FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog QuoVadis Commentary, November 19, 2008, San Francisco – Free Media Online Blog is publishing an open letter to President Elect Barack Obama drafted on behalf of current and former Voice of America employees who are concerned about the mismanagement of U.S. international broadcasting by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The BBG, which had been responsible for eliminating VOA radio broadcasts to Russia shortly before the Russian military attack on Georgia, was also severely criticized in a recent report by the Public Diplomacy Council. See FreeMediaOnline.org article.
And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.
Barack Obama Acceptance Speech, November 4, 2008
A THANKSGIVING MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA
The above quote from your acceptance speech is absolutely correct: for years people from beyond our shores have huddled around their radios in distant forgotten corners of the world to hear America’s message. Many did so at their peril. They still try to do so.
Perhaps with that in mind, you issued a plea, on the eve of the Iowa caucus, to the people of Kenya to stop the violence that erupted in the wake of the country’s disputed presidential election. To reach the maximum number of people in your father’s homeland, you issued that plea for stability through America’s global voice to the world, the Voice of America. And you did so on the most reliable medium to reach the greatest number of people in that area of the world: radio.
Unfortunately, over the past decade, that proud and inspiring global voice has become but a whisper and, in its wake, the prestige of the United States of America has plummeted.
How did VOA’s disintegration happen? Dissolved during the last two administrations, there are no longer any substantive Voice of America broadcasts to much of Eastern Europe even though those countries in transition to democracy were and are in dire need of information about America and the world.
Despite an outcry from thousands of listeners who depend on VOA for news and information, there is no longer any Voice of America radio to India because the Broadcasting Board of Governors recently terminated broadcasting in Hindi.
Most egregious, the people in Russia now have no radio broadcasting communication with America through VOA because the Broadcasting Board of Governors ceased all VOA Russian broadcasts on the eve of the Russian attack on Georgia in August, leaving only the Internet for the relatively small number of people who have access to computers. Do the people of Russia still need objective and credible information from America? The answer is yes and especially now with a more emboldened and aggressive Russian leadership on the scene.
Your story, as outlined in your acceptance speech, is America’s story. How sad that Russians could not hear and be inspired by that story on VOA Russian radio which had carried presidential speeches live in Russian translation over many years.
Fortunately, through the concerted efforts of those who still care in this country, VOA radio broadcasts to Ukraine, Georgia, Tibet, and many other languages marked for elimination in September ‘08 were spared the guillotine, at least for the time being.
Why and how was the VOA muted? The answer: unfortunate mistakes by successive administrations, one Democrat, one Republican. Since 1999, all decision-making power has been vested in the Broadcasting Board of Governors whose compounded errors have diminished the U.S. broadcasting voice to the world.
As your new administration embarks on possibly turbulent seas, we encourage your transition team to go beyond the rehashed, perhaps rosy facts and statistics inevitably served up by the outgoing team, just as the Bush transition team was presented with some arguable facts and figures regarding international broadcasting by the outgoing Clinton team.
We hope this time around that your team will uncover the real truth. For instance, your transition team could ask:
1) Why does the Broadcasting Board of Governors resist attempts for a strategic multimedia platform combining radio, TV, and the Internet to reach the world?
2) Why have 24/7 radio and TV broadcasts into the Middle East produced little or no results in a region of the world of vital strategic importance to the United States? And why does the BBG squash all negative reports about the inadequacies in U.S. broadcasting to the Middle East?
3) Why does the Broadcasting Board of Governors persist in trying to curtail worldwide English-language broadcasts when research shows the emerging dominance of English in the world?
The members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors have made many mistakes over the past decade. As President, you will have the unique opportunity to reverse those mistakes. And if you do, America’s Voice can once again be heard loudly and clearly throughout the world and regain its place as the beacon of liberty to the world.
If, by some remote chance, you do say “yes, we can,” it would surely be a Happy Thanksgiving for many Voice of America employees.
QuoVadis
You are cordially invited to email your views about U.S. international broadcasting and the Broadcasting Board of Governors using the BarackObama.com website email form. If you wish, you may copy and paste our Open Letter to President Elect Obama into the BarackObama.com email form. Thank you and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackFor those who labor in U.S. international broadcasting, but whose careers stretch back several decades, it has become clear that influential elements, both in the media and within the government, would like nothing more than to see VOA, and every other “entity” now grouped under the BBG, sucked into some new structure containing the title “Strategic Communication”
For the last several years of the Bush administration, proponents have pressed their case for doing so on Capitol Hill. Several studies and reports have also endorsed this course, advocating an end to the BBG, and re-creating the spirit if not the resources and capabilities of the former USIA that disappeared under the Clinton administration.
