Mrs. Lantos’s April 4, 2012 letter to the BBG begins:

“I write in support of Voice of America radio and television broadcasting, particularly to China, Tibet and Russia. In addition, I write in support of the efforts of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting. The CUSIB works to ensure that U.S. government-funded broadcasts promote respect for human rights and freedom of the press, especially in nations where these basic freedoms are under attack.”

Annette Lantos is the Chairman of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice.

Her late husband Tom Lantos (February 1, 1928 – February 11, 2008) was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1981 until his death and a powerful champion of human rights around the world. In speaking before the House of Representatives after his death, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that Lantos “devoted his public life to shining a bright light on the dark corners of oppression. . . He used his powerful voice to stir the consciousness of world leaders and the public alike.” U2 lead singer Bono called him a “prizefighter,” whose stamina would make him go “any amount of rounds, with anyone, anywhere, to protect human rights and common decency.”

The Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice describes Annette Lantos’ role as her late husband’s partner in the struggle for human rights:

“For almost 30 years, Tom and Annette Lantos worked together in the Congress, fighting for the human rights and dignity of people in every corner of the world. This commitment to human rights was a shared passion, born out of their joint experience as Holocaust survivors. With colleagues on both sides of the aisle, they co-founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and waged many important legislative battles. After his death, Congress permanently established the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, which continues the work of The Human Rights Caucus.”

Click here for more information about Mrs. Lantos’ pro-human rights activities.

Annette Lantos

228 Justice Court, NE #B Washington, DC 20002

Members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors

330 Independence Avenue
Washington, DC 20237

To Whom It May Concern:

I write in support of Voice of America radio and television broadcasting, particularly to China, Tibet and Russia. In addition, I write in support of the efforts of the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting. The CUSIB works to ensure that U.S. government-funded broadcasts promote respect for human rights and freedom of the press, especially in nations where these basic freedoms are under attack.

I write to you on a personal basis to express dismay that Voice of America radio and television broadcasts to Russia ceased in 2008. I am deeply concerned that although last year’s proposed cuts of VOA Mandarin and Cantonese radio and television programs were halted, this year’s proposal includes the elimination of VOA Cantonese services and VOA Tibetan Radio Services, at a time when there is significant unrest in Tibet. I urge you to continue the Cantonese and Tibetan broadcasts, and to restore them to Russia.

I well remember as a girl in Nazi-occupied Hungary, how every Sunday afternoon my family would draw the shades, close the curtains, and gather around the shortwave radio, pressing our ears close so that we could catch each precious word of freedom and hope that poured out of that radio receiver like manna from heaven. We had to strain to hear over the static caused by Nazi attempts to block the signal, but we were grateful to do so, because these words of truth were pure gold in the ubiquitous mire of Nazi propaganda. The VOA and BBC broadcasts were our one connection to freedom, our one connection to hope, and our lifeline that gave the resistance the courage to endure to the end. The VOA broadcasts fanned the fires of resistance in the brave underground fighters who sought to destroy the brutal Nazi totalitarianism from within. To cut off the VOA broadcasts would have been to cut off the very legs of the resistance. The same is true today in nations ruled by totalitarian regimes.

Now, the people of China and Tibet are suffering at the hands of a brutal, heartless regime. They also cannot speak openly without fear of punishment. The Chinese Communist Party seeks to maintain complete control over the information available to the people of China and Tibet. The CCP blocks the Internet and controls the flow of information, distorting the truth and promoting distrust of America. VOA has been the voice of freedom and democracy in China for 70 years. It is highly respected, even venerated, in China. Human rights activists like Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and Chinese campaigner for women’s rights Chen Guangcheng languish in prison and under house arrest. VOA broadcasts may be the only link with the free world for their families and supporters.

Millions of Cantonese speaking and Mandarin speaking Chinese people depend on VOA daily as their lifeline to the light of truth, freedom and hope. Millions of Tibetans also depend upon VOA’s Tibetan radio broadcasts. Radio reaches hundreds of millions who are too poor to afford television or the Internet, especially in rural China and Tibet.

Further, VOA radio and satellite television serve to counter anti-American propaganda in the most powerful way, giving a positive view of America, which is so necessary during this time of increasing Chinese militarism and anti-American militancy. Thus, these broadcasts are important to our national security.

I know that my late husband, Congressman Tom Lantos, would have fought to save the VOA Russian, Tibetan, and Cantonese Broadcast Services — to use all available means to deliver uncensored news, hope and encouragement to those seeking freedom. How could I do any less?

Recent pro-democracy protests around the world and attempts to suppress them show that giving up radio and television broadcasting to rely exclusively on the Internet would be a mistake, because the Internet can so easily be monitored and blocked. I commend the CUSIB’s efforts to urge the Broadcasting Board of Governors to maintain broadcasting – especially Voice of America radio and television broadcasting – into China and Tibet, and to restore it to Russia.

Sincerely,

Annette Lantos

To read the entire letter by Annette Lantos click here.

BBG's chief strategist Bruce Sherman at BBG Gallup audience research panel

Why is the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) trying to silence Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Tibet when Tibetan Buddhist monks are self-immolating to shock the conscience of the world and the Chinese government is increasing its repression of the Tibetan people and their culture? Why are the Voice of America Cantonese Service and many other VOA brand-names, including VOA English and VOA Spanish, being put on the chopping block by the BBG when China and even Iran are expanding their radio and television broadcasts around the world, including Latin America?

The answer to these questions was provided recently by the BBG’s chief strategist in an important article posted on one of the BBG’s websites.  Because of its significance, we are providing a link to Mr. Bruce Sherman’s article and reposting it at the end of our commentary. He holds the position of  the Director of  the BBG Office of Strategy and Development.

In a display of unlimited confidence, Mr.  Sherman explained that his federal agency can change brand-names at will. No name or institution is safe.  Even those that have been around for more than 70 years, have Congressional mandates and are closely associated around the world with America and its support for freedom can be erased and silenced overnight.

“Where our brands resonate with audiences, we want to preserve them. Where they don’t, we have the flexibility to invent new ones. Radio Sawa (‘together’ in Arabic) helped us rebrand our efforts in the Middle East and reach millions of new listeners.” — Bruce Sherman —  The BBG: One Organization, Many Brands

This is how the Director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors Office of Strategy and Development described the elimination a few years back of Voice of America (VOA) Arabic broadcasts and the banning of the VOA brand-name from the Middle East by the BBG. Mr. Sherman did not elaborate further that the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ decision to kill these broadcasts and their brand-name was based on audience research showing that words like “America” and “American” were disliked in the region.

Using the same logic,  the United States should not have used the “Voice of America” name to call its radio station established during World War II to broadcast news to Nazi Germany. It should have used a more neutral one. Perhaps a name like “Radio Together with Music” would have been less offensive to most citizens of Hitler’s Germany, who after all overwhelmingly supported their leader and viewed America as an enemy until almost the end of World War II.

In his article, Mr. Sherman overlooks an important fact that the American people and the U.S. Congress have always wanted the Voice of America to provide news and hope to those who are the most silenced and the most oppressed.

These audiences are often condemned to censorship and silence not only by their governments but also by the majority of their countrymen fed on regime propaganda. And yet, these marginalized groups that the BBG wants to abandon in its pursuit of a mass audience often produce the most influential intellectual and political leaders in support of freedom.

Think of Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943), a German student active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was executed and widely condemned by the vast majority of Germans at the time of her death. The Voice of America brand-name surely did not resonate well with those who cheered her death sentence.

Chen Guangcheng (born November 12, 1971), an illegally detained civil rights activist in the People’s Republic of China, and Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, belong to the same category of officially marginalized activists and intellectual figures for whom the Voice of America was established more than seventy years ago. They are not likely to receive news through the Internet. The VOA Mandarin and Cantonese websites are in any case effectively blocked by the Chinese cyber police, especially in prisons, labor camps and for those kept under house arrest like Chen Guangcheng and his family.

Chen Guangcheng with his family

Yet, the BBG strategists wanted to do away with the VOA Mandarin and Cantonese shortwave radio and satellite television broadcasts and to rely on Internet only. Their great idea for getting a mass online audience is to  promote English lessons with high school juvenile humor, which while being both creative and popular are ignored by the Chinese censors because they are unthreatening to the regime.

Mr. Sherman would no doubt point out that the agency planned to continue Mandarin and Cantonese radio news broadcasts on Radio Free Asia (RFA), also managed by the BBG. RFA is a “surrogate” broadcaster performing a very important function but was not created to represent the United States by providing American viewpoints. It was created to provide internal Chinese dissident viewpoints delivered by independent Chinese journalists. Two different missions, both equally important.

Still, Mr. Sherman’s commissioned research shows that  the RFA’s brand-name resonates even less well with audiences in China. Should it also be killed and replaced with something more neutral, perhaps even more neutral than VOA once the VOA radio and TV brand-name is also eliminated? The U.S. Congress needs to step in and stop this before it goes any further.

Liu Xiaobo

What is then the real reason for killing the best-known American international radio brand-name in China? The real reason — we suspect — is a bureaucratic desire to take control over U.S. international broadcasting away from the American people, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

It’s not about saving money when budgets are tight. The BBG and its bureaucratic arm — the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) — are wasting U.S. taxpayers’ money right and left.

It’s not about moving to new Internet platforms, which as everyone knows are inexpensive and often free, and which VOA and other U.S. international broadcasters have already been using and expanding their use for many years. It is about preserving and creating new bureaucratic jobs by eliminating critical international news programs.

It is about firing close to 300 journalists and program support staffers so that the BBG can give a 50 million dollar audience research contract to the Gallup Organization.

Gallup has already reported to the BBG that the majority of people in China think that their media are free. This kind of finding is hardly worth millions of dollars. But the VOA Tibetan radio service and the VOA Cantonese news services are to be eliminated to pay for this kind of research in China.

What’s the point of doing questionable research in support of disappearing programs?

Much of what Mr. Sherman writes in his article are conclusions based on similar research findings consisting of only half-truths. Mr. Sherman claims for example that millions of new listeners were reached in the Middle East with the new Radio Sawa brand-name.

It is true that millions of new listeners came to the station over the years. But what Mr. Sherman fails to explain is that the BBG is now paying millions of dollars each year to put music-heavy Sawa programs on local FM and regional AM transmitters — something it had not done for Voice of America Arabic programs. If the same millions have been spent on the production and especially local FM distribution of the old VOA Arabic broadcasts, millions of new listeners also could have been gained for a much more substantive news and information on an American-brand radio and website.

In fact, the audience research data which Sherman swears by is highly misleading and practically useless for countries like China, where people are too afraid to give honest answers to politically sensitive survey questions. Yet, on the basis of this kind of research in highly repressed nations, which may show that broadcaster “A” has 0.1% weekly rating and broadcaster “B” has only 0.04%, the BBG makes strategic decisions to kill brand-names that have been around for 70 years and represent America, its institutions and its values.

