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‘Old white guys’ – National Review links to BBG Watch discrimination and mismanagement story

Link to the video of the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, congratulating the Voice of America (VOA) on the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China

On Dec. 6, 2011, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher hosted a large reception on Capitol Hill to mark the 70th anniversary of VOA broadcasting to China. He had earlier introduced an amendment that saved VOA radio and TV programs to China. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also attended the reception as did Congressman Chris Smith, also a strong supporter of VOA and an outspoken critic of human rights abuses by the Chinese communist regime. Ros-Lehtinen, Rohrabacher, and Smith thanked VOA China Branch employees for their work.

No current BBG member attended the reception, although all of them had been invited. A former Republican BBG member, Blanquita Cullum, who had published an op-ed in The Washington Times critical of the decision to end VOA broadcasts to China, spoke at the reception about the importance of VOA radio for the victims of human rights abuses in nations governed by dictatorial and authoritarian regimes and for those who experience severe economic hardships and political upheavals.

Sources have told BBG Watch that BBG’s Republican member Ambassador Victor Ashe was planning to attend the Capitol Hill reception but was travelling to Greenville, North Carolina, to visit the BBG radio transmitting station, which BBG executives and some of the other BBG members want to close down as part of their plan to privatize the Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti and to merge Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV into a large corporate bureaucracy.

Critics point out that this large bureaucracy would still be funded by American taxpayers but run by some of the current BBG executives with less oversight from Congress and less independence for the so-called “surrogate broadcasters” such as RFA and RFE/RL than under the current arrangement. VOA and Radio and TV Marti would lose their semi-official status, which is feared by authoritarian regimes such as the one in Cuba, but would also continue to be funded by American taxpayers.

Ashe was quoted as saying that his trip to Greenville was very productive and that the transmitting facility is performing a “valuable service.” BBG executives had tried to discourage him from going on this trip. The executive staff had advised BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson, a former CNN executive and author of the best selling biography of Steve Jobs, that Congress would not object to the plan to end VOA broadcasting to China. BBG members seem now split on the wisdom of the advice they have been getting from their staffers.

Ambassador Ashe has been lately critical of BBG plans to reduce VOA radio and television broadcasting to countries without free media. He has been meeting also with groups of employees and raising employee morale issues.

Sources also told BBG Watch that Michael Meehan, one of BBG’s Democratic members, was also planning to attend the reception. The BBG was represented by Jeff Trimble, the Deputy Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), who — according to BBG Watch sources — had earlier advised BBG members to end VOA radio and TV transmissions to China, as well as to Russia in 2008. VOA broadcasts to Russia were terminated and never resumed. Sources also told BBG Watch that VOA Director David Ensor was travelling abroad and could not attend the Capitol Hill reception. Neither VOA nor BBG has issued a press release to mark the 70th anniversary of broadcasting to China or to highlight the unprecedented expression of support for VOA Chinese radio and TV programs from the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and other members of Congress.

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Chairman of House Committee on Foreign Affairs says Chinese people need Voice of America broadcasts

If it were not for Congressman Rohrabacher and other members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, VOA would not be able to celebrate this anniversary. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency which manages VOA, wanted to terminate all VOA radio and television broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese as of October 1, 2011, which happened to be the anniversary of the founding of communist China. On this year’s Valentine’s Day, BBG managers informed 45 VOA China Branch journalists and broadcasters, most of whom specialize in human rights reporting, that their programs and their jobs would be eliminated. This announcement caused an outrage among human rights activists, free media advocates, and members of Congress. An amendment to save VOA broadcasts to China, introduced by Congressman Rohrabacher, received broad bipartisan support and blocked BBG from implementing its plan. Both Democrats and Republicans criticized the bipartisan members of the BBG for lacking transparency and for exercising poor judgement.

BBG members, who are both new and inexperienced and work only part time, followed the advice of their executive staff and were surprised by the strength of the opposition to their plan. Some BBG members are now beginning to question the wisdom of another plan, also developed by the BBG executive staff, that proposes to merge Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa into a large corporate entity. BBG officials also proposed to de-federalize and privatize Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti. Under the chairmanship of Walter Isaacson, a former CNN executive and author of the best selling biography of Steve Jobs, several top BBG positions have already been filled by former CNN employees, one of who bragged in an email to a BBG member about displacing “old white guys,” sources say.

These plans are likely to encounter strong opposition in Congress. Critics claim that the proposal would destroy the traditional dual arrangement of the Voice of America and the surrogate broadcasters having different roles and missions. This arrangement, supported by Congress and numerous U.S. administrations, has been very successful due to the independence and specialization of the surrogate broadcasters and the semi-official status of the Voice of America. Centralization and privatization being proposed by the BBG executive staff would undermine both elements on which the effectiveness of U.S. international broadcasting depends and would create a huge, costly, and unaccountable corporate bureaucracy, critics charge.

Members of the BBG were invited to the Tuesday reception on Capitol Hill despite their earlier vote to end VOA radio and TV programs to China.

Independence of surrogate broadcasters and their ability to concentrate their news gathering operations on specific countries with a focus on human rights abuses were the key elements of the U.S. international broadcasting model developed by such giant figures of American foreign policy and public life as General Dwight Eisenhower, the author of the policy of containment George Kennan, General Charles Douglas (C.D.) Jackson who later became President Eisenhower’s advisor on countering Soviet propaganda, the hero of the Berlin Airlift General Lucius Clay, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan and former Under Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew, U.S. intelligence specialist Frank Wisner,  CIA Director Allen W. Dulles and many other distinguished Americans. Even young Ronald Reagan was involved in helping to support Radio Free Europe’s independent journalistic activities in defense of freedom. Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton likewise supported the dual model of U.S. international broadcasting with the surrogate radios and the Voice of America operating under different rules and independently of each other, each having a distinct mission that served to advance U.S. interests and to support democracy abroad in different ways.

The current BBG plan to eliminate the independence of surrogate broadcasters, centralize news gathering  –  using centralized controls which made the Voice of America far less effective in Eastern Europe than RFE/RL until the Reagan Administration took office — and eventually to privatize the Voice of America and Radio and TV Marti was, by contrast with the earlier plan, developed by anonymous BBG bureaucrats.  They are clearly the only group that will benefit from their own proposal — not BBG members, not BBG journalists, not audiences abroad, not victims of human rights abuses, and certainly not the American people.  Keep in mind that these same bureaucrats proposed earlier this year to end all Voice of America radio and television broadcasts to China. Congress wisely rejected their proposal. They now want to do even greater damage to U.S. international broadcasting and public diplomacy abroad.

