Tag: Ronald Reagan

Cold War, Featured, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, Poland, Radio, RFE, RL, Russia, The Hill, USAGM, VOA

Tarnishing the Legacy of Cold War Winners

Ted Lipien with his mentor, anti-Nazi underground Home Army radio coder in German-occupied Poland, journalist Zofia Korbońska, at the Voice of America Polish Service in Washington, DC, circa 1974. Faulty research by three British academics distorts the history of the Cold War. Tadeusz “Ted” Lipien This postcard was sent from Poland to the Voice of America Polish Service in the…

Read more
Tadeusz Lipień (Ted Lipien) 2021 photo.
Cold War, Congress, Featured, Highlights, History, International Broadcasting, Iran, Poland, Radio, RFE, Russia, Ukraine, VOA

Why are US-funded USAGM journalists defending Russia, Iran over the Hamas massacre? – Ted Lipien Op-Ed in The Hill

My new op-ed in The Hill includes comments on the latest barbaric attacks by Hamas terrorists on Israeli civilians—defenseless Jewish women, children, and the elderly. I discuss the hard-to-understand and explain defense of propaganda and disinformation from Iran and Russia by U.S. government-managed and funded U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) journalists, including federal employees working for the Voice of America (VOA). They went…

Read more
President Reagan meeting with Pope John Paul II in Fairbanks, Alaska. 05/02/1984
Cold War, Glos Ameryki, VOA

Refugee Voice of America Journalists Stood Up to the Anti-Reagan VOA Newsroom and Won the Cold War

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…

Read more
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…

Read more
Presidents

Reagan lauded emigration, labor rights, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe in a 1980 campaign speech

Cold War Radio Museum September 10, 2016 Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign with a Labor Day speech at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, New Jersey on 1 September 1980. In his speech, Reagan talked about the United States as a nation of immigrants, mentioned the Solidarity independent trade union strike in Gdańsk, Poland, and stressed the importance of…

Read more
Cold War, Glos Ameryki, History, International Broadcasting, Poland, Public Diplomacy, Russia, VOA

Warsaw Uprising Betrayed by Pro-Stalin WWII Voice of America

Warsaw during August 1944  anti-Nazi uprising.
Warsaw during August 1944 anti-Nazi uprising.

 

August 1, 2019 is the 75 anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Uprising, a 63-day unsuccessful operation by the Polish resistance Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa) to liberate Warsaw from Nazi German occupation. About 16,000 Polish fighters were killed and between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. After the Home Army capitulation in Warsaw, the Germans expelled from the city the entire civilian population. Thousands of the evacuees were sent to Nazi concentration or labor camps. The city was almost completely destroyed during the fighting and after the uprising in a deliberate German action of blowing up buildings.

But in line with Stalin’s negative view of  of Polish anti-Nazi fighters who were not pro-Soviet Communists, World War II U.S. Voice of America radio broadcasts largely ignored the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, while most Americans and even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who caved in to nearly all of Stalin’s demands, expressed support for  the Poles’ fight for freedom. VOA’s early news writers, including future Stalin Peace prize winner, American Communist Howard Fast, did not practice journalism in the style of CBS wartime radio reporter Edward R. Murrow. They followed in the footsteps of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty who, because of his pro-Soviet and pro-communist bias, shamelessly lied about the starvation and death of millions of people in Ukraine and in other parts of the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule.

Some of Soviet sympathizers and Communists were hired by VOA’s first director John Houseman, a future Hollywood Oscar-winning actor. The U.S. State Department and the U.S. Military Intelligence quietly forced him to resign in 1943 with the approval from the FDR White House, but many of his Communist hires remained until at least 1945. Some stayed on for a few years longer. Some went back to Eastern Europe to work as propagandists and diplomats for Soviet-dominated communist regimes.  

But a different view of early Voice of America radio broadcasts was presented by current VOA director Amanda Bennett in a recent Washington Post op-ed:  “Those broadcasts were lifelines to millions. Even more important, however, was the promise made right from the start: ‘The news may be good for us. The news may be bad,’ said announcer William Harlan Hale. ‘But we shall tell you the truth.’” Bennett insisted that Edward R. Murrow helped to create VOA. Based in London and working for CBS, he had absolutely no role and no influence over wartime VOA dominated by admirers of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Unlike early VOA officials and broadcasters, Murrow was not a journalist to be easily fooled by Soviet propaganda. 1

It took Zofia Korbońska, Irene Broni (Irena Radwańska), Zdzisław Dziekoński, Jan Grużewski, Wacław Bniński and other VOA Polish Service Cold War era broadcasters and journalists who were former Warsaw Uprising fighters many years to undo the damage done by Soviet agents and sympathizers who had taken control of U.S. international broadcasting during World War II. Another VOA Polish Service broadcaster, my deputy Marek Walicki, witnessed the Warsaw Uprising as a young boy. Eventually, with the help of these journalists, VOA was perceived in Poland as a symbol of America’s commitment to freedom and democracy, but it required a change of staff, a change of management and a new vision for the organization that previously had betrayed American values.

The 1944 Warsaw Uprising was doomed because Stalin halted the Red Army offensive to allow the Germans to kill and crush anti-Communist Poles. As a result of concessions made by Roosevelt to Stalin  and the presence on the ground of Red Army troops Poland fell under Soviet domination and communist oppression for nearly five more decades. The early Voice of America did not only betray Warsaw Uprising fighters and Poland, it betrayed more than 80 million people in all the nations which fell under Soviet rule.