How can any sane person make such decisions on the basis of a fraction of one percent difference when the margin of error in this kind of survey can be 3 to 5 percent and more? How can a survey conducted among Tibetan refugees in Nepal be used to prove that VOA Tibetan satellite TV programs should continue but VOA Tibetan radio programs should be eliminated when everyone knows that the Chinese authorities rigorously control private ownership of satellite dishes?

“Where our brands resonate with audiences, we want to preserve them. Where they don’t, we have the flexibility to invent new ones.”

What it means is the flexibility to decide what brand-names resonate with BBG’s International Broadcasting Bureau’s officials  who want to have greater control of U.S. international broadcasting resources. They want the power to kill brand-names, to show incomplete and unreliable research data to BBG members, and to get them to approve their decisions.

Tibetans, victims of human rights abuses in China will be ignored if it means saving the IBB’s bureaucratic jobs, giving $10,000  bonuses to its top executives, allowing them to travel around the world at taxpayers’ expense, and giving them the power to distribute multi-million-dollar contracts. All this for being rated in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) government-wide employee opinion surveys as being the worst leaders and managers in the federal bureaucracy. Should the U.S. Congress give even more power to this group of bureaucrats held in such low esteem by their own employees who are experts on their own countries and regions?

If that happens, the U.S. Congress, which had created the Voice of America and gave it its Charter and its mandate, will be ignored as well.

The BBG’s own data show that there is little strategic vision in BBG’s strategic planning.  Afghanistan and the Middle East are important, but strategically China represents the greatest  and the fastest growing public diplomacy challenge for the United States. And yet,  the BBG’s per capita spending on China is 39 times less than in Afghanistan, 29 times less than in the Middle East, 18 times less than in Iran, eight times less than in Tajikistan.

A BBG member Michael Meehan pointed out recently that the Chinese spend 6.6 billion dollars a year doing what the BBG is doing. (The BBG’s annual budget is about $750 million.) If there is not enough money, which is clearly the case, the last thing BBG members should be doing is giving more money to their bureaucrats and allowing them to eliminate programs to Tibet and China. This can hardly be based on any kind of strategic thinking.

But perhaps it is be unreasonable to expect BBG and IBB bureaucrats to propose eliminating their own positions to absorb budget cuts. The bureaucrats  will always push for cutting programs and jobs of journalists and broadcasters. That’s why BBG members have a responsibility to protect these important broadcasts. And yet they have failed to exercise this duty. They have given away their powers to Presidentially-appointed IBB Director Richard Lobo, his deputy Jeff Trimble and to Director Sherman.

Among BBG members, Ambassador Victor Ashe seems to be the only one speaking out publicly about the bureaucratic waste and abuse while strategically important broadcasts are silenced for no good reason. Most of the other BBG members approve whatever the IBB executive team puts in front of them, including ending VOA radio to Tibet.

A letter addressed to Congresswoman Kay Granger (R – TX), Chairman of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the House Committee on Appropriations and to Ranking Member Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D – NY) criticizes the Broadcasting Board of Governors for expanding their bureaucracy at the expense of critical overseas broadcasts and U.S. strategic interests:

The proposed reductions are driven not by a considered strategic world view, but by bureaucratic expedience and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of VOA. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, the staff level for VOA will be reduced by 13.2% from the current year. In contrast, only 3.3% of the positions from the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which provides administrative support to the BBG, will be cut.

If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted the number of full time equivalent (FTE) positions for the IBB will rise from 593.2 in fiscal year 2011 to 678.2. In the same time period VOA will lose 121.2 FTE positions. The general trend of the IBB has been to grow larger while the number of language services they support is being reduced. Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support. The eliminations and reductions in broadcasting to Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam alone will cut 28 positions from VOA.

Link to the Letter

Source: Broadcasting Board of Governors FY 2013 Budget Request

BBG’s Strategic Vision and Planning Is Seriously Unbalanced

Mandarin Service

Cantonese Service

Tibetan Service

Burmese Service

Vietnamese Service

NOTE: All data are sourced from BBG 2010 Annual Language Service Review Briefing Book unless otherwise noted.

###

BBG Watch is providing a copy of Mr. Sherman’s article posted on one of the BBG websites:

“One organization, many brands” is integral to the BBG’s new strategy, Impact through Innovation, and Integration. The ability to have multiple brands offers several advantages…

More from the BBG Strategy Blog

By Bruce Sherman
BBG Office of Strategy and Development

The BBG’s major brand names are, of course, the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Alhurra TV, Radio Sawa, Radio Martí and TV Martí. There are also various sub-brands such as Radio Azadi (RFE/RL) in Afghanistan and Deewa Radio (VOA) in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Popular BBG programs — Parazit in Iran, OMG Meiyu in China, and Studio 7 in Zimbabwe — often acquire identities in their own right.

Differential branding is beneficial. It lets us position our products for specific markets and target key audience segments (women, youth, etc.). It helps us stand out in cluttered media environments and deal with challenging political realities, including anti-Americanism. All this helps boost our reach and impact — a BBG priority.

Where our brands resonate with audiences, we want to preserve them. Where they don’t, we have the flexibility to invent new ones. Radio Sawa (“together” in Arabic) helped us rebrand our efforts in the Middle East and reach millions of new listeners.

While the BBG sponsors multiple brands at the agency level, local audiences see only one or perhaps two brands in their particular markets. Research shows they usually know one from the other, and often use one more than the other — which is to say, the brands have unique audiences. Preserving those audiences is decidedly in the BBG’s interests.

Our brands, as symbols of our organizations, also reflect our statutory requirements — to do the news (local and international), represent America, and present U.S. policy. They each are established in law and have supporters in Congress. Preserving the brands thus upholds our congressional mandates.

That said, while supporting the brands, the BBG will become an increasingly unified international media network. Each brand will produce value-added content and retain editorial control. Where two brands coexist, they will complement each other so as to satisfy both audience needs and mission imperatives. The BBG will support them through integrated strategy, budgeting, research, distribution, marketing, and administrative management.

This is the “one organization, many brands” vision. The FY 2013 budget proposals to begin streamlining management and ending language service duplications are steps towards realizing this vision. So, too, is the board’s decision to combine the three grantee organizations (RFE/RL, RFA, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks), into one entity and to seek legislation to achieve definitive agency restructuring.

Broadcasting Board of Governors

Negative Impact Through Disintegration

by The Federalist

In late March, the Broadcasting Board of Governors/International Broadcasting Bureau (BBG/IBB) announced that it is partnering with the Gallup organization on “research.”

Gallup is a venerable polling and survey research company.  It has been around for a very long time, much like the Nielsen organization which also has done research for the BBG in the past.

Over a period of five years, the “partnering” contract awarded by the BBG/IBB could cost the American taxpayer $50-million dollars, at $10-million dollars per year.

Inaugurating the partnership, the BBG/IBB issued a press release on the subject of how global publics perceive the media where they live.  Let’s examine the press release and some of the statements and materials it contains.

According to BBG Governor Michael Meehan:

“This partnership with Gallup comes at a critical juncture for U.S. international broadcasting… Research is key to knowing our audience so we can serve them better and be even more effective with the limited resources we have.”

This is indeed a critical juncture for US international broadcasting, made more so by proposals put forward by the BBG/IBB and the Obama administration to substantially reduce or eliminate 14 of 43 Voice of America (VOA) language services.  That represents over 30% of VOA broadcast operations.  As we see it, the BBG/IBB doesn’t really care or want to know about its audiences.  It is abandoning those audiences in what has always been the core foundation of VOA broadcast operations.

Next up from the press release:

“BBG Director of Strategy and Development Bruce Sherman noted that the agency had conducted audience studies through other means for years.  But he added, ‘Gallup’s industry-leading research will play a key role in helping the BBG accomplish the objectives in our new strategy, Impact through Innovation and Integration.’”

In the press release, Sherman doesn’t explain “audience studies through other means for years.”

Unless the agency was using signal flags and Morse code, the methodology throughout the world of pollsters is fairly standard: phone calls and face-to-face interviews randomly or with focus groups.

What might be more the case is the BBG/IBB doing what it has done for years: bringing on consultants or pollsters looking for someone to validate a desired BBG/IBB outcome.  It’s the BBG/IBB version of Albert Einstein’s (attributed) definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.”

And with the agency poised to make substantive cuts to its core base audience, the real title for what the BBG/IBB is doing should be: “Negative Impact Through Disintegration,” because that is the ultimate consequence of the agency’s “new strategy.”

The press release goes on to roll out some current Gallup research on perceived media freedom.  Working off that research, the press release states:

“With few exceptions, perceived media freedom is highest in developed countries in Asia, Europe, and North America.”

This is all fine and good.  The problem is, as a general rule, VOA’s intended audiences are in places where things are a whole lot less free beyond the parameters noted above.  In so many words, this speaks to things that are known.  At $50-million dollars, that’s a pretty steep price tag for knowing the already knowable.

But wait, there’s more:

“The Gallup research is largely consistent with earlier studies of press freedom and with the BBG’s strategic plan to promote global media freedom and provide a credible source of uncensored world news.”

Here’s the rub: if this research is largely consistent with earlier studies, including those obliquely referenced by Sherman, why is the agency taking it to the American taxpayer for a $50-million dollar contract for what amounts to a reaffirmation of what is already obvious?  You can’t fault Gallup for picking up a cool multi-million dollar contract, at $10-mill a pop for each of five years.

However, there is a lot to question of a BBG/IBB that appears to be either asleep at the switch or oblivious to known realities.  And it could also be that the BBG/IBB is intentionally ignoring these realities.

As to “promoting global media freedom,” we can add that to the other BBG/IBB mantra of “supporting freedom and democracy.”  You can’t be doing a very good job of either when you take a sledgehammer to the operation and reduce your known audience by about 30% in a part of the operation (radio) that represents 50% of your known core audience.  The BBG/IBB uses phrases like these to get congressional buy-in to use American taxpayer dollars for “Negative Impact Through Disintegration.”

Moving on:

“The BBG is partnering with Gallup to conduct its global audience research program, which will inform current and future operations of its broadcasts in 59 languages to more than 100 countries.”

Let’s quickly revisit the statement up above about cutting broadcast services.  It’s not only VOA where there will be cuts, but also in US Government grantee broadcasting entities also under the BBG/IBB.  Thenumbers above will have to be revised downward if the FY2013 budget proposal goes forward.  Less broadcasting equates with reduced effectiveness.

When you talk about the BBG/IBB, you are talking about an agency that costs about the same and does less with diminished impact and effectiveness.  That’s kind of crazy, from the American taxpayer perspective.  But Einstein’s definition of insanity appears to be an operative methodology embraced by the BBG/IBB.

In short, why is it that the BBG needs to spend $50-million dollars on what is evident and obvious?

The American people would be better served if the agency spent that $50-million dollars on the language broadcasts it intends to reduce or eliminate, including broadcasts in English, particularly in the face of increased broadcasting to North America by China and Russia.

And the Congress would be best served by hammering the BBG/IBB on how it goes about spending (which equates with wasting) American taxpayer dollars.

Finally:

“The Gallup results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,000 adults, aged 15 and older, conducted in 133 countries between February and December 2011.”

Again, this is standard operating procedure in the polling universe.

