By Ted Lipien “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” ― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between In the early 1980s, vehemently anti-Reagan Voice of America (VOA) central English newsroom journalists, almost all of them U.S.-born, engaged in dogged resistance against officials and managers selected by the new administration to run the U.S. taxpayer-funded international media outlet operating…
Comrade Absolonova is a tall, blond, sexy-looking girl and a devout Communist who seduced young men and blackmailed them to become informers. “Radio Free Europe calls the citizens of Bratislava! … We are warning you…” Newsweek reported that after RFE called her “a prostitute, an immoral woman, and a tramp … Comrade Absolonova doesn’t work in Bratislava any more.” The…
By Ted Lipien One of the most principled and courageous Voice of America (VOA) journalists, Konstanty Broel Plater, was born in Poland 111 years ago on September 19, 1909, yet his name remains unknown to nearly all VOA employees who have been convinced by successive U.S. government broadcasting leaders that the first VOA director John Houseman who in reality invented…
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…
By Ted Lipien for Cold War Radio Museum Polish communist intelligence service and secret police spied on Voice of America’s (VOA) jazz expert Willis Conover during his visit to Poland in 1959 and tried to exploit it to influence U.S. diplomats into silencing Polish broadcasts of Radio Free Europe (RFE). As reported by Polish media, the spying on Conover is…
Toward the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, the Republican administration of conservative President Ronald Reagan greatly increased spending on U.S. international broadcasting to the Soviet Union and to other communist-ruled nations. Broadcasts to nations behind the Iron Curtain were carried out by the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL). President Reagan…
Today’s Voice of America (VOA) reporters might benefit from seeing a historical example of how a former VOA journalist who during the Cold War became an anti-American propagandist for the communist regime in Poland wrote one-sided narratives using a few news facts and some true information about the United States and Canada to create an almost entirely false picture of…
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…
Russian propaganda influence in the United States is not new. “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”* *Howard Fast. Being Red (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), p. 18. Howard Fast was Voice of America (VOA) chief radio news writer…
By Ted Lipien I would like to thank Bill Coe for bringing Victor Suvorov’s book to my attention. Journalists reporting on Vladimir Putin’s latest attempt to re-write history with his propaganda and disinformation blaming the start of World War II on Poland–the first victim of the war and the first country to resist militarily Hitler’s Nazi Germany–should read The Chief…