During the Cold War, the Voice America eventually redeemed itself and broadcast truthful news behind the Iron Curtain. President Ronald Reagan paid tribute to former anti-Nazi Warsaw Uprising fighters, including those who later worked in the VOA Polish Service. During World War II, however, VOA Polish radio broadcasts prepared by admirers of Stalin and Communism, were filled with Soviet propaganda and hostile toward those who did not want to accept Stalin’s rule. They even largely ignored the Holocaust because Soviet propaganda, which they promoted, focused on the suffering and sacrifices of Soviet soldiers and civilians rather than the plight of  Jews or other groups and nationalities. Some of the early OWI journalists, including Stefan Arski,  a.k.a. Artur Salman, and Adolf Hofmeister, went to work for communist regimes in East-Central Europe. Before they left, these Soviet sympathizers and agents of influence made the life of a few honest VOA journalists extremely difficult. A VOA Polish Service broadcaster Konstanty Broel Plater resigned in 1944 rather than be forced to read Stalin’s propaganda lies to German-occupied Poland. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, who was one of the most liberal members of President Roosevelt’s cabinet, in 1943 sent a secret memo to the White House with a warning that pro-Soviet fellow travelers and Communists employed in the Office of War Information have shown “bitter hostility” even toward “a considerable number of officials in the United States Government who are deemed inconvenient.” 2

This article, originally written in 2015, was updated for the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising.

Notes:

  1. Amanda Bennett, Voice of America Director,  “Trump’s ‘worldwide network’ is a great idea. But it already exists.” The Washington Post, November 27, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-worldwide-network-is-a-great-idea-but-it-already-exists/2018/11/27/79b320bc-f269-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html.
  2. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles April 6, 1943 memorandum to Marvin H. McIntyre, Secretary to the President with enclosures, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum Website, Box 77, State – Welles, Sumner, 1943-1944; version date 2013. State – Welles, Sumner, 1943-1944, From Collection: FDR-FDRPSF Departmental Correspondence, Series: Departmental Correspondence, 1933 – 1945 Collection: President’s Secretary’s File (Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration), 1933 – 1945, National Archives Identifier: 16619284.
Read more
Cold War, Glos Ameryki, History, Media, Poland, Video, VOA

Tomlinson on Voice of America coverage of Pope John Paul II

Former Voice of America (VOA) director and former Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Chairman Ken Tomlinson, who died recently, told Voice of America two years ago that his most memorable moment at VOA was to visit the Polish Service and help arrange extensive news coverage of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland when the country was still under communist rule during the Cold War. The Pope’s visit to Poland helped the suppressed Solidarity trade union to intensify its peaceful struggle for democracy and eventually resulted in the fall of communism. Father Stefan Filipowicz, a Chicago-based Jesuit priest and former director of the Polish Service at Vatican Radio, provided religious commentary from a VOA studio in Washington during the coverage of the papal visit. Live audio transmission from Poland was provided to VOA by Vatican Radio.

Ken Tomlinson and his wife Rebecca later traveled to Rome with VOA Polish Service director Ted Lipien to meet Pope John Paul II who thanked the Voice of America for broadcasting news to his countrymen in Poland under communism.

Thanks to Ken Tomlinson’s support, funding from the Reagan administration and full bipartisan backing in the U.S. Congress, the Polish Service became one of the most successful language services in the history of VOA, with over 70% weekly audience reach in Poland in the late 1980s.

Read more
Audio, Cold War, Glos Ameryki, Poland, Public Diplomacy, VOA

Martial law prisoners in Poland praised Reagan, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe

Originally posted on December 4, 2013

Today’s political prisoners who are fighting for democracy and human rights are still being held in China, Iran and in many other countries. While much of Central and Eastern Europe, previously under Soviet domination is now free, Belarus and Russia are still ruled by autocratic leaders and pro-democracy forces in Ukraine are struggling to free their country from Putin’s blackmail. Attacks on independent journalists continue in Russia. Media freedom and human rights situation in many other nations can be far worse.

In some countries like Iran, Tibet and China, even in the age of the Internet and smart phones, radio broadcasts remain the safest and still a vital link to uncensored outside information for pro-democracy and human rights activists and their families and supporters, although some individuals find ways to get their news from the blocked Internet sites. Tibetan monks told an NPR reporter that they listen to Voice of America (VOA) shortwave broadcasts. Blind Chinese human rights campaigner Chen Guangcheng said after being granted asylum in the United States that he was able to listen to VOA and Radio Free Asia even while being held in a Chinese prison camp. He did not disclose how it became possible for him to get a radio receiver into prison, but other political prisoners in other countries reported similar feats before. At the very least, their families were able to listen to Western radio broadcasts and pass on news to prisoners during prison visits.

In the early 1980s, America’s attention was on Poland and on Solidarity trade union leaders being interned by the communist regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who on December 13, 1981 had declared martial law. President Ronald Reagan and the rest of America immediately offered their moral and material support to Solidarność.

Read more
Audio, Cold War, Featured, Glos Ameryki, History, International Broadcasting, Poland, Public Diplomacy, Radio, VOA

We are condemned to reach an agreement in Poland, Walesa told VOA Polish Service in 1987

Poland’s communist regime organized a referendum on political and economic reforms, which was held on 29 November 1987. Around a third of eligible voters did not participate, defying the regime. It was the first time that Communist authorities in Eastern Europe had lost a vote. I covered the referendum for the Voice of America (VOA) Polish Service. After the vote,…

Read more
Cold War, Glos Ameryki, History, International Broadcasting, Photo, Poland, Public Diplomacy

Poland, A Season of Light, and of Darkness

In 1982, the United States International Communication Agency (USICA), earlier and later called the United States Information Agency (USIA), published a booklet “Poland: A Season of Light, and of Darkness,” to complement its “Let Poland Be Poland” television film produced by the agency as a response of the Reagan Administration to the imposition of martial law in Poland by General…

Read more