The full press release is attached for your complete reading pleasure.

US international broadcasting has been around for 70 years.  That means there is a lot of known historical context.  If you know that, you know that the BBG/IBB is trafficking in a lot of nonsense in order to cloak a dysfunctional “strategy” that is way off the rails from the agency’s core mission.  It is not interested in historical context or institutional memory.

Don’t forget: this is yet another manifestation of what Secretary of State Clinton meant when she said, “We are losing the information war.”  The value of this press release is that it is an apt demonstration of how the BBG/IBB is losing the contest of global public opinion and spending oodles of your American taxpayer dollars doing so.

This is your BBG/IBB:

“Negative Impact Through Disintegration!”

The Federalist

(Part of the BBG Watch Collective)

April 2012

by Quo Vadis
 
Year after fiscal year, members of Congress in bipartisan fashion, question the  plans of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and its powerful Executive Staff to eviscerate the Voice of America. Since 1999, the Broadcasting Board of Governors has governed the units responsible for U.S. international broadcasting including the Voice of America, Radio/TV Marti and the grantee organizations:  RFE/RL, RFA (Radio Free Asia) and for the past several years, MBN (Middle East Broadcasting Network).
 
All sorts of reasons for dismantling VOA are presented.  The latest reasoning goes like this: the Chinese government jams VOA Mandarin and Cantonese broadcasts. In fact, the BBG people have demonstrated to congressional aides what jamming in China does to the signal.  Ergo, the broadcasts should be shut down.  Their solution?  The Internet, leaving out the critical fact that the Chinese government has complete control of the Internet thanks to its most efficient cyber-army.  Thankfully, Congress understood these facts when it decided to negate the BBG’s attempts last year to drastically cut VOA Mandarin and Cantonese radio and TV broadcasts to China. That did not deter the BBG Executive Staff from narrowing the reduction plan, now proposing to cut the VOA Cantonese Service in FY2013.
 
Another argument presented by the BBG in its jaunts to the Congress is:  since Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can read much of the Standard/Classical Chinese script, the BBG should cease Cantonese broadcasting.  The BBG and its Executive Staff neglect to mention that in their spoken forms, the Mandarin and Cantonese languages are totally different.  Therefore, by closing VOA Cantonese as they have been proposing for years, the BBG would effectively eliminate communications with over 60 million Cantonese-language speakers in China, including the residents of Hong Kong.
 
Using that curious reasoning of the BBG and its Executive Staff regarding jamming, one wonders how world history might have changed if the present BBG had governed international broadcasting during the long years of the Cold War? What would have happened if the VOA and RFE/RL had stopped its broadcasts to the countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR when jamming was extensive?   Would the Berlin Wall have fallen?  Would Lech Walesa have created the Solidarity movement?  Would the Republic of Georgia and the Baltic countries have had the chance at independence from the Soviet Union? Would the names of Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek been known to the Czechoslovak people?
 
During the Cold War, in-country monitoring of broadcasts in those areas conclusively showed that there were significant lapses in the effectiveness of the Soviet and Eastern European jammers to fully obliterate the signals (quite a common thing that happens in shortwave broadcasting). Past Directors of the VOA  during the Cold War understood the issues of radio reception and the ability of shortwave to elude jamming, especially outside the cities. They would never have proposed the cessation of U.S. broadcasts to critical areas as the BBG is doing now.  And if by chance they had, there would have been some intervention by the U.S. Information Agency which at one time had a prioritized list of countries for which U.S. broadcasts, in the interests of national security, were essential.
 
Concrete evidence since the ’89 fall of the Berlin Wall with the subsequent liberalization in countries escaping the Soviet yoke shows that listening to VOA broadcasts, in spite of attempts at signal jamming, was extensive throughout the USSR and Eastern Europe. Using the faulty logic of today’s BBG and its Executive Staff in cutting broadcasts because of jamming, U.S. international broadcasting would have lost what many have called its finest hour.
 
And then, there’s that sticky question of shortwave radio that the BBG and its Executive Staff keep saying is out-of-date and passe.  Ironically, their own research shows that over a billion people in the world tune in regularly to shortwave radio and that shortwave is necessary in countries with vast land stretches like Russia which encompasses nine time zones as well as China or Brazil.  Their own statements verify that the bulk of their present audience listens via radio.  Their conclusion?  But, of course, heave shortwave radio broadcasts and close the Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station in Greenville NC.  Due to opposition from BBG member Victor Ashe and intervention by North Carolina Congressman Walter B. Jones, the Greenville facility has been saved for now.
 
It is comforting to know that there are many in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, who do understand what the VOA mission is all about, including Congresswoman Betty McCollum. In her remarks at a subcommittee hearing several years ago, Congresswoman McCollum stressed the strategic importance of radio in delivering the message of America to the world.  She also pointed out that VOA is a vital part of the public diplomacy toolbox, a comment that no doubt aggravated the BBG Executive Staff who deny that any such function exists for VOA.  Broadcasting employees could only wish that her belief in the value of VOA broadcasts would be shared, in some way, by the BBG Executive Staff.
 
Video:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHdpodoVxUE
 
Judging by the BBG’s concerted attacks upon the Voice of America, the remarks of Congresswoman McCollum and the bipartisan opinion of a majority of the U.S. Congress regarding the importance of VOA broadcasts are alien to the BBG Executive Staff whose actions reveal their determination to throw this once-effective 70-year-old institution on to the trash heap of history.
 
 
 

It’s no excuse, but our volunteer editor is on vacation this week.

Rep. Walter B. Jones

Congressman Walter B. Jones and Broadcasting Board of Governors member Ambassador Victor Ashe, whose joint efforts saved the US shortwave radio transmitting station in Greenville, NC from being closed down by the BBG, will rededicate the facility as the Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station in a ceremony on May 2. Jones and Ashe, both Republicans, will be joined by the International Broadcasting Bureau Director Richard Lobo, a Democrat appointed to his position by President Obama.

BBG staffers whom Lobo kept after taking over his IBB job had tried earlier to close down the transmitting station but their plans were stymied due to strong opposition from Ashe and Congressman Jones’ intervention. The North Carolina facility is located in Jones’s congressional district.

The same IBB staff that wanted to close down the station is still trying to cripple US government-funded radio broadcasting to the world. Acting against the wishes of US Congress and despite protests from many human rights and media freedom groups, their latest targets are Voice of America (VOA) radio news broadcasts to Tibet, VOA Cantonese broadcasts to China, VOA radio to communist Vietnam and Laos, VOA English and Spanish programs and several other news services funded by US taxpayers to provide uncensored news and information about America.

BBG Watch has learned that some members of the bipartisan Board claim that they did not know about the exact cuts proposed by the staff in the FY2013 budget plan, particularly with regard to the elimination of the Voice of America Tibetan radio, but most of the members, both Democrats and Republicans, are still supporting the BBG/IBB staff’s recommendations to drastically eliminate shortwave broadcasts and VOA language services while preserving and expanding bureaucratic positions at the International Broadcasting Bureau.

BBG Governor Amb. Victor Ashe at the Greenville Transmitting Station.

Despite opposition from these BBG and IBB executives, Ashe had visited the Greenville complex in December 2011 and insisted that it be kept operational as the only remaining shortwave radio broadcasting facility on US territory. He also demanded that the original name of the facility, the Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station, be restored. Ashe opposes the BBG/IBB staff’s recommendations of closing down Voice of America language services or reducing them to Internet-only news delivery to countries like China that block and censor Western news websites.

###

Read the official Broadcasting Board of Governors announcement and register to attend the ceremony:

Join The BBG In Rededicating The Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station

APRIL 5, 2012

You are cordially invited to the Rededication Ceremony of the Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station

Date:   Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Time:  10:00 AM

Place:  3919 VOA Site B Road

Grimesland, North Carolina 27837

Please join the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) for the rededication ceremony in honor of the renowned broadcaster and director of the USIA (1961-1964), Edward R. Murrow, and in recognition of World Press Freedom Day.

Speakers will include:

Congressman Walter Jones (invited)

Victor Ashe, BBG Governor, former Ambassador to Poland and former mayor of Knoxville

Richard M. Lobo, award-winning media executive and journalist and Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau

Edward R. Murrow’s legacy as a journalist and his rich understanding of the importance of press freedom as part of the bedrock of democracy along with the key role of U.S. international broadcasting as a model of a free press will be highlighted in the ceremony to be held in the lead-up to World Press Freedom Day, May 3rd.

The transmitting station, a 24/7 broadcast facility, supports the mission of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy” through about 2,200 hours of transmissions each month.

Following the ceremony a tour of the facility will be offered.

Register through Eventbrite by April 26, 2012.

For more information, please call 202-203-4400 or email pubaff@bbg.gov.

Tara Sonenshine

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) executives who have embarrassed the Obama Administration by their decision to end Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Tibet will receive an early visit to VOA from the newly sworn-in Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara D. Sonenshine.

BBG Watch has learned that the new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs has accepted an invitation from the BBG to come by the Cohen Building early in her tenure.  Tara Sonenshine plans to attend the Board’s meeting this month at the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), but has also welcomed the chance to visit the agency’s headquarters as well as “the vaunted home of VOA,” as one BBG official with former links to the State Department described her planned Voice of America visit in an internal email.

Tara Sonenshine will see the Voice of America shortly before it may lose many of its broadcasting services, including VOA radio to Tibet, major parts of VOA English and Spanish, VOA Cantonese broadcasts and Internet Cantonese news to China, VOA Georgian radio and several other foreign language news operations. VOA would lose 170 professional front line broadcasters and producers in the proposed budget if it is passed by Congress.   VOA faces net cuts totaling $17 million, compared with a reduction of $731,000 for its sister network, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

These cuts to Voice of America operations are being advanced year after year by a small group of BBG and IBB strategic planners and executives. Despite strong bipartisan opposition in Congress to these cuts, they were approved again this year by the majority of part time BBG members with the notable exception of the senior Republican Ambassador Victor H. Ashe. He and Sonenshine are the only attendees of BBG board meetings with any substantive foreign policy and public diplomacy experience. Sonenshine will represent at these meetings Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who is an ex officio BBG member.

Tibetans protesting at BBG's Michael Lynton's LA Sony office against silencing of Voice of America radio broadcasts to Tibet by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

A group of Tibetans and their supporters protested recently against the latest proposed VOA cuts at the Sony Pictures office of the BBG interim presiding chair Michael Lynton. Thousands of letters in support of VOA Tibetan radio broadcasts have been sent to members of Congress, some of whom want to save not only VOA Tibetan and Cantonese broadcasts but also VOA programs to other nations without free media, including Vietnam and Laos.

BBG and IBB executives who want to end these broadcasts claim that the Voice of America’s mission of representing the United States to the world can be done by the so-called surrogate broadcasters, semi-private entities such as Radio Free Asia (RFA), which are also managed by the BBG. Critics have charged, however, that these executives are also taking resources from the surrogate broadcasters to expand their own International Broadcasting Bureau bureaucracy. Their primary target, however, according to these critics, is the Voice of America, particularly reporting in foreign languages focusing on human rights issues. These BBG and IBB executives want to fire dozens of experienced VOA journalists, media freedom and human rights activists have warned.

