By Ted (Tadeusz) Lipien Published August 9, 2021 by Blogger News Network With Cubans protesting against the communist regime, Cuba is again in the news, including news by the U.S. government-managed and tax-funded Voice of America (VOA) in the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). This graphic was produced by the Voice of America Latin American Division in 2016 after…
by Ted Lipien in The Washington Examiner May 03, 2021 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where I served briefly as president and CEO until earlier this year, is under assault by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Through his agencies and obedient courts, he is blackmailing the media organization funded by U.S. taxpayers, issuing fines and threats of criminal prosecutions unless Radio Liberty agrees…
Treated for decades as second-class citizens and denied direct access to wire services by native-born, mostly white, mostly left-leaning, and mostly male Voice of America (VOA) managers and reporters, these VOA immigrant broadcasters, some of them outstanding women journalists who spent time in communist prisons, did their best to win the propaganda war with the Soviet Union and its satellite…
Informacja prasowa USAGM [U.S. Agency for Global Media – Agencji Stanów Zjednoczonych ds Globalnych Mediów] USAGM uhonorowuje Zofię Korbońską, dziennikarkę sekcji polskiej Głosu Ameryki [Voice of America – VOA] 16 sierpnia 2020 r Waszyngton, DC – Dziś mija 10-ta rocznica śmierci Zofii Korbońskiej, uczestniczki antyhitlerowskiego ruchu oporu w Polsce w czasie drugiej wojny światowej, która po wojnie w ucieczce przed…
Amerykanie w Polsce – Americans in Poland, 1919-1947 is a visually stunning bilingual catalogue for the exhibition which was held last summer in Warsaw at the History Meeting House (Dom Spotkań z Historią) in partnership with the US Embassy and American Center Warsaw. The catalogue can now be purchased online (follow instructions listed below) to help cover the expenses involved…
I learned something today by reading on the Internet the Nobel Prize in Literature Lecture delivered on December 7, 2019 at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm by Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. As a young girl growing up in Poland in the 1960s and the 1970s, a country at that time still under communist rule until 1989, she was often listening…
My photo with the great Polish patriot, anti-Nazi fighter, and political leader Stefan Korboński was taken on June 20, 1976 in front of the White House on the day of my daughter’s baptism. Stefan and his wife, Zofia Korbońska, my colleague in the Polish Service of the Voice of America (VOA), were Leokadia W. Lipien’s (Lodi Rohrer) godparents. Stefan Korboński (2…
2019 MP3 Recording of Original VOA Audio, Video with NASA Photographs, Transcript and Images of VOA’s 1969 LP Record by Cold War Radio Museum
In 1948, Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate charged that Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts contained “baloney,” “lies,” “insults,” “drivel,” “nonsense and falsehoods,” amounting to “useless expenditures” and “a downright tragedy.”
In 1948, U.S. senators called VOA programs “ridiculous,” “unjustified” and “deplorable.” Liberal, moderate, and conservative lawmakers, some of whom even accused the Voice of America of “slander” and “libel” in how several U.S. states were described in radio programs acquired from NBC under a government contract, did not seek to de-fund and close down VOA but wanted to make it more effective in presenting America to the world and in countering propaganda from Soviet Russia. Their criticism eventually led to partial personnel and programming reforms in the early 1950s. In 2019, history seems to be repeating itself, with similar problems being reported at the Voice of America as the United States tries to respond to propaganda from Putin’s Russia, communist China, theocratic Iran and other nations under authoritarian rule. Today, there is little interest in the U.S. Congress and no obvious signs of management reforms, while some of the problems seem now more difficult to solve than those besetting the broadcaster in 1948.
The News Bureau room of the Office of War Information (OWI), November 1942, at about the same time Howard Fast started writing Voice of America newscasts. The photograph’s official caption said: “It is arranged much the same way as the city room of a daily newspaper. Here, war news of the world is disseminated. In the foreground, are editors’ desks handling such special services as trade press, women’s activities, and campaigns. The news desk is in the background.” Smith, Roger, photographer. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540.
“I established contact at the Soviet embassy with people who spoke English and were willing to feed me important bits and pieces from their side of the wire. I had long ago, somewhat facetiously, suggested ‘Yankee Doodle’ as our musical signal, and now that silly little jingle was a power cue, a note of hope everywhere on earth…”[ref]Howard Fast, Being Red (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), 18-19.[/ref]
Howard Fast, 1953 Stalin Peace Prize winner, best-selling author, journalist, former Communist Party member and reporter for its newspaper The Daily Worker, decribing his role as the chief writer of Voice of America (VOA) radio news translated into multiple languages and rebroadcast for four hours daily to Europe through medium wave transmitters leased from the BBC in 1942-1943. Howard Fast, Being Red (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), pp. 18-19.
Cold War Radio Museum Voice of America (VOA) Polish Service director Ted Lipien and VOA English Service correspondent Wayne Corey interviewed the then Vice President George H.W. Bush on September 24, 1987 in his office in Washington shortly before his trip to Italy to see Pope John Paul II and to Poland to confer with government and opposition leaders.…
By Ted Lipien Published April 20, 2016 by Digital Journal John Kerry is wrong and what Hillary Clinton had said three years ago about U.S. government media outreach abroad is still true. She called the effort “practically defunct.” According to Secretary Kerry when he spoke on April 19, 2016, “Today’s Broadcasting Board of Governors is not the BBG of a few years ago.” The BBG…
By Ted Lipien Published February 17, 2016 in Digital Journal British newspaper The Telegraph‘s sensationalist headline read: “Did Pope John Paul II fall in love with married American academic? BBC to investigate.” The headline referred to the BBC program “Panorama,” which aired on Monday, February 15, 2015. The program, which is now difficult to view online outside of the UK, was described…
By Ted Lipien Published August 12, 2015 in Digital Journal The Voice of America, one of America’s taxpayer-funded weapons against Russian propaganda, had something in common with Russia’s propaganda weapon RT last week. RT (formerly Russia Today), a multimedia English-language website, still looked vastly more polished, more frequently updated and far more visually appealing than VOA’s late 20th century GI (Government…
By Ted Lipien Published April 3, 2015 by Digital Journal The U.S. State Department is not a news or journalistic organization. It never was and never will be. But State Department public diplomacy specialists could teach Voice of America a few technical things about journalism in the digital age. VOA aspires to be a news organization engaging audiences abroad with the help…