The BBG also plans to ask Congress to remove the Smith-Mundt Act’s restrictions on domestic distribution of its programs. This proposal is another reason behind the centralization of news gathering. When such a centralized system existed – but only at the Voice of America prior to the 1980s – VOA foreign language journalists literally had to beg the central VOA newsroom for coverage of country-specific and region specific news. The central newsroom at VOA wanted to operate like a newsroom at any domestic American media outfit. The  surrogate broadcasters, on the other hand, were providing much better, specialized news coverage due to the independence they enjoyed then but may soon lose. The BBG merger plan now threatens to destroy the ability of the surrogate broadcasters to specialize in certain topical and regional reporting.  The BBG proposal will also destroy the current special role of the Voice of America  — as it developed and improved over the years — as the voice of the American people and their public diplomacy messenger abroad. 

What the architects of U.S. international broadcasting wanted to avoid at all cost, BBG bureaucrats want now to put in place for their own benefit and possibly to please the BBG Chairman Walter Issacson, a former CNN executive who has a vision of U.S. international broadcasting as a large CNN-like operation. Having just published a biography of Steve Jobs, he obviously had very little time to think through his idea, although to his credit he has attended all BBG public meetings unlike some of the other members of the part-time Board. The part-time nature of the bipartisan Board may also explain why the bureaucrats and not its members have been in charge of developing the strategic plan. Chairman Isaacson and the Board may also be facing legal issues of a different nature than those addressed in the Baker & McKenzie report. One of the top BBG executives, who until now enjoyed Chairman Isaacson’s full support and was one of the few who enthusiastically embraced the planned consolidation, reportedly wrote in an email that the part of the organization under his control could use getting rid of “old white guys.” Other executives are known to have reservations about the proposed merger but are afraid to voice them publicly. Much larger public policy issues, however, are at stake.

The Baker & McKenzie analysis does not address any of the public policy issues, and their lawyers would probably would not be qualified to do so.  However, they should have warned Chairman Isaacson and the BBG that any proposal to place essential government functions and public institutions under the control of private corporate bureaucrats will not be nearly as easy as the study seems to suggest from a purely legal point of view.

At their last meeting, the BBG promised to release the Baker & McKenzie analysis but so far has failed to do so.  We are making public parts of the report because of its significance for public policy. The analysis was paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Interestingly and apparently without intending to do so, the Baker & McKenzie legal analysis gives BBG members, who also serve on the boards of directors of the surrogate broadcasters, very good legal reason not to support the proposed merger that would inevitably harm and diminish these entities. At least two and perhaps three of the eight BBG members, not counting the Secretary of State who is an ex officio member, seem to understand the dangers behind the proposal. Comments made at public BBG meetings suggest that Ambassador Victor Ashe who is a Republican, as well as two Democrats, Michael Meehan and Susan McCue, may have second thoughts about what the executive staff put forward for the Board’s approval. Perhaps after reading the legal analysis as well as the earlier study done by Deloitte, other BBG members will realize that what they are dealing with are not primarily management and legal issues but public policy issues of great importance for foreign affairs, America’s image and human rights.

This is what the legal analysis points out in the Director Fiduciary Duty section:
 
“Regardless of the ultimate transaction structure, the individual members of the Board of Broadcasting Governors, as corporate directors of each of the Private Grantees, owe fiduciary duties of care and loyalty to each Grantee. The duty of care requires a director to inform himself or herself of the available facts concerning a transaction and its alternatives, and being so informed, to then act with due care in the discharge of the director’s responsibilities. The duty of loyalty requires a director to act in the best interests of the corporation and avoid self-dealing.”

In the Federal Legal Authority Analysis, the study makes getting Congressional approval for the merger appear painless and easy when in fact — as the BBG found out with their China plan — Congress is not likely to accept an effort by bureaucrats to expand their power if important government functions and foreign policy interests are threatened:
 
“In our opinion, subject to the qualifications discussed below, the BBG may continue, without amendment to the International Broadcasting Act, to make grants to consolidated entity equivalent to the grants currently made to the three Private Grantees. This would constitute a reprogramming and the Appropriations Act requires that the Committees on Appropriations be notified 15 days in advance of such reprogramming of funds. It is our opinion that the reprogramming of funds to provide grant funds to one consolidated grantee would be permissible and consistent with the International Broadcasting Act so long as the consolidated grantee will continue to perform the broadcasting and related functions currently performed by each of the Private Grantees.”

The Labor and Employment section provides an equally upbeat analysis:

“It does not appear that the proposed Transaction would pose any significant legal issues from a labor and employment law perspective with regard to current employees. In the United States, as a general rule, compensation, healthcare, retirement, pension and other benefits currently provided by the Grantees to employees may be changed as long as “vested rights” of employees are respected and the terms of the RFA’s collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”) with the Newspaper Guild-Communication Workers of America (“CWA”) are taken into account as discussed below. To the extent any
individual employees or executives are subject to an employment contract, the contractual obligations may result in additional costs in completing the Transaction if the Transaction would trigger a ‘termination.’”

In Transaction Structure section, the law firm gives the BBG various options for executing the merger but without going into any public policy concerns or possible difficulties:

“There are three basic ways that individual legal entities can structure a transaction to consolidate their operations under a single entity. First, one or more of the entities can merge into another existing entity, with that entity surviving; the non-surviving entities cease to exist at the effective date of the merger. Second, the entities can consolidate by each merging into a separate, newly created entity; in such a consolidation, the separate legal existence of each individual entity ends upon the effectiveness of the transaction and the newly created entity inherits the rights and obligations of each entity party to the consolidation. Third, one or more of the entities can transfer some or all of their assets to a single designated entity, either newly created or already in existence; following the sale, each seller entity then dissolves or continues to exist with minimal assets.
 
It is also possible to use a combination of the techniques described above. For example, one entity might transfer most of its assets to a second entity (while keeping title to an asset that is difficult or time-consuming to transfer), while the third entity is merged into the second entity. Once the first entity’s final asset is able to be transferred to the second entity, the first entity can dissolve.
 
These structuring considerations are routine and are typically addressed once due diligence has been performed on each participating entity’s assets and liabilities. In
determining the appropriate structure for the Transaction the BBG should consider

(i) the corporate governance implications for the surviving entity in its state of incorporation,
 
(ii) the difficulty of transferring any important assets held by any of the Grantees,

(iii) the preservation of the brands and individual culture at each Grantee and

(iv) any statutory considerations raised by the relevant Grantee authorizing statutes. We note that, as discussed above, the International Broadcasting Act does not dictate one transaction structure over another. We note that a consolidation structure – one where there is a newly created consolidated entity – is sometimes used to reinforce the collaborative nature of a transaction and avoid the perception that one entity is absorbing another and being favored over another.
 
