Cold War Radio Museum Could a foreign power such as Russia try to infiltrate the Voice of America (VOA) or influence its executives, broadcasters and programs? Could U.S. government-hired journalists and program contributors, acting on their own, support in VOA broadcasts accommodation with authoritarian rulers in countries such as China, Cuba, Iran or even North Korea? Could one-sided propaganda produced…
Executive Order 9182 Establishing the Office of War Information June 13, 1942 In recognition of the right of the American people and of all other peoples opposing the Axis aggressors to be truthfully informed about the common war effort, and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution, by the First War Powers Act, 1941, and as…
Cold War Radio Museum Commentary by Ted Lipien In his February 26, 1962 speech to mark the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America (VOA), President Kennedy discussed the necessity of freedom of information and complete truthfulness of the press, but he also argued that the Voice of America is different from private U.S. news media. He pointed…
Cold War Radio Museum In 1951, the Voice of America (VOA), which was at that time located primarily in New York but managed from Washington by the State Department, was under heavily criticism, particularly from Republicans in the U.S. Congress, for failing to counter Soviet propaganda. There was a spirited debate as to whether VOA should continue to offer primarily…
Exhibitions Updates, RFE, RL, VOA
SOLZHENITSYN Target of KGB Propaganda and Censorship by Voice of America
OPINION Cold War Radio Museum How Voice of America Censored Solzhenitsyn SOLZHENITSYN, Target of KGB Propaganda and Censorship by Voice of America By Ted Lipien This research article, written for Cold War Radio Museum website to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik coup in Russia, deals primarily with censorship at the U.S. taxpayer-funded and government-run Voice of…
OPINION Cold War Radio Museum How Voice of America Censored Solzhenitsyn China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea By Ted Lipien When in 1974 the Voice of America (VOA) banned Alexandr Solzhenitsyn from its programs, the push for the ban may have originated with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Today, personal, ideological and partisan preferences of VOA managers and…
OPINION Cold War Radio Museum How Voice of America Censored Solzhenitsyn The Obama “Reset” with Russia By Ted Lipien Hillary Clinton seemed to have had some understanding of how Russian propaganda works when she made her critical comments about the Broadcasting Board of Governors in 2013 to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, calling the U.S.…
OPINION How Voice of America Censored Solzhenitsyn Radio Liberty Fails on Russian Interference By Ted Lipien The vast majority of political propaganda and disinformation in U.S. media is originated domestically by American commentators, partisan think-tanks, reporters and social media users. But all too often, U.S. government officials, as well as journalists, both government-hired as in the Voice…
“The Voice of America—the United States Government overseas radio broadcasting station founded in 1942—ignored the subject of the Holocaust throughout the Second World War,” American scholar Holly Cowan Shulman wrote in a 1997 article published in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. She noted that U.S. government officials in charge of VOA were “either Jewish or philo-Semites,” but the…
Cold War Radio Museum October 6, 2016 Title: New York, New York. “United Nations” exhibition of photographs presented by the United States Office of War Information (OWI) on Rockefeller Plaza. Listening to broadcasts of President Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-shek, heard every half-hour from a loudspeaker at one end of the frame containing the Atlantic Charter. This frame is…