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…
Cold War Radio Museum Patricia Gates Lynch Ewell, U.S. ambassador and broadcaster at the Voice of America (VOA), a tax-funded U.S. government media outlet for foreign audiences where she was known as Pat Gates, was a remarkable radio personality. She may have had more listeners to her English-language programs than Willis Conover’s VOA jazz programs in English, although various…
Cold War Radio Museum Thanks to generous donations from Voice of America employees, the online Cold War Radio Museum acquired an original photograph of VOA broadcaster Willis Conover interviewing jazz musician Louis Armstrong autographed by both for Croatian musician Miljenko Prohaska. The back of the photograph has the following text: AMERICAN JAZZ STARS INTERVIEWED ON VOICE OF AMERICA “MUSIC,…
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…
By Ted Lipien in Digital Journal Published April 24, 2016 by Digital Journal The Voice of America (VOA), a U.S. taxpayer-funded international media outlet made famous by pro-human rights Cold War programming as well as cultural diplomacy programs of its late jazz producer and music broadcaster Willis Conover, failed to report on the recent White House snub of Cuba’s legendary jazz…