Their measure of success, according to one critic, are VOA English lessons with high school bathroom humor that Chinese censors are inclined to ignore rather than providing hard-hitting radio and satellite television news of interest to specific groups such as political dissidents, human rights activists, ethnic and religious minorities and women who are victims of forced abortions. “They can’t survey these groups in an authoritarian nation like China and therefore videos with juvenile humor seem to them more appealing because they bring it an online audience that can be measured for as long as the Chinese censors allow it,” a critic said.

A letter addressed to Congresswoman Kay Granger (R – TX), Chairman of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the House Committee on Appropriations and to Ranking Member Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D – NY) criticizes the Broadcasting Board of Governors for expanding their bureaucracy at the expense of critical overseas broadcasts and U.S. strategic interests:

The proposed reductions are driven not by a considered strategic world view, but by bureaucratic expedience and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of VOA. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, the staff level for VOA will be reduced by 13.2% from the current year. In contrast, only 3.3% of the positions from the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which provides administrative support to the BBG, will be cut. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted the number of full time equivalent (FTE) positions for the IBB will rise from 593.2 in fiscal year 2011 to 678.2. In the same time period VOA will lose 121.2 FTE positions. The general trend of the IBB has been to grow larger while the number of language services they support is being reduced. Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support. The eliminations and reductions in broadcasting to Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam alone will cut 28 positions from VOA.

Link to the Letter

Here is the schedule of Tara Sonenshine’s planned visit to the BBG and Voice of America headquarters, as described in an internal email:

The new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Tara Sonenshine, has accepted an invitation from the BBG to come by the Cohen Building early in her tenure.  She plans to attend the Board’s meeting this month at OCB, but has also welcomed the chance to visit the agency’s headquarters as well as the vaunted home of VOA.

This she will do next Tuesday, April 10, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.  The program agreed upon with the State Department will be:

11 a.m. to noon – reception with light refreshments, VOA Briefing Room.

Among the invitees will be the language service heads and senior congressional staff who handle public diplomacy issues.

Noon to 12:30 – Tailored tour taking in historic aspects of the building as well as state-of-the-art studios.  Possible TV interview, to be worked out with VOA; tape would be shared across entities.

12:30 to 1:30 – Informal lunch, pre-ordered individually for those who choose to participate.  Details to follow.

The program will end in time for a brief break before the 2 p.m. Strategy and Budget Committee meeting.

Unlike most top level BBG and IBB executives, Tara Soneshine has extensive public diplomacy experience and is believed to be sensitive to human rights issues. Some who know her believe than she may be more involved in BBG decision making process.

Here is her official State Department bio:

Biography

Tara D. Sonenshine
Under Secretary
Term of Appointment: 04/05/2012 to present
Tara D. Sonenshine was sworn in as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs on April 5, 2012.

Tara was formerly Executive Vice President of the United States Institute of Peace. Prior to joining the United States Institute of Peace, she was a strategic communications adviser to many international organizations including USIP, the International Crisis Group, Internews, CARE, The American Academy of Diplomacy, and the International Women’s Media Foundation. Ms. Sonenshine served in various capacities at the White House during the Clinton Administration, including Transition Director and Director of Foreign Policy Planning for the National Security Council and Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Communications for the NSC.

Tara has had a distinguished career in communications and government, with high-level experience in broadcast, print, and online media. She has produced news programs for network television and authored numerous articles for national print and online media. She is the recipient of 10 News Emmy Awards and other awards in journalism for broadcast programs on domestic and international issues.

Tara graduated from Tufts University in 1981 Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in political science. She has remained active at Tufts on boards and advisory committees including the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service.

Her broadcast career began at ABC News in New York, working for another Tufts alumnus, David Burke, then vice president of ABC NEWS. Ms. Sonenshine went on to become editorial producer of ABC News’ Nightline, where she worked for more than a decade. She was also an off-air reporter at the Pentagon for ABC’s World News Tonight. A former contributing editor for Newsweek, Sonenshine is the author of numerous articles on foreign affairs published in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers.

Her hobbies include family time, tennis, Zumba, writing about foreign policy and global women’s issues.

This word resonates sharply with what has been an ongoing activity by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in its efforts to decimate U.S. broadcasting to many countries of the world, among them Tibet and China. Anyone who has a modicum of interest or understanding of what it means to live under an oppressive regime would be appalled by the direction in which the BBG is taking the Voice of America.

The explanations given thus far that the Internet is a more useful tool for addressing America’s public diplomacy are lacking in truth and common sense. Everyone knows that totalitarian regimes and their leaders are aggressive players in boycotting and in censorship of any Western influence or talk of freedom, human rights, living and breathing with dignity.

In spite of Congressional budget allotments for specific broadcasting, the BBG has acted in direct opposition to what Congress has dictated that must be done.

It would seem that the Executives leading the BBG do not agree with what Congress stipulates and are actively pursuing their own inexplicable agenda, which is even more worrisome. It appears that advancing the humanitarian goals of American public diplomacy abroad is not required by those in charge of the BBG. They are quite content to throw billions of people under the bus, deny them access to news from America and prevent them from learning that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also applies to those souls who live under repressive and communist regimes.

With the advent of a new President in 2008, the activity and misdirection by the BBG has multiplied and moved quickly in spite of what Congress has said and done. They are behaving like autocrats themselves and influencing the editorial of direction of the Voice of America. They are exercising judgement that lacks humanity or compassion for the unfortunate people around the world who yearn to listen to VOA.

President Obama has shown his disdain for the relevancy of the three branches of government. The BBG executives are acting in the same manner and obviously are taking lessons from their patron. How disheartening for all those selfless persons who for seventy years made a huge difference in the lives of billions around the world. A bunch of highly paid wonks want to destroy the bedrock of American public diplomacy around the world to people who really need to hear its message of freedom and hope.

by Quo Vadis
 
The recent and most devastating Reduction-in-Force proposed by Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in the FY-2013 budget is the latest in a series of frontal attacks against the basic mission of the Voice of America.   For FY-2013, the BBG has stepped up the pace of these annual onslaughts proposing to cut almost 200 broadcasters from an ever-shrinking staff, sapping the strength of America’s voice to the world and draining what’s left of the morale of its broadcasters. At the same time, the BBG is busy feathering its bureaucratic nest with the number of past, present and future management positions exploding.
 
Time and again, over the last few years, the BBG, on the recommendation of its Executive Staff, has marched in lockstep up to Capitol Hill with its proposals to cut  important and vital VOA language broadcasts, including English. Only through the direct intervention of the Congress have VOA broadcasts been spared. But like a toddler in a perpetual temper tantrum, the Executive Staff of the BBG persists in its relentless anti-VOA animus trying to prove to Congress that they, like the Enron folk, are “the smartest guys in the room.”
 
Let’s take a swing through the past starting with 2007, when the BBG proposed closing a number of services including Cantonese, Croatian, Georgian, Greek, Thai and Uzbek for FY2008.  In addition, the BBG planned to cut 14 hours of radio broadcasts in English, plus ending radio in Hindi, Russian and to the Balkan countries.  Reductions were proposed for broadcasts in Portuguese to Africa, Tibetan, and Ukrainian.
 
Nothing doing, said the Congress. The decision was helped along by an unprecedented bipartisan letter to save the VOA in March 2007 signed by eleven (11) former Voice of America Directors who served over the years under both Republican and Democratic administrations.  (see letter at link: http://www.publicdiplomacy.org/78.htm)
 
Fast forward to the final version of the appropriations bill for FY2008, in which the Congress overturned the BBG’s slash-and-burn plan with the following language:  

Language Service Reductions.- The Committee recommendation supports continuing broadcasting which the administration proposed for language service reductions in fiscal year 2008, particularly Albanian, Bosnian, Cantonese, Croatian, English, Georgian, Kazakh, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, South Slavic, Tibetan, Thai, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

 
True to form, the powers that be at the BBG paid no attention to the will of the Congress which picks up the tab for U.S. broadcasting and proceeded to cut radio/TV broadcasts to Russia in July of ’08, just three weeks before Russian troops invaded Georgia.  The VOA Georgian Service narrowly escaped the same fate thanks to the efforts of a Congresswoman who headed the Congressional Georgian Caucus.
 
Even though rebuffed in the appropriations for FY2008, the Executive Staff of the BBG was at it again the very next year. In the FY 2009 budget process, the BBG  requested implementation of the FY2008 cuts which the Congress prevented them from doing the previous year.
 
“Nay,” said the Congress in a bipartisan vote.
 
The House version of the 2009 appropriations bill included the following language:  

The Committee recognizes VOA for its essential contribution to United States public diplomacy.  The VOA’s English-language radio programming is especially important since it provides accurate, objective and comprehensive news to a potential English-speaking audience of 1.6 billion people worldwide.

 
The U.S. Senate concurred. In its appropriations bill for FY 2009, the Senate wrote: 

The Committee provides $693 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an increase of $23 million above the FY08 enacted level and $ 6 million below the request.  The bill provides funding for broadcasting in languages which the Administration proposed to eliminate in FY09, such as Russian, Uzbek, Tibetan and to the Balkans, where freedom of speech remains restricted and broadcasting is still necessary.

 
 
Same old, same old reduction proposals for FY 2010, but this time less drastic: Croatian, Greek (a perennial target) and Hindi.  In spite of the outcry from listeners in India, BBG executives  closed down VOA Hindi radio/TV broadcasts, arguing that VOA English could substitute for those language broadcasts.  Reductions were also proposed to Radio/TV Marti newscasts and on that basis, the BBG conducted an illegal RIF of 23 employees which was overturned in 2011 by an Arbitrator.  Since the Agency has appealed the Arbitrator’s decision on restoring the fired Marti employees, that situation is still in limbo.
 
Interestingly enough, although the availability of VOA English broadcasts was used as a justification to close VOA Hindi in 2010,  the BBG proposes to cut VOA English programs to the area in FY2013.
 
It didn’t get any better in 2011 with the BBG’s proposed reductions for FY2012. A huge battle erupted last year to save the VOA China radio/TV programming in Mandarin and Cantonese as the BBG proposed closing down the radio/TV broadcasts and transferring their functions to the Internet, which is totally blocked in China and policed by a 50,000+ person cyber-army.
   
In a decisive maneuver, an amendment was proposed for the FY2012 House Appropriations bill by Congressman Rohrabacher and approved unanimously in a bipartisan vote by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee:. 

Limitation: Of the funds authorized to be appropriated to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, 13.76 million is authorized to be appropriated only for Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese language radio and satellite television broadcasting.  Such funds may not be used for any other purpose.

 
Although the U.S. Congress once again came to the rescue of VOA,  the victory was bittersweet because the BBG, like the Energizer Bunny, was cranking up for the legendary Big One in its FY2013 budget plans with the most sweeping Reduction-in-Force ever proposed for VOA.
 
Battle-weary broadcasting employees are still determined to fight to the end whatever that end may be and have turned again to the Congress to petition for redress of grievance.
 