Following a merger or consolidation, many companies opt to operate the constituent business operations as distinct divisions within one legal entity. This structure often allows companies to maximize the desired efficiencies while minimizing the impact of the transaction on brand value and operating culture. Thus, there could be a newly created entity with a broader, non-regional name and with three separate operating divisions named RFE/RL, RFA and MBN.”

The law firm does deserve some credit for advising the BBG that it “should carefully consider which transaction structure allows maximum efficiencies while preserving the brand and operating culture of each Grantee.”

Of course, the legal analysis does not address the question whether the whole proposal would be good for American taxpayers and American interests abroad. Keep in mind that the BBG has not said how much the implementation of its five year strategic plan will cost. A separate study done by Deloitte indicated only minor savings from the merger itself but did not address any additional spending that BBG executives may be planning, as they most certainly do.

There is very little doubt that the BBG merger and privatization plan will be in the long run far more costly for U.S. taxpayers than the current arrangement. Turning the BBG into another NPR-like structure will not only shortchange foreign audiences and human rights victims abroad, it will also create yet another area of political controversy at home. The Administration and the Congress would be wise to put a stop to this proposal before it even gets off the ground. If, upon further reflection, the BBG would withdraw its plan, it would be even better. If they are politically smart, all BBG members should take that action and save themselves and the American people a lot of headaches and unnecessary expenses such the legal costs involved and the $1.3 Deloitte consulting contract, which includes $150,000 for travel. That money could be better spent on producing radio and TV broadcasts to countries like China and Russia.

Free Media Online president Ted Lipien who had worked for the Voice of America and U.S. international broadcasting for over 30 years in various journalistic, managerial, marketing and executive positions, provided FreeMediaOnline.org and BBG Watch websites with the following analysis:

“The decentralized model of U.S. international broadcasting with independent surrogate broadcasters and the Voice of America, each having a different mission and operating under different rules, served well the needs of the United States Government, the American people and radio listeners behind the Iron Curtain, as it now also serves information needs in countries like Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. It worked initially much better for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, but once the Voice of America’s editorial independence was protected by law in 1976 and VOA news reporting decentralized during the Reagan Administration, the dual arrangement became even more effective in promoting human rights, media freedom and understanding of America. After the United States Information Agency was abolished and the Broadcasting Board of Governors was created, this successful model was first weakened and may now be completely dismantled, with the Voice of America and U.S. public diplomacy being the primary losers. It would be great to have a BBC-like, journalistically  independent international and domestic multimedia broadcaster, well-funded and easily identified abroad as the voice of the American people and to some degree the U.S. Government but also able to offer targeted and hard-hitting news and commentary to countries without free media. But for a variety of historical and political reasons, this is not a good model for the United States. Privatization, centralization of news gathering and the removal of at least informal links between the Voice of America and the foreign policy community and U.S. public diplomacy will harm the cause of supporting media freedom, human rights and democracy. U.S. national security interests abroad will also be harmed by this proposal.
 
Someone, somewhere — whether they are U.S. diplomats, political figures, corporate officers, or journalists — will have to decide what goes into U.S. Government-funded broadcasts and to where they should be directed. No one with any knowledge of the history of successful public diplomacy wants to see interference with journalistic freedom. U.S. ambassadors and other State Department officials should not exercise a veto power over what goes on the air. But a complete divorce of U.S. international broadcasting from the experience of the U.S. Government’s foreign affairs community may not be good either for America and the world. The system of checks and balances that developed between U.S. Government broadcasters and Government officials toward the end of the Cold War, although far from perfect, gave the United States the ability to send both authoritative and journalistically bold messages targeted to specific countries. It might be wise to study this history before deciding on a new arrangement.”

“If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security, privatization may not be feasible,” – Deloitte

“If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security, privatization may not be feasible,” is a conclusion of a consolidation study done by Deloitte, but the consulting firm recommends a quick action on the BBG plan to merge grantee broadcasters. Free Media Online has obtained a copy of the Grantee Consolidation Assessment done for the Broadcasting Board of Governors by Deloitte. It was announced at today’s BBG open meeting that the report will be posted on the BBG Strategy website. The report makes references to “language duplication” between VOA and the Grantees, which implies that there are no differences in mission between VOA and the Grantees. If VOA and the Grantees have different missions, then “language duplication” is a non-issue. If they have the same mission — which evidently they do not — then the logical step would be to combine VOA and the Grantees. Deloitte, however, did discover that VOA broadcasts may have a national security and foreign policy mission and is advocating a further study of the BBG’s de-Federalization proposal.

Here are some of the main elements of the report:

Key Findings:

Today RFE/RL, RFA and MBN are three separate private 501(c)(3) organizations with combined resources of approximately $240 million and approximately 2,000 full time employees and contractors. All have a common mission to act as a surrogate media outlet in countries that do not have an open media environment; additionally, unlike RFE/RL and RFA, MBN is charged with providing context about America, its people, and policies.

Aside from Arabic services to Iraq, there is no overlap in language services among the Grantees, or in bureau locations. With just a merger of the Grantees, there is no potential to eliminate duplication of language services beyond that already planned. A combined entity framework can set the foundation for achieving substantial synergies with respect to the large overlap with VOA language services, which is unanimously supported by all Grantee Presidents.

There are several potential benefits of a merger of the three grantee corporations:

- It would serve as a first step in the execution of the Board’s Strategic Plan that calls for consolidating and streamlining management and administrative infrastructure. A merger would create a single grantee management team which would facilitate
coordination with the BBG in pursuit of its strategic objectives.

- It creates more financial transparency and demonstrates to stakeholders that BBG leadership is committed to allocating resources as efficiently as possible and eliminating waste – potentially garnering support and trust.

- It creates an enforceable structure for more formalized content sharing, advancing the Board’s strategy to harness original reporting from across the language services to create a global news service with rich programming.

- It creates resource savings over time with the elimination of duplicative administrative and technical infrastructures and pooled purchasing power (e.g., for equipment, services, and insurance). This is a key benefit in our current economic environment.

- Positive reaction from Congress if new services, technologies and broadcast medium can be achieved without an increase to the top line.

- Annual run rate savings of $9M, or about 10% can be achieved on approximately $90M of addressable spend which is approximately 38% of the aggregate Grantee budget.

Savings could expand to nearly $14M annually with aggressive facilities consolidation.

