Miro Dobrovodsky passed away on July 23, 2009. FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, March 25, 2009, San Francisco — Miro Dobrovodsky, one of the best journalists who came to the U.S. from Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War to escape media censorship in their native countries, sent me an email pointing out that the process of silencing the Voice of America…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, March 18, 2009, San Francisco — My commentary on the poor state of U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting, Sexy Images from the Voice of America, has produced management backlash against the Voice of America Russian Service journalists. It was unfortunate but not unexpected that the Agency’s management, rated by its employees as one of the…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, March 16, 2009, San Francisco — BBC has recently made some reductions in its Russian-language radio broadcasts, but unlike the Voice of America (VOA), the British public broadcaster did not completely eliminate radio programs to Russia. The termination of VOA radio to Russia, which occurred last July, just 12 days before Russia invaded Georgia,…
No in-depth reports from the Voice of America or high-resolution photos from the State Department, but one can now find sexy images on the VOA Russian website. The Clinton-Lavrov meeting and the First Lady’s visit to the State Department revealed a sorry state of U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting. It took hours after Secretary Clinton and her Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Lavrov had finished their joint press conference in Geneva before the…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, March 4, 2009, San Francisco Senator Richard Lugar is right about past mistakes that had crippled U.S. public diplomacy, but new actions by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors also continue to silence America’s voice abroad Closed Down American Centers and Crippled Voice of America In an insightful and candid article posted on the Foreign Policy magazine blog,…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, January 29, 2009, San Francisco — President Obama may have been surprised to find out that the Voice of America, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described as largely responsible for “telling America’s story” to the world, no longer has programs in Arabic of any kind due to actions taken by the Bush Administration and…
In answers to written questions from Senator Richard Lugar submitted during her Senate confirmation process, Hillary Clinton said that “telling America’s story is largely the task of the VOA.” What she may not have been told by her briefers is that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages the Voice of America, has completely eliminated or severely restricted VOA…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, January 23, 2009, San Francisco — In a move that may signal a return to a more serious approach to pubic diplomacy, the U.S. State Department website no longer prominently features an announcement for the “Democracy Video Challenge” contest. Such contests were promoted by a series of Bush Administration’s political appointees at State as a new and exciting way of influencing public…
Anna Karapetian, a journalist from Armenia who in radio broadcasts funded by the U.S. government reported on human rights abuses in her country, is one of many people around the world who see Barack Obama’s inauguration as a hopeful beginning of a new era of change in Washington. Ms. Karapetian hopes that with Mr. Obama’s strong commitment to protecting workers’ rights, the new administration will…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, January 15, 2009, San Francisco — FreeMediaOnline.org has been reporting recently on the actions of U.S. political appointees and senior government agency officials who had stopped Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Russia 12 days before the outbreak of the war in the Caucasus, terminated VOA Hindi radio to India shortly before the terrorist attacks…