Congressional staffers often ask VOA employees why they think that the BBG is so intent on cutting the Voice of America.  The only answer seems to be that the BBG and its Executive Staff must truly believe that they, and not the Congress or VOA broadcasters, are “the smartest guys in the room.”  Exactly what the executives at Enron in their corporate arrogance thought as well.
 
​​​​​​​
 
 

Like a failed “Biggest Loser,” VOA news management continues to push
the boundaries of its own ballooning size. There are currently four
assistant managing editors and one managing editor in Central News,
and a host of “duty” and “coverage” and “supervisory” editors below
them, all keeping watch over the shrinking pool of those who actually
report, write and produce.

A couple of these supernumeraries don’t seem to have all that much to
do (though they have a hard time keeping even that straight.) It seems
like more than enough managers for an operation that’s about to RIF
20% or more of its staff.

But not so fast, there — the Central News managing editor has now
found a need for a GS-14 deputy. To “deal with upstairs,” it was reported.

(As if there aren’t enough underemployed 14s and 15s already watching
the clock at VOA.)

See the “vacancy” announcement.

BBG member Michael Meehan

BBG Watch Commentary

Speaking up at a panel discussion on media freedom, an unidentified Tibetan woman challenged the Broadcasting Board of Governors over the BBG plan to end Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcasts. The March 28 panel discussion in Washington was organized jointly by the BBG and Gallup. A moderator from Gallup repeatedly tried to silence the Tibetan woman, but she was allowed to finish her comments thanks to an intervention by BBG member Michael Meehan who was one of the panelists.

The panel discussed how the world’s populations perceive media freedom in their countries. Gallup and BBG also announced the details of their new global research project, which will cost US taxpayers 50 million dollars over the next five years.

BBG Watch applauds Governor Meehan for defending the Tibetan woman’s right of free speech as a US taxpayer who is concerned how her money is being spent to support freedom and democracy abroad.  While the Governor showed a genuine interest in the tragic human rights situation in Tibet, we disagree with his comments that Tibet is just one of many hot spots around the world that Broadcasting Board of Governors cannot possibly cover.

Tibet is controlled by China, which represents one of America’s biggest strategic challenges, especially in the area of media freedom and public diplomacy. The argument that the BBG should not respond in cases of crisis has been a favorite one of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) bureaucrats who see their positions and their bureaucratic spending threatened each time real news programs are saved or expanded. They have managed to infect BBG members with their faulty and self-serving reasoning.

In fact, if BBG members could have asked the late Vaclav Havel or Lech Walesa, they would learn that it is exactly in times of crisis that the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were needed the most and gained the largest audience and the greatest loyalty of their listeners. That loyalty and friendship toward America lasted for decades and is paying dividends for the United States to this day.

As the unidentified Tibetan woman said, to eliminate VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet at this time is not just wrong; it is outrageous.

The problem is the culture of the BBG and IBB executive staff on whom BBG members depend far too much. These highly-paid executives have lost an appreciation of whom US international broadcasting should serve and with what.

While Governor Meehan mentioned the need to broadcast to those living under authoritarian regimes, neither the BBG and IBB staff or the moderator from Gallup have shown any real concern for the those who are the most oppressed and the most opposed to tyranny. Based on what we saw at this panel, it seems unlikely that the corporate culture at Gallup is well suited to serve the needs of the BBG and American taxpayers when it comes to promoting free speech, media freedom, and US public diplomacy interests around the world.  Gallup may be a great company for commercial and political research serving commercial and political needs, but US international broadcasting was not created for commercial reasons.

You don’t cut off the Tibetan people’s lifeline at the most critical moment in one of the most strategically important countries — you expand it, even if it means laying off BBG and IBB bureaucrats.

We hope Governor Meehan will take these views into consideration. It’s the high time for BBG members to start thinking for themselves and to take charge of US international broadcasting.

TIBETAN WOMAN CHALLENGES GALLUP AND BROADCASTING BOARD OF GOVERNORS – TRANSCRIPT

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN:  I just wanted to make a point when it comes to research in cases like Tibet that is under China’s authoritarian rule, there is no research data that you can collect inside Tibet.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Ma’am, do you have a question?

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: I do. The BBG has proposed to eliminate the Voice of America Tibetan radio. It concerns me because Voice of America radio is the only source of international news and information about America to Tibetans inside Tibet

Radio Free Asia also goes to Tibet, but their mandate is different.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Ma’am, please ask a question?

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: Radio is the most common and cheapest, used by Tibetans everywhere.

President Obama recently said the Voice of America is the voice of freedom.

And, it is so.

Eliminating this voice of freedom for the Tibetans at this time, based on the research that you have collected is just outrageous.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Ma’am, please state a question, otherwise we’ve got to move on. We have a lot of folks here who want to ask questions.

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: I understand. I just wanted to make a point that Tibetans and Tibetan supporters at this time are outraged when the situation inside Tibet is right now…

[Moderator from Gallup attempts to cut off the Tibetan woman's mike.]

BBG GOVERNOR MICHAEL MEEHAN: Let her finish, thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: Thank you.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: Go ahead. Ask me a question. I sit on the Board. You are not going to find a bigger supporter of Tibet than me.

If you have a question, let’s have it.

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: Yes, we would like to ask that you reconsider this proposed budget for 2013 [that calls for] the Tibetan radio to be eliminated.

It [VOA radio] does provide a very vital source of life for Tibetans inside Tibet.

We’d like you to look at that.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: Excellent point. Excellent point.

Thank you for sharing that, your point of view, and it’s an excellent point.

This is one of the harder things that we as a Board have.

Because there is no way that, I would say, that the US government should spend 750 million dollars to try to cover every hot spot in the world.

The Chinese spend 6.6 billion dollars a year doing what we do.

We are just up against some really big forces.

There are seven people that work at the VOA Tibetan [radio] effort. But I would disagree with you that VOA is the only staff that covers Tibet.

We have Radio Free Asia. We have five different companies that are under US international broadcasting.

And, in a case by case basis, we have to find places where there are overlaps of people doing work.

And Tibet is a unique challenge. I understand that. I understand.

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: The mandate is different for Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. I listen to both services.

Voice of America covers international news and news related to America.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Ma’am, this is not the time for a debate.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: Let me finish my point on this. If the Congress … the Congress came to us and said you’ve got to cut the whole place by ten percent, and then they cut us by five percent.

So some cuts have to be made.

80 percent of funding that goes to US international broadcasting are for people.

[At this point the Tibetan woman's mike is cut off by Gallup. Some of her comments cannot be heard clearly.]

UNIDENTIFIED TIBETAN WOMAN: Only a minute percentage of people.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: But Ma’am, if the other 99 countries that we cover came and made the same point you make, we’d be talking about five, and seven, and nine employees as well.

MODERATOR FROM GALLUP: Next question. Ma’am, we’re going to move on.

BBG GOVERNOR MEEHAN: The Board is expanding our efforts in Tibet. We’re expanding our efforts, Mam.

When talking to Congressional staffers about shortwave radio reception in China, BBG executives put together about ten random samples of Voice of America Mandarin shortwave transmissions which showed that between the Chinese government’s jamming and co-channel interference about 95% or more of what VOA broadcasts can’t be heard.

These BBG executives could have just as well do a demonstration for Congressional staffers of Internet access in China to Voice of America Mandarin and Cantonese websites. It would have shown that the Chinese government’s blocking and censorship of VOA Chinese websites is about 99% effective unless one is a computer whiz kid who can access proxy servers before the Chinese cyber police discovers and blocks them.

The truth of the matter is that these BBG executives want to eliminate the Voice of America as a U.S. broadcaster in China and to fire dozens of VOA journalists specializing in human rights reporting. Their argument about developing new media program delivery is a hoax, since using new media is by and large free or inexpensive and the Voice of America Chinese Branch already makes a good use of it. What these BBG bureaucrats want is to take money and resources from serious Voice of America journalism and to use them for themselves and their private contractors.

The demonstration put together by these BBG executives for Congressional staffers was purposely incomplete and misleading. Voice of America shortwave radio broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese can in fact be heard outside of the main metropolitan areas in China and even in some big cities at certain times. National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent reported recently that Tibetan Buddhist monks in Tibet secretly listen every night to VOA Tibetan shortwave radio programs. BBG executives should be asked how these Tibetan monks manage to listen to these shortwave broadcasts if jamming is 95% effective.

Recently, a group of Voice of America radio listeners in China put together a video to show how important these VOA broadcasts are to them and to many disenfranchised and oppressed political, social, religious, and ethnic groups. The Broadcasting Board of Governors wants to pretend that groups like these do not exist and that VOA would be better off producing noncontroversial programs, such as English lessons, that would appeal to a mass audience and be approved by the Chinese censors.

BBG executives are so obsessed with faulty audience research that they don’t see the big picture. English lessons are designed to attract listeners to substantive news on VOA. They are not an end in themselves. These bureaucrats have no idea why Tibetan monks and others in China want Voice of America radio.

Women’s Rights in China (WRIC) NGO has produced a short video showing that both very young and older persons in China continue to rely on Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts for uncensored news and information. Their comments, recorded in China, point to the censorship of the Internet by the Chinese authorities and the fact that hundreds of millions of Chinese cannot use the Internet to access VOA websites, which are being blocked in China, or can’t afford to have Internet access of any kind because they are too poor.

The Voice of America celebrated last year the 70th anniversary of broadcasting to China. Its supporters in China seen in this video wish VOA happy birthday, which almost could not have been celebrated as the U.S. agency responsible for these broadcasts wanted to stop them shortly before the 70th anniversary date.

Thanks to numerous protests in China and in the United States, members of Congress from both parties prevented the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) from implementing its plan to end VOA radio and TV programs to China on October 1, 2011, which happened to be the anniversary of the founding of communist China. The BBG again wants to end VOA radio and television in Cantonese. BBG executives also want to terminate VOA Tibetan radio programs.

Women’s Rights in China Video was recorded in China by WRIC volunteers. Those appearing in this video have shown a lot of courage by admitting on camera that they are listeners to VOA radio broadcasts, but please note that their names are not used. They know that listening to VOA radio is safer than using the Internet.

Link to the Women’s Rights in China video on the 70th anniversary of Voice of America broadcasting to China.

The BBG staff’s presentation on Capitol Hill was highly misleading. Here are some counter-arguments:

1. Since the samples are all from urban or built-up areas, what about samples from the countryside? What anecdotal evidence do they have regarding jamming from Chinese individuals who have listened to VOA from rural areas that have either escaped or emigrated to the U.S.?

2. What active measures have the IBB taken to overcome jamming? Have they shifted frequencies or bands on a random or radical basis? Have they transmitted from various transmitter sites to change the incoming angle (i.e., North – South, East – West, over the Eural mountains, etc) in order to make jamming more difficult? By not attempting to overcome jamming, isn’t this a form of “surrender” in the War of Ideas? Does the BBG believe we are involved in a War of Ideas with China or that they have a role to play in its prosecution?

3. Have they experimented with “twilight” transmission (within an hour before and an hour after sunrise and sunset) when propagation patterns change and make jamming more difficult?

