“More than 30 years have passed since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about the “Soft Voice of America” in an article that first appeared in National Review on April 30, 1982. Incredibly, today we appear again to be headed in the direction bemoaned by Solzhenitsyn all those years ago. While the budget for international broadcasting has certainly grown since Cold War days,…
International Broadcasting, Newspaper Articles
U.S. taxpayers funding pro-Putin VOA programs – Ted Lipien in Washington Examiner
Ted Lipien, a former Voice of America (VOA) acting associate director, has been warning for some time that marketing and staffing policies pushed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executives have changed the focus of VOA and other BBG broadcasters from serious, accurate and well balanced journalism to ratings-chasing entertainment and sloppy reporting produced by inexperienced, poorly paid, otherwise…
International Broadcasting, Newspaper Articles, Russia
Washington Times Op-Ed warns about pro-Putin bias in Voice of America Russian programs
In a Washington Times Op-Ed, a Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting member Ted Lipien warned about a pro-Putin bias in the Voice of America Russian programs. Lipien reported that a highly respected independent journalist in Russia hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors to evaluate the VOA Russian website concluded last year that it has a pro-Kremlin bias and downplays…
International Broadcasting, Russia
Media freedom activist Ted Lipien warns against diminished public stake in U.S. international broadcasting
Republished from the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) website: In an article published in American Diplomacy, a quarterly electronic journal of commentary, analysis, and research on American foreign policy and its practice, the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) director Ted Lipien warns against diminished public stake in U.S. international broadcasting. Lipien, a former acting associate director of the…
Cold War, International Broadcasting, Poland
Voice of America during the martial law in Poland – Radio stanu wojennego
Radio of the Martial Law Thirty years ago, on December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski had declared martial law in Poland, imprisoning Lech Walesa and other Solidarity Trade Union leaders. The Polish communist rulers placed the country under a complete information blockout, but thanks to radio programs in Polish from the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE)…
Photos, Public Diplomacy
CUSIB members honor victims of human rights abuses in China, stress importance of VOA and RFA broadcasts
The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) members paid tribute to victims of human rights abuses in China by placing flowers Wednesday, December 7, in Washington, D.C. at the Victims of Communism Memorial. President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers Reggie Littlejohn, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1812 Timothy Shamble who represents the Broadcasting Board of…
Celebrated Voice of America Breakfast Show host Pat Gates Lynch died after a struggle with cancer Sunday at her home in Fort Belvoir. From the mid-50s until 1969, Pat served for about 15 years as host and interviewer on the VOA Worldwide English Breakfast Show, which drew significant audiences around the world that even surpassed at times those of jazz…
International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy
Newly-formed Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting vows to defend media freedom journalism
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…
Silencing VOA programming would end U.S. support for China’s freedom. John Lenczowski, who as President Reagan’s Soviet affairs adviser was instrumental in increasing funding for Voice of America and Radio Free Europe broadcasts to Poland during Solidarity’s struggle for democracy, wrote in a Washington Times op-ed that by proposing to end VOA radio and TV transmissions to China, the Broadcasting…
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…
In a paper published by the Public Diplomacy Council, Alan L. Heil Jr., a former deputy director of VOA, the author of Voice of America: A History, argues for a multi-platform U.S. international broadcasting that in addition to new media takes advantage of both radio and television. In his paper LANDSCAPE OF INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING VOA and the BBC at a…
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…
International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy
Partial Victory Declared in Fight Over Censorship at Voice of America
FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, July 28, 2011 –Press freedom advocates and Ethiopian Americans are declaring a partial victory in their fight with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. government agency, over the censorship of the Voice of America radio programs to Ethiopia. They credit massive protests and a demonstration held Monday in front of the BBG and VOA headquarters in Washington, DC with getting a senior Voice of America official to tell the journalists working for the Horn of Africa VOA Service “to continue their work without any restrictions or self-censorship,” the Ethiopian American news website Addis Voice reported.
Link to the demonstration video 1
Link to the demonstration video 2
International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy
Censorship at the Voice of America: Broadcasting Board of Governors Sided with Ethiopian Regime Against VOA Journalist
FreeMediaOnline.org San Francisco, CA, USA, July 24, 2011 — Leaders of the Ethiopian American community joined by free media advocates are planning a protest rally on Monday, July 25, in front of the Voice of America (VOA) building in Washington, DC amid charges of censorship of VOA news programs to Ethiopia by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). According to Voice of America broadcasters who spoke on the condition that their names not be revealed because they fear reprisals, the BBG has tried to silence VOA journalist David Arnold who encouraged reporting that upset BBG members as well as officials of the Ethiopian regime. VOA journalists have complained of their reports being removed by the management from VOA websites and of being prevented from covering important political events. In a situation reminiscent of Soviet and East European communist media controls, a high-level manager reportedly forbade VOA Africa Division journalists to take written notes during a staff meeting in which complaints about censorship were raised. The BBG is a presidentially-appointed bipartisan group which runs VOA and other government-funded U.S. international broadcasters and is supposed to promote freedom of expression and anti-censorship efforts around the world, but has been accused of negotiating with repressive regimes, terminating VOA radio and TV programs to countries that restrict media freedom, including Russia and China, and firing VOA journalists who specialize in human rights reporting. BBG and VOA managers have been putting pressure on broadcasters to limit political reporting in favor of human-interest stories as a way of persuading various regimes to allow placement of such reports on local stations and websites. Numerous government surveys have rated the BBG as one of the worst-managed federal agencies. Independent journalists fighting censorship abroad have accused the BBG of being confused about its mission.