BBG Watch Commentary

BBG Watch has learned that Ann Noonan, Executive Director of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org), will make a short statement at Friday’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) open meeting in Washington, D.C.
At the BBG meeting in December 2012, Noonan called for the reinstatement of fired Radio Liberty journalists. In a later interview with Russian media, controversial Radio Liberty’s Russian Service director Masha Gessen attacked Noonan by describing her NGO activities and those of other CUSIB members in the United States as “a trick with mirrors: they serve themselves, illuminate themselves, inflate scandal.”
Ann Noonan has been active in human rights organizations, including those working for religious freedom. She is the former President of the New York Chapter of the Visual Artists Guild. In 1999, Noonan founded Free Church for China, an NGO which researches and documents religious persecution in the PRC. She was also a Senior Advisor at the Laogai Research Foundation, an NGO founded by another CUSIB member, Harry Wu, to gather information on and raise public awareness of the Laogai system of prison labor camps in China.

Ann Noonan will come to the BBG meeting with another CUSIB member, journalist and human rights activist Jing Zhang, president of Women’s Rights in China. Jing Zhang, a former political prisoner, is the author of a personal testimony, “VOA Cannot Retreat from China,” on the importance of continuing Voice of America radio and television broadcasts.
The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB – cusib.org) 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. CUSIB supports journalism in defense of media freedom and human rights and works closely with the executive branch, Congress, and media to promote effective multi-channel delivery of news and information to overcome press censorship.