4. Do they see any potential with digital transmission in the shortwave (DRM)? Have they conducted any experimentation whatsoever with DRM in China?

5. If shortwave transmission to China is so poor, why is the BBG intent on continuing – if not upgrading – RFA shortwave transmission while eliminating VOA transmission?

6. Is the BBG in agreement that VOA and surrogate programming have entirely different purposes and that neither should be “homogenized” nor turned into a hybrid service or not?

7. Have they distributed or proliferated shortwave radio receivers, particularly to individuals in these disenfranchised communities? Do they see any value in giving poor populations more shortwave access?

Finally…

8. Shortwave is the only way to communicate with the economic and politically disenfranchised desparate individuals in China. These are people that suffer the most from human rights abuses and the ones that are most in need of VOA programming. As Dr. Lenczowski so eloquently states, it is VOA programming that helps reduce the “atomization” of politically disenfranchised individuals that are separated from each other by the totalitarian regime and they cannot coalese political power. Most of these individuals continue to live in poor areas where there are no electrical infrastructures in their communities. Therefore, it is impossible to communicate with them on the Internet or via social media since they have no electrical access whatsoever let alone the economic wherewithal to purchase Internet products. Does the BBG still consider this demographic group as a target population for VOA programming or are they only interested in reaching the “movers and shakers” and youth populations that have Internet access in the urban areas?

If the BBG is not interested in continuing an appeal to this particular demographic group, there is a serious disconnect between the BBG leadership and the journalists in the various language services. From my observation, the disenfranchised demographic in our target areas is the one that most of the journalists in most of the language services are most interested in reaching. If this is not the same concern of the BBG then there needs to be a serious re-education of either the BBG leadership or the journalists. If this is the case, this disparity between the preferred target audience of the BBG leadership and the target audience of the majority of the VOA journalists is a contributing factor to the low morale in our building. There is no wonder the BBG ends up at the bottom of the list of Federal government agencies in the Human Capital survey of employees.

This is how Jing Zhang, a former political prisoner in China who now lives in the United States and runs Women’s Rights in China, explained the importance of Voice of America radio broadcasts for the audiences that the Broadcasting Board of Governors wants to forget about:

The Internet offers undeniable advantages. However, it cannot replace radio broadcasting. In today’s China, foreign radio broadcasts in Chinese are still a crucial source of outside information for the majority of the population who lack access to the Internet. Voice of America not only provides indispensable and truthful news reporting, it also upholds the image of the United States and is a valuable antidote to the Great Foreign Propaganda Plan of the Chinese regime. Not only would the elimination of VOA’s Chinese language service be contrary to the spirit and values of America’s Founding Fathers, it would inflict irreparable harm on generations of dissidents and advocates of freedom and democracy, and silence the most vulnerable groups in Chinese society—the women and children.

READ MORE: Former Chinese political prisoner says VOA must not retreat from China of Ms. Zhang’s appeal.

The continued flow of information from people in the know concerning the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and concurrently the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) is cause for grave concern about continued American strategic, public diplomacy and humanitarian interests in various countries in the world especially, countries like Tibet where wanton desecration of its people is the cultural genocidal policy of China as well as China itself, where human rights and freedoms are denied in every part of one’s existence.

For these active efforts on the part of the BBG to decimate the Voice of America (VOA) and its other offshoot broadcasting entities one is reminded of there being something rotten in the state of the BBG. It isn’t just a lack of vital knowledge or even understanding about what the VOA and the BBG’s surrogate broadcasting grantees are all about, it seems more to be a contrived effort to eliminate America’s influence and presence around the world and especially in those countries where it is the sole light in people’s lives.

It is becoming clearer by the day that in spite of the simple fact that the BBG is completely out of touch and worse, has no real interest in knowing what, who, how and why the VOA has operated so successfully for seventy years. Its strange actions would appear to be herded from some other source which has a vested interest in eliminating American influence.

There is considerable evidence provided by the Obama administration that America has many things it should apologize for but rarely mentions those which have provided millions of people with hope , inspiration and a belief in liberty, freedom and justice for all — the bedrock of America’s dreams and accomplishments.

It is of deep concern that Congress has not acted in a more rapid process to stop what the BBG is doing in its tracks, completely, not just for the short term.

Whenever there has been a consolidation of entities such as for instance what the BBG wants to do, place Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) under one umbrella — ostensibly to save money and end duplication, supposedly — it becomes very clear in short order that what was intended is an unwieldy bubble with no direction. Incapable bureaucrats with even less information upon which to make decisions take over and for all intents and purposes the fundamental reason for the whole operation is lost and done away with entirely.

This is the track that the incompetents at the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the International Broadcasting Bureau seem to be on and America will definitely regret the day that these individuals were in a position of authority to exercise such insane judgement in a world where freedom, liberty and human rights are being torn apart.

One only needs look at the horrible attacks on Jews and Christians in many parts of the world and their right to exist being driven off the map of humanity. At no other time in America’s history, except for during the Second World War, has its influence, care, generosity and hope been more necessary than now. So the question remains, and it requires a very solid response. Why is the BBG attempting to tear down what has been operating exceptionally well for over seventy years?

The namby pamby answers from the BBG, such as saving money and eliminating duplication, just don’t answer the question and in no way are even reasonable or sound. While some may believe that the Cold War is over, most know that in a different form it is just heating up in many parts of the world. It is a frightening thought to realize that Christians and Jews are being killed just for the heck of it, without a viable response by radio broadcasts from America.

Now is the time — not later, or sometime in the future, but now — for Congress to act in a direct, concise and patriotic manner to save the agency and the Voice of America from demolition by a group of know nothings, care nothings, who themselves are so self-absorbed they have no idea what is required of America in order to maintain its influence and humanity for millions around the world.

Nobody should miss the key point in the letter to Congress: The IBB — International Broadcasting Bureau as an element of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — exists solely to provide administrative support to broadcasting.

Yet the IBB is getting bigger — at the same time that broadcasting units are being decimated. As the letter states, “Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support.”

Spelling it out in numbers: If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, Voice of America (VOA) staff levels will be cut 13.2%. But just 3.3% positions will be cut from the IBB. 

In fact, the IBB’s full-time equivalent (FTE) positions will increase by 85 new position, for a total of 678 . At the same time, VOA will LOSE 121 positions. 

It’s a crazy, upside-down agency run by managers intent on lining their own pockets while driving the mission into the ground. 

by Quo Vadis

An early April Fools’ joke?  Classes in “outer beauty” as part of “Taking care of yourself from the inside out” in an Agency whose employees face a sweeping loss of 200+ positions in the upcoming Reduction in Force (RIF)?  Surely someone jests.  

Could this be some misguided bizarre attempt to improve morale by bringing in brigades of Cosmetic Consultants from high-end, chi-chi area stores to an Agency where morale is already at rock bottom and sinking, if that’s possible?  Are packets of shiny lip gloss and eye shadow color palettes and technicolor nails and the newest blush brush demonstrated by imported make-up mavens from Nordstrom’s and Macy’s the answer to the VOA morale problem?  

Who are these strange out-of-touch people who occupy  suites on the third floor that evidently believe that the prospect of losing your job calls for cosmetic and not job consultants?  

Could it be a variant of Marie Antoinette’s infamous “let them eat cake” in answer to a plea for bread? 

Or could this be the BBG/IBB saying, in essence: let them have lip butter in parfait pink and delicious Airbrush mousse as their cryptic answer to VOA employees wondering why their jobs are being eliminated for reasons that don’t make any sense? 

Hope it’s not the BBG’s final Alice-in-Wonderland act before tossing what they view as rank-and-file flotsam down the rabbit hole.   

In the national interest, the BBG’s self-proclaimed value-added experts should be mandated to take classes in make-up removal to expose the real face of the BBG/IBB.  It’s high time the Congress and the taxpayers see who they really are. 

Life at VOA is starting to look a bit like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.  “There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter.”  

Link to Video.

###

From: IBB Notices Administration 
Subject: House Announcement: Taking care of Yourself – 1 PM Today VOA Briefing Room
Date: March 20, 2012 10:16:54 AM PDT
To: IBB Staff 

Taking care of yourself from the inside out (outer beauty)
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Location: VOA Briefing Room
 
Nordstrom’s Cosmetic Consultants will be here with their Spring Collection.

Macy’s and other cosmetic consultants are invited.

Bureaucratic power-grab

After making a good start on destroying Voice of America’s ability to fulfill its unique mission of informing the world about the United States, the next target of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and International broadcasting Bureau bureaucrat are now the surrogate broadcasters.

Sources tell BBG Watch that the power-grab by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) – International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) bureaucrats is killing morale at the grantee surrogate broadcasters: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), which otherwise have enjoyed very high morale when compared to how the BBG, IBB, and Voice of America (VOA) staffs view their own managers and their leadership qualities.

The bureaucratic power-grab is the proposal to merge all three grantee organizations under one administrative umbrella.

At the same time, BBG/IBB bureaucrats have already grabbed even greater share of resources from the Voice of America (VOA), decimating its broadcasts and staffs. If morale at the surrogate broadcasters is bad, it is ten times worse at VOA, where entire language services are being abolished and its mission of representing the Unites States undermined in a direct violation of the law.

The IBB/BBG management team is in effect abolishing VOA’s broadcasting capabilities, particularly radio, and giving itself control over VOA assets to use for their own bureaucratic purposes. If they were also to gain full control of the surrogate broadcasters, it would be a frightening prospect considering that they have been consistently rated as the worst leaders and managers among all federal government executives. Keep in mind that they are the ones who proposed to end Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcasts while Tibetan monks were self-immolating and Tibet was burning

These BBG and IBB bureaucrats have always had much more control over the Voice of America than the surrogate broadcasters. The merger proposal is designed to put them also in firm administrative control over these privately-run but publicly-funded entities.

The grantee broadcasters are each focused on a particular area of the world and run by professionals who understand special needs of their specific audiences. To the extent that they can be effective, it is due to their programming specialization and administrative independence. They were in fact specifically created by Congress to be independent and to specialize.

The merger proposal in its current form will destroy their independence and ultimately their ability to specialize. This would make them ineffective. They will no longer be run by area specialists and journalists who are in touch with their audiences but by BBG and IBB bureaucrats. And, as we said before, these bureaucrats are the worst in the entire US federal government. It would be equivalent to putting experts in cracking safes in charge of the bank.

For example, the BBG’s CFO’s office has grown by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years while Voice of America staff is being decimated and top programming positions handed over to big contractors. And yet with all those new accountants in place, the CFO still can’t pay BBG, IBB and VOA contract employees on time. One could only imagine what havoc BBG and IBB bureaucrats would cause if given administrative control over the much more efficiently-run grantee organizations.

As these bureaucrats eliminate broadcasts and other information programs, International Broadcasting Bureau offices in the Cohen building are growing out of control. Many sources describe these IBB bureaucrats as being “totally out of touch with the actual broadcasters.”