Risks of integrating the Grantee corporations include:

- Possible negative reaction from Congress if a merger of the Grantees impedes the flow of content to audiences.

- Uncertain result of merging a partially unionized workforce with non-unionized staff.

- A potentially broader impact of digital and physical security threats in a merged environment if not mitigated.

- Potential disruption to current foreign business licenses and relationships in host countries.

Over five years, the cumulative net savings from merging the Grantee organizations is estimated to be approximately $30M to $40M. There are cumulative savings of $35M to $50M available with one-time costs of $8M to $12M. The savings result from a small headcount reduction of approximately 45-50 resources, plus non-headcount savings related to sourcing efficiencies, and facilities and technology infrastructure consolidation. Longer term, there are opportunities for additional headcount reduction if facilities are more aggressively consolidated.

Conclusions:

Deloitte believes that the merging of the Grantees does have merit, and does make sense strategically and economically. We heard in numerous discussions with leaders across the Grantees that current structure is a product of the evolution of the Agency, is not ideal, and would not be the logical approach if one were starting fresh. We agree with that perspective. The current siloed structure is not an optimal foundation for the new strategic direction envisioned by the Board.

From an operational perspective, we see no roadblocks that cannot be overcome. The vast majority (around 75%) of the resources of the Grantees are devoted to content and programming, so their day to day roles will not change. Merging the administrative processes, policies, and supporting systems will be no more complicated here than in any other merger of a similar scale.

In the current economic environment, continuing to operate three separate organizations with redundant executive management teams, administrative infrastructures, audits, etc. seems to be an
inefficient use of taxpayer resources. The potential annual savings of $9M to $14M could be redeployed toward journalistic initiatives that advance the Board strategic vision.

As with any merger there are risks associated with the potential decline in employee morale. These can be mitigated by swift decision-making and a strong change management program.

Delaying a decision about the path forward will create uncertainty which can dampen employee morale. In addition, delays will stall the advancement of the Board’s strategic plan and cause the organization to miss out on significant potential savings.

Recommendations and Next Steps:

We recommend that the Board approve the merger of the Grantees, and proceed with the design of the new organization and the implementation planning. Based on a typical merger timeframe of about 6 months from a decision, we believe that the Board should target a “Day 1” in July 2012.

To pursue the larger savings available by reducing duplication of language services, as noted earlier and broadly supported by Grantee leadership, we recommend commencing a study on the feasibility, benefits and costs of VOA/OCB de-federalization, reportable at the Board’s March 2012 meeting to explore 3 items:

1. The “quick hit” opportunities available from partially integrating some VOA/OCB operations into the Grantee structure without de-federalization. The objective of this study would be to identify initiatives that could be implemented in parallel with the Day
1 of the Grantee merger in July 2012.

2. The next tranche of opportunities that would become feasible in FY13 without de-federalization.

3. The feasibility of VOA/OCB de-federalization, including benefits, risks, and financial implications.

Key Principles:

There were several key principles that were consistently articulated throughout the visioning discussions with the Grantees. These are things that all believed should be the ‘guard rails’ of any potential integration.

There should be no change in the journalistic mission of the organizations – the current markets and audiences should continue to be served with the content appropriate for them.

The existing market-facing brands should remain intact as they are critical to success. The relationship between the brands and the grantee entity is different across the three organizations. For MBN, the brands (Alhurra, Radio Sawa, Afia Darfur) are the externally known identities, while for Radio Free Asia the brand and the organization are one in the same across its market. RFE/RL has individual brands by service that will be critical to maintain.

The new organization should maintain an entrepreneurial spirit and ability to remain nimble; avoiding bureaucracy.

Risks:

There are five primary potential risks that were identified from discussions with the Grantees.

Congressional reaction:

There is uncertainty as to reaction from Congress. The proposed merger has positive actions in doing more with less, but has the potential to disrupt content if not managed carefully.

Cultural differences:

The three organizations have cultural differences. MBN is a primarily a television focused entity and produces content in a single language , Arabic. RFE/RL and RFA are primarily radio entities (though expanding into other media) and produce content in many languages. Because RFA is much smaller in employee count and budget, it sees itself as a more tightly knit community than the others. It also operates with the least sophisticated resources of the three (e.g. production facilities, technical resources). Bringing together the cultures of these three organizations will require a focused change management effort. Mergers bring uncertainty and change, so there is a possibility that employee morale could suffer resulting in an increased risk of employee turnover. Decision-making delays can exacerbate this situation; employees who are uncertain of the path forward and their role (or lack thereof) in the new organization may be more likely to seek other opportunities.

Unions:

A significant portion of RFA’s workforce is unionized, while RFE/RL has 8 unionized employees and MBN has no unions. A deliberate plan is required to ensure that all parties’ interests are represented in the planning.

Security:

Because of the nature of their work, each organization comes under threat (both physical and digital). Today, when one organization is attacked, the others are unaffected. If the organizations are combined, a threat could affect the scope of the entire operation. For example, if systems are combined and there is a digital attack inspired by RFA’s content, programming and employees in the Middle East and Europe could be affected as well. That said, there are mitigation strategies that could be employed to address this risk.

Staff Reductions:

Management Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 13-14 high-level management staff positions, including two Presidents, several VPs and other management support roles. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new leadership structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

Finance/Admin Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 14-15 finance/admin staff positions, including finance management, accounting, and procurement personnel. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new finance organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

HR Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation is not estimated to reduce overall headcount for HR in the near term, however would likely result in a different mix of positions required -eliminating for example two Director Roles, but increasing the staff at various locations should no facility changes be assumed. The consolidation is likely to require job roles and benefits plans to be redefined and broadly, and HR policy will need to be revisited. If facilities consolidation occurs, there may be an opportunity to reduce 1-2 HR positions.

Facilities Staff Reductions – Real estate consolidation could yield approximately 3-5 facilities staff headcount reductions. In the near term for example, savings would result from offices in the Washington, DC metro area being consolidated. These savings could be realized quickly if existing space is subleased and facilities consolidation begins upon execution of the merger. If facilities consolidation is delayed until the nearest term leases expire, savings will begin to be realized in FY14 and fully realized in FY15.

Communications – Grantee consolidation could eliminate 2-3 communications positions. These savings could begin to be as soon as the new communications organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging.

Technology Staff Reductions – Grantee consolidation could eliminate an estimated 13 technology staff positions . These savings could begin to be realized as soon as the new technology organization structure is executed, and fully realized in the first full fiscal year after merging. The location/facilities strategy will affect the degree of opportunity in this area. On-site technical resources are required in facilities where production takes place and where there are significant groups of users. Because of the 24×7 nature of some of the operations, shifts are also required which increases overall staffing needs. With fewer locations, it may be possible to streamline the technical staff by up to 25 resources.

