BBG Watch has learned that individuals associated with U.S. human rights, labor, and media freedom organizations have formed the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) with the aim of working with the Administration, Congress and media to promote free flow of uncensored news from the United States to countries in which journalists are threatened or lack sufficient resources. Many of…
SENATOR CHARLES H. PERCY, 1919-2011 by Alan Heil Senator Percy passed away September 17 at the Washington Home in the District of Columbia after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 91, just ten days shy of his 92nd birthday. The Illinois Senator and former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee played a key role in enactment of…
Now, as the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks nears, it may be time for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to consider its mission and how it achieves it, wrote Michael Rubin in Commentary magazine post Why Would U.S. Taxpayers Publish a Celebration of the 9/11 Attack? This is about yet another example of how BBG’s directives to use a wrong…
Fox News reported — Lawmakers Scramble to Keep Voice of America On Air in China — that Congressional lawmakers are scrambling to prevent America’s international media arm from going off-air in China, arguing that a plan to shift much of its reporting to the Internet won’t do much good in a country notorious for its web censors. In a full…
BBG wants to end VOA Chinese broadcasts on the anniversary of the establishment of communist China. “On Valentine’s Day, the BBG announced to all the employees of the VOA’s China branch its proposal to eliminate VOA shortwave radio and TV broadcasts to China on October 1. By switching to Web-only operations, the BBG told us, $8 million would be saved.…
FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, April 1, 2011– The Washington Times has published an op-ed by Free Media Online president Ted Lipien urging Congress to stop the Broadcasting Board of Governors from silencing the Voice of America radio to China. A Chinese free labor union leader like Poland’s Lech Walesa could be declared expendable by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which…
Former BBG Governor Blanquita Cullum, who served during the George W. Bush administration, wrote in a Washington Times column: “The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA), among other broadcasts, is preparing to implement what some inside observers have termed a “strategic disintegration plan” – marking America’s exit as a bona…
En ce moment, il n’y a plus de pilote dans l’avion. [At the moment, there is no longer a pilot on the plane.] — A European comment on President Obama as a leader of the Free World. TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, USA, January 03, 2011 — Who is the leader of the Free World when democracy is under threat? For a…
TedLipien.com, Truckee, CA — A funeral Mass for Zofia Korbonska, a heroine of the Polish underground resistance against Nazi occupation, participant in the Warsaw Rising of 1944, political activist against Communist rule after World War II, and former Voice of America (VOA) Polish Service broadcaster, was held at the Our Lady Queen of Poland Catholic Church in Silver Spring, MD…
FreeMediaOnline.org, September 8, 2010 –Thirty-two years ago this week, on September 7, 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré journalist, who lived and worked in London, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge and later died. In February 2010, Time magazine ranked the murder of Georgi Markov at number 5 of the “top 10 assassination plots”, just below the…
From Senator Lugar’s website: On June 9, 2010, Senator Dick Lugar released a report prepared by the minority staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In his letter accompanying the report, Senator Lugar wrote: “A key component of any nation’s public diplomacy effort is its ability to communicate with the rest of the world — either through people-to-people initiatives…
Although diplomats and pundits have crowned Web 2.0 as the new communications king, radio remains the globe’s most trusted source for information. Consequently, America should ensure its public diplomacy strategy continues to commit resources, as well as congressional oversight, to developing its radio capabilities. The author of this article, Helle C. Dale, is Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy in the…
U.S. International Broadcasting in Leaderless Limbo | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News..
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 06, 2010, San Francisco — Dr. Kim Andrew Elliott reported the launch of a new Voice of America digital freedom web page. Dr. Elliott is an employee the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages VOA. He edits his own international media news website, Kim Andrew Elliott on International Broadcasting, which he claims is…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 02, 2010, San Francisco — Armenian genocide and Holocaust denials in radio and TV reports generated by private contractors working for the Broadcasting Board of Governors are linked to mismanagement and flawed programming policy at this US taxpayer-funded Federal agency, says FreeMediaOnline, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization which works to promote independent journalism…