On September 1, 2010, The Washington Times published my article about Zofia Korbońska, an anti-Nazi and anti-Communist resister and a Voice of America Polish Service journalist who had passed away on August 16, 2010.
By Ted Lipien Published July 27, 2013 by Digital Journal Washington – Federal employees were told to identify U.S. stations but not to make offers of government-funded news to domestic media. With the controversy swirling over media reports that after a recent congressional modification in the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, U.S. officials may try to target Americans with government propaganda, the federal agency…
By Ted Lipien Published September 14, 2012 by Digital Journal Washington – Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe criticizes the executive staff of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) for using a weak language in describing the death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Public relations officials of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — the U.S. government agency responsible for…
By Ted Lipien Published May 20, 2012 by Digital Journal Blind Chinese legal activist and dissident Chen Guangcheng had been secretly listening to Voice of America (VOA) Mandarin shortwave radio broadcasts while he was in prison in China. The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting – CUSIB – reported that blind Chinese legal activist and dissident Chen Guangcheng, who arrived Saturday in the…
Voice of America is celebrating its 70th anniversary amid devastating programming cuts being imposed by the Broadcadting Board of Governors. One of the programs scheduled for elimination are VOA radio broadcadts to Tibet. The BBG also wants to close down the VOA Cantonese Service. The VOA HISTORY was written in the early 2000s by the VOA external affairs office.…
By Ted Lipien Published March 2, 2012 by Digital Journal Moscow – Voice of America and Radio Liberty, funded by US taxpayers to promote media freedom abroad, self-censor news on two stations in Moscow to comply with Russian media law prior to Russia’s presidential elections on March 4. US government-funded media freedom broadcasters, Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe and Radio…
Republished from CUSIB.org. February 17, 2012 For Immediate Release Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting Opposes Broadcasting Board of Governors’ Budget Proposal for FY2013 The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) has issued the following statement after a careful review of the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ 161-page Budget Proposal for FY2013: “The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting is outraged by the…
This report was published first by CUSIB. In an article published in American Diplomacy, a quarterly electronic journal of commentary, analysis, and research on American foreign policy and its practice, the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) director Ted Lipien warns against diminished public stake in U.S. international broadcasting. Lipien, a former acting associate director of the Voice of America,…
FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, July 28, 2011 –Press freedom advocates and Ethiopian Americans are declaring a partial victory in their fight with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. government agency, over the censorship of the Voice of America radio programs to Ethiopia. They credit massive protests and a demonstration held Monday in front of the BBG and VOA headquarters in Washington, DC with getting a senior Voice of America official to tell the journalists working for the Horn of Africa VOA Service “to continue their work without any restrictions or self-censorship,” the Ethiopian American news website Addis Voice reported.
Link to the demonstration video 1
Link to the demonstration video 2
FreeMediaOnline.org San Francisco, CA, USA, July 24, 2011 — Leaders of the Ethiopian American community joined by free media advocates are planning a protest rally on Monday, July 25, in front of the Voice of America (VOA) building in Washington, DC amid charges of censorship of VOA news programs to Ethiopia by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). According to Voice of America broadcasters who spoke on the condition that their names not be revealed because they fear reprisals, the BBG has tried to silence VOA journalist David Arnold who encouraged reporting that upset BBG members as well as officials of the Ethiopian regime. VOA journalists have complained of their reports being removed by the management from VOA websites and of being prevented from covering important political events. In a situation reminiscent of Soviet and East European communist media controls, a high-level manager reportedly forbade VOA Africa Division journalists to take written notes during a staff meeting in which complaints about censorship were raised. The BBG is a presidentially-appointed bipartisan group which runs VOA and other government-funded U.S. international broadcasters and is supposed to promote freedom of expression and anti-censorship efforts around the world, but has been accused of negotiating with repressive regimes, terminating VOA radio and TV programs to countries that restrict media freedom, including Russia and China, and firing VOA journalists who specialize in human rights reporting. BBG and VOA managers have been putting pressure on broadcasters to limit political reporting in favor of human-interest stories as a way of persuading various regimes to allow placement of such reports on local stations and websites. Numerous government surveys have rated the BBG as one of the worst-managed federal agencies. Independent journalists fighting censorship abroad have accused the BBG of being confused about its mission.