Costs to Achieve Staff Reductions – Estimated costs to achieve the identified headcount reduction savings is approximately $2.1M to $2.8M in severance costs. The timing of the severance costs will depend on the execution date of the merger and how aggressively the organization chooses to reduce headcount.

Observations on De-federalization of VOA/OCB and on TSI

VOA, OCB, and BBG/IBB make up approximately $500M (about 66%) of the overall spend on US International Broadcasting, or more than double the spend of the Grantee organizations combined. A full view of synergies opportunities across US International Broadcasting cannot be understood until these organizations are reviewed as well.

Throughout the assessment period, several themes emerged from the discussion regarding VOA, OCB and BBG/IBB:

While there are almost no content overlaps among the Grantees, there are significant overlaps with VOA. The Grantees believe that magnitude of the synergies available by addressing this overlap is greater than the benefits to be gained by just integrating the three Grantees.

All senior Grantee leadership indicated that the merger of the Grantees had merit if VOA was included due to the potential savings resulting from elimination of language service duplication.

It is unclear whether de-federalizing VOA is actually feasible or even desirable. Additional work is required to determine the pros and cons, and financial impact. Issues that must be included in the study are:

Potential loss of major backers:

BBG funding is for a Voice of America that could be perceived as a governmental, rather than an NGO function.

National security:

If VOA constitutes communications essential to national security,
privatization may not be feasible.

In the near term, there are opportunities to find efficiencies with VOA, such as co-location to reduce costs. These opportunities are being addressed on an ad hoc basis.

The Grantees have an interest in taking on some of the distribution functions of TSI, especially if TSI is considering outsourcing them to a 3rd party. The Grantees would like to have the opportunity to ‘bid’ on this work before it goes to a 3rd party as they believe they can offer more cost effective solutions. They also would prefer to have great control over the distribution function to ensure their market needs are met.

There is question of whether the TSI backbone transmission infrastructure could be more efficiently operated by a grantee, rather than federal, organization. A reversal of the client/provider relationship between the federal and non-federal organizations could be explored in terms of efficiencies.

To keep its bloated bureaucracy in times of tight budgets, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive staff resorts to cuts in radio and TV broadcasts and closing down of BBG’s foreign language services. Not surprisingly, these cuts affect foreign-speaking journalists but leave the administrative staff in place. Thus, more and more BBG managers — they add bureaucratic positions even while broadcasters lose theirs — oversee fewer and fewer foreign language programs. The United States loses the ability to influence public opinion in strategically important countries — the BBG even proposed to cut Voice of America radio and TV to China — but that hardly concerns BBG bureaucrats and long as they get to keep their jobs.

Another tactic used by the BBG management to save money and their jobs is to replace permanent VOA employees with full-time contract employees. These men and women, mostly foreign-born, are shamelessly exploited by the BBG management. They are denied not just the basic benefits such as vacation and sick leave that should come with full-time employment — they work regularly scheduled hours, 40 and more hours a week. They are also not protected against arbitrary dismissal.

The BBG uses these tactics not just against the Voice of America (VOA) contract employees in Washington, DC, where they constitute 45 percent of the VOA workforce. BBG managers have employed the same personnel practices against the foreign-born journalists employed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Prague, the Czech Republic, where RFE/RL has its headquarters. The idea is to prevent these contract employees from organizing and complaining about discrimination and poor working conditions. What is even more outrageous is that Czech citizens employed by RFE/RL in Prague are protected by the Czech labor laws. The BBG makes sure, however, that foreign-born journalists brought to Prague by RFE/RL are exempt from these laws, can be fired at will and would not be able to challenge their dismissal.

A journalist living in Prague has sent us this update on the lawsuits brought against RFE/RL and the BBG by two former employees who are fighting for their rights.

A Letter from Prague: Two Women Fighting to Uphold America’s Principles at America’s Freedom Radio

Anna Karapetian

A human-rights lawsuit brought in Prague by Armenian journalist Anna Karapetian against American Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is again before the Czech Supreme Court. The date of the trial has not yet been set. It is the sixth time her case will be heard by the Czech judges. In the ongoing court ping-pong, where the ball is human fate, RFE/RL is represented by a Wall-Street law firm, White & Case.

By now, the score is 3:2 for RFE/RL. But the moral parameters as measured by personal suffering and the international media reaction cannot be expressed in numbers. Armenian newspaper AZG (People), published in Yerevan, wrote: “The most devious anti-American mind would not have been able to design an international media campaign so devastating to RFE/RL and, by natural extension, to America’s image and trustworthiness abroad, as the American RFE/RL managed to cause on its own.”

Wall Street lawyers have argued in Czech courts that RFE/RL may apply to foreign personnel outside the United States American labor laws allowing the use of the “employment-at-will” doctrine, i.e. terminations without any stated reason. To its Czech employees, RFE/RL was forced by local trade unions to apply Czech legislation, which excludes arbitrary terminations.

Snjezana Pelivan

The Anna Karapetian’s lawsuit is not the only one of its kind. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has received a legal complaint from a Croatian citizen, Snjezana Pelivan, also a former RFE/RL employee. She charges that the Czech Republic tolerates discrimination based on national origin by RFE/RL, an American employer. Her case is also pending.

In the Czech courts, Anna Karapetian, an Armenian, instructs an American institution that by the will of the U.S. Congress dictated by respect for the legal sovereignty of foreign countries, American labor laws are not applicable to foreigners working for American employers abroad. She has told the Czech courts that time and again that, without a single exception, U.S. courts, heeding to the will of Congress, refused to apply U.S. labor laws to foreigners employed by American companies overseas.

No doubt that the practice of arbitrary terminations, even if it contradicts the will of Congress and the laws of the United States and the Czech Republic, suits the bureaucrats managing RFE/RL. It also prevents its foreign employees, who constitute the vast majority of its editorial staff, from staging any open protests against unfair treatment and poor working conditions. DS Magazine published in Slovakia wrote that at RFE/RL “Everybody knows that any protest will end in a termination.” However, it is also obvious that the American management at RFE /RL in Prague would never dare to defy the will and laws of the U.S. Congress unless it was directed to do so from above.

In fact, RFE/RL stands for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. Federal agency that supervises all non-military U.S. broadcasting aimed at overseas audiences. The BBG, according to statements found on its website, “makes all major policy determinations governing the operations of RFE/RL” and “provides worldwide personnel management policies, programs, and services.” RFE/RL, the largest American civil institution abroad financed by the U.S. Congress, broadcasts in 28 languages to 21 countries and employs in Prague hundreds of foreigners.