Along with this potential integration of current broadcasting efforts into some sort of Defense Department-linked structure, we also hear the continuing drumbeat for the enhancement of soft power (see Defense Secretary Gates’ remarks since amplified by many others).
And comes the recent piece from the Heritage Foundation in which Helle Dale, Tony Blankley and Oliver Horn hold forth on the need for an integrated national strategy or doctrine, a clearly stated mission, and more coordination between government agencies.
They make positive points that U.S. public diplomacy has lacked personnel and resources, and thankfully they inveigh against handing international communication tasks to the Pentagon. But they still pound away on this question of the lack of an “integrated national strategy and doctrine” and propose that U.S. international broadcasting be placed under a new Assistant Director for Information Programs.
Unfortunately, this would merely accelerate and perhaps make permanent what has been happening for years, as Quo Vadis rightly observes, under Democratic and Republican administrations.
That is, that the decades-old and much defended principle of REPORTING THE NEWS, by the Voice of America, a practice that newer organizations only adopted from VOA and its Charter which was made law in the 1970’s, has been tarnished by association with government information programs, regardless of whose minds they’re trying to win over.
James Glassman, during his tenure as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, has played both sides of this game.
When it has been useful for him, in order to hold back the anger and resentment among journalists and others in the BBG building down on Independence Avenue, he has assured them that their mission hasn’t changed, that it has not become one only of broadcasting to and changing the hearts and minds of our enemies.
However, in higher-profile appearances, in news conferences and in the media, he has happily continued to walk on the edge, emphasizing the importance of doing all of this to un-brainwash al-Qaida and those that now or in the future would accept its ideology and support it.
Decades ago — in that same building where members of the BBG over the years participated in the steady dismantling of VOA’s worldwide broadcasting capabilities, attending meetings that have been closed to employees and the general public — a petition was drawn up by international broadcast professionals supporting INDEPENDENCE for VOA.
Unfortunately, that dream is for the most part no longer alive anywhere in those halls. U.S. international broadcasting long ago took the “other” fork in the road, away from the BBC’s model of a fiercely independent organization (though BBC has had its lapses) that expanded aggressively, and today enjoys a worldwide multimedia audience that dwarfs that of BBG operations in quality and respect.
When Barack Obama, or his staff members, contacted VOA during the political and civil crisis in Kenya, and a VOA report incorporated his comments about the situation, it occurred to some that he might take the kind of interest in U.S. international broadcasting that Ronald Reagan took in the 1980’s.
An infusion of resources, and a renewed commitment would be welcome. But one hopes President-elect Obama will avoid the mistake of further embedding VOA and U.S. international broadcasting in an ever-expanding alphabet soup of government bureaucracies.
If he were to apply the enthusiasm and determation of his “Yes We Can” campaign to the U.S. government-funded broadcasting, he might actually be willing to listen to proposals to finally eliminate the links that have prevented VOA and other “entities” from attaining the kind of credibility they might under a completely independent structure, based not on things like “soft power” but on the same journalistic principles the United States has protected and promoted since we were created.
For those reading (and one hopes this, Quo Vadis and other comments somehow get to the president-elect) this all may be preaching to the converted, or barking up the wrong tree. But at this time of transition and great opportunity, it needs to be stated.
I worked for VOA for two weeks and then resigned - voluntarily. My problem is that I had previously worked in commercial radio and TV and had been exposed to true professionals. The crowning blow (and my resignation) came after two incidents. The first was being chewed out by a lumbering female supervision who chewed me out for not using both sides of the typing paper when writing my scripts. Think about it.
The last straw was being informed that the guy in the back of the bullpen - the one who kept nodding off to sleep and scrambling to attention when the hot ashes burned through his shirt - was not just being a nice guy and waiting for his wife to finish her shift. He was also a supervisor and was on shift.
What’s the phrase…good enough for government work?
Typing paper? Smoking in the office? When the heck did Chase Hamil work at VOA?
That stuff has been gone for at least two decades. Think about it.
This isn’t your father’s VOA any more. It’s sleek, efficient and professional, thank you.
Yes, the specific incidents mentioned did happen a few years back. That was my point. All these years, and the VOA is still a dinosaur, staffed with little-tin-god supervisors who may be qualified as bean counters, but certainly not as professional broadcasters. As to the VOA’s “sleek and professional” qualities, take a look at today’s budget figures. If president-elect Obama really wants a mean, clean broadcasting machine, he should start by taking the ax to the VOA.
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