The argument that the merger proposal will save money by eliminating duplicate administrative positions is completely false. It will simply transfer assets and resources from the grantee organizations who know how to use them efficiently to support specific missions and programs that they understand and feel passionate about to incompetent and power-hungry bureaucrats who have little knowledge of specific regions and their programming needs and care little for the suffering of those who live under oppressive regimes. If they did, they would not want to eliminate VOA radio to Tibet.

They even want to give themselves the power to actively market BBG programs in the United States by repealing the Smith-Mundt Act. Placing all BBG programs, including those from surrogate broadcasters, in public domain is a great idea. To that extent, the Smith-Mundt Act should be modified. But allowing these non-specialist bureaucrats to focus on an NPR-like outreach in the United States will simply further undermine the USIB’s core international mission.

By proposing to end or drastically reduce Voice of America broadcasting to China, Russia, Tibet, Vietnam, Laos, Georgia and many other countries, proposing to decimate VOA English and Spanish programs, and to eliminate Radio Free Asia shortwave radio transmissions to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, these bureaucrats have shown over and over again their indifference to serving the information needs of core international audiences.

Sources tell BBG Watch that BBG member Susan McCue, who as a former Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has more Congressional experience than other Board members, is working on putting together the US Innovation Act (USIA), hoping to pass all kinds of US international broadcasting legislation in one package. Ironically when the United States Information Agency (also USIA) was in charge of US international broadcasting before the BBG came into existence, it would have been inconceivable for VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet or any other nation ruled by a communist regime to be terminated.

It will be interesting to see what emerges from Susan McCue’s effort, but if the proposed legislation limits even further accountability of BBG/IBB officials and puts them in even greater control over strategic international broadcasting assets, the results would be disastrous. These officials claim that they are using audience research, eliminate duplication and save money in a period of tight budgets. Sources among experts at the surrogate broadcasters say, however, that the research techniques these bureaucrats use are flawed, that they can’t interpret correctly even those research results that are accurate, and the whole claim of saving money is false. No money is being saved. It goes to expanding their bureaucratic empire and lining the pockets of big contractors.

If the house is on fire because of a design flaw, one doesn’t go to the house architect to change the design. One calls a fire brigade. If Susan McCue is relying on advice from BBG/IBB in-house “experts” — the worst leaders and managers in the federal government according to OPM surveys — the proposed legislation is bound to increase their power while diminishing public scrutiny, undermining the efficiency of US international broadcasting operations and wasting taxpayers’ money.

A letter addressed to Congresswoman Kay Granger (R – TX), Chairman of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the House Committee on Appropriations and to Ranking Member Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D – NY) criticizes the Broadcasting Board of Governors for expanding their bureaucracy at the expense of critical overseas broadcasts and U.S. strategic interests:

The proposed reductions are driven not by a considered strategic world view, but by bureaucratic expedience and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of VOA. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, the staff level for VOA will be reduced by 13.2% from the current year. In contrast, only 3.3% of the positions from the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), which provides administrative support to the BBG, will be cut. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted the number of full time equivalent (FTE) positions for the IBB will rise from 593.2 in fiscal year 2011 to 678.2. In the same time period VOA will lose 121.2 FTE positions. The general trend of the IBB has been to grow larger while the number of language services they support is being reduced. Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support. The eliminations and reductions in broadcasting to Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam alone will cut 28 positions from VOA.

Link to the Letter

What the BBG needs is to reform itself, starting by sending their failed bureaucrats into early retirement, reversing their program cutting proposals, reaffirming Voice of America’s unique mission and preserving the autonomy of the grantee organizations. It would certainly be a welcome news in Tibet and in many other countries where desperate people see the Voice of America and the surrogate broadcasters as their only hope and their only news link to the free world.

It is one of the primary targets in the proposed 30% reduction in VOA broadcast operations.

It is a place with an estranged relationship with its managers who are seen as defensive at best, vindictive at worst.

It is being saddled with a set of production objectives which are impossible to meet, mainly involving the time-consuming requirements to integrate the disparate needs of radio, television and agency websites.

It is being used as a clearinghouse for commingled content between itself and the agency grantees which have different missions and standards which raises a number of other serious concerns.

The latest reaching the Federalist from various sources:

On Thursday, March 15 (the Ides of March no less), VOA Director David Ensor held a meeting with Newsroom staff. He got an earful. He may not have been happy with what he heard. Nevertheless, he needed to hear it, directly from the staff feeling the consequences of poor/hostile management and the disarray as the direct consequence of BBG/IBB decisions adversely impacting on Newsroom operations.

Ensor should take staff input seriously, rather than accepting the sycophancy coming from Newsroom management.

In the Newsroom and elsewhere in the Cohen Building: threats, intimidation and bullying are poor substitutes for leadership. They have become an institutionalized part of the agency’s management philosophy. It makes the agency what it is: a hostile work environment. These are not qualities. They are liabilities, along with the people who perpetuate their existence. They don’t need to be encouraged, much less condoned or supported. They are not hallmarks for an effective and mission-successful operation. They are the basis for failure.

Mr. Ensor may not have experienced a reduction-in-force (RIF) firsthand. He should be concerned. If you haven’t been through it, it would be unwise to allow one’s ego to dismiss the effects caustically. The effects are felt long before the actual event.

In an agency with a long history and tradition, such an action is a breach of faith with the workforce. Ensor would be well served to remember what he said some months ago in a previous meeting with the Newsroom staff – his comment about the place not being the same with what is to come. Worse, if what the BBG/IBB proposes comes to pass, it would likely be one of the largest RIFs on record in the agency – fertile ground for things to get messed up or manipulated.

In short, Mr. Ensor has it right. It won’t be the same.

It will be worse.

There are certain things which VOA does well. They should be the top priority, rather than the BBG/IBB “flim flam plan” approach of trying to reinvent the wheel. The BBG/IBB likes to throw caution to the wind, rely upon cheesy and arrogant pronouncements and tamper with core operations.

One of the things the agency doesn’t do well is television, with elongated production costs, staff and time requirements. In this regard, too much of what the agency is doing is cheap television done badly. Shortcomings in other areas aside, this is the one thing capable of taking the whole place down. One of the principle fault lines for this is the Newsroom.

It is no secret that we are big believers in radio: it is immediate, it is right now, it is covering the news as it happens. Everything else comes – later.

The message to Mr. Ensor and the BBG/IBB is simple: play to your strengths, not your weaknesses.

Start with the Newsroom. Bag the notion that big cuts to the Newsroom operation will make things better. Forget it. It won’t. Not even remotely.

Beware of cheap television done badly.

The Federalist
March 2012

“For a journalistic organization, it is shameful and exploitative to omit such an essential piece of information,” one former VOA journalist told BBG Watch, “especially since these officials know that supporters of freedom in Tibet, human rights organizations and many members of Congress are trying to stop the BBG from ending Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcasts. Media in communist-ruled countries uses similar techniques to manipulate public opinion.”

See official BBG announcement: “The Dalai Lama: Then And Now.”

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) member Michael Meehan and BBG’s Director of Strategy and Development Bruce Sherman will speak about their embattled federal agency’s new strategic vision for US international broadcasting at a panel discussion later this month organized jointly with Gallup which recently landed a controversial 50 million dollar audience research contract with the BBG. Also see the BBG announcement: “Gallup Joins BBG To Examine Media Freedom.”

The “Media Freedom and Public Confidence: Informing, Engaging, and Connecting the World through the Media” panel discussion will take place March 28, 2012 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at The Gallup Building at 901 F Street, NW, Washington, DC. Attendance is by registration.

The announcement says that the discussion will focus on how the world’s populations perceive media freedom within their countries. The panelists will also share data on citizens’ confidence in their media.

The joint BBG/Gallup event may offer an opportunity for the public to learn more about the controversial agency which one US Senator described as the most worthless organization in the federal government. Its officials are consistently given the lowest leadership and management ratings in the annual Office of Personnel Management (OPM) employee opinion surveys. Their union reports that employees have no confidence in the strategic plan and reforms announced recently by BBG officials.

BBG employees, their union and human rights groups all point out that while attacks on free press intensify around the world, the BBG is pushing for major cutbacks in broadcasting to countries without free media as part of the proposal for reorganizing US international broadcasting. Critics see it as an attempt by BBG officials to save their bureaucratic jobs at the expense of critical broadcasts and journalistic positions which they want to eliminate to protect theirs from budget cuts. A BBG spokesperson implied that keeping Tibetan and Cantonese radio broadcasts by both Voice of America and Radio Free Asia during a period of tight budgets would be irresponsible.

An anonymous Voice of America journalist said, however, that the decision to end VOA radio broadcasts in Tibetan and to abolish the VOA Cantonese Service suggests that the Broadcasting Board of Governors “has gone mad.” “This is happening on the day China’s Vice President Xi Jinping, heir apparent of the communist regime, arrives in Washington on a get-to-know-you visit. This is happening while Tibet is burning. A day after the 23rd Tibetan monk self-immolated to protest unprecedented Chinese crackdown on their religion,” a journalist wrote.

Bruce Sherman who will speak at the joint BBG/Gallup panel is the chief BBG strategic planner behind unprecedented recent and previous cuts to Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts to Tibet, China, Russia, and Afghanistan as well as major proposed reductions in VOA English and Spanish news programs. The event will offer an opportunity for Sherman and Meehan to explain the silencing of the Voice of America to most of the world and for members of the public to ask questions about the BBG’s strategy and its restructuring plan.

Michael Meehan is one of nine members (there is currently one vacancy) of the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors which manages all civilian US government-funded international broadcasting. The majority of BBG members have approved the latest programming cuts, although senior Republican member Ambassador Victor Ashe has been raising objections about some of the Board’s decisions and plans, including the price tag of the audience research contract with Gallup, and expressing concern about poor management and poor employee morale.

Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup, is scheduled to speak at the event. At about the same time the BBG had voted to approve the 50 million dollar five-year contract with Gallup, it had also decided to end numerous broadcasts, mostly at the Voice of America, and to eliminate positions of over 200 broadcasters and support staffers.

Despite these programming cuts, the BBG’s administrative organization, the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), has added dozens of new positions in the last two years to support far fewer programs. Critics argue that much of the audience research the BBG needs is either free or can be purchased at a much lower cost, while audience research in China and other countries ruled by authoritarian regimes is practically impossible to conduct among the intimidated population without getting highly biased results.

Even when audience research results are accurate, critics argue that by applying commercial marketing analysis to what are unique US taxpayer-supported journalistic programs, BBG and IBB officials have shown their inability to draw program planning conclusions that are appropriate for US broadcasters who are required by law to speak on behalf of the United States and are committed to promoting human rights and democracy.

One critic said that while good audience research is absolutely essential, seeing the larger geopolitical and foreign policy picture combined with the ability to interpret the data for a non-commercial US government-funded broadcaster with a unique public mission are even more important. This ability has been spectacularly absent among BBG strategists, the critic told BBG Watch.

Critics have also accused BBG officials of insisting on programming changes based on audience research results which showed that audiences in countries like China and Russia object to strong criticism of their governments’ human rights records. BBG officials and their private consultants reportedly have made these demands during program and audience research reviews with BBG broadcasters, arguing that suggested programming changes will enable them to improve audience ratings. Some journalists who objected to these orders were dismissed or their programs eliminated by BBG executives. BBG experts reportedly told the Voice of America Russian Service not to refer to the Russian military attack on Georgia in 2008 as an invasion because according to their research audiences in Russia object to such an description.