Anna Karapetian, mother of three minor children, was one of them. In November 2006, her employment at RFE/RL Armenian Service was terminated without any preliminary warnings and no reason was given for her dismissal after 12 years of exemplary service. Simultaneously, RFE/RL management requested her to sign a letter stating that she accepts the termination and will not question it in courts. She refused to exchange her dignity and human rights for the hush money. In retaliation, the American employer, who in 1995 had invited Anna Karapetian to come to Prague, withheld her severance pay, to which she was entitled. For her family, which moved together with her from Yerevan to Prague, she was the only breadwinner.

In July of 1996, Hillary Clinton, the First Lady at that time, visited RFE/RL and called for the global “alliance of democratic values.” Hillary Clinton’s speech was translated into all RFE/RL broadcasting languages. Anna Karapetian was the journalist was translated the speech into Armenian. On April 4, 2009, Hillary Clinton again spoke in Prague to a packed RFE/RL audience. This time, as the Secretary of State, she was also and still is ex officio a full member of the BBG. In her own name and on behalf of President Obama, she praised the Radio for being “a ‘smart power’, which helps “to create a broad international agreement with values that respect human dignity, individual rights and responsibilities.” She thanked RFE/RL staff: “What you do here is an instrumental, essential part of everything America stands for.”

Among her listeners were hundreds of citizens and refugees from the Radio’s target countries who emotionally and politically identify with RFE/RL’s noble mission “to promote democratic values and institutions,” “strengthen civil societies by projecting democratic values,” “provide a model for local media… .” These well-informed professionals listening to these high-sounding phrases were acutely aware of the anti-discrimination lawsuits brought against RFE/RL by their former colleagues, Anna Karapetian and Snjezana Pelivan. Aware even more so because RFE/RL is denying them some of the very same values stressed so emphatically in Hillary Clinton’s address.

In his internationally circulated Open Letter to U.S. Senators, Czech Senator Jaromir Stetina, who is a member of the Czech Senate’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Security, and the Vice-chairman of Senate caucus of the governing party, noted that RFE/RL “hires its foreign employees on labor contracts, which explicitly deny them protections automatically granted to any employee in the Czech Republic. 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.” Senator Stetina personally protested human rights violations also in Cuba and Belarus. In Russia, he is a persona non grata.

In her column in The Washington Post (Radio To Stay Tuned To, 4/22/2008), Anne Applebaum described the situation of RFE/RL foreign employees in these words: “Once there (in Prague), they can’t go home, they can’t get green cards, they don’t speak Czech.”

Anna Karapetian knows that all too well. In her appeal to President Obama she wrote: “Signing a standardized RFE/RL Employment Agreement ‘governed by the applicable laws of the United States, the laws of the District of Columbia or the Policies of the Company’, all non-American journalists trustfully and proudly placed themselves under the protective hand of RFE/RL, a beacon of human rights (on air). Only after landing jobless on the streets of Prague, I discovered that I and several hundred of my non-American colleagues, mostly from the target countries in RFE/RL broadcast area, being foreigners working for an American employer outside the United States, are exempt from legal protections provided to Americans by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Civil Rights Act of 1964, District of Columbia Human Rights Act of 1977, or by any other American labor law. RFE/RL foreign employees are intentionally placed in a legal vacuum.”

Since June of last year, there are new BBG members appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Since June of this year, there is a new RFE/RL president appointed by the BBG. But RFE/RL’s shameful labor policies sanctioned by the BBG — no labor rights for foreign-born journalists — remain the same. The BBG’s pronouncements, such as its newly “revised mission statement”: “To inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy,” sound hollow to the non-American journalists employed under BBG contracts. No wonder that the international media — in English, Russian, Armenian, Croatian, Czech, Slovak… — in reaction to the lawsuits against RFE/RL (read BBG), uses these words to describe the U.S. Government’s position: hypocrisy, betrayal of ideals, violation of human rights, lawlessness, double standards, moral disaster, fraud, cynicism, and the like. These words in response to the BBG personnel policies aimed at their foreign-born journalists have a devastating impact on the international moral standing of the United States.

“BBG is responsive to U.S. foreign policy priorities,” one reads in the new “BBG Strategic Plan” proposed for the next five years. Is the convenience of unelected American bureaucrats really the actual priority of American foreign policy?

Read the original article on the BBG Watch website:

Two Women Fighting to Uphold America’s Principles at America’s Freedom Radio

RFE/RL analyst Charles Dameron took issue with another of Putin’s claims in the same interview. Putin said that NTV’s Vladimir Kulistikov’s move to state television from Radio Svoboda is evidence of Russia’s liberalization. Kulistikov was one of the reporters asking questions.

The RFE/RL analyst pointed out that dozens of journalists in Russia have been killed during Mr. Putin’s rule because they offended the authorities.

Ted Lipien said that there was a clear purpose to Vladimir Putin’s comments linking Radio Svoboda to spying on the USSR during the Cold War. Such comments, Lipien said, are designed to intimidate both journalists and Radio Svoboda’s potential audience in Russia, in addition to reassuring Prime Minister’s Putin’s nationalistic supporters.

Read more on CUSIB:

Follow this link to BBG Watch:
Putin goes after Radio Svoboda on Russian TV — CUSIB

October 13, 2011
For Immediate Release

Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting Announces Advisory Board

The Committee for International Broadcasting (CUSIB) is proud to announce the formation of its Advisory Board:
 
Harry Wu, Founder of the Laogai Research Foundation;
Tala Dowlatshahi, Senior Adviser and U.S. Representative of Reporters Without Borders;
Appo Jabarian, Executive Publisher and Senior Editor of USA Armenian Life Magazine;
Jing Zhang, President of Women’s Rights in China;
Reggie Littlejohn, Founder and President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers;
Joe Brown, President of the Pasadena Chapter NAACP;
Herbert W. Stupp, Baruch College, former NYC Commissioner;
Robert A. Senser, Editor/Publisher of Human Rights for Workers website;
Manny Papir, Media Consultant and Human Rights Campaigner;
Timothy Shamble, President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1812;
Gary Marco, retired employee of the Voice of America and former President of Local 1418, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees;
Marie Ciliberti, former Voice of America writer, producer and broadcaster for programs directed to the former Soviet Union.
 
“We are honored to welcome such a diverse group of men and women who bring experience from journalism and human rights advocacy to our Advisory Board as we analyze the policies and plans of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the Federal agency in charge of U.S. international broadcasting. The CUSIB has been formed in response to the belief that the BBG lacks transparency especially after such a serious rebuke by the U.S. Congress,” stated Ann Noonan, Executive Director of CUSIB.  “Last month we were encouraged to learn that the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations rejected the Broadcasting Board of Governor’s plan to pull the plug on Voice of America’s uncensored radio and television broadcasts to China and rely instead solely on the vulnerable internet. With this Advisory Board in place, we hope to assist the BBG’s transparency goals and avoid future mistakes.”

CUSIB co-founder Ted Lipien stated: “The CUSIB reviews U.S. international broadcasting operations in an effort to develop solutions for restoring U.S. broadcasting’s emphasis on freedom of the press and on human rights. Some of our most recent concerns have included censorship of the Voice of America’s news broadcasts to Ethiopia as well as reporting from North Korea that covered local conditions, notably the ongoing food shortage, only in passing, while giving extensive airing to the North Korean regime’s propaganda.  We hope our Advisory Board will be welcome in the BBG’s discussions.” 

U.S. international broadcasting includes the Voice of America, which offers international news as well as explaining U.S. policies and providing information on American culture, society and politics, and the surrogate broadcasters — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí) — which focus more closely on internal news in countries without free media. CUSIB believes both VOA and the surrogate broadcasters serve very important functions and deserve support of all Americans.

The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) is a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization working to strengthen free flow of uncensored news from the United States to countries with restricted and developing media environments. For further information, please contact:

Ann Noonan, co-founder and Executive Director
Tel. 646-251-6069

Ted Lipien, co-founder
Tel. 415-793-1642

Email: contact@cusib.org

Link:
Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting Announces Advisory Board — CUSIB Press Release

A RIF (Reduction in Force) will happen.

“There are going to be some RIFS. I don’t think it is constructive to put a number out when the numbers have to go through about five different other groups, now it goes to the Board in a few days time, then it has to go to (OMB Director) Jack Lew, then it goes to subcommittees on the Hill.”

“There are going to have to be reductions, the substance of VOA I think is going to go on and be stronger. I think there are a lot of really cool things we can do here.”

“I’m going to fight like hell” to minimize cuts, Ensor said.

On the BBG’s plan to end VOA Chinese broadcasts, which members of Congress are working to block, Ensor suggested that he is in favor of expanding satellite television transmissions which were to be eliminated under the BBG plan.

“I would like to have a proposal in a matter of weeks on an expansion in the number of hours of satellite television, I would like to see some ideas, let’s come up with a smart idea because I think we need to move some of the money we are spending on Mandarin shortwave. It was previously to be cut but may now be restored, we need to try to get permission, and we’re going to have to get it to move some of that into satellite television.”

“By the way, all these changes, any change we make, we are so over-regulated by Congress and committees and the BBG, there are so many layers over the top of this it is a bit distressing. But what I think, given the situation in the country, what I think may work and what I think we must try, is to come up with our own plans for how to move forward and address the goals that Congress and the American people want us to address. So, there are key countries for example, it is not a secret that China, Iran and North Korea and Pakistan are particularly important countries for us, and it is part of my job and all of our jobs to try to figure out how to better reach those audiences, well OK instead of being on the defensive and reacting to things all the time, let’s come up with some proposals. So for example in Mandarin I want a new television program or programs. I want to double our work, I want to take that money out of shortwave radio. And then I want to go to the Hill and sell it to them. They could say no, but I am betting they will say yes. If we have a positive plan, something we think the money will work better to reach more Chinese. That is a bet I am hoping that we can all make together, butthere is a certain amount of risk involved.”

“I promise to make that point on the Hill, and wherever else, in the media, I can go. So I will try to be a defender of the work we do here, the money we need to do this, but realistically we still have to talk about cuts.”

“In national security we’re [VOA] a cheap date.”

“My suspicion is it is not going to be as bad as we were forced to make it look. I just don’t think the president is going to want to do it. For the price of one airplane we supply the U.S. will an enormously valuable asset.”

“I was asked by the Board and was asked do you agree with this idea (restructuring) are you willing to work toward this goal, and I said yes I am, and I do.”

“I actually think this period of change toward consolidation is going to be harder for the others than it is for us because we are VOA already and in effect what is going to happen is they are going to become so too, inevitably. We are VOA, we are the big organization, with 30 percent of the budget we produce 70 percent of the audience. We are already in television effectively.”

February will be a key month as the BBG is forced to make “a whole series of decisions” about consolidation.

“The BBG currently told the RFA (Radio Free Asia), RFE (Radio Free Europe)and MBN [Middle East Broadcast Network, which runs the U.S. government's al-Hurra television] to combine into one.”

For the time being, Ensor said, VOA will remain a federal organization.

“They have not worked that out. The first step that the BBG has set in motion is for a process under which the 3 grantees become one grantee and for the moment OCB and VOA look for ways to work more closely with the others, but we remain federal and they remain non-government.”

Steve Redisch, VOA’s Executive Editor who was acting director before Ensor arrived to take up his political appointment, said the massive restructuring would not eliminate “brands” such as Alhurra television for the Middle East, Radio Sawa which broadcasts to the Mideast, or TV Ashna, a relatively new VOA TV operation for Afghanistan.

“What has happened since 1942,” Ensor said, “is Congress created a Rube Goldberg creation if you will, a kind of hydra-headed international broadcasting, which I doubt the taxpayer can any longer afford to have.”

Asked by one employee if the restructuring would address the public perception that BBG operations remain highly duplicative, Ensor said some cuts proposed are in language services “where two outfits are pretty strong and doing similar things.” However, he said he has not agreed with those on the BBG advocating “eliminating duplication on the basis of “function.”

Ensor also suggested that the restructuring will be easier for the VOA than for other broadcasters under the BBG, with which VOA he said will have to be working more closely.

“Many of them find themselves as Pepsi to our Coke,” Ensor said. “Guess what? We can’t afford both anymore.I think we will have an easier time doing that they may because they have been so busy defining themselves as the “un-VOA.”

“One other note on consolidation, I don’t want to hand the VOA to the next director, weaker than it is now.I want to have it stronger, so though I want to be a good corporate citizen if you will within the process and want to work with the BBG try to reach these goals, if it seems to me and the leadership of VOA that if they are asking us to do something that would be really bad for VOA we’re going to fight it.”

Ensor also addressed what has been a steady elimination of VOA worldwide broadcasting in the English language, which employees and many former VOA officials have said has hurt American interests over the past decade.

“Can I tell you there is going to be some massive re-building of it? No there isn’t, it has gone too far down to be built into some huge force at VOA.”

VOA language services will continue local news service. Stopping it would be a death sentence, Ensor said. BBG Watch agrees.

“If you ask VOA to get out of the local news business, it’s a death sentence, and we won’t for one moment do it. We have been doing local news since 1942 along with a mix of national, international and American news, we will continue to do so — that is a winning formula.”

But he also said that additional language services at VOA, as well as Radio Free Asia will be eliminated or severely cut back. “Believe me, there is blood on the floor after this discussion of the last few weeks, and it’s not only ours.”

Pushing for satellite TV

“We need to have mobile apps that get our Internet sites on to those phones. Goat herders in Afghanistan have cellphones and will go hungry rather than give up their monthly contracts, so that is really a big deal.

Another big deal is satellite television. We need to get better at video and get better at television. We need to start moving some of the funds that we have spent on shortwave radio, honorably and well, for all these years, start moving some of that money to things likes satellite television and mobile applications to remain relevant, remain engaged with the international public that we are here to try and reach.”

“One thing I am sure of is that the BBG does not believe, and they are probably not wrong, that the U.S. can any longer afford to have five different flavors out there, to have us and RFE kind of competing with each other and not always liking each other very much and overlapping somewhat. It was kind of fun having that competition but we can no longer afford it, we don’t have enough money so in order to be effective we need to consolidate. There will be savings. You know how many general counsels do you need if you have one entity, etc.”

Ensor, a former CNN, ABC and NPR correspondent, said that within the first five weeks of being VOA director he had already threatened to quit once.

“I really am going to try and consolidate us with the others in every way we can, end “duplication” and go forward and leave [U.S. international broadcasting] it in a better shape than it is today. But I have to be able to quit in anger.”

Responding to one employee who asked how long he expects to remain in his position, Ensor said he hopes to remain for at least two years.

“I have already had to threaten to quit once. I think in this kind of a job, I am a political appointee, you have to be ready to walk. In order to stand for the things that you believe are essential for the organization. An organization like this needs a boss who is willing to walk on principle in order to get the things that the organization needs to go forward. And I am willing to. I hope not to for some time to come. I hope to stay with you for a couple of years or more but I have to be able to do that. I am not a civil servant, I am a political appointee, and I am going to try and stand for this organization with a certain backbone. I am also going to try and stand for the things the BBG has asked us to try and do. I really am going to try and consolidate us with the others in every way we can, end “duplication” and go forward to make international broadcasting, leave it in a better shape than it is today but I have to be able to quit in anger. It is part of what goes with this kind of a job I think, so I can’t tell you I’m hoping to stay for a couple of years or more.”

 Sourced from: BBG Watch

This is about yet another example of how BBG’s directives to use a wrong marketing approach to international broadcasting confuse inexperienced web content producers into thinking that their mission is not to provide hard news and expose human rights violations but to make their audiences feel good. Remember that the BBG fired dozens of experienced reporters both at RFE/RL and VOA and now has plans to fire 45 more journalists at the VOA China Branch — a move roundly condemned by members of Congress, Chinese human rights activists, Human Rights Watch, and other human rights organizations.

This is what happened. RFE/RL asked web users to submit their views about 9/11 and published them on a special page.

One of the entries came from Pakistan. Here is what it said:

On that day my father and I were going from Peshawar to Charsadda to attend my cousin’s marriage… While on the way one of my friends called me on my cell phone, the use of which was still rare in those days, and he told me to switch on my television. However, I told him, “I am on the road and not able to get to a television now.” At the same time he told me that someone had attacked America. It was unbelievable for me but when I turned and told this to my father, a big smile appeared on his face. He replied that it had happened because of what America is doing with the international community. After that, when I reached Charsadda, I came to know that everyone was happy about the attack.

The comment may have been later removed since we could not find it.

This is how Michael Rubin assessed the whole thing:

There’s a tendency among many U.S.-government funded broadcasters to believe broadcasting criticism bolsters credibility. In reality, many foreigners just find the self-flagellation pathetic. They tune into VOA and RFE/RL to hear news which their own governments censor, or which their own journalists could never tackle. Expressions of glee at the murder of nearly 3,000 people are not something RFE/RL should tolerate, whether on the RFE/RL website directly, or in a separate project among the “highlights.”

Michael Rubin is absolutely right. But private contractors at RFE/RL are not the ones to be blamed for this. At least they did not post sexy images on their website to increase page views, as the VOA Russian Service did after most of its experienced journalists were dismissed. BBG executives should not be surprised that web content producers are confused about the mission, because BBG members who get their advice from their executive staff are themselves confused.

At least some BBG members seem to think that programs about health for Africa are more important than exposing human rights violations and other crimes of dictatorial regimes. In fact, they negotiated with the repressive regime in Ethiopia to get local placement for their health programming project.

Afterwards, the VOA Horn of Africa Service was told to limit political reporting, their reports were censored, and the service chief was dismissed, reportedly at the insistence of Michael Meehan after the Ethiopian regime complained to the BBG. All of this was done to achieve greater local exposure for VOA programs. Ethiopian Americans and media freedom activists organized an anti-censorship demonstration in front of the BBG building, the largest ever in VOA’s history.

No doubt that audience surveys indicate that health issues are important to radio listeners in Ethiopia and anti-American sentiments are widespread in Pakistan. But VOA was not created to focus on health programming, and RFE/RL’s job is not to make their audiences feel good about themselves. Community service programming is important and can play a part in VOA broadcasts, but programs about health can be produced by others: local radio, Doctors Without Borders, the UN. There is nothing controversial about health.

As for RFE/RL and their My 9/11 project — if you ask stupid questions, you get stupid answers.

It’s possible that the idea for these projects of questionable taste came from within the BBG or from one of their private contractors and consultants, since VOA had a very similar survey: VOA Social Media Project Asks: What’s your 9/11?

Let us know if you know how this idea originated.

View original post here:
Azerbaijan – Embassy cable confirmed government harassment of RFE/RL

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

Voice of America Chinese Service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senator Richard Lugar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

From the BBC press release:

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

From the BBC Russian Service website:

Русская служба Би-би-си перенесет вещание в интернет

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

BBC Press Release

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

Date: 26.01.2011

Category: BBC; World Service

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

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

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

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

The changes include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The changes in detail are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBC World Service Press Office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RFE/RL can appeal the latest Czech court decision.

Sources:

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

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

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

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 and 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.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://govoritamerika.us/zpod/voaradio.swf" height="250" width="520" base="http://govoritamerika.us/zpod/" /]

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.