Featured, Glos Ameryki, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, OWI, Poland, Russia, VOA, Women
WWII Pro-Soviet U.S. Government Propaganda in Polish Was Spread in Pamphlets and Voice of America Radio Broadcasts
WWII Pro-Soviet U.S. Government Propaganda in Polish Was Spread in Pamphlets and Voice of America Radio Broadcasts During World War II, the Office of War Information (OWI) produced and distributed printed propaganda material in the United States and abroad and was also responsible for the Voice of America (VOA) shortwave and medium-wave radio broadcasts for worldwide audiences. Sometime in 1942…
Cold War, Congress, Featured, Glos Ameryki, Highlights, History, OWI, Poland, Russia, VOA
Polish Radio Host Who Resigned from Voice of America to Avoid Broadcasting Soviet Propaganda Lies About Katyn Massacre
Cold War Radio Museum By Ted Lipien We know of only one Voice of America (VOA) journalist, Konstanty Broel Plater, who resigned from his job at the U.S. government radio station during World War II in protest against the orders from the VOA management and the editors in the Office of War Information (OWI) in New York and Washington to…
Cold War, Featured, Glos Ameryki, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, Poland, RFE, VOA
From Risking Life As A Young Anti-Nazi Scout In Poland To A Cold War Broadcasting Career At Radio Free Europe and Voice of America
By Ted Lipien for Cold War Radio Museum Marek Walicki, the former journalist of the Polish Service of Radio Free Europe and the Polish section of the Voice of America, is the author of Z Polski Ludowej do Wolnej Europy (From People’s Poland to Free Europe), Bellona, Warsaw, 2018, a memoir of his life and radio career. During World…
Featured, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, OWI, Poland, Public Diplomacy, Radio, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA
Why Voice of America and BBC Had No Russian-Language Broadcasts Until After WWII?
Cold War Radio Museum By Ted Lipien A partial answer to the question of why the Voice of America (VOA) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had no Russian-language radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union until after the end of World War II can be found in the biography of William Benton by Sidney Hyman. William Benton (1900–1973) was a…
Cold War, Featured, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, Religion, Russia, VOA, VOA80
Religious Programs at the Voice of America
Anti-communist atheist Bertram D. Wolfe discovered that Voice of America (VOA) English writers could not write persuasively about religion in communist-ruled nations in the early 1950s. Religious programming was then and continues to be a challenge for VOA’s American-born officials and broadcasters, partly because of the wrongly perceived separation of church and state concerns and partly because of a certain…
Featured, Highlights, Media, VOA
Voice of America – USAGM Management Censored News to Protect Communist Vietnam — Radio Free Asia Did Not
USAGM Watch Commentary As reported by Paul Farhi in the Washington Post on Tuesday, the Voice of America (VOA) management in the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is now headed by a former VOA Director, Amanda Bennett, removed a news story that embarrassed Vietnam’s prime minister. The removal of the story by the Voice of America was requested…
Cold War, Featured, Glos Ameryki, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, OWI, Poland, Public Diplomacy, Radio, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA
A Book for Experts and Students of Cold War History
Mark Pomar’s new book about the Cold War political radio could help American government officials unfamiliar with the history of U.S. international broadcasting. Mark Pomar’s book Cold War Radio [Mark G. Pomar, Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Lincoln: Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2022), Amazon Link] is, in my…
Featured, Highlights, International Broadcasting, Photos, Public Diplomacy, VOA, Women
With Voice of America Director Evelyn Lieberman in Russia
Evelyn May Lieberman (née Simonowitz; July 9, 1944 – December 12, 2015) was the Director of the Voice of America (VOA) from 1997 until 1999 during the Clinton administration. She was the first woman to serve as White House Deputy Chief of Staff and was the first United States Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. It was Lieberman who transferred former…
Cold War, Glos Ameryki, Highlights, History, Poland, Radio, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA, VOA80
Jamming Was a Sign of Effectiveness of Western Broadcasts
Soviet jamming was a sign of the effectiveness of Western radio broadcasts. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were consistently jammed. The Voice of America was jammed only during some periods. Ted Lipien for Cold War Radio Museum In his book Operation Suicide: “Those Strange Bridges to Communism,” published in 1967, American journalist Eugene Lyons, a former communist sympathizer who interviewed Joseph Stalin…
Cold War, Featured, Glos Ameryki, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, OWI, Poland, Radio, Russia, VOA, VOA80
Beware of Government Propaganda “Experts”
Disinformation governance by government propaganda experts can be dangerous, judging by the record of the early officials in charge of the Voice of America and journalists duped by Soviet propaganda. As the Voice of America (VOA), the United States government’s radio station for international audiences, observes its eightieth anniversary in 2022, it may surprise some Americans, assuming they have heard…
Blog, Featured, Glos Ameryki, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, Media, Poland, RFE, RL, Russia, Ukraine, VOA, VOA80, Women
I’m proud of my Polish hometown’s aid to Ukrainian war refugees
This is an excerpt from my March 15, 2022 Washington Examiner op-ed about my Polish hometown’s (Mszana Dolna) aid to Ukrainian war refugees and a few broader propaganda warfare and U.S. international broadcasting issues. I’m proud of my Polish hometown’s aid to Ukrainian war refugees By Ted Lipien Still, over the years, his [Putin’s] propagandists have done tremendous damage to…
Cold War, Featured, History, Russia, Ukraine, VOA
Black history hero Homer Smith fought racism at home and Soviet propaganda abroad
Smith should be recognized for his principled refusal to contribute to the manipulation of the Western media by the Soviets, as well as for his struggle against racism in America. I could not find any photographs of Homer Smith, Jr. which are in the public domain. The featured photo above shows A. Marcus Garveyite reading the OWI (Office of War…
Featured, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, OWI, VOA, VOA80
VOA at 80: Selling “the religion of democracy” was Voice of America’s first mission statement
80 years ago today, on February 1, 1942, the first Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcast in German may have gone on the air. There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of the first VOA radio transmission, and the programs did not acquire the official Voice of America name until several years later. Selling “the religion of democracy”…
Featured, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, OWI, Russia, VOA, VOA80
VOA at 80: Different Names of the Voice of America
80 years ago today, on February 1, 1942, the first Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcast in German may have gone on the air. There is some uncertainty as to the exact date in February 1942. Moreover, for the first several years, the name “Voice of America” was not yet used. The early broadcasts had various names, such as “America…