BBG journalists reported that officials have also transmitted to them requests from repressive regimes and affiliate stations abroad demanding limits on political reporting while asking for less controversial non-political coverage.

The original BBG’s founding mandate was to protect the Voice of America and other taxpayer-supported international broadcasters from frequent past interference with news reporting from the State Department and the White House, but critics charge that interference from the BBG and its audience researchers and strategists can be even more insidious.

In their FY2013 budget proposal, BBG officials insist that there is duplication between the Voice of America and the so-called private surrogate broadcasters such as Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Officials claim that rather than relying of the federally-owned and federally-operated Voice of America, the job of informing audiences about the United States and US policies can be done in many countries by privately-run broadcasters also managed by the BBG.

These plans have met with strong bipartisan opposition in Congress which last year had blocked the BBG plan to end VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China. Unlike the surrogate broadcasters, the Voice of America has a Congressionally-approved Charter to inform the world about the United States.

Critics describe the BBG cuts to the Voice of America as an indirect attempt to de-federalize it by transferring assets to private broadcasting entities under BBG’s management and lessening Congressional and public scrutiny over all US international broadcasting.

The latest BBG proposal to end VOA radio broadcasts to Tibet and VOA Cantonese broadcasts to China at the time of increasing reports about self-immolating Tibetan monks and people seeking basic human rights in China being sent to languish in the Laogai –- re-edcuation through labor camps — have sparked an outrage among human rights organizations.

The International Campaign for Tibet NGO has included an appeal to Congress to continue VOA radio programs to Tibet. The online appeal has already produced thousands of messages to more than 470 congressional offices, the International Campaign for Tibet reported. One BBG critic said that BBG strategists seem completely unable to understand political and human rights dimensions, such as the suffering of the Tibetans and Chinese dissidents, that audience research in countries like China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba cannot properly capture.

Critics also point out that BBG strategists have an unusual record of proposing US broadcasting cuts shortly before major international crises or assaults on human rights. The latest BBG program cutting proposal preceded a major spike in repression in China and Tibet, while the BBG’s 2008 decision to end Voice of America radio and TV broadcasts to Russia came just days before Russia launched a military attack on neighboring Georgia. In another planning blunder by BBG strategists, the proposed VOA Chinese broadcasting cuts in 2011 were to take effect on the anniversary of the founding of communist China. The latest BBG proposal again calls for ending Voice of America radio broadcasts to Georgia.

In justifying previous and current proposed cuts, BBG officials insist they need to transfer resources from broadcasting to support new media technologies. But critics charge that since many of these technologies are free or inexpensive, the money taken from US government broadcasting to strategically important countries like China and Russia is wasted on the BBG and IBB bureaucracy and lining the pockets of big private contractors while contract employees are being shamelessly exploited.

An anonymous VOA journalist wrote that in addition to ending Voice of America Tibetan radio, BBG strategists are decimating VOA broadcasts to the Laos (4 out of 6 employees), Vietnam (10 out of 15 employees) and Cantonese to China (all 7 employees). The journalist observed that the BBG is cutting America’s broadcasts to three out of five remaining communist regimes. The journalist added that while planning all these cuts, the BBG promoted Bruce Sherman to an SES position, hired an SES director for the Office of Digital Design and Innovation, hired a BBG communications director, another SES. All three SES positions were created as the Broadcasting Board of Governors was planning to eliminate dozens of rank and file journalists. “Who needs this Board that cannibalizes its own worker bees to feed itself?” — the journalist asked.

Bruce Sherman and Michael Meehan will have a chance to respond to this and similar questions at the joint Broadcasting Board of Governors and Gallup panel discussion in Washington on March 28.

View more information and register for this event on the Gallup website HERE.

by Quo Vadis 

In November 2011, at a forum sponsored by the Public Diplomacy Council and reported on by Adam Clayton Powell III, participants heard that the newest 2011 VOA audience figures showed an increase of 22 million for the international broadcasting audience in comparison with 2010.  Good news, of course, and fast on the heels of a brand-spanking-new Strategic Plan unveiled just a month prior and authored by the IBB spokesman at the forum, the Director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Performance Measurement of the United States Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

In those 2011 VOA audience figures, “the biggest success on the planet” is how the IBB spokesman described U.S. broadcasting in Afghanistan.  Evidently, the data showed three-quarters of the entire country watches or listens to American broadcasts. Additionally, 400,000 Afghans subscribe to BBG text messaging services. According to available research data, less than half of the population in Afghanistan has a TV and only a tiny minuscule has access to the Internet. Therefore, it would not be difficult to deduce that radio, for the time being, is by far the most powerful medium in the country to reach potential listeners.
 
In reaction to the news about the impact and popularity of U.S. broadcasting in Afghanistan, the BBG/IBB in its FY-2013 budget submission decided to cut those evidently powerful VOA radio broadcasts to Afghanistan while proposing to release eight seasoned VOA broadcasters. In so doing is the Agency, as some wonder, transferring the functions away from VOA’s federal employees to the RFE/RL surrogate grantee, thereby opening up the back door to de-federalization?   

That non-sequitur in deciding to cut VOA Afghan broadcasts in spite of their importance and popularity is rivaled by the announcement in the FY-2013 budget that VOA will cut most of its English-language broadcasts to the world including China and the Middle East. This decision ignores the fact that according to some, English is or should be the official language of the United States, remains the language of diplomacy, culture, and commerce in the world as well as being the second language of choice for millions of people around the globe from Albania to Zambia. One can only wonder if the BBC, plus Radio Canada International and Radio Australia, perhaps inspired by the daring VOA example, will soon cut its English-language broadcasts to the world as well. 

At the Public Diplomacy forum, there came a “medium is the message” a la Marshall McLuhan moment when the IBB spokesman stated: “Impact cannot be reduced to audience, but you cannot have impact without audience,” adding that broadcasting needs to look at specific audiences – not just traditional elites, but young people and women.” Actually, the Voice of America has been doing that for many years, informing audiences with the latest news and commentary and tailoring its back-half features to the diverse interests of its listeners with programming aimed at a cross-section of the listening audience: farmers, students, teachers, engineers, politicians, elites, business people, young/old, men/women, rich and poor. In its music programs, the VOA of the not-too-distant past  broadcast the full spectrum of American music: opera and classical music, country, Broadway, folk, pop, rock, hip-hop, blues, jazz and never concentrated solely on rock and pop music, as in Radio Sawa to the Middle East, as if that were the only musical genre produced in America.

Beyond audience growth, another goal of the Strategic Plan, said its author, is for VOA and other U.S. broadcasters to embrace user content and use material created by listeners and viewers. According to the IBB spokesman at the forum, the “value added” by U.S. international broadcasting would be checking and verifying the accuracy of material submitted by the audience. Unfortunately, the “check-and-verify” concept was challenged by the recent gaffe of the VOA Russian website which published a completely fictitious interview supposedly with a leader of the anti-Putin dissident movement in Moscow, Alexei Navalny, who announced to the world that the VOA interview was totally bogus and conducted via cyberspace with an impostor. “Value added” is a slippery slope, indeed.

One questioner at the PD forum said he could not find the phrase “public diplomacy” anywhere in the Strategic Plan.  “Correct,” said the Strategic Plan author, the reason being:  “Objective journalists by and large, don’t subscribe to the idea that they are changing people’s attitudes,” continuing that “attitudinal and behavioral change is the hope, but not a direct goal.”  And the explanation finished with:  “we don’t do the advocacy piece. Good things will come from good journalism.”  

Crystal-clear.  Forget the WHAM (Winning Hearts and Minds) factor.

That comment is in sharp contrast to the words of the distinguished public diplomacy expert, Walter Roberts, whom many credit with being one of the founding fathers of VOA. At the recent 70th birthday celebration of VOA, Walter Roberts stated: As the information revolution proceeds, diplomacy will become much more public diplomacy and public diplomacy cannot exist without international broadcasting. When I predict that in 30 years the Voice of America will exist, I also predict that Deustche Welle will also exist, that the BBC will exist because international broadcasting is a vital part of public diplomacy.”

Although public diplomacy was indeed omitted in the latest Strategic Plan, former BBG Chairman, Walter Isaacson, placed international broadcasting at the center of our national security. In his remarks when the Strategic Plan was unveiled, Mr. Isaacson said: “Our media outlets – VOA, RFE/Radio Liberty, Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa, RFA, and Radio/TV Marti – are a vital, cost-effective national security asset, whose impact is felt by some 166 million people weekly across the globe where critical U.S. interests are at stake.”

That difference of opinion is reflected in the current state of affairs at the BBG/IBB where there is an obvious disconnect about the true mission of international broadcasting between upper management and some middle-managers together with most of the rank-and-file.  Over the past few years, that disconnect is also obvious with the U.S. Congress which has consistently overruled the plans of the BBG/IBB in the national interest and the interests of national security.

The VOA ensemble trudges on and plays its heart out in spite of who happens to be the leader or conductor at any given time. Many directors embraced their duties conducting the VOA ensemble with enthusiasm, earning respect and admiration; others were indifferent or perceived the employees as a bothersome and unruly bunch, preferring to keep interaction to a minimum. Regardless of whether the Director was a gem or a lemon or whether upper management knew the score or didn’t, the broadcasting band continued to play on and does so now until such time as its voice will be silenced.

Not much different from the musicians in this video playing Dance of the Comedians from Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” with the irrepressible rascal, Victor Borge, at the podium.

Link to Video

CLICK on this image to send a letter to Congress to save VOA

The International Campaign for Tibet NGO has posted online an easy to use form for sending a letter to members of Congress to urge their support for resolutions calling on the Chinese government to end repression in Tibet and for preserving Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcasting, and sustain funding for other Tibet support programs in the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill.

Monday and Tuesday more than a hundred Tibetan-Americans and Tibet-supporters will convene in Washington, DC to raise Tibet with their Senators and Representatives. With a few clicks you can help amplify their message today. Please join us and send a message to Capitol Hill that constituents across the country care about Tibet.

Every message counts! Please send one today—and encourage your friends and family to do so as well by tweeting about #TibetLobbyDay and posting this on Facebook.

To send the letter to your Congressional Representative and your Senators CLICK HERE.

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SAMPLE LETTER

Members of Congress,

I write to thank you and your colleagues in Congress for a record of leadership on Tibetan issues and a commitment to provide programmatic and political support for Tibetans in exile and in Tibet.

Tibet is in crisis today. The Tibetan people are taking great risks to speak out for freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama. In response, Chinese security forces have imposed virtual martial law in many Tibetan areas, imposed a communications blackout, and blocked foreign journalists from reporting on the situation. It is vital that Congress and the international community help give Tibetans a voice.

Tibetan-Americans and Tibet supporters live in communities across the country. We recognize that the Chinese government has a well-funded and sophisticated lobby operation in Washