issued by the Annenberg School of Journalism they discovered that the single most praised feature of our broadcasts was the Russian Service newscast. Then, the management decided to obtain research from Russia on the image of the Russian Service programs among the listeners in Russia. Here again, they miscalculated. The results of this research were also very positive for us.

So here you have three Russian Service success stories in a row: a positive evaluation by the Annenberg School of Journalism, the positive image study, and the peak of around six percent in our audience reach in Russia. So what did RFE/RL management and the BBG do at this point? They hired someone who had previously worked for BBG member Norman Pattiz — it was the latter who had the brilliant idea of creating Sawa Radio and Alhurra Television — and they got exactly the results Jeff Trimble had originally wanted to get. Based on these results, they proceed to “reform” the Russian Service. Great programs were eliminated, audience ratings immediately dropped. I would point out that similar  BBG “reforms” at VOA last year produced an even greater, 98 percent drop in audience reach in Russia; millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been wasted. It’s shameful how the  generosity of the American people in support of much needed broadcasting that promotes understanding between nations and cultures is being abused by these officials.

In my opinion, those among the old KGB and the new FSB officials, who see the U.S. as an enemy rather than a valuable and generous partner of Russia, could only be enormously happy with such leaders in charge of U.S. international broadcasting as the current U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive team. They have no reason to worry or need to do anything themselves to undermine U.S.-funded broadcasts; it is being done for them by these American government officials who are now trying hard to hide their mistakes from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

FREEMEDIAONLINE.ORG: When Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was based during the Cold War in Munich, West Germany, RFE/RL employees had full protection of the German labor law. The BBG and RFE/RL management used a communist era Czech law to deprive foreign journalists working for them in Prague of some of these basic protections. Do you think that this policy is designed to make journalists more dependent on the management and to stifle independent journalism and criticism at RFE/RL? Are these journalists vulnerable, in your opinion?

MARIO CORTI: Obviously they are vulnerable. Back in Munich many were members of the German journalists unions while others belonged the Newspaper Guild in New York. Nothing like this is true now. Now, according to the RFE/RL new Policy Manual, EEO regulations do not apply to non-American employees. And a Czech Court recently ruled that Czech labor law regulations do not apply to non Czech employees working for RFE/RL. So RFE/RL is allowed to do with its non American and non Czech employees — and they are the majority — whatever it wants, whether it’s right or wrong. They don’t have to worry about any legal consequences. What they don’t realize, however, is that employees without any rights will have little loyalty and little reason to alert the management to possibly fatal journalistic and programming mistakes if voicing dissent can result in them losing their jobs. Hopefully, the European Court of Human Rights, to which some former employees are turning now, or the Obama Administration will soon put a stop to this shameful treatment by RFE/RL and the BBG of its foreign journalists and other  foreign workers.

FreeMediaOnline.org allows republication of its interviews with attribution and link to our site.

 

More about Mario Corti

Mario Corti was born in Italy but his parents took him to Argentina, where he developed a lifelong interest in Russia. Later on he became a fluent Russian speaker and writer. Living in Italy in the 1970s, he was active in defense of human rights in the Soviet Union and published Russian samizdat books, articles and documents.

From 1979 until 2005, he worked at the U.S.-funded international broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He became the head of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service but left the station together with other veteran journalists over a programming dispute with the American management. He is an author of numerous books and articles, many of them published in Russian. Dreif, a book written in Russian about philosophy and culture, was published in Russia and Ukraine in 2002. His book, Salieri i Mozart, on the relationship between the two composers, was published in Russian in 2005. His articles on human rights and Soviet dissent have appeared in several languages in many countries. He speaks Italian, Rusian, English, German, Spanish, and French and has a working knowledge of several other European languages. Dividing his time between Italy and Russia, he now works as a freelance journalist and a consultant for a media group based in Saint Petersburg.

 

More about Tengiz Gudava

Tengiz Gudava, who had a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was a former dissident who organized music concerts in support of human rights in the Soviet Union and spent five years in a labor camp before being expelled to the West in 1987. He joined Radio Liberty and wrote and produced popular programs in defense of human rights for Russian and Georgian shortwave broadcasts.

Gudava was a harsh critic of the current Russian leadership. After he was dismissed from RFE/RL in 2004, he also posted on his personal website biting criticism of Radio Liberty’s new management and programming philosophy. On the night of April 15, Gudava left his Prague apartment on foot to buy cigarettes. He was found unconscious on a road in a secluded area about a 20 minute drive from his home. Police attributed his death to a car accident but could not explain how he ended up in a strange location a long distance away from his apartment in Prague.

VOA Responds to Crisis in Georgia

On August 8, 2008, Russia’s military forces in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia began invading Georgian territory and moving toward its capital, Tbilisi. In response to the crisis, VOA increased its daily Georgian radio broadcasts from 30 to 60 minutes on shortwave and FM. VOA’s broadcast is also available live and on-demand on VOA Georgian’s website. VOA’s Russian Service also provided comprehensive coverage of Russia-Georgia conflict.

Even after the crisis started, former BBG members, Edward E. Kaufman (now a Democratic senator from Delaware) and James K. Glassman (former BBG chairman who was also President Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy) rejected urgent pleas from Voice of America journalists to resume VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts to Russia and to the war zone in Georgia. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, Mr. Kaufman blocked a formal request from another BBG member Blanquita Walsh Cullum ( a Republican appointee and the only working journalist serving on the board) to have a new vote on resuming VOA Russian radio programs.

In another part of the budget request, the BBG admits that the Russian service “ceased its radio broadcasts on July 26, 2008,” and “is enhancing its website to appeal to burgeoning web audiences with targeted content.” The document fails to point out that largely as a result of ending VOA Russian radio and television programs, VOA’s annual reach in Russia dropped by 98% from 7.3% in 2007 to 0.2% (est.) in 2009 (another omission). No other international broadcaster, U.S. or foreign, has ever experienced a similarly dramatic fall in ratings. Even a 25% drop would have been a disaster, yet the BBG claims that despite a 98% audience loss VOA “improved its programming to such strategically important countries as… Russia.”

While advocating Internet-only strategy for Voice of America in Russia — rather than far more prudent and far more effective multiple platform program delivery  — the BBG admits in another part of its budget request that the Internet is vulnerable to blockage and censorship by unfriendly governments, ”Governments also target RFE/RL [a BBG-run private broadcaster] with technological disruption, including a global cyber attack in April 2008 which probably originated in Belarus, and Kazakhstan’s blockage of RFE/RL’s Kazakh-language website in the spring of 2008.” Another cyber attack, this time against Georgian websites, occurred during the Russian military intervention in Georgia. A recent article by Understanding Government, “Will America’s Voice Stay Silenced?“, reported on this issue and other problems at the BBG. 

The BBG’s budget request also states that “in response to the crisis, VOA increased its daily Georgian radio broadcasts from 30 to 60 minutes on shortwave and FM.” That statement is only technically correct. What the BBG does not mention is that the broadcasting board also had plans to eliminate all VOA radio programs to Georgia and that the VOA Georgian service was reduced to a handful of journalists who were not able to immediately increase airtime and had to work nonstop for many days just to produce a 30 minute radio program.

The BBG budget request to the U.S. Congress also includes another disingenuous and misleading statement:

VOA Covers Mumbai Terrorist Attacks

VOA’s South Asia Division language services provided wall-to-wall coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, including on-the-ground coverage from stringers, interviews in Pakistan and India, and live call-in shows. VOA Hindi provided its new affiliate Zee TV with reaction from President Bush, President-elect Obama, U.S. officials, experts and members of American-Indian communities.

In fact, shorty before the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the BBG terminated all Voice of America radio broadcasts in Hindi. While bragging and misleading the Congress about its response to the terrorist attacks in India, in another part of the budget request the BBG frankly admits that it plans to close down VOA Hindi service altogether:

BBG proposes to end VOA broadcasts in Croatian, Hindi, and Greek, and discontinue radio rebroadcasts of PNN television programming and one hour daily of original VOA Persian radio.

Another misleading omission in the BBG’s FY 2010 budget request deals with VOA broadcasts to Ukraine:

Ukrainian Language Broadcasting

VOA’s Ukrainian Service continues to have a major impact through its television programming. An October 2008 survey indicated that VOA Ukrainian’s weekly TV programs reach 11.9 percent of the population and that the combined weekly TV, radio, and Internet audience is 14.2 percent (5.7 million people).

In fact, the BBG terminated all VOA radio broadcasts to Ukraine on December 31, 2008, a day before Russia cut off deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine and Western Europe in a billing dispute with Kiev, as it had earlier terminated VOA radio to Russia. Yet the BBG describes both Russia and Ukraine as “strategically important countries” for VOA broadcasting and in another part of the FY 2010 budget request says that “Russia has effectively turned into a one-party dictatorship in the past few years.”

The Broadcasting Board of Governor ignored numerous requests from members of Congress not to end VOA radio programming to media-at-risk countries like Russia and Ukraine. The BBG also ignored requests from members of Congress not to end VOA radio programs in Hindi.

According to the BBG’s critics, including BBG employees and their union leaders, misleading and disingenuous statements in the FY 2010 budget request reflect a culture of mismanagement and arrogance that was captured in the OPM’s most recent Human Capital Survey designed to measure employee job satisfaction and confidence in the management. This is what the AFGE Local 1812 government employees union website says about the quality of the management at the Broadcasting Board of Governors:

BBG CLAIMS TITLE AS THE WORST PLACE TO WORK IN GOVERNMENT

DATELINE: Washington, D.C., 01/23/09. AFGE Local 1812 has obtained a copy of the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) ranking of government agencies which included the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) based on the results of the 2008 Human Capital Resources survey. The BBG ranked dead last on three of the four categories the OPM measures in its survey. Finishing second to last in one category prevented an atrocious clean sweep of the four categories measuring the effectiveness of management at the BBG.

The BBG’s management problems are not limited only to federal government workers at the Voice of America working in Washington, D.C. but extend to other BBG-managed  U.S.-funded broadcasting entities throughout the world. Foreign journalists working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a private broadcaster also supervised by the BBG, accuse the management of depriving them, based on national origin, of the same job security and labor protection rights which are available to both American and Czech employees. RFE/RL headquarters are based in Prague, the Czech Republic. RFE/RL’s former acting president, Jeffrey Trimble, is now the BBG’s executive director and was responsible for implementing personnel and other management decisions during the period covered by the Human Capital Survey. He was replaced at RFE/RL in Prague by another BBG-selected official, Dr. Jeffrey Gedmin, a former resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists-at-risk are a group of the most vulnerable contract employees from countries like Russia, Uzbekistan,  Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Afghanistan, Iran and several others. These journalists charge that by taking advantage of the communist era laws still on the books in the Czech Republic, the BBG has restricted their right to challenge unlawful discrimination and employment termination in Czech and U.S. courts.

Two former RFE/RL employees plan to pursue their claims against RFE/RL and the BBG by challenging the communist era Czech laws in the European Court of Human Rights. They have also petitioned United States Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and its supervising Federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

On May 6, the Czech news agency, CTK, and the largest Czech national daily Dnes (Today) reported that the two petitioners, former RFE/RL employees, a Croatian citizen Snjezana Pelivan and Anna Karapetian, an Armenian journalist, are charging BBG and the management of U.S. Congress-funded radio station with fraudulent deception intended to keep RFE/RL foreign personnel in a legal vacuum without court protection in the United States and the Czech Republic.

The BBG has also been severely criticized for imposing its programming and marketing strategy on journalists and forcing them to follow recommendations from uninformed consultants, some of them with links to BBG members, rather than allowing journalists and managers to use their own expert  knowledge of the audience. In an interview scheduled for publication this week, former head of RFE/RL Russian Service, Mario Corti, who was forced out in a programming dispute four years ago, charges that the BBG’s strategy and the American management of the station have destroyed the unique value of Radio Liberty broadcasts in Russia and made them nearly ineffective. Corti is now a manager at a private radio network in Russia. Since his departure, RFE/RL has been criticized by a Russian human rights organization for giving airtime to nationalist extremists known for promoting racist views and its Moscow-based bureau chief was downplaying the impact of the murder of a prominent human rights reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

But one of the most severely criticized BBG operations has been the Alhurra Television program for the Middle East.  According to KEBABfest blog, maintained by Arab-Americans, Alhurra viewers are subjected to “hours of mindless chatter interspersed with shallow assessments of selected current events and random feature stories (some of which are marginally entertaining). There is no depth in the news coverage, nor in the rest of the programming. Rather, there is a failed attempt at fast-paced US-style news that comes off as chaotic and incoherent.” Alhurra was also criticized for giving airtime to Holocaust deniers. A study by researchers for the University of Southern California, who conducted a review of Alhurra broadcasts, concluded that “the quality of Alhurra’s journalism is substandard on several levels“ and that the station has no significant audience in the Middle East.

Not surprisingly, the BBG is presenting Congress with a much rosier picture of Alhurra programming:

Expanding our reach.

The new three-hour daily show Al Youm launched on March 8, 2009 has redefined Alhurra’s voice in the region with an information mix unique in the Middle East today. The new show provides a platform for focusing on the news of the day, discussing compelling social issues, and a spectrum of information not presented anywhere else in the region’s media. The program broadcasts reports directly from the Middle East with hubs in Dubai, Beirut, Cairo, and Jerusalem. The mix from the region and America will continue to capitalize on Alhurra’s ability to provide the people of the Middle East with unique insight into America that will inform their views and opinions of the region, the world, and the United States.

While the original concept for Alhurra’s surrogate broadcasting, based on outdated Cold War models, came from neoconservatives in the Bush White House, programming and marketing strategy for Alhurra, Radio Sawa and other  U.S. broadcasting entities, which is still followed by the BBG, was introduced by former Democratic BBG member Norman Pattiz, founder of U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One and a protege of Vice President Joe Biden when he was a U.S. senator from Delaware.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors FY 2010 Budget Request to the U.S. Congress (link) provides for an interesting reading and is a good example of how government bureaucrats try to hide their mistakes and mismanagement of government resources while asking U.S. taxpayers for more money, said Ted Lipien, former VOA acting associate director, who is now president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit which supports independent journalism worldwide.

In response to the termination of VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, FreeMediaOnline.org has helped to launch a Russian-language news website, GovoritAmerika.us, which offers a wide selection of Russian-language news analysis from both U.S. government and nongovernment sources. GovoritAmerika.us is staffed by volunteers and receives no public funding.

WILL AMERICA’S VOICE STAY SILENCED?

07. May 2009
An Understanding Government report

By Mitchell Polman

Washington, D.C. — Since it was founded in 1942, the Voice of America has been just that – a radio voice for the American perspective on the issues of the day and a prime source of information about American society for its overseas audiences. VOA has also brought educational programs to overseas audiences on such issues as public health and business skills. In recent years, however, the broadcasting service has experienced staff cuts, service reductions, and politically-charged controversies.

At the center of the storm has been the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, which oversees U.S. government-funded media outlets. And these problems have arisen while – largely through emergency supplemental appropriations from Congress in the past couple of years – the Broadcasting Board of Governors has seen its budget actually increase. Critics say that the BBG has skewed priorities and has spent money that could have gone to its broadcasting services on wasteful administrative overhead and public relations efforts.

America’s voice in Russia fades to silence

Last year the BBG made the unpopular and unexpected decision to terminate all Russian language shortwave radio and television broadcasts of the Voice of America. It ordered VOA to shift its resources towards Internet-based broadcasting. The decision has been widely criticized, in large part because Internet penetration in Russia is too low – estimated at 20% by some pollsters – to justify ending radio and television broadcasts to the Russian public.

But critics see more than just a mistaken choice of media. Former VOA Deputy Director, and author of the book Voice of America: a History, Alan Heil, Jr., for example, said regarding radio service to Russia that “the Voice of America cannot continue to be silent. It would not only be contrary to the U.S. national interest. It would also be a distinctly untimely disservice to millions of listeners in Russia and the surrounding republics that had, until last July, depended on VOA Russian for more than sixty years as their reliable window on a turbulent world.”

Critics note that it is easier for governments to block websites and control Internet usage than it is to block shortwave radio, and that shortwave radio is more commonplace in conflict zones – where the need for independent media is most vital. The BBG’s decision has been called shortsighted for other reasons, in particular because the VOA could have continued producing shortwave and FM radio as well as television content using its seasoned Russian-language reporting staff – and used it on the Internet as well. Instead, the BBG ordered VOA to produce content only for the VOA website and terminate all Russian language radio and television programming.

And while some in the Broadcasting Board of Governors may consider shortwave radio to be a dying technology, the Russian government apparently does not. As the Voice of America fades as a radio source, Radio Moscow has been renamed the Voice of Russia, and it continues to broadcast in shortwave throughout both Russia and the entire world.

“Runet” – the Internet in Russia

Obviously, there is a vital role for the Internet in America’s information arsenal. In a December 2008 report, the media research group InterMedia said that television remains the dominant source of news coverage in Russia, but that the Internet is growing. 19% of the population, according to InterMedia, reported using the Internet to follow current events in Russia in 2008, up from 13% in 2007.

However, by some estimates only 2% of Russians have broadband service. Without broadband service, listening to radio programs or watching television programs over the Internet can be difficult. Broadband and DSL subscriptions are on the rise, but they are still mostly available in Moscow and St. Petersburg and other major cities. Several companies have large plans to expand their networks. However, as it stands now, many homes can not get even dial-up service for lack of a landline, and it is doubtful that Russian citizens will put up with or pay for watching or listening to a half hour long program on a painfully slow Internet connection. Overall, it seems clear that the share of the Russian population that is not thoroughly “wired” is now unable to be part of the VOA audience.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty gains while VOA loses

The BBG shifted some of VOA’s resources, including radio frequencies, to a different radio broadcaster — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). RFE/RL – known simply as “Svoboda,” or “freedom,” in Russian, was a vital source of information for human rights activists inside the USSR during much of the Cold War. However, the two broadcast entities do not share the same mission or approach to broadcasting, so an expansion of Radio Free Europe cannot be seen as a substitute for what VOA has done in the past.

To begin with, RFE/RL focuses exclusively on news involving the country and region that is broadcasting to, whereas the VOA adds world news and reports on American policies and society. In addition, RFE/RL contracts with private companies overseas or surrogates in places like Moscow to reach its audience. The surrogate companies and their staffs and families are often subject to governmental pressure, intimidation, and threats. The Voice of America, on the other hand, broadcasts directly from Washington and avoids these direct pressures.

Historically, the Voice of America had a larger audience in Russia than RFE/RL has at present. According to InterMedia, VOA’s Russian language service had a cumulative annual audience for 2007 of 6,504,030 people (broadcasting for three hours of radio daily and one hour of TV) while RFE/RL had 3,613,350 people (broadcasting eighteen hours daily on radio). VOA radio had an average weekly listenership of 481,780 listeners, VOA TV had an average weekly viewership of 722,670 viewers and VOA had 120,445 visitors for its website from Russia. These statistics are for Russia only – they do not include Russian language speakers from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan or other former Soviet republics, which are believed to be a substantial audience.

Finally, there is also some dispute about the methodologies being used to determine the number of visits to VOA’s Russian language website. Sources familiar with VOA’s numbers comment that roughly half of the visits to VOA’s Russian language site may actually be coming from inside the United States. Even if this estimate is exaggerated, there is no disputing the fact that the number of VOA website users is far below the audience that VOA TV and radio enjoyed in Russia. The most recent InterMedia study shows VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia dropped by 98% in just one year: from 7.3% in 2007 to an estimated 0.2% in 2009 (0.2% is the VOA Russian Internet reach.) This drop was experienced only by VOA, so it cannot be solely because of the Russian government’s restrictive media policies. Clearly the disappearance of VOA radio service has harmed America’s ability to reach out to Russian citizens.

Reaction from inside and outside Russia

The cutbacks in VOA service have drawn protests from many quarters. On July 31, 2008 a prominent group of human rights activists in St. Petersburg, Russia, including Aleksandr Nikitin, Anna Sharogradskaya, Olga Staravoitova, and lawyer Yuri Schmidt, sent a letter to Congress asking it to intervene with the BBG saying, “(The Russian) public is deprived of objective coverage of events inside the country and abroad. International radio stations broadcasting in Russian and Internet are the only sources of unbiased, balanced, and truthful information, especially analysis of global events. That is why we believe that it is premature to end VOA’s Russian Service broadcast.”

The bi-partisan Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or CSCE, sent a letter to the Broadcasting Board of Governors in October 2008 protesting the Russian service cutbacks as well as planned reductions in VOA’s Ukrainian and Georgian services then-Chairman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) and Ranking Minority Christopher Smith (R-NJ) asked for VOA shortwave radio service to be restored saying, “Freedom of the media in Russia, especially on the airwaves, has been cut to the point that it is extremely difficult for people to hear views other than those espoused by the Kremlin.”

Problems with the BBG decision emerged in stark relief during the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia. Russian language VOA programming went off the air on July 26, less than two weeks before the Russian army entered Georgia on August 7, 2008. Russian speakers in the region thus had one less source for coverage of the war and of the American government’s views. The Georgian language service had also been slated to go off the air, but was granted a reprieve and temporarily increased at the insistence of Congress.

VOA would suffer similar embarrassments in the months ahead as, for example, it terminated Ukrainian language radio service the day before Russia disrupted gas service to Ukraine on January 1, 2009, and when VOA’s highly popular Hindi language radio programs (with an audience of eight million listeners a week) went off the air shortly before the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. After protests from VOA supporters, VOA radio returned on a Moscow-based AM channel for only thirty minutes a day Monday through Friday, down from its previous three hours.

Former VOA Staff Calling for Service Restorations

One of the most prominent critics of the BBG is Ted Lipien, who spent 33 years with the VOA as a reporter and then as Associate Director for Central Programming. Retiring in 2006, Mr. Lipien soon after started the website FreeMediaOnline.org to assist independent broadcasters and journalists worldwide. Responding to the cutbacks at VOA, Mr. Lipien launched GovoritAmerika.us, a Russian language site containing news summaries from U.S. government and non-governmental sources.

Mr. Lipien’s criticisms of the BBG go beyond disagreements over planned cutbacks. He charges that BBG market research findings have led Voice of America to cut back on criticism of the Putin government. Mr. Lipien has similarly charged that market research was behind a Radio Liberty decision to carry a program featuring Russian extremists, which sparked protests from Russian human rights groups. Lipien says that most of the responsibility for the cutbacks in Russian language service is the responsibility of Ted Kaufman, a close confidante of Vice President Biden who replaced Biden as U.S. senator from Delaware.

Lipien is also critical of BBG member Jeffrey Hirschberg, charging that Hirschberg’s business interests in Russia are “an apparent conflict of interest” with his BBG responsibilities. Hirschberg, a former Director of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, is still on their board and is a partner and Managing Director of Kalorama Partners, LLC, a Washington, DC-based consulting and risk-management company. However, no specific conflict of interest has been documented and it is worth noting that Hirschberg is also a board member of the human rights group Freedom House. But according to Lipien, “in many ways, BBG’s business-connected members with conflicts of interest are more dangerous for journalistic independence at VOA and RFE/RL than the White House and State Department officials who in the past had also tried to interfere with programming for political reasons.”

James Glassman, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy near the end of George W. Bush’s term, was previously the BBG Board Chairman and led the effort to abolish the Russian language services. The board members who voted to abolish the services cited the decline of shortwave and the rise of the Internet as part of their reasoning for the changes.

Voices of discord at VOA Russian service?

However, other VOA insiders speculate that the reorganization of the Russian service may in part have been due to a reputation that it developed in earlier times as having a myriad of internal personnel problems. Former USIA official William P. Kiehl, the Country Affairs Officer for the USSR and Baltic States from 1981-1983, said of the VOA Russian service,

Among those who worked with, but not in, the Russian Service of the VOA, it was known as ‘the snake pit’ because of the internecine warfare that was a constant among the staff. The Russian Service like many language services then and now reflected both the good and the bad of the societies that provided the native speakers–so in the case of the Russian Service you had Westernizers and Slavophiles, monarchists and socialists, Jews and anti-Semites, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians, people with all sorts of agendas, all working together in a high pressure situation under the supervision of a Russian speaking Foreign Service Officer from the ranks of the USIA or the State Department.

Clearly, the diverse staff of the VOA Russian-language service – a product of the Soviet Union’s own complicated legacy – must have been a difficult one to manage. But it produced programming that was listened to by millions of Soviet citizens during the Cold War, and remained popular after the breakup of the USSR. This legacy has been interrupted with the changes to VOA’s Russian service.

The future of the BBG

Currently there are four vacancies on the BBG Board out of a total of nine seats. Secretary of State Clinton holds one seat on the board, but generally speaking the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, currently designated to be Ms. Judith McHale, sits in for the Secretary. Board members can serve after their terms have expired until replacements are named. Currently, four members are serving in this status. While traditionally, four members have been named by the Senate Minority Leader, and four by the sitting president, it is now technically possible for President Obama to remake the Board in its entirety by himself.

The Obama Administration has not given any indication who it will appoint to the BBG or if it will even keep the BBG as an institution. In both 2007 and 2008 the Office of Personnel Management rated the BBG as having the worst employee satisfaction level of any government agency. So new appointees will have their hands full trying to fix it, and the abrupt decision taken in 2008 to end Russian-language service may be impossible to reverse. There continues to be a great deal of uncertainty surrounding much of VOA’s work. For example, the Uzbek language service was taken off the air, only to be switched back on in 2004-5. It is now again being threatened with closure.

It is quite possible that the Obama Administration views the BBG as an agency in need of an overhaul. The BBG was founded in the wake of the dismantling of the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1999, a move which reshaped – not necessarily for the better – America’s public diplomacy. At that time, most of USIA’s programs were folded into the Department of State. But there was a fear that VOA, RFE/RL, and Radio Marti (which broadcasts to Cuba) would be unable to maintain their journalistic independence under the Department of State. The concept of a bi-partisan board with governors from both parties appointed by the president, with a spot reserved for a State Department official, arose as a solution to that problem.

Today, questions remain as to how international broadcasting operations should be managed. As a Senator, Vice President Biden was among those most involved in the discussion. How the Obama Administration will approach international broadcasting remains to be seen, but it is likely the BBG’s many perceived missteps are going to lead to some changes. In these challenging times, America can ill afford such tumult in its overseas broadcasting services.

“I accepted the invitation to join RFE/RL with an unhidden pride as I was becoming a part of a radio station with a glorious history,” she says. “From the very first day of my employment I got the task of covering the Bosnian war.” Before joining RFE/RL, this graduate of the Moscow State University worked for numerous media outlets in Armenia, including the UPI news agency, covering  local politics and the war in Karabakh.  At RFE/RL, she wrote feature stories, edited and  moderated newscasts and produced the daily programs. One of her regular weekly radio series was on the 1700 anniversary of Christianity in Armenia. Continuing to show pride and loyalty toward her former employer despite a sense of betrayal, she describes RFE/RL as an excellent school of journalism.

When Anna Karapetian was suddenly fired from her job two years ago even though her job performance was described as exemplary, this mother of three minor children discovered that non-American employees like herself, most of whom are journalists, are as unprotected against arbitrary decisions and discrimination by the RFE/RL management as their colleagues in the countries to which the radio station broadcasts programs about the importance of defending human rights.

“The methods are different but the results are virtually the same,” Anna Karapetian wrote in a letter to media freedom and human rights organizations in January 2009.  “In RFE/RL target countries the journalists are harassed, persecuted and forced into silence. At the Prague main office, they are harassed and left without means of livelihood and work prospects by arbitrary separations from the Radio.”

After RFE/RL terminated her employment, Anna Karapetian found out that unlike her American colleagues working at the RFE/RL headquarters in the Czech Republic, she did not have the protection of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Federal Civil Rights Act, and many other U.S. anti-discrimination institutions and laws. The Czech government made sure that locally-hired Czech employees would have the full protection of the Czech labor law, but at the insistence of the BBG it allowed RFE/RL to exempt foreign journalists working for RFE/RL in Prague from the Czech labor standards. They were placed instead under a special Communist-era law, still on the books, which was used to facilitate the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia after 1968. This special law allowed RFE/RL as a foreign employer to fire any third-country non-American journalist at any time without any reason.

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

The Washington-based Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is responsible for these personnel policies, was rated by its own American employees in the most recent government-wide Office of Personnel Management survey, as the worst-managed U.S. Federal agency. The agency is run by a small group of political appointees representing both parties. (There are currently four BBG members plus Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who serves as an ex officio member.) The Board’s executive director, Jeffrey Trimble, is a former acting president of RFE/RL.

“On various solemn occasions different members of the BBG have been encouraging us with their speeches by stressing the mission we had – dissemination of free word and advocacy of human rights,” Anna Karapetian told FreeMediaOnline.org.  “I have come to realize that unfortunately there is now little or no difference between the BBG members, the RFE/RL management  and the pathos of Communist leaders’ speeches addressed to people with no rights.  I believe that the  people with no rights can’t have any sincere mission, thus it appears that the US Congress finances double standards of  the BBG and RFE/RL in the name of American foreign  policy.”

Snjezana Pelivan, who graduated from the University of Sarajevo, was employed by RFE/RL to facilitate the use of its programs by radio and television stations in countries still developing their democratic institutions and free media. Like Anna Karapetian, she feels betrayed by RFE/RL, the BBG, and the U.S. Government but still strongly believes in the importance of U.S. international broadcasting.

“In Munich and later in Prague, RFE/RL  — with its message of tolerance, rule of law, democracy, human rights – became for me not just an employer. I could identify with RFE/RL broadcasts supporting reconciliation and peace in my native Balkans and, in similarly war-torn, Caucasus.”

Pelivan came from a politically engaged family. When she left Sarajevo in 1992, her father, Jure Pelivan, was the first Prime Minister of independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. She became a refugee in Germany and later worked with relief organizations and accompanied deliveries of humanitarian aid to the camps of Bosnian refugees in Croatia.

“For me, it was not humanitarian mission only but also a personal and political one, ” she told FreeMediaOnline.org.   ”I am just sorry that the notions of human dignity, individual rights and fairness have a different meaning for the American bosses of that great radio station than for its employees. The bosses are not ‘living American values’, in the words of Hillary Clinton who has recently visited RFE/RL. They’re just selling them — but with less and less success. The salesmen are losing the trust of their own employees and the people to whom they try to sell their ideas.”

Neither Pelivan nor Karapetian see their cases as wrongful termination claims by individual employees but as a landmark lawsuit designed to put an end to a “shameful discrimination” that has affected many journalists at RFE/RL. They describe themselves as having the determination and the support of their friends, RFE/RL employees, and families to stand up to the radio station’s management and the BBG. Other journalists from Belarus, Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tatarstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, North Caucasus, and former Yugoslavia whose contracts were terminated could not afford to lose their severance pay by not signing a release agreement demanded by RFE/RL.

The agreement stipulates that “to receive a severance as a result of involuntary termination”,  they had to sign a letter of “General Release”, which states unequivocally: “In consideration of the payments and promises contained in this letter, you agree…” Then follows half a page of promises and obligations not to make any claims, demands, complaints, legal charges against RFE/RL, and to keep the whole matter strictly confidential. After signing such a letter, they receive severance pay for their work at the radio station. Often, it is a double-digit figure depending on number of years with RFE/RL. Anna Karapetian and Snjezana Pelivan did not sign it together with another former RFE/RL employee who later decided not to go to court.

While there may be legitimate reasons for RFE/RL and the BBG to make job reductions, the current practice does not protect foreign-born journalists from arbitrary terminations and retaliation by the management. Both Anna Karapetian and Snjezana Pelivan were considered outstanding employees and received excellent performance reviews. One former RFE/RL broadcaster told FreeMediaOnline.org that after landing on a street in Prague – with no job and no prospect to find one, no income, no language, no connections, no usable education and  experience but with a family, kids, sometimes other dependent relatives – it is no surprise that most people sign the release and take the ”shut up” money. This former RFE/RL journalist pointed out that Turkmen or Uzbek broadcasters who report on human rights abuses ”are not in high demand in  the Czech Republic or elsewhere, just in Turkmen and Uzbek prisons.”  The BBG and RFE/RL worked together to make sure that these journalists would have no access to legal protections or union representation that could safeguard them from unfair treatment. Read Broadcasting Board of Governors Rated Worst Than Ever By Its Employees and As One of The Worst Federal Agencies.

These policies of discriminating against journalists and other employees on the basis of national origin are directly linked to the BBG’s efforts over more than a decade to privatize U.S. international broadcasting. One of the main goals was to bypass many of the U.S. government personnel rules which apply to employees at the Washington-based Voice of America (VOA), which is also managed by the BBG. While the BBG kept outsourcing U.S. broadcasting jobs abroad and to private contractors, VOA  was being slowly dismantled. In the view of most BBG members, the U.S. government offered too many protections to employees and prevented the BBG from quickly implementing the previous Administration’s schemes for changing  the public opinion in the Middle East that turned out to be wateful and counterproductive.

Without understanding the special mission of U.S. international broadcasting and the special role of journalists engaging in human rights reporting to countries ruled by repressive regimes, BBG members want to treat them the same way as employees of U.S. commercial broadcasters. Unlike most of their foreign-born colleagues,  fired American journalists with job experience and degrees from American universities can compete for new jobs in the large and open U.S. media market. More importantly, they have rights that are being denied by the BBG to foreign-born journalists at RFE/RL and to journalists working for other BBG-managed private contractors. Lacking job security, they were less likely than their colleagues at VOA to question the BBG’s misguided ideas about increasing audience reach with entertainment programming. Fearful of losing their jobs, they were also less likely to resist the pressure to offer a platform to Holocaust deniers in the hope of winning approval among Alhurra’s viewers. 

There is an additional journalistic and security risk associated with this kind of treatment of vulnerable employees. FreeMediaOnline.org has warned that denying RFE/RL journalists basic rights and job security makes them and their families more vulnerable to intimidation by intelligence and security services of countries like Russia and Uzbekistan.

Embolden by the freedom to fire and hire journalists in Prague, the BBG executive staff has been trying to find ways to subject workers at the Voice of America to some of the personnel practices used against foreign-born employees at RFE/RL and at other private broadcasting entities under their management. This task is being accomplished largely through program and budget cuts designed to reduce the number of government employees protected by the union and Federal personnel rules.

In order to continue broadcasting to critical regions of the world, these budget and program cuts have forced the Voice of America to rely increasingly on independent contractors, called Purchase Order Vendors (POVs), who work without any job protections. In violation of existing U.S. laws, they perform all the functions of full-time government employees, but as in the case of foreign-born journalists at RFE/RL, they can be dismissed at any time without any reason.

Recently, a TV producer  in VOA’s Russian Service was abruptly fired after years of excellent and loyal service but cannot challenge her dismissal because she is not a government employee. The system imposed by the BBG prevents contract workers, who for all practical purposes are regular employees, form joining a union and protecting their rights. It also allows managers to fire older workers, often women, and replace them with friends and former associates.

VOA’s Russian Service has become the latest target of the BBG’s efforts to weaken and dismantle Voice of America broadcasting in favor of private radio stations such as Alhurra and RFE/RL.  In July 2008, the BBG eliminated all VOA on-air radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military invasion of the disputed part of Georgia. As a direct result of  the BBG’s actions, VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia diminished by an unprecedented 98% in just one year, from 7.3% in 2007 to the estimated figure of just 0.2% in 2009.

Both Republicans and Democrats serving on the BBG have supported privatization of U.S. international broadcasting, limiting the rights of foreign-born journalists at RFE/RL, and dismantling of VOA broadcast services. The effort to eliminate all VOA Arabic-language programs and to create privately-run Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television wanted by neoconservatives in the Bush White House and the Pentagon was led by two prominent former Democratic BBG members: Norman Pattiz, founder of Westwood One radio syndicate, and Edward E. Kaufman, now a U.S. Senator from Delaware. Since their creation, there have been reports of numerous financial and editorial scandals at both of these stations, including charges of giving airtime to Holocaust deniers. A study by researchers for the University of Southern California, who conducted a review of Alhurra broadcasts, concluded that “the quality of Alhurra’s journalism is substandard on several levels.“ With only one BBG member, conservative radio host Blanquita Cullum voicing her concern, all others supported eliminating VOA radio broadcasts to Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, India and a number of other countries. As a result of the decisions taken by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Voice of America no longer has any Arabic-language programs. Read ProPublica.org: Report Calls Alhurra a Failure

Hillary Rodham Clinton did not join the BBG until she became the Secretary of State in the Obama Administration and was not involved in making these controversial decisions. Both Anna Karapetian and Snjezana Pelivan hope that a woman of her experience and stature would intervene to put a stop to some of the mismanagement and abuses for which they hold the BBG and its executive staff responsible.  Snjezana Pelivan had petitioned the Czech court to question Secretary Clinton about the BBG’s personnel policies because of her role as the Board’s ex officio member. There was very little chance, however, that a Czech court would take this step and in any case Hillary Clinton, as a foreign government official who enjoys diplomatic immunity, could not be compelled to give a testimony. As one former RFE/RL journalist ironically observed, in rejecting Snjezana Pelivan’s claim, the Czech court ruled that RFE/RL is in full compliance with a Communist law. When RFE/RL was based in Munich, Germany, its employees enjoyed full protection of German labor laws. When the radio station was moved to Prague in 1995, the BBG gladly took advantage of Communist-era Czech laws to limit the rights of RFE/RL journalists. Unless there is a settlement, the case will most likely be decided by the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.

Some of the current and former BBG members, including Norman Pattiz, Senator Kaufman, and D. Jeffrey Hirschberg have close ties to Vice President Biden and Secretary Clinton. It’s not clear whether these personal ties and the fact that these Democrats joined forces with neoconservatives in the Bush Administration will affect how Secretary Clinton the Obama White House deal with the reports of mismanagement at the  BBG.  Snjezana Pelivan hopes that the new Secretary of State might make a difference, but she is only cautiously optimistic after learning that Mrs. Clinton made no public comments about BBG’s personnel policies during her recent visit to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headquarters in Prague:

“I admire Hillary Clinton, but I felt sorry for her when I was reading her address to RFE/RL journalists. She had to visit RFE/RL; it is “her” Radio now. But everybody there who listened to her knew about mine and Anna’s court cases; everybody knew that she was suggested as a witness against RFE/RL; and everybody knows that we are fighting not only for our but also for their rights and dignity.”

Snjezana Pelivan says that she plans to ask the Croatian Government to join her in her case against RFE/RL and the BBG at the European Court of Human Rights. Anna Karapetian may also ask the Armenian Government to join the suit. For more information about the case see the press release from ICCEE - Information Centre – CAUCUSUS EASTERN EUROPE. ICCEE, a non-governmental non-profit organization established in Prague in 1999, is the publisher of major Armenian magazine in Europe, Orer (Days).

Even some members of RFE/RL management are appalled by the personnel practices encouraged by the radio station’s former and current leadership and the BBG. One manager sent this letter to Ms. Pelivan:

“Dear Snjezana,

Forgive me for not being able to adequately express my feelings in this short e-mail. The news about your firing was too shocking and surprising. Yes, I’m deeply surprised by the fact that a professional like you was fired and by the way it was done. I don’t know the details of your cooperation with other services but on behalf of our service and its bureau I would like to express you our sympathy and gratitude for your very important job done with and for our service during last few years. It was a great pleasure to have you, an excellent teamworker, among us. I wish you all the best for the future. Best regards, (name withheld — SP)”

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980’s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia. He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

About FreeMediaOnline.org

FreeMediaOnline.org is a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide. Founded in 2006, FreeMediaOnline.org reports on threats to media independence and assists journalists in media-at-risk countries.

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources.

Dmitry Medvedev

Barack Obama

  FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog,  GovoritAmerika.us, April 1, 2009, San Francisco –  According to a senior U.S. Administration official, the violent attack against Lev Ponomarev, a leading Russian human rights activist, was raised during Wednesday’s meeting in London between President Obama and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev.

Lev Ponomarev

“I’m sure many of you have read, Lev Ponomarev was badly beaten in Moscow yesterday. He is a leading human rights activist in — first in the Soviet Union with Andrei Sakharov and all through — that came up in a very productive, positive exchange about what had happened to him, and a concern expressed on both sides,” said a senior U.S. Administration official in a background briefing for reporters in London.

Earlier, nine human rights organizations have called on the Russian authorities to investigate the attack against the prominent human rights defender. Ponomarev, 67, was attacked and seriously injured by several unidentified assailants late on the night of March 31, 2009, outside his apartment building in Moscow. The organizations – the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, Amnesty International USA, Freedom House, Frontline Defenders, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the International League for Human Rights, International Memorial Society, and the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights – called on US President Barack Obama and other leaders meeting with President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia at the G-20 gathering in London to highlight the need to bring Ponomarev’s attackers to justice and to ensure an end to the growing number of attacks on human rights activists in Russia.

Russia is also one of the least safe countries in the world for journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a recently released report, “Getting Away With Murder 2009“ that President Dmitry Medvedev failed to deliver on his promise that attacks against journalists would be investigated and prosecuted. The CPJ charges that the Russian authorities “have failed to obtain convictions in even high-profile killings such as the 2004 murder of Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov and the 2006 slaying of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.”

The most recent victim of violence against journalists is Sergey Protazanov, a reporter for Grajdanskoye Soglasye, a local newspaper based in the north Moscow suburb of Khimki. The Reporters Without Borders NGO reported that he died at his home on 30 March, two days after being attacked and beaten. He had been covering irregularities in the 1 March local elections in which Khimki mayor Victor Strelchenko was reelected.

Human rights violations have been a low priority in U.S.-Russian relations in recent years and, in the opinion of most experts, are not likely to take precedence for the Obama Administration over such issues as nuclear proliferation, Iran, or the war on terror.  But according to Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, the raising of the Ponomarev case during the Obama-Medvedev meeting may  signal a subtle change in emphasis.

BBG

The lack of concern for the human rights situation and the safety of journalists in Russia became especially glaring during the last months of the Bush Administration in controversial actions of the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees U.S. broadcasts to Russia and other countries. The BBG took Voice of America (VOA) Russian-language radio programs off the air last summer just 12 days before the Russian military incursion into Georgia.  The BBG’s action resulted in a major reduction in human rights reporting by the Voice of America in Russia and, combined with the Kremlin’s own media restrictions, produced an estimated 98% drop in annual audience reach for VOA (from 7.3% in 2007 to est. 0.2% in 2009).

FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a volunteer-run Russian-language website, GovoritAmerica.us, to compensate for the BBG’s restrictions on VOA broadcasting.

The BBG has also been accused of exposing Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalists in Russia to intimidation and blackmail by the Kremlin’s security services and of denying their foreign-based journalists basic protections of U.S. labor law. In addition to VOA, whose journalists are Federal employees, the BBG oversees RFE/RL, which is based primarily in Prague and Moscow, and other privatized broadcasting entities such as Alhurra Television for the Middle East. BBG-managed Alhurra has been criticized for poor journalism, broadcasting statements by Holocaust deniers, and financial irregularities. A Russian human rights organization has criticized RFE/RL for giving extensive airtime to a Russian politician known for his racist views.

Hillary Clinton

Former Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists are suing the U.S. taxpayer-funded broadcaster in the Czech and European courts over its labor practices. One of the journalists requested the Czech Constitutional Court to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is an ex officio member of the BBG. She enjoys diplomatic immunity and is not expected to respond.

Later this week, she and President Obama will be visiting the Czech Republic, where the local media has reported on this story as an example of a double standard in American human rights policies. The controversy also drew a comment from former Czech President and human rights defender Vaclav Havel. The case could prove embarrassing to U.S. officials during President Obama’s visit.

FreeMediaOnline.org’s Ted Lipien said that “the BBG’s actions, which been disastrous for journalists’ rights overseas, have caused its own journalists and other employees to rate it in a government-wide Office of Personnel Management survey as the worst-run Federal agency.” He called on the Obama Administration to “move quickly to restore the human rights focus at the BBG and to make the agency accountable to the American taxpayers who don’t want their money to be used to give credence to Holocaust deniers and contribute to racial violence in Russia.”

But even the low figure of 2.5% does not reflect the whole severity of the decline since it represents VOA audience for the whole of 2008 and not VOA’s current reach in Russia. FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit,  estimates that the annual reach for VOA in Russia is now well below 1 percent.

According to FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien,  the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the agency in charge of VOA, is to blame for causing a 98% loss of audience in just one year. Lipien said that BBG’s actions have caused hundreds of thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars to be wasted at a time when audiences in Russia are faced with increased media censorship and need access to objective news and opinions from the United States. 

With the elimination by the BBG of on-air VOA radio and TV for Russia in the second half of last year, FreeMediaOnline.org estimates the total audience since August/September 2008 to be not much higher than 0.2 percent. InterMedia — the firm which conducted the survey – reported 0.2% as past year’s reach of VOA Russian Service website. InterMedia also reported that only a very small percentage of former VOA Russian radio listeners and TV viewers are visiting VOA website.

From the InterMedia market media report: “International Broadcasting in Russia,”  December 2008:

VOA Russian [Service] stopped airing radio and TV programs by September 2008 (video and audio segments are still aired by a small number of local stations); Internet is Golos Ameriki’s [VOA Russian Service] principal focus for reaching audiences in Russia. This caused a drop in total annual reach for Golos Ameriki from 10.3 percent in 2007 to 2.5 percent in 2008. Past-year reach for VOA’s golosameriki.us Internet site was 0.2 percent.[Emphasis added by FreeMediaOnline.org.] Other international broadcasters were able to maintain their reach, with Radio Svoboda [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)] reaching 1.0 percent of Russians weekly and 3.2 percent annually; BBC reaching 0.8 percent weekly and 3.3 percent annually; and DW [the German broadcaster] reaching 0.7 percent weekly and 2.0 annually. As with Golos Ameriki, [VOA Russian Service] only a very small portion of this reach can currently be attributed to the websites. 

In late July 2008, just twelve days before the Russian army invaded parts of Georgia in a territorial dispute,  the BBG took all VOA  Russian-language radio programs off the air and later canceled VOA Russian-language TV programs. These decisions were made without any public announcements and implemented despite protests from members of Congress, VOA journalists, and human rights organizations.

The subsequent tremendous drop in audience size (98% in just one year — an unprecedented loss of audience for an existing  media service in the history of international broadcasting) can be attributed almost entirely to decisions made by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a small group of presidentially-appointed officials representing both major political parties and their executive staff who manage U.S.-funded broadcasts for overseas audiences.  Critics of the BBG’s actions argue that these decisions have deprived VOA journalists of their ability to counter censorship in Russia by making it impossible for VOA to use multiple program delivery platforms and media products at a critical time.

VOA and other Western international broadcasters have experienced a steady loss of audience reach in Russia over a number of years as a result of the Kremlin’s restrictive media policies. But according to Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, the sudden multifold  drop in 2008 was a direct result of actions taken by U.S. government officials and cannot be attributed to any new restrictions by the Russian authorities.  Also confirming that the BBG is to blame for the sudden loss of VOA audience in Russia  was an observation in the InterMedia report that ”other international broadcasters were able to maintain their reach” last year.

Former BBG chairman,  James K. Glassman – known for his neoconservative views, support for privatization of U.S. international broadcasting assets, and great enthusiasm for the use of Internet –  personally rejected urgent requests from VOA journalists who pleaded with him last August to allow them to resume radio broadcasts to Russia and the war zone in Georgia.

BBG officials justified their actions by claiming that VOA would be in a better position to overcome Russian government media censorship if it concentrated its programming efforts exclusively on the Internet. FreeMediaOnline.org and others repeatedly warned the BBG that this strategy was extremely naive and would reward Mr. Putin’s censorship of independent media. The same critics predicted a drastic drop in audience size for VOA if the BBG implemented its plan. They also pointed out that the BBG plan called for spending money on needless projects benefiting private Internet contractors while the Russian Service would be deprived of substantive Internet content previously generated from radio and TV programs.  Read FreeMediaOnline.org report “Model Interactive Website Touted As Replacement for Voice of America Radio to Russia Attracts No Comments from Users”

This is how in an internal memo “VOA Russian Options Paper,”  written in 2008, government bureaucrats inspired by the BBG’s marketing strategies, boasted about their ability to substantially increase VOA audience size in Russia using only the Internet:

Based on the situation in Georgia and the separatist territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, VOA has investigated options to reach audiences in Russia and neighboring countries. While options exists for reaching audiences through traditional broadcast methods — AM/FM, shortwave, and television — data indicate the growing market for reaching our target audience is in new media.

FreeMediaOnline.org sent a critique of the Internet-only strategy to the BBG, but a former BBG member, Edward E. Kaufman, who is now a Democratic Senator from Delaware, reportedly blocked an effort  by another Board member to hold a vote on resuming VOA radio broadcasts to Russia. Kaufman, another Board member Jeff Hirschberg, and the BBG executive director Jeffrey Trimble are believed to have initiated the move to deprive VOA of radio and TV presence in Russia in order to benefit Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Jeff Hirschberg and Jeffrey Trimble, who was formerly acting president of RFE/RL, have personal links with RFE/RL managers in Moscow and Prague, while Senator Kaufman may have supported the move because RFE/RL is incorporated in Delaware. His former boss, Vice President Biden, was also known to be a strong supporter of the private broadcaster during and after the Cold War. Trimble and most BBG members ignored warnings that by establishing a large presence in Russia after the Cold War, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has exposed its reporters, who are Russian citizens, to intimidation and blackmail by the Russian secret police. This was not seen as a problem immediately after the end of the Cold War but after Mr. Putin’s rise to power (he is a former KGB officer) is viewed as a serious threat to RFE/RL’s journalistic independence. Read FreeMediaOnline.org report Radio Liberty Russian managers put a positive spin on Putin’s comments about the murder of a pro-democracy journalist 

 VOA’s audience reach in Russia had been previously reduced over time due to the Russian secret police interference with the affiliate stations using VOA programs but never suffered a similar one-time loss, not even from major increases of jamming of shortwave radio signals during the Cold War.  FreeMediaOnline.org had warned that eliminating VOA radio and TV in Russia would be harmful to media freedom and would send a wrong signal to the Kremlin and human rights activists.

While all major Western international broadcasters have been increasing their Internet presence, none followed the BBG’s course on relying exclusively on the Internet in Russia and dropping both radio and TV. Ted Lipien said that a proper response to the growing media censorship in Russia should have been an expansion of the number of delivery platforms rather than their reduction to a single one. Before leaving public service, he was an acting associate director of the Voice of America. To compensate for restrictions and reductions in VOA output, FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a volunteer-run GovoritAmerica.us website, which compiles Russian-language news and analysis about the United States and U.S.-Russian relations.

Journalists working in the VOA Russian Service also don’t see BBG’s actions as designed to help them but rather as being part of the same strategy that resulted in the dismantling and eventual total elimination of VOA Arabic-language programs as well VOA broadcasts in other languages. After they had created Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television, BBG members made sure that VOA no longer had any Arabic-language programs. Some VOA Russian Service journalists suspect that the BBG executive staff purposely mislead the Board about the benefits of the Internet-only option in order to justify later a complete elimination of VOA broadcasts to Russia citing low audience ratings, which they knew would result from their actions.

One of many nonprofit foreign policy organizations, which believes the BBG has seriously mismanaged U.S. international broadcasting, is the highly-respected Public Diplomacy Council. The organization, which includes former diplomats, academics and other foreign policy experts, has called on President elect Obama and Congress to take urgent action in reforming publicly-funded U.S. international broadcasting. The Council blames the BBG for ignoring strategically important target areas such as Russia, the Balkans, India and the Western Hemisphere. The Council noted that the Broadcasting Board of Governors “has taken special aim at the Voice of America” by abolishing the VOA Arabic Service and reducing its broadcasts in English to the Middle East and other regions.  The Council also criticized the BBG’s decision to terminate all VOA radio broadcasts in Russian shortly before Russia’s military attack on Georgia last summer. Read FreeMediaOnline.org report: Public Diplomacy Experts Urge Obama to Stop the Broadcasting Board of Governors from Silencing the Voice of America

Many VOA journalists, NGO media freedom activists, and former U.S. diplomats believe that the BBG, dominated by an alliance of Republican neoconservatives and Democrats who joined forces in formulating and supporting ill-conceived outreach programs vis-a-vis the Muslim world such as Alhurra and Radio Sawa,  is determined to continue expanding privatization of U.S. broadcasting resources. The latest push, which affected Russia and Ukraine and threatened Georgia, came between July and December, in the waning months of the Bush Administration, and may have been purposely orchestrated and timed to present the Obama Administration with a fait accompli.

Not satisfied with killing VOA radio in Russia, on December 31, 2008, the BBG terminated VOA radio programs to Ukraine. This action was taken just hours before Russia stopped the flow of natural gas supplies through Ukraine when that country was on the verge of a major economic and political crisis. The Ukrainian crisis has since then gotten much worse and  now seriously threatens democratic gains and pro-Western foreign policy of the government in Kiev.

Critics have been warning for years that the Broadcasting Board of Governors is outsourcing vital journalistic and public diplomacy functions to private entities and contractors who – as a direct result of BBG’s marketing policies – are unable and unwilling to reflect American opinions and values and lack basic journalistic skills. (BBG-created private broadcaster Alhurra Television for the Middle East aired comments by Holocaust deniers and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty gave extensive airtime to extremist Russian politicians known for their racist views.)  A study by researchers for the University of Southern California, who conducted a review of Alhurra broadcasts, concluded that “The quality of Alhurra’s journalism is substandard on several levels.“

Critics also accuse the BBG of ignoring such problems with these private broadcasters and of deliberately trying to dismantle the Voice of America, which operates under strict U.S. government fiscal controls and enjoys journalistic independence under a Congressional Charter. The Charter requires VOA to adhere to high journalistic standards and to accurately and objectively represent a broad spectrum of American views. According to critics, BBG officials prefer to steer money to private broadcasters, such as Alhurra and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, because these stations can be more easily controlled. They can also be used to benefit their friends and supporters with high-paying positions and private contracts.

According to these critics, the BBG executive staff knew from previous market research that  VOA’s annual reach on the Internet for its Russian-language programs in Russia was well below one percent. (Weekly reach for VOA Russian website is far lower: 0.03%.) Despite of this data, BBG officials made widely exaggerated predictions and ignored obvious warnings that the Russian security services are fully capable of blocking and manipulating the Internet. RFE/RL was not ordered by the BBG to drop its shortwave radio broadcasts and managed to hold on to its radio audience, as did the BBC  and Deutsche Welle Russian-language services — another proof that the sudden 98% drop in VOA’s reach in Russia was orchestrated by the BBG and its executive staff.

Ted Lipien of FreeMediaOnline.org said that the actions of BBG officials that have obliterated VOA audience in Russia not only harm media freedom but represent  a monumental waste of U.S. taxpayers’ money. “In just one year, these BBG officials and their staff have completely wasted 98% of a VOA broadcasting service budget,  making a free gift of  hundreds of thousands of U.S. tax dollars to Mr. Putin and other enemies of democracy and free media in Russia,” Lipien said. Even if the BBG managed to increase VOA Russian-language website’s reach by 100% each year for the next few years,  — a highly unlikely prospect — it would take about a decade to go from 0.2 percent to the 2007/2008 level registered before the BBG’s single program delivery platform strategy was put into place.

As many critics have feared, there is also evidence that the BBG’s marketing policies may have started  a process of promoting censorship and self-censorship at the Voice of America, which would be a violation of the VOA Charter and U.S. law. In an apparent attempt to increase ratings similar to what seemed to have encouraged airing of statements by Holocaust deniers on Alhurra and giving airtime to racist politicians on RFE/RL broadcasts, VOA Russian Service journalists were reportedly confronted with the BBG-commissioned market research analysis and told to avoid topics that are “confrontational” to the Russian audience. They were also reportedly ”berated” for their “hostile” and “in your face” blogging and urged  not to express their opinions in blogs.

“They want VOA’s Russian Service toothless,” was the conclusion of one VOA journalist who remains defiant but is afraid that the BBG will succeed in destroying VOA Russian-language programs as they did earlier with VOA Arabic broadcasts and many other VOA vernacular and English services. “That is the only way to characterize their demands,” this VOA Russian Service journalist wrote, ”because most of our materials will not be liked by [the] Kremlin and its agents (how do we know that [market research] monitors are not Kremlin’s loyal servers?). Welcome to the new era at VOA’ Russian Service!”

The VOA journalist did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation. VOA employees have no confidence in the BBG’s ability to manage international broadcasting.  In a recent government-wide survey, they rated their employer as one of the very worst among U.S. government agencies. Read FreeMediaOnline.org report Broadcasting Board of Governors Rated Worst Than Ever By Its Employees and As One of The Worst Federal Agencies

More comments from a VOA Russian Service journalist:

I am reading the program review materials [annual evaluation of a VOA program] now and can’t help laughing at some things. For instance, it states that “given the unfavorable media climate in Russia today, characterized by increasingly strict government control, VOA Russian has embarked on a project to develop a multi-media, interactive web site that will allow the Service to circumvent the problem of government pressures which have led to the loss of most of its affiliates.”

Translation: VOA and IBB [IBB -- the International Broadcasting Bureau] is a technical arm of the BBG] closed Russian radio and TV programs and put all eggs in one basket at a time when Kremlin is following China’s steps to establish full control of Internet.

All VOA’s independent evaluators “related concerns about ongoing difficulties associates with the functionality of video files (on our site). One suggested that incompatibility between site formats and available local technologies ( in Russia and other former Soviet states) might exacerbate this problem.”

Translation: VOA management is clueless about media infrastructure in countries other then the U.S. and wastes money, resources and talent without achieving the goals of U.S. international broadcasting.

Senator Richard Lugar is right about past mistakes that had crippled U.S. public diplomacy, but new actions by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors also continue to silence America’s voice abroad

Closed Down American Centers and Crippled Voice of America

In an insightful and candid article posted on the Foreign Policy magazine blog, Senator Richard R. Lugar, argues that the United States can only blame itself for not being able to properly explain America to the world. He pointed out that “reaching out to the man or woman on the streets of Jakarta or Caracas or Cairo is the practice of public diplomacy,” which, unfortunately — according to Senator Lugar — the U.S. government has not done very effectively in recent years. The closing down of American information and cultural centers abroad — the subject of Senator Lugar’s article — is, however, only one example of an American institution destroyed or severely crippled by political expediency and naivete of Washington bureaucrats. The Voice of America (VOA)  — international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government  — is another institution being dismantled by the very agency — the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) – set up to strengthen U.S. broadcasts to the world and to represent America abroad.  

In his article, the Republican senator from Indiana noted the continued existence of various U.S. public diplomacy initiatives, including the Peace Corps and the Fulbright academic exchange program. He also mentioned the Voice of America without offering any further comments about VOA. His overall conclusion, however, after analyzing other public diplomacy programs, was that the United States has been “waging the battle of ideas with one hand tied behind its back.”

Lugar’s criticism is focused on the dismantling of the United States Information Agency (USIA) by a joint action, taken by the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress, and the subsequent closing down of American information and cultural enters around the world. Senator Lugar wrote that the United States no longer has “a worldwide equivalent to what Britain and France have, namely, facilities in major world cities with libraries, reading rooms, outreach programs, unfiltered Internet access, film series, lectures, and English classes that enable people to meet with Americans of all walks of life and hold two-way conversations on issues of mutual interest.”

The central point of Senator Lugar’s article is that the U.S. government’s own actions and inactions have contributed to its inability to conduct effective public diplomacy overseas. But the closing down of American centers has not been the only action that was damaging to America’s image abroad in recent years. While Senator Lugar noted that the Voice of America still exists, many of VOA radio programs for overseas audiences have in fact been terminated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

BBG Ends VOA Radio to Russia Less than Two Weeks before Russia Invades Georgia

In an incredible show of bad judgment, this bipartisan board had taken VOA radio programs to Russia off the air just 12 days before the Russian invasion of Georgia last summer. The BBG also ended VOA radio broadcasts to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania just as Mr. Putin started to increase pressure on Russia’s neighboring states to make them follow the Kremlin’s foreign policy objectives. BBG members even wanted to terminate VOA radio broadcasts to the Republic of Georgia — one of the most vulnerable of the former Soviet republics – but the Russian invasion forced them to suspend their decision, at least temporarily. Earlier, the BBG also tried to reduce radio broadcasts to Tibet.  The Board only backed off when pro-independence demonstrations in Tibet were bloodily suppressed and a group of Tibetan monks staged a silent protest on Capital Hill.

In yet another show of incredibly poor judgment combined with bad timing and ulterior bureaucratic motives resulting in a major waste of U.S. tax dollars, the BBG had silenced Voice of America radio programs to Ukraine on December 31, 2008, just one day before Russia halted natural gas deliveries to Europe. Since then, Ukraine has sunk further into a major economic and political crisis, which is threatening its pro-Western foreign policy and democratic changes won during the Orange Revolution.

As a supporter of American Centers abroad who appreciates the value of teaching English and sharing American culture, Senator Lugar would probably also appreciate the damage of the BBG’s persistent efforts to reduce funding for Voice of America English broadcasts. (BBG claims that some of these VOA programs have small audiences and therefore should be terminated. But the BBG has done close to nothing to help market and distribute such programs. The agency instead poured millions of dollars into private entities and their contractors. As it turns out, the results in terms of audience size in many cases are not statistically significantly any better than what traditional VOA broadcasting was able to deliver at a much lower cost and with much greater credibility in representing America.)

Responding to these decisions, a union representing the Voice of America employees said on its website that the BBG has made “at least a half dozen mistakes in the past few months.” One of them resulted in the silencing of the Voice of America Hindi radio broadcasts just a few weeks before the terrorists attacks in Mumbai. ProPublica.org, a nonprofit investigative journalism website, and FreeMediaOnline.org, another nonprofit organization which supports media freedom worldwide, have also reported extensively on journalistic scandals and mismanagement at the BBG.

“America” As a Bad Word — Market Research without Political and Human Rights Context

BBG officials argue that their actions are based on solid market research. Theirs is the same argument used previously to justify the closing down of American information and cultural centers around the world, namely that radio — which comes as close to providing similar people-to-people contact with real Americans as American centers had done before they were eliminated — is not nearly as effective as the Internet, short video clips, and other impersonal but highly technological solutions.

The real story behind the BBG’s actions is a combination of incredible incompetence and the desire of BBG members to subcontract Voice of America work to private entities which can benefit their U.S.-based friends, supporters and constituents. Several years ago, BBG bureaucrats spent countless hours discussing names for  their new privatized broadcasting stations for the Middle East, making sure above all that no word “American” was used. Their market research showed that Muslim audiences did not approve of such verbal associations with America. We can only imagine what the Voice of America would have been named if the BBG had existed during World War II and had been able to conduct market research in Hitler’s Germany. Presumably, at that time most Germans also did not like the word “American.”

Dubious Market Research in Russia Results in Attempts at Censorship

More recently, BBG-commissioned market research in Russia revealed that panels of Russian media users don’t like to hear criticism of Mr. Putin’s authoritarian rule. Based on the previous BBG logic and actions, VOA journalists — who had been told to start blogging after the BBG eliminated their radio programs to Russia — are likely to be urged now to go easy on criticizing Mr. Putin and to hold back on expressing in their blogs their personal opinions about human rights abuses. Inside sources told FreeMediaOnline.org that such instructions have in fact been issued to the VOA Russian Service staff, although it’s unclear where within the BBG hierarchy they have originated. What’s quite clear, however, is that the BBG is responsible for creating a culture in which bureaucratic interests and poorly-understood and often patently compromised market research data take precedence over journalistic values, human rights concerns, and plain common sense.

It is unlikely that VOA Russian Service journalists, who are committed to journalistic freedom and objectivity and protected by the Congressionally approved VOA Charter, would comply with censorship orders. “They want VOA’s Russian Service toothless,” was a conclusion of one VOA journalist who remains defiant. Ultimately, however, their jobs as journalists are not protected if the BBG wants to get rid of those who do not play ball. Since VOA employees cannot be fired directly for their criticism, the way the BBG had dealt with such internal opposition it in the past was by eliminating programs which these employees produce and making them subject to reduction-in-force separation from government employment.

One of the reasons the BBG favors privatized broadcast entities over VOA is the ability to fire their journalists at will. The BBG even denies some foreign-based journalists basic protections of U.S. labor laws. BBG members may not even realize that this has serious implications for America’s image abroad and journalistic freedom. These abhorrent, un-American, and undemocratic BBG policies also make these foreign journalists insecure about their employment more vulnerable to intimidation and recruitment by the intelligence services of dictatorial regimes.

The Russian Service journalists, who were completely demoralized when the former BBG Chairman James K. Glassman personally refused their urgent pleas to allow them to resume radio broadcasts to the war zone in Georgia, have recovered much of their fighting spirit and seem unafraid to offer highly critical comments about Mr. Putin’s rule in Russia and the suppression of local independent media. BBG-ordered program cuts, however, severely limit their ability to provide in-depth multimedia coverage of human rights abuses and other critical issues.

BBG Market Research Encourages Airing of Racist Views on RFE/RL

A few years earlier, BBG-hired private consultants also cited market research to force programming changes at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) — a surrogate broadcaster with a splendid Cold War record completely mismanaged and set adrift by the BBG. Based on market research, RFE/RL journalists were strongly discouraged from sounding too critical about human rights abuses in Mr. Putin’s Russia. Those who resisted were silenced, fired or forced to resign. BBG consultants told RFE/RL reporters that Russian audiences want a more positive view of Russian society and politics and a more critical view of the West. 

About the same time, BBG member Jeff Hirschberg (D. Jeffrey Hirschberg), who has business links in Russia, and the Board’s executive director Jeffrey Trimble conducted secret negotiations with Russian officials to assure them that RFE/RL would practice only ”responsible” journalism. When human rights journalist Anna Politkovskaya was brutally murdered in 2006, their hand-picked managers in charge of RFE/RL operations Moscow and Prague expressed confidence in Mr. Putin’s leadership. Another change resulting from BBG market research in Russia was to allow Russian nationalists and other extremists access to Radio Liberty airwaves, causing a Russian human rights organization to issue a warning that comments by these individuals on a U.S. taxpayer-funded station promote acts of violence against immigrants, Blacks, and other minorities.

In criticizing Radio Liberty, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau said the station was guilty not only  of enabling such people “to spread their poisonous views,” but also of legitimizing their ideas “in the minds of many impressionable radio listeners.” The appeal, written by the organization’s head Aleksandr Brod, argues that stations, which “in their pursuit of higher ratings“ invite such “nationalist radicals,” are giving these enemies of democracy a larger audience and exacerbating ethnic tensions.

BBG Eliminated Voice of America Arabic Broadcasts

Because most VOA journalists would not blindly accept BBG’s directives, former and current BBG members had made sure earlier that the Voice of America would no longer have any Arabic-language broadcasts that would be immune to BBG-desired changes based on short-term trends identified by dubious market research. With strong encouragement and support from the Bush White House, BBG officials created instead Alhurra Television for the Middle East, making sure it has no cumbersome journalistic and financial standards used by VOA and no mandate to present a broad spectrum of American views and values that some Middle Eastern audiences might find objectionable.

While I’m not an expert on the Middle East and the Islamic world, I have studied propaganda and written extensively on this subject. My media contacts throughout Eurasia have been quite clear that they are not fooled by clever names for broadcasting entities thought up by the BBG and would prefer to receive American news and views from an authoritative American source clearly identified for what it is. BBG officials and the Bush White House should have known that propaganda techniques used during World War II and even during the Cold War — one of which was to try to obscure the identity of the originator of news and information — have no chance of success in the era of instant communications and the Internet.

Denying the Holocaust at U.S. Taxpayers’ Expense

BBG members acted surprised when Alhurra reporters gave extensive coverage to statements from a Holocaust deniers’ conference, held in Tehran, with absolutely no attempt to present balancing views. Yet these Alhurra reporters and TV anchors were not doing anything in this case that BBG’s own market research would not support.
Use this link to the ProPublica.org web site to view the Alhurra report with English subtitles: http://www.propublica.org/feature/alhurra-video

Misleading Administration and Congress

In answers to written questions from Senator Richard Lugar submitted during her Senate confirmation process, Hillary Clinton said that “the BBG has learned that it must rely on the best market analysis to understand the unique listening habits and attitudes of the populations we seek to inform.” The BBG indeed spends tremendous amount of taxpayer money on market research. Unfortunately, most BBG members have demonstrated that they lack both experience and judgment to apply research results to political realities in countries without free media.

Before being confirmed as the Secretary of State, Senator Clinton obviously had no time to study closely U.S. international broadcasting or the BBG (of which she is now an ex officio member). In her answers to Senator Lugar, she most likely repeated information provided by the BBG staff. She also told Senator Lugar that “performance of America’s international broadcast entities has been quite successful in telling America’s story (largely the task of the VOA).”

I believe Secretary Clinton, along with most Americans, would be surprised to learn that the Voice of America does not have a single Arabic-language program. Neither does any other U.S. government-supported entity that has “American” in its name — thanks to the BBG’s strategy of privatizing U.S.  international broadcasting and using market research to make decisions that ultimately belong in the political rather than commercial sphere.

In carrying out its privatization of U.S. international broadcasting, the BBG has ignored and mislead Congress and high Administration officials and has tried to keep secret its mistakes and actions designed to weaken the Voice of America. BBG officials had refused to make public an independent study, which was highly critical of Alhurra, until they were forced to make it available on the Internet by the Obama transition team. The termination of VOA radio broadcasts to Russia was also done without any public announcement.  

Supporting Privatized Entities More Important to BBG than Representing America

Senator Lugar is right that, from the U.S. public diplomacy perspective, the elimination of American centers abroad was a damage self-inflicted by the U.S. Government (the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress). Also a self-inflicted damage was the elimination of the VOA Arabic Service by the BBG and the termination of VOA on-air radio programs to Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and many other countries.

The governments of most of these countries would have gladly allowed VOA to continue these radio broadcasts on local stations, thus assuring VOA access to a wide audience. The situation in Russia is drastically different, with the secret police actively prohibiting VOA rebroadcasts by private stations and keeping a close eye on the work of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalists in Russia who are Russian citizens and thus subject to Kremlin’s laws.

The intimidation of RFE/RL reporters in Russia makes the continuation of VOA radio programs from the safety of Washington even more necessary as a powerful political signal to the Kremlin’s secret security services, and equally to the segment of the Russian population that cares about democracy and human rights. BBG officials, however, refuse to admit that there is a security problem, since they justified the termination of Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia by claiming that RFE/RL radio broadcasts would be sufficient. They also don’t want scrutiny of their earlier decisions to place significant RFE/RL facilities and other U.S. international broadcasting resources in Moscow within easy reach of Russia’s security services.

Naive About Mr. Putin’s Secret Police and Internet in Russia

According to information and documents obtained by FreeMediaOnline.org, BBG staff shows a high level of cluelessness about the ability of the new, post-Soviet KGB, now known as the FSB (Mr. Putin’s former employer), to control the Internet in Russia. Despite obvious signs that the Internet is great but not safe in times of serious crisis and not sufficient to reach the most vulnerable audiences, BBG bureaucrats remain widely enthusiastic about their Internet-only strategy for VOA’s Russian Service. With their American-only mindset, they assume that war zone victims, refugees, and the poorest and most repressed segments of world’s populations have high-speed  and uncensored access to the Internet just like they do in their Washington suburban homes.

It may have not even occurred to these BBG officials that the audience panels they commissioned in Russia at great expense to U.S. taxpayers are most likely controlled by the Russian FSB. Based on my own experience working for many years with owners of pro-democracy private radio and TV stations in Russia who had been harassed into silence by the FSB,  the Kremlin’s spy agency almost certainly has tried to skew BBG’s market research and RFE/RL reporting from Russia.

BBG Deserves Greater Scrutiny

While he did not address these problems, Senator Lugar should be applauded for speaking out candidly about past U.S. mistakes when it comes to public diplomacy. He, along with other members of Congress and the new Obama Administration, however,  now has a chance to save U.S. public diplomacy not only from past disasters but also the ones being currently perpetrated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors and its staff.

At the very least, the BBG members and senior officials deserve a much closer scrutiny of their decisions than they had received during the Bush Administration. During the past eight years, BBG members — both Democrats and Republicans — enthusiastically supported any ill-conceived public diplomacy initiative for the Middle East and came up with a few disastrous ideas of their own at a cost of millions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers. Only one BBG member, Blaquita Walsh Cullum, the only working journalist sitting on the Board, was said to have opposed program cuts to countries without free media and objected to hiring expensive consultants to beef up BBG’s public image in the United States.

Cullum is a Republican and was otherwise a strong supporter of the Bush foreign policy. Other Republican members, including the former BBG chairman James K. Glassman, unquestionably backed cutting of VOA radio broadcasts and privatizing U.S. international broadcasting. Ironically, all Democratic BBG members were just as enthusiastic in their support for the ill-conceived broadcasting initiatives for the Middle East as their Republican colleagues, if not more so.

In fact, the main architect of Alhurra and Radio Sawa was Norman Pattiz, a Democratic appointee and a personal friend and supporter of former Senator and now Vice President Joe Biden. Pattiz — whose company, America’s largest radio network Westwood One, is now in serious financial trouble — introduced commercial market research and commercial music formats at the BBG and pushed hard for eliminating Voice of America broadcasts to the Middle East and other regions. Pattiz worked closely with another former BBG member, Edward E. Kaufman, who is now a Democratic U.S. Senator from Delaware.

Other members of Congress, however, have taken notice of the waste and mismanagement at the BBG. One of the most severe critics of the BBG’s performance during the Bush Administration years was a Republican Senator from Oklahoma Tom Coburn, M.D.

Another U.S. Senator, Sam Brownback (R-KA),  has called for abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors. He introduced legislation that would establish the National Center for Strategic Communications, an agency similar to the now defunct U.S. Information Agency. 

Also, Patrick Leahy, a Democratic Senator from Vermont, has tried to stop the BBG from eliminating U.S. broadcasts in foreign languages. His request to the BBG not to end VOA radio Russia and other  media-at-risk countries was ignored. The BBG executive director Jeffrey Trimble, a former acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,  implemented the cuts, reportedly after requesting and receiving advice and help from Senator Biden’s staff.

VOA employees, including journalists in the Russian Service, are hopeful that the Obama Administration, with its new message about America’s intentions around the world, will understand the public diplomacy value of the Voice of America news broadcasts and will not want to engage in deceptive marketing of news using privatized entities with purposely ambiguous names. Their optimism is tempered, however, by the knowledge that Senator and now Vice President Biden was a strong supporter of former BBG members, Norman Pattiz and Edward Kaufman.  Kaufman, who was at one time Biden’s chief of staff in the Senate, was described by a union leader at the BBG  as “no friend of Voice of America employees.” Biden’s support for the privatization of U.S. international broadcasting may be partly explained by the fact that some of the BBG’s private entities, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, are incorporated in Delaware, Biden’s home state.

Federal Human Capital 2008 Survey (FHCS)

One of the Worst Among U.S. Government Agencies Needs Reform

The BBG, which was rated by its own employees as being among the very worst U.S. government agencies, should be abolished — an action recommended by the highly-respected Public Diplomacy Council, a nonprofit organization which includes former diplomats, academics and other foreign policy experts. The PDC has called on President Obama and Congress to take urgent action in reforming publicly-funded U.S. international broadcasting.

The hundreds of millions of dollars that the BBG spends on the discredited and scandal-ridden Alhurra Television could not only pay for re-opening of some U.S. centers abroad and for restoring VOA radio broadcasts to the Middle East and to Russia. Some funds might even be left to offset the record budget deficit and to help with economic recovery. In any case, most Arabs view Alhurra as the Bush Administration’s propaganda tool.

President Obama apparently understands the credibility issue with Alhurra and probably would not want his name to be associated with a television station that welcomed comments from Holocaust deniers. Rather than going to Alhurra, President Obama gave his first televised message to the Arab world in an interview with the Al Arabiya television network.

The United States should be honest with its potential Middle Eastern audiences. Rather than hide behind ambiguous names like Alhurra and Sawa, it should restore Voice of America Arabic broadcasts and offer programs that truly reflect America’s diversity and values. Some of the privatized entities managed by the BBG have proven again and again that they are incapable of applying high journalistic standards. In their current setup under BBG’s marketing rules, they are also incapable of representing America to the Muslim world.

Another reason for urgent action are the financial scandals that have been a constant occurrence among the privatized broadcasting entities so strongly favored by the BBG. The agency has been largely left unsupervised during the previous two administrations. If Senator Lugar can get his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate to support him and get the Obama White House and Secretary Clinton to go along, he may have a good chance of not only repairing U.S. public diplomacy but of making U.S. government more fiscally responsible and more efficient.

The BBG’s organizational chart looks even worse than the GM corporate structure with multiple non-American brands, multiple physical facilities, and multiple executive positions costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars in completely unnecessary and duplicative expenses. (BBG members should have asked themselves why the British Government was not trying to dilute the BBC’s brandname by hiding it under multiple non-British names.) Eliminating the BBG and consolidating almost all U.S. international broadcasting under one American brand, as proposed by the Public Diplomacy Council and others, could make America’s voice abroad once again strong, credible, effective and fiscally justifiable to American taxpayers.

…after the Cold War, the United States prematurely declared victory in the battle for hearts and minds, terminating the U.S. Information Agency, which ran the centers, and cutting the State Department’s public diplomacy budget. Many thought the Internet and global satellite TV would render irrelevant the people-to-people exchanges fostered by the centers. — Senator Richard R. Lugar

About Ted Lipien

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980’s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia.

Wojtyla's Women by Ted Lipien

About FreeMediaOnline.org

In 2006, Ted Lipien founded FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide.  He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

About GovoritAmerika.us

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of some of the more serious news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

BBG officials initially had told the VOA Russian Service that their requests to resume radio broadcasts were a “non-starter” even after Russia invaded Georgia. Only after weeks of protests, including reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, the BBG finally allowed VOA to produce a short audio program for the Internet, updated only Monday through Friday. This program is rather difficult to find on the VOA website. We made it available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us website managed by FreeMediaOnline.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, said that the Bush Administration did not have a strong response to the brutal murder in 2006 of the independent journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages U.S. government-funded international broadcasting, terminated Voice of America (VOA) radio programs to Russia in July 2008 and has not responded to reports that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalists working in Russia are being intimidated by the secret police.

“We hope that the Obama Administration will increase U.S. support for media freedom in Russia by allowing VOA and RFE/RL journalists to expand their coverage of human rights abuses without fear of reprisals from the Russian authorities and criminal elements,” said FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien.

20 January 2009

Double murder reveals culture of impunity and injustice

SOURCE: ARTICLE 19, London

(ARTICLE 19/IFEX) – The following is a joint action by ARTICLE 19 and Index on Censorship:

Russia: double murder another blow for human rights

The shocking murders of the lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the young journalist Anastasia Barburova on Monday brings Russia’s human rights record to a new low. The crime is compounded by the knowledge that Russia has a culture where impunity reigns and murderers are rarely brought to justice. Even in the case of a journalist as famous as Anna Politkovskaya, after a rare two-year murder investigation it is the alleged accomplices who are on trial – while the murderer remains at large.

Stanislav Markelov was well known for his work as a human rights lawyer, particularly in Chechnya. Markelov represented the family of 18-year-old Kheda Kungayeva, who was murdered by Yuri Budanov – the first senior officer to be convicted of human rights abuse during the Chechen campaigns.

Markelov had announced that he would be challenging Budanov’s early release last week.

Those who are brave enough to expose human rights abuses in Russia risk their lives. Over the past few months, victims have included Umar Israilov, a Chechen who claimed that he had been tortured by President Ramzan Kadyrov and had filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. He was shot dead in Vienna last week. Last November, Mikhail Beketov, a local newspaper editor, was assaulted in the Moscow suburb of Khimki and left in a coma. Beketov had been a fearless critic of the local administration.

Last summer, Magomed Yevloyev, who owned the website www.ingushetia.ru and also bravely exposed abuses, was shot dead in a police car as he was being taken away for questioning. All these cases represent a striking and widespread level of lawlessness.

We would like to remind the Russian authorities that as a State Party to the European Convention on Human Rights, Russia has agreed to secure the human rights of all within its jurisdiction, including the right to life and to freedom of expression.

ARTICLE 19, English PEN and Index on Censorship call on the Russian authorities to do everything in their power to bring those responsible for the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Barburova to justice – and to demonstrate the will to address the continuing culture of impunity.
For further information, contact ARTICLE 19, 6-8 Amwell Street, London, EC1R 1UQ, U.K., tel: +44 20 7278 9292, fax: +44 20 7278 7660, e-mail: info@article19.org, Internet: http://www.article19.org

FreeMediaOnline.org has been reporting recently on the actions of U.S. political appointees and senior government agency officials who had stopped Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Russia 12 days before the outbreak of the war in the Caucasus, terminated VOA Hindi radio to India shortly before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and ended VOA Ukrainian radio programs on December 31, 2008, just hours before Russia stopped the flow of natural gas supplies to Ukraine and the rest of Europe. 

According to the latest Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS), the employees of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) have recently given the BBG Board members and the officials of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) the worst ever rating for good management and placed the BBG at the very bottom of Federal agencies.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) describes the Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS) as “a tool that measures employees’ perceptions of whether, and to what extent, conditions characterizing successful organizations are present in their agencies. Survey results provide valuable insight into the challenges agency leaders face in ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce and how well they are responding.”

FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit supporting media freedom worldwide, is deeply concerned that the BBG’s actions are undermining access of international audiences to unbiased news and information from the United States. Especially hard hit are the very poorest groups as well as refugees and other victims of war and repression. In many countries around the world — including Russia, India, and Ukraine –the BBG and the International Broadcasting Bureau staff have abandoned Voice of America radio, which used to serve these audiences, in favor of relying exclusively on television and the Internet. This insensitive and elitist strategy has been condemned by labor leaders, human rights activists, as well as BBG’s own employees.

FreeMediaOnline.org is republishing a report on the latest Federal Human Capital Survey posted on the BBG Government Employees AFGE Local 1812 Union web site.

2008 HUMAN CAPITAL SURVEY RESULTS EVEN WORSE FOR BBG

 

DATELINE: Washington, D.C. 01/09/09.  The results of the 2008 Federal Human Capital Survey for the Broadcasting Board of Governors were released yesterday.  It proved to be the worst survey yet for the BBG.  Some examples of the results:

 

The BBG received a negative response of 37.1% to the survey question: “I recommend my organization as a good place to work”.  The negative responses governmentwide averaged 14.9%.

 

It was a negative response of a whopping 50.9% for the BBG regarding the question: “How satisfied are you with the policies and practices of your senior leaders?”.  The governmentwide negative numbers for this question were 28.9%.

 

For the question, “I can disclose a suspected violation of any law, rule or regulation without fear of reprisal”, the BBG earned a 33.3% negative response.  Governmentwide the negative responses averaged 19.0%.

 

All the negative percentages for the BBG listed above are higher than the previous results for the same questions in the surveys of 2006 and 2004.  Instead of working to improve the dismal showing on past surveys, the management of the BBG and the organizations under its umbrella seem to take pride in being if not the worst, one of the worst, places to work in all of government.  Lisa Vandenberg, the president of the Union representing the employees at the FLRA, was quoted recently regarding the survey results for the Agency where she works, “We were led by people not interested in our mission or sustaining our program.”.  That could very well be said by the people working under the BBG.

 

FreeMediaOnline.org has also been critical of the BBG for dismantling the Voice of America and favoring privatized U.S. broadcasting not designed or staffed to present American voices and explain American values to the world. These BBG policies have resulted in giving airtime on Alhurra Television to Holocaust deniers and allowing racist Russian politicians extensive access to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) airwaves. The BBG has also based much of RFE/RL’s reporting and administration in Russia, where locally-hired employees and contractors, who are Russian citizens, are subject to blackmail and other forms of intimidation from the Kremlin’s secret police and intelligence services.

The BBG executive director is Jeffrey Trimble, who was formerly acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Only five members currently serve on the bipartisan Board: Joaquin F. Blaya, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, Steven J. Simmons, and Condoleezza Rice (ex officio).

One prominent former BBG member Edward E. Kaufman, recently appointed as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, (He had been Senator Biden’s chief of staff and replaces him in the Senate.) joined other Democrats and Republicans, including the BBG’s most recent Republican chairman James K. Glassman, who is now the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs,  in voting to end VOA radio programs to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and India — each time shortly before a major news emergency affecting these countries. Only one BBG member, syndicated radio host Blanquita Walsh Cullum, was reported to have opposed programming cuts to media-at-risk countries. 

Some BBG employees have expressed hope to FreeMediaOnline.org that the new Obama Administration will undertake major reforms at the Agency. The Obama transition team has been credited with forcing the BBG to release contents of a highly critical independent study of Alhurra Television, conducted by the USC Annenberg School for Communication, which the BBG wanted to keep secret. The transition team was reviewing America’s international broadcasting services, including the Voice of America and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and advised the transition team working with the U.S. Department of State on public diplomacy.

The international broadcasting services team was led by Ernest J. Wilson III, Dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. BBG employees will have a chance to question him during a roundtable discussion which will take place January 22, 2009, 12:00 PM, at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Participants can register online on the USC Center on Public Diplomacy web site.

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, January 13, 2009, San Francisco – 

State Department videos embarrass the U.S. among audiences abroad while the Department’s top promoter of Public Diplomacy 2.0 pushes to eliminate Voice of America radio journalism in favor of TV and Internet propaganda advertising and broadcasting based on Cold War models.

While I was an elementary school student in Poland in the 1960s, we had to write compositions why communism was the world’s best political system and what made Lenin the greatest man who has ever lived. Communist media in Poland was full of similar propaganda, although admittedly it was not nearly as naive as what the Soviet media was offering at the time. Most people in Poland were both offended by and laughed at such crude efforts to promote communism. They listened instead to radio broadcasts by Radio Free Europe (RFE) and the Voice of America (VOA). Everybody knew that these two station, financed by the U.S. government, represented a particular political point of view against communism, but we appreciated the fact that they offered generally accurate news and sophisticated journalistic analysis rather than crude propaganda.

Since then, communism had collapsed and international consumers of media news have become even more skeptical and discerning. And yet a number of recent U.S. State Department political appointees responsible for public diplomacy and officials in charge of U.S. international broadcasting have enthusiastically embraced propaganda advertising  as the primary solution to the problems of how the Bush Administration and the United States are perceived abroad.

These efforts have been in line with the general desire of neoconservative Bush Administration officials to subcontract much of public diplomacy and international broadcasting to private corporations and institutions, thus limiting fiscal controls, transparency and input from professional State Department diplomats and Voice of America journalists who could question and possibly block outlandish and counterproductive ideas. Instead of responsible and balanced journalism by Voice of America, foreign audiences are now being offered short propaganda videos and entertainment-rich programs produced by private contractors.

A similar effort to replace journalism with questionable marketing and advertising concepts has been underway for a number of years at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which is responsible for U.S. international broadcasts. Even though this is a bipartisan board, its Democratic members joined forces with neoconservative Republicans in slashing Voice of America journalistic programs and creating private broadcasting entities, such as Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television for the Middle East, with the stated goal of “marrying the mission to the market,” (BBG’s own slogan.)

BBG members and their private consultants had told these privatized entities to play music, offer programs that audiences agree with, and to make every other effort to attract more listeners and viewers. Not surprisingly, Muslim viewers dismissed Alhurra as an American propaganda station, even though in its misplaced desire to please the audience the station aired reports expressing sympathy with those who deny that six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis during the World War II Holocaust.

Use this link to the ProPublica.org web site to view the Alhurra Holocaust report (with English subtitles) as an example of what the BBG’s marketing strategy has produced at these privatized U.S.-funded stations:  http://www.propublica.org/feature/alhurra-video 

Voice of America is the only U.S. Congress-funded international broadcaster that has tried to resist BBG’s marketing strategy, but “Marrying the Mission to the Market” and  Public Diplomacy 2.0, which in their current form can only be described as Propaganda 2.0, have largely replaced objective journalism in U.S. efforts to communicate with foreign audiences. One of the first Voice of America broadcasting units eliminated by the BBG was the VOA Arabic Service, which was highly-respected in the Middle East for independence and the quality of its radio programs.

More recently, the current public diplomacy chief at the State Department, James K. Glassman, the neoconservative co-author of the book DOW 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market, (Yes, in 1999 Glassman was just as enthusiastic in predicting that the U.S. stock market would soon reach this level as he is now about his vision of Public Diplomacy 2.0.) ordered the termination of VOA radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military attacked Georgia in August 2008. Glassman had also wanted to eliminate all VOA radio programs to Georgia and Ukraine. He personally rejected pleas from VOA Russian Service journalists to allow them to resume radio broadcasts to the war zone in the Caucasus during the height of the Russian-Georgian conflict.

Glassman apparently became convinced that even war refugees and war combatants can get their news from the Internet, and if they can’t, they probably do not matter as an audience since more often than not these groups are not statistically significant. His other assumption was that the Internet requires vast sums of money (for private consultants and contractors), and therefore VOA cannot possibly do both radio and Internet to Russia at the same time, even though many other private and public broadcasters are combining the Internet with radio and TV without much difficulty.  It’s hard to tell what Mr. Glassman thinks about the people in Russia and elsewhere who cannot afford the Internet, but he definitely ignores the power of direct communication between American journalists and their  international audience that has always been crucial, especially in times of serious political crises, and he dismisses concerns about the documented ability of Russia’s secret services to block and sabotage the Internet.

At first, the BBG would not even consider restoring VOA radio to Russia, but after protests by FreeMediaOnline.org and others, it allowed the Russian Service to produce a much reduced 30 minute radio program Monday through Friday, which has no current newscasts but does offer more in-depth coverage of critical current issues than what is available from other formats.  Despite BBG’s decision to spend large sums of money on outside Internet consultants and contractors, the Russian radio program is difficult to find on the VOA web site and its audio is often not updated regularly, thus leaving site visitors to hear the same outdated program over a number of days.

Voice of America Russian radio program is made available for easier access and listening on the GovoritAmerika.us web site managed by FreeMediaOnline.org

ProPublica.org, a nonprofit investigative journalism web site, has uncovered major financial and editorial irregularities related to private contractors hired under the rules set up by the BBG. Some of them were confirmed by an independent study prepared by the Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, University of Southern California. Commissioned by the U.S. government,  the study’s authors concluded that Alhurra, Arab-language television to the Middle East managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors fails to meet basic journalistic standards and is seen by few.

It was beyond the scope of the USC study to point out that the money to operate Alhurra has been taken from VOA broadcasting to such strategic countries as Russia, China (including Tibet), and India.  As millions of dollars were being spent and wasted on Internet propaganda videos at the Department of State and on programs at scandal-ridden private broadcasting entities, such as Alhurra, the Broadcasting Board of Governors also made a decision to stop VOA Ukrainian radio broadcasts. This happened just hours before Russia shut off the flow of natural gas supplies to Ukraine and the rest of Europe.

Only five members serve currently on the Board: Joaquin F. Blaya, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, Steven J. Simmons, and Condoleezza Rice (ex officio). One prominent former BBG member Edward E. Kaufman, recently appointed as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, (He had been Senator Biden’s chief of staff and replaces him in the Senate.) joined other Democrats and Republicans in voting to end VOA radio programs to Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and India — each time shortly before a major news emergency affecting these countries, which included the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

In making these cuts, the majority of BBG members completely disregarded warnings and requests from the U.S. Congress, human rights NGOs, and the union of journalists and broadcasting technicians working for the Agency. BBG members have also ignored advice from professional diplomats and media experts familiar with foreign cultures. Neither Kaufman nor Biden seemed concerned that silencing VOA radio while RFE/RL operations in Russia are vulnerable to intimidation by the Russian secret police presents a serious risk. RFE/RL is incorporated in Delaware.

Most BBG officials treat their jobs as giving them carte blanche to support their pet projects.  Democrats on the Board became enthusiastic supporters of the Bush Administration’s plans for privatized broadcasting to the Middle East. The chief architect and implementer of these plans at the BBG was a Democratic appointee, Norman Pattiz, founder of the U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, only one BBG member, a Republican appointee, was reported to have opposed VOA programming cuts to media-at-risk countries, angering both former BBG Republican Chairman Glassman, and Ted Kaufman, former top Democratic member. Leaders of the union representing BBG employees have called for the Board to be eliminated as did the highly respected Public Diplomacy Council, whose members come from diplomacy, the armed forces, nonprofits and academia. Most BBG members are successful businessmen (often in domestic broadcasting industry) with strong political connections, but they lack substantive experience in foreign policy, public diplomacy, international broadcasting, or international human right advocacy.

This is a link to “I Am America” video in Russian on the State Department’s web site that truly qualifies as a historical exhibit in a propaganda museum. It is described on YouTube as a video “presented to the U.S. State Department by Business for Diplomatic Action” that “will be played in U.S. embassies and consulates.” The images of America  are spectacular, but the message is crudely propagandistic and naive. Anybody with even basic political education, which describes much of today’s world, knows that the people in the video do not run U.S. foreign policy and had elected George W. Bush twice as their president before changing their minds about the direction the country should take in dealing with the world. A one-sided view of America will be dismissed as propaganda regardless of how many dollars are spent on a clever advertising packaging.  

In fact, millions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent on these highly embarrassing videos, which are prominently featured on the State Department web site. A single VOA radio or television report about President Elect Barack Obama’s family background and foreign policy plans could not only help repair some of the damage done by these propaganda videos but would also have a long-term positive impact on how America will now be perceived abroad. Unfortunately, for ideological and bureaucratic reasons, the BBG has put VOA on its chopping block, and the  Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy is still determined to replace a substantive dialogue with foreign audiences with short and clever video messages and apparently wants to hold on to his job after the Obama Administration takes over.

Another propaganda video commissioned from private contractors by the State Department public diplomacy 2.0 team announces a worldwide contest for submitting privatelly-produced videos about the meaning of the word ‘democracy.’ View it here. The prize is “an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, New York and Hollywood to attend special screenings of the winning videos, gain exposure to the U.S. film and television industry and meet with creative talent, democracy advocates and government leaders.” The contest has been prominently featured on the State Department’s official web site, but the YouTube page, where contest videos must be submitted, has received less than 160,000 views despite being available for several months. A popular Voice of America radio program can attract many more listeners in single day and offer a journalistic view of American democracy that is far more substantive and credible.

The Internet does offer enormous opportunities for U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting but not in the hands of propagandists, or  private contractors who have no journalistic and foreign policy experience and care primarily about their own profits. Most of the members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (James K. Glassman was its most recent chairman) have done great harm to journalism and to the U.S. image abroad. The current Bush Administration’s public diplomacy chief at the Department of State does not seem to realize that many types of Internet activities are not appropriate or credible when done by government officials and are better left to truly independent NGOs and individual bloggers.

For people placed in charge of U.S.-funded journalistic entities, most BBG members have shown remarkable indifference to the concept of journalistic independence. In their misplaced desire to chase after higher audience ratings, they have allowed Russian-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reporters to be intimidated by the Kremlin’s secret police and tolerate giving extensive airtime to Russian politicians known for their racist views. This is the same marketing-first/journalism-second approach advocated by the BBG that had encouraged Alhurra, another privatized broadcaster, to air comments by Holocaust denies.

Radio Liberty, which during the Cold War had played a highly effective role as a surrogate broadcaster, providing in-depth domestic news coverage for listeners in the Soviet Union, has become a virtual hostage of the BBG strategy of favoring privatized surrogate broadcasting. Mr. Putin’s repressive but sophisticated media policies call for an entirely different approach, and yet the BBG insists that RFE/RL should have a large presence in Russia and rejects VOA radio broadcasts from the United States as unnecessary. But the idea of keeping many private broadcasting entities fits well with the desire of individual BBG members, both Democrats and Republicans, to keep as much control over U.S. international broadcasting for themselves and to reward their friends with well-paid positions and lucrative contracts.  James K. Glassman was reported to have tried to hire Paula Zahn, formerly of CNN, as the BBG’s high profile spokesperson at about the same time when the BBG executive director Jeffrey Trimble, formerly acting president of RFE/RL, was implementing the plan to stop VOA radio broadcasts to Russia. Paula Zahn had wisely declined the offer perhaps after realizing that her job might be to explain why a group of Tibetan monks staged a silent protest on Capital Hill against the BBG’s plans to reduce U.S. radio broadcasts to Tibet. Thankfully, at least in this case the BBG backed down.

Contrary to what BBG members believe, including its most recent chairman, traditional independent radio and television journalism can be successfully merged with Web 2.0 concepts and can achieve high audience ratings without resorting to questionable management techniques, marketing practices and crude propaganda.

They could have learned much about the use of “soft power” from reading a recently published book by Ambassador Patricia Gates Lynch, Thanks for Listening: High Adventures in Journalism and Diplomacy, with the foreword by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. For many years Ms. Gates had been a host of the highly popular VOA Breakfast Show. She made millions of friends for America around the world without resorting to propaganda simply by telling her audiences about America and broadcasting interviews with exceptional and ordinary Americans. Later named  by President Reagan as U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar and the Comoros Islands, Pat Gates also worked briefly as a public relations representative for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at the time when that organization practiced truly independent surrogate journalism while Voice of America offered a mix of American news, American commentaries, as well as reports on political and human rights situation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There was no BBG at that time, and both VOA and RFE/RL were managed by journalistic professionals and distinguished Americans, people like NBC anchor John Chancellor and Malcolm Forbes, Jr. Political appointees serving now on the BBG do not want people with ideas and much greater accomplishments to tell them how to practice broadcast journalism.

Ironically, even as the Cold War ended, neoconservative Republicans and  internationally naive but politically ambitious Democrats serving on the BBG chose the very earliest surrogate broadcasting model developed when Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberation (later Radio Liberty) were still financed and run by the CIA. This model, which was completely outdated and inappropriate for skeptical and hostile audiences in the Middle East (audiences in Easter Europe during the Cold War were highly sympathetic to the message in American-funded radio broadcasts) nevertheless gave BBG members and the White House maximum control over truly uncooperative and potentially uncooperative journalists.

While surrogate broadcasting was effective during the Cold War, even then it faced some serious problems, which BBG members chose to ignore when they developed their grandiose broadcasting plans for the Middle East. They could have learned about these problems and how to avoid them from an exceptionally honest account by former RFE/RL manager James Critchlow. In his book, Radio Hole-in-the-Head: Radio Liberty: An Insider’s Story of Cold War Broadcasting, Critchlow describes some very serious policy and editorial errors committed by naive political operatives, incompetent bureaucrats, and uninformed journalists who had worked at RFE/RL between 1953 and the end of 1980s. 

At least during the Cold War, RFE/RL journalists were based in Munich, West Germany, and were relatively safe from intimidation by the KGB. Serious editorial problems were usually uncovered and corrected until the BBG took over. The BBG placed most of RFE/RL Russian Service reporters in Russia and kept them there even after former President Putin and the KGB’s successor agency, the FSB, nearly completely took control over the local broadcast media using force and intimidation.

Unwilling to give up or significantly scale down RFE/RL’s large bureau in Moscow, BBG members and their staff, some of whom had business and personal links to Russia, began negotiating with members of the Putin regime while BBG-hired consultants told RFE/RL journalists to make their programs less critical of the political and social realities in Russia.

Independent Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya Who Was Murdered in Moscow in 2006

Shortly after independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow in an execution-style hit in 2006, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty managers made public statements strongly suggesting an attempt on their part to appease Mr. Putin. In an apparent effort to protect their presence in the country, the head of RFE/RL Moscow bureau, Elena Glushkova, said in an on-air discussion in October 2006 that the work of Radio Liberty journalists cannot cause Russia any harm. She insisted that RFE/RL reporters respect and love Russia. She also pointed out that all Radio Liberty reporters who work in Russia are Russian citizens and said that her optimism despite the murder of Ms. Politkovskaya is based in her belief in “the common sense of the current Russian leadership.” Maria Klain, Russian Service director at the RFE/RL home office in Prague, also expressed confidence that the radio’s future in Russia looks good. These comments surprised and offended pro-democracy activists in Russia who were still in mourning after Anna Politovskaya’s murder.

More recently, a Russian human rights organization, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, has criticized Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for giving an entire hour of airtime to a Russian politician known for his racist views and verbal attacks on Blacks and other ethnic and racial minorities.  For the new U.S. administration headed by the first African-American president, this is not a very encouraging sign that the BBG’s marketing and programming strategies have been successful. View FreeMediaOnline.org report: “U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Spreading Racist Views on Radio Liberty in Russia: What Would Barack Obama Say If He Knew…”   

One would think that in light of such developments and statements by RFE/RL managers in Russia, the BBG would want Washington-based Voice of America journalists to expand their Russian broadcasts. The BBG’s policy, however, has been not only to dismantle the Voice of America radio services but to make sure that  even the names of the privatized entities designed to replace them did not have any references to the U.S. in an naive belief that this would make them more credible with skeptical and hostile audiences.

By placing much of the work and operations of these privatized entities in countries like Russia and in the Middle East and relying on locally-hired staff, the BBG created no safeguards to make sure that local reporters would not be blackmailed by foreign security and intelligence services. At the same time, the BBG denied locally-hired employees the protection of U.S. labor laws, damaging U.S. reputation in countries like the Czech Republic and drawing attention and criticism from local politicians, including the highly respected former Czech President Vaclav Havel. Link to FreeMediaOnline.org report Radio Free Europe or Radio Free Putin? Did BBG End U.S. Surrogate Broadcasting in Russia on Radio Liberty in an Attempt to Appease Mr. Putin and Pursue Its Marketing Strategy?

The new Obama Administration has a chance to completely reform U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting. Millions of U.S. taxpayers’ money are still being wasted by the BBG in financing multiple privatized broadcasting entities — a veritable GM-like corporate model – with multiple executive positions and duplicate administrative structures. None of these entities is set up to present America’s story to the world.

The Voice of America, the only journalistic organization that knows how to do this job without propaganda and with some measure of credibility, desperately needs protection from the incompetent political appointees at the BBG and from the Bush Administration’s public diplomacy chief. If nothing is done, propaganda will triumph over journalism and America’s reputation abroad will be further diminished. Public Diplomacy 2.0 designed by ideologues, propagandists, and profit-seeking private contractors is an embarrassment. The Obama Administration would do well by sending these State Department videos to a museum as a warning to future government officials in charge of public diplomacy and U.S. international broadcasting who might again be tempted by the allure of propaganda.

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980’s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news broadcasts to Russia and Ukraine.

In 2006, Ted Lipien founded FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit which supports media freedom worldwide.  He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

In December 2008, FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of more serious  news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy that has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, January 7, 2009, San Francisco – In yet another show of incredibly poor judgement combined with bad timing and ulterior bureaucratic motives resulting in a major waste of U.S. tax dollars, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan body responsible for U.S. international broadcasts, had silenced Voice of America (VOA) radio programs to Ukraine one day before Russia halted natural gas deliveries to Europe.  In a similar move just a few months earlier, the BBG had terminated VOA radio programs to Russia and had stopped VOA Hindi radio to India shortly before the recent deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

As a major energy and political crisis was about to hit Eastern and Western Europe, the last Voice of America Ukrainian radio program aired on December 31. The BBG was aware of the Kremlin’s threat to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine as of January 1, 2009 but decided to eliminate the VOA Ukranian program anyway and leave the Obama Administration with another fait accompli.

Listen to the last Voice of America  (VOA) radio broadcast to Ukraine. These radio programs were eliminated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) on Dec. 31, 2008, one day before Russia halted natural gas deliveries to Ukraine and Western Europe, precipitating a major crisis. Earlier, the BBG  had eliminated VOA radio to Russia 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia and took VOA Hindi programs off the air shortly before the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. The BBG also wanted to reduce radio programs to Tibet, also shortly before major pro-independence demonstrations in the region, which were brutally suppressed by the Chinese authorities. 

In July 2008, the BBG had halted Voice of America radio programs to Russia just 12 days before the Russian military forces attacked Georgia. The former BBG chairman, neoconservative Republican  James K. Glassman, who now serves as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, ignored urgent requests from the Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) who on behalf of the Senate Appropriations Committee had directed the BBG not to terminate broadcasts to Russia and other countries without free media.

Glassman formed an alliance with the BBG’s liberal Democratic members, including Edward E. Kaufman and D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, who were equally eager to dismantle Voice of America radio programs to Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine in order to bolster privatized broadcasting by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which is based in Prague and  Moscow. The closing down of VOA Russian radio was implemented by the BBG executive director Jeffrey Trimble, a former RFE/RL acting president, who worked closely with Glassman, Kaufman and Hirschberg and reportedly received advice from Senator Biden’s staff. Only one BBG member was reported to have voted against cutting VOA radio programs.

BBG officials claim that VOA Ukrainian TV programs and the VOA Ukrainian web site, which have not been eliminated, are sufficient to present American news and opinions. They made the same claim with regard to Russia even though many people in the region, especially in the conflict areas, do not have access to the Internet. There is also overwhelming evidence of the ability of the Russian security services to block and sabotage Western news and human rights web sites.  

The most recent BBG chairman, James K. Glassman, however, is well known for his boundless enthusiasm for the Internet and pro-democracy online video contests, which he describes as Public Diplomacy 2.0. He is equally enthusiastic about the use of private consultants to carry out U.S. government operations, including public diplomacy,  and several years ago he co-authored a book “DOW 36,000,” predicting that the U.S. stock market would be at that level by now.  Glassman ignored warnings from both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill who urged him not to discontinue Voice of America radio broadcasts.  U.S. lawmakers were especially concerned about countries without free media and countries subject to pressure from aggressive neighbors and vulnerable to attacks from terrorist groups.

Another former BBG member, Senator Kaufman (D-DE), who had previously served as Senator Biden’s chief of staff and was appointed to replace him in the U.S. Senate, has been a strong supporter of steering money to RFE/RL, which is incorporated in Delaware. Both Kaufman and Vice President elect Biden were supporters of the Bush Administration’s Middle East broadcasting policy focused on marginalizing the Voice of America and  using privatized entities and private consultants rather than U.S. government employees.

Despite the BBG’s bipartisan structure, moving forward with the privatization of US international broadcasting has been part of the strategy of the Board’s Democratic members and their neoconservative Republican colleagues ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The BBG has enthusiastically embraced the Bush Administration’s plan to outsource  broadcasting to private entities, many of them based overseas. Their strategy also called for the elimination of Voice of America services based in Washington, D.C. These VOA broadcasting services provided more balanced news with an American perspective and were subject to much stricter editorial and fiscal controls than the new privatized stations.

Acting on advice of the BBG’s most prominent former Democratic member Norman Pattiz, founder of the now seriously ailing U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One, and with strong encouragement from the White House and the Vice President Cheney’s office, the bipartisan Board shut down VOA’s highly-respected Arabic radio service and created two privatized Middle East broadcasting entities,  Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. Both are increasingly viewed by U.S. diplomats, foreign policy experts and NGOs as a major propaganda blunder, contributing to the growth of anti-Americanism rather than improving U.S. image in the region.

Privatized broadcasting entities managed by the BBG have been plagued with financial and editorial scandals. The nonprofit investigative journalism web site ProPublica.org has uncovered  major financial irregularities at Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television and reported on the lack of editorial controls that have resulted in giving airtime to Ismalist extremists and Holocaust deniers.  A study prepared by the Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, University of Southern California, which was commissioned by the U.S. government, concluded that Alhurra, Arab-language television to the Middle East managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) fails to meet basic journalistic standards and is seen by few.

The BBG’s privatized corporate structure looks very similar to the General Motor’s panoply of automotive brands, but — except for the rapidly disappearing Voice of America — it does not offer any sign of representing the United States. As with the ailing U.S. automotive firms, the structure created by the BBG includes multiple and duplicate executive positions. It offers BBG members, their staff, contractors and employees of the privatized entities plenty of opportunities for international travel at taxpayers’ expense between Washington and such desirable overseas locations as Prague, Dubai, and Hong Kong.

In a major waste of taxpayer resources, the BBG spends millions of dollars on separate office facilities for each station, even in Washington, D.C. Ted Lipien, president of media freedom nonprofit FreeMediaOnline.org, whose reporting on the Holocaust deniers conference in Teheran led to the investigations of Alhurra Television’s programming, suggested that another investigation, this time of the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ management practices, should become a priority for Nancy Killefer, President Elect Barack Obama’s appointee as the White House Chief Performance Officer.

The Public Diplomacy Council, a nonprofit organization which includes former diplomats, academics and other foreign policy experts, has also called on President Elect Obama and Congress to take urgent action in reforming publicly-funded U.S. international broadcasting. The PDC is proposing consolidation of all five broadcast entities into a single international network. The PDC believes that the proposed consolidation and replacing the Broadcasting Board of Governors by a new nonpartisan oversight commission would result in “cost savings aimed at making U.S. global broadcasting unmatched on the airwaves and in cyberspace.”

There is also growing evidence of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s inability to carry out its journalistic mission in Russia and in other countries where free media is at risk. FreeMediaOnline.org has been reporting that as a result of strategic decisions made by the BBG,  RFE/RL journalists based in Russia are subject to blackmail by the Kremlin’s secret police. The BBG not only ignored these warnings but also prevented VOA journalists based in the relative safety of Washington, D.C. to broadcast radio news to the war zone during the height of the Russian-Georgian conflict last summer. A Russian human rights organization has accused RFE/RL of giving extensive airtime to an extremist Russian politician known for making racist comments about Jews, Blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities.

FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien has urged the Obama transition team to restore Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia and Ukraine. Lipien said that VOA journalists should be allowed to serve as a credible voice of the American people and be able to give overseas audiences a responsible, accurate and objective view of American values and the goals of the new Obama Administration. Otherwise, radio and TV audiences in the Middle East may think that the U.S. agrees with Holocaust deniers and Russians may believe that Americans, who have elected the first African-American U.S. president, are happy to pay for giving airtime to racist Russian politicians on a U.S. taxpayer-funded radio station, Lipien said.

FreeMediaOnline.org has launched a Russian-language web site — GovoritAmerika.us ГоворитАмерика.us  – which includes summaries of more serious  news and commentaries from multiple U.S. government and nongovernment sources. According to Ted Lipien, the web site is designed to compensate for the loss of information from the United States for Russian-speaking audiences due to program and budget cuts implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The web site, which includes links to VOA Russian Service news reports, is also designed to counter the BBG marketing strategy, first introduced by former BBG member Norman Pattiz. The marketing approach imposed by the BBG and its private consultants has forced broadcasting entities to focus on entertainment programming and to avoid hard-hitting political reporting that might prevent local rebroadcasting or offend local officials. GovoritAmerika.us web site was developed without any public or private funding and is managed by volunteers. It is also hosted on LiveJournal.com.

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, December 30, 2008, San Francisco – FreeMediaOnline.org has been reporting in recent months on the intimidation of Radio Liberty (Radio Svoboda) journalists in Russia and the unwillingness of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to address this issue. Years after Mr. Putin has destroyed nearly all independent broadcast media in Russia, the BBG, which manages Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), still insists that the station is a surrogate broadcaster and its journalists based in Russia can do their jobs without being subject to blackmail by the Russian security services. The bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors controls all U.S. civilian international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. Its current members are: Joaquin F. Blaya, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, Steven J. Simmons, and Condoleezza Rice.

Comments by Radio Liberty managers in Russia and current program content suggest, however, that the station tries to stay on the good side of Mr. Putin in order to protect its bureau in Moscow and a large team of local reporters who are Russian citizens. It is difficult to determine exactly how widespread this problem has become for RFE/RL journalists based in Russia. Local RFE/RL employees must observe Russian laws regarding internal security, including a ban on revealing that they may be victims of intimidation by the secret police.

As Radio Liberty’s Russian radio programs were becoming more innocuous in recent years due to pressures from the BBG to make them sound more acceptable to anti-Western Russians in the interest of pursuing the questionable marketing goal of “marrying the mission to the market,” Voice of America journalists based in Washington have tried to offer more hard-hitting news and comments and thus serve the role of a surrogate radio broadcaster that RFE/RL is no longer able to play in Russia. This year, however, the BBG made good on its threat to end all VOA Russian radio broadcasts and implemented its decision just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia last summer. When the war started, the Voice of America was prevented by the BBG from broadcasting Russian radio programs. The two now former BBG members who were most responsible for this public diplomacy and foreign policy blunder were James K. Glassman, the BBG’s most recent neoconservative chairman who is now the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and liberal Democrat, Edward E. Kaufman, who was subsequently appointed to succeed Vice President elect Joe Biden as a U.S. Senator from Delaware.

The original BBG marketing strategy was developed in the early years of the George W. Bush Administration by another liberal Democrat Norman Pattiz, founder of the U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One, who was the architect of privatizing U.S. broadcasting to the Middle East and terminating Voice of America radio services. His vision produced similar programming scandals at Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. Only one BBG member was reported to have voted against ending VOA radio broadcasts to Russia.

In a letter to U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, Lev Roitman, a former Radio Liberty Russian service broadcaster, has described a recent example of how Radio Liberty continues to fail in its mission to expose Mr. Putin’s anti-democratic rule. Mr. Roitman’s wife, Snjezana Pelivan, is one of the two two foreign RFE/RL female employees (the other employee, Anna Karapetyan, is the mother of three minors) who are suing RFE/RL for violations of their labor, civil and human (national equality) rights when their were dismissed from their jobs in the Czech Republic, where RFE/RL has its headquarters.

A national Czech newspaper described the RFE/RL’s treatment of its foreign employees as offering them “equality with preconditions” and engaging in a practice that “contradicts ideals” of American democracy. Former Czech president Vaclav Havel has promised to follow this case as a human rights issue. RFE/RL has its headquarters in the Czech Republic. Senator Brownback has sponsored a bill that would reform U.S. public diplomacy and eliminate the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The BBG is ultimately responsible for RFE/RL’s policies with regard to its employees in the Czech Republic and in Russia and for the content of Radio Liberty’s Russian broadcasts.

From Lev Roitman’s letter to U.S. Senator Sam Brownback:

In 1973 I emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States. I worked for RFE/RL over thirty years in New York, Munich and Prague until my retirement as a senior commentator four years ago. I was with this Radio when the Soviets and their satellites jammed our broadcasts without having a lunch break, and I lived through the heady days when the Soviet jazz stopped and WE effectively contributed to the fall of that indeed evil empire.

I was always proud to contribute to RFE/RL mission of furthering the goals of American foreign policy. However, when five years ago BBG came up with the idea “to marry mission to the market”, I stopped being proud.

Step dancing on air still goes on. The results in the remaining traditional target areas of RFE/RL, in Russia, Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union, are devastating:

shrinking disinterested audiences;

loss of disappointed rebroadcasting affiliates

(do not be mistaken or mislead: this loss is only partially attributable to the attitudes of local officialdoms);

loss of human rights emphasis (“unmarketable”);

lip service to U.S. foreign affairs (“unpopular”);

fear of sustained critical analysis of local politics (“unpatriotic”), etc.

Just to give you one (but not the only one) example of the level where the married to the market RFE/RL is today. On November 17, its Russian service polled the audience with the following questions posted on its site Svobodanews.ru (I translate from Russian):

“Why the democratic parties in Russia had fallen into decay?

They simply finished their life cycle,

They lost competition against the adepts of power politics,

Their leaders suffered [from] moral bankruptcy,

Western leaders defamed in the eyes of Russians the very idea of democracy,

All of the above” Period.

No other actionable choices were offered. Say,

 “They were barred from access to mass media”,

“They were stripped of financial resources”,

“Their leaders and members were harassed by authorities”,

“Media that was to them sympathetic, had been silenced by physical and/or political repression”, etc.

One is left to wonder if it is Radio Free Europe or Radio Free Putin — at the U.S. tax[payer's ]expense.

In the process of privatizing U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting, both Republicans and Democrats serving on the BBG were eager to destroy the Voice of America (VOA) Arabic Service, which followed far stricter journalistic standards of accuracy and balance and was required by law to represent the entire spectrum of American opinions. Dr. Snow is right in pointing out that Alhurra was not just a creation of fabulously incompetent and ideologically-driven neoconservatives. Alhurra may be therefore difficult to get rid of precisely because Democrats were just as guilty of supporting this enterprise as were neoconservative Republicans.

But if the Obama Administration wants to have a fresh start in the Middle East, it should reverse the privatization of U.S. international broadcasting. Alhurra should be abolished or completly redesigned despite the leading role in supporting this failed experiment played by the staff of Senator Joe Biden and his former chief of staff, the newly appointed U.S. Senator from Delaware Edward E. Kaufman (one of Alhurra’s strongest supporters on the BBG).  Alhurra’s godfather on the BBG was Norman Pattiz, founder of the U.S. radio syndicate Westwood One. He is another prominent Democrat and one of Biden’s financial backers.

Mistakes by both Democrats and Republicans led to the current problems in U.S. international broadcasting and public diplomacy. The elimination of the United States Information Agency (USIA), which launched in earnest the privatization of U.S. public diplomacy, was the initiative of the Clinton Administration. At the time, the dismantling of USIA had strong bipartisan support. The creation of Alhurra was the Bush Administration’s initiative, which also received bipartisan Congressional approval. As with the Iraq war, the initial decisions were based on false analysis and empty promises and are now regretted by many who had supported them.

Unfortunately, the misguided privatization of U.S. international broadcasting has not been limited only to the Middle East. In an attempt to bring even more money for Alhurra, the BBG engaged in the process of eliminating or reducing Voice of America broadcasts to a number of strategically important countries and regions, including China, Tibet, Russia, and India. Jobs of U.S. journalists who could have stopped propaganda and bias were eliminated in favor of hiring private contractors who were not subject to the same rules as those followed by the Voice of America.

In a major public diplomacy and foreign policy blunder, Edward E. Kaufman and D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, another liberal Democrat, joined ranks with James K. Glassman, the BBG’s most recent neoconservative chairman, in voting earlier this year to terminate yet another  critical Voice of America program. The BBG ended VOA radio broadcasts to Russia while ignoring strong opposition from many concerned Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress who warned them not to proceed with these cuts.

VOA Russian radio broadcasts went off the air just 12 days before the Russian army attacked Georgia. The BBG refused to reverse its decision, ignoring desperate pleadings from VOA journalists to allow them to resume their job of broadcasting radio to the war zone. James K. Glassman personally told VOA employees that these broadcasts would not continue. Yet this incredible fiasco did not stop Glassman’s friends from calling on the Obama transition team to allow him to keep his current State Department post of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

One of the reasons neoconservative Republicans joined forces with Democrats in an effort to silence VOA Russian radio was to help Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), another private broadcasting entity which is incorporated in Delaware. Shortly before the summer war in the Caucasus and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the same group of Democrats and Republicans on the BBG also voted to eliminate VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia, Ukraine, and India. When terrorists struck in Mumbai, VOA no longer produced radio programs in Hindi to India. By a miracle, VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine were temporarily saved because the BBG staff did not act fast enough to end them before the Russian attack on Georgia.

It should not be a surprise that privatization of U.S. international broadcasting would lead to decisions which harm U.S. national security interests and result in major journalistic failures. Some of these failures, which were highlighted in the study prepared the Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, University of Southern California, are described at length by Dr. Snow. It’s also no surprise that the BBG wanted to keep the study secret even from members of Congress.

As Dr. Snow points out, there were plenty of earlier warnings which the Broadcasting Board of Governors chose to ignore.  Fortunately for media freedom and journalistic ethics, a news event — a conference in Teheran which gathered those who deny the reality of the Holocaust — became an unexpected test of the BBG’s privatization and marketing strategies and eventually led to investigations which exposed both journalistic and financial abuses.

Reporting by FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, which had dealt with international media and NPR reporting on the conference in Teheran, was responsible for the initial inquiries on how Alhurra and other BBG-run entities covered various statements by Holocaust deniers.

According to ProPublica.org, another nonprofit investigative journalism website, one Alhurra Television report that had particularly upset lawmakers was from an Iranian reporter who told viewers that there was no proof that 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II. Use this link to the ProPublica.org web site to view the Alhurra report with English subtitles:  http://www.propublica.org/feature/alhurra-video

View  FreeMediaOnline.org report:  “Holocaust conference in Iran: Al Jazeera offers more balance than National Public Radio (NPR) reporter; objective coverage from most other international media”     (In response to criticism, NPR later aired a number of reports to correct its initial reporting. The BBG has been silent about such mistakes and attempted to limit journalistic inquiries.)

Reports which violate basic U.S. journalistic standards became common on the U.S. broadcasting entities privatized by the BBG, as the Alhurra study demonstrates. The Voice of America could not provide a more balanced reporting to counter such abuses because its programs have been reduced or eliminated by the Board and the Bush Administration.

In addition to the effects of privatization and the lack of sufficient oversight, BBG’s marketing strategies, introduced by Norman Pattiz, also contributed significantly to biased reporting and journalistic failures. Political interference with journalistic program content was made part of the BBG’s strategy of “marrying the mission to the market.” Private consultants hired by the BBG were telling Alhurra and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) not to focus too much on human rights issues since such an emphasis might offend highly nationalistic audiences and lead to lower ratings. Norman Pattiz and his consultants also told BBG broadcasters that they can improve their audience reach through music and entertainment programming.

One reason privatization became a major focus for the BBG was the inability of the Board members to force VOA journalists to take orders and compromise their journalistic ethics. Saving jobs of private contractors overseas while eliminating U.S. positions at the Voice of America also became a priority for BBG members and their staff.

In the case of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg and BBG’s executive director Jeffrey Trimble wanted to maintain a large private contractor presence in Russia despite strong evidence that the Kremlin’s secret police has been busy intimidating and blackmailing RFE/RL journalists who are Russian citizens and are subject to Russian laws. (Russian law prevents these contract employees from disclosing to RFE/RL and the BBG that they might have been approached by the FSB, the successor agency of the KGB.) To protect their bureau in Moscow from being closed down, Radio Liberty managers put a positive spin on Putin’s comments about the murder of independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.  View FreeMediaOnline.org report.

  
More recently, a Russian human rights organization, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, has criticized Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for giving an entire hour of airtime to a Russian politician known for his racist views and verbal attacks on Blacks and other ethnic and racial minorities. View FreeMediaOnline.org report: “U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Spreading Racist Views on Radio Liberty in Russia: What Would Barack Obama Say If He Knew…”   

Many independent experts and organizations, including the Public Diplomacy Council, have called for a major reform of U.S. public diplomacy. The Obama Administration should show that it wants U.S. public diplomacy to have a fresh start by abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors and un-privatizing Alhurra Television. The new Administration has no need for private  U.S. propaganda radio and TV operating without proper supervision and accountability. 

Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. He is founder and president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit which support media freedom worldwide, and author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church” (O-Books – June 2008). In his book he describes the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by Western journalists.

The White House statement issued to commemorate Human Rights Day and the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 included a claim that “U.S. international broadcasters funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) are overcoming censorship by gathering news from citizen journalists with cell phones, reporting the facts via SMS feeds and targeted e-mails, and encouraging citizens living in repressive regimes to join the information revolution with open discussions on radio and TV call-in shows and blogs. The BBG now offers diverse Internet products in all 60 broadcast languages, ranging from basic text to complex video and audio and live streaming.” The wording of the White House statement may suggest to some that the BBG is paying for these initiatives when in fact U.S. taxpayers’ money appropriated by Congress is being used.

Such self-serving statements are more interesting not for what they include but for what they leave out. For nearly eight years, the BBG has supported the neoconservative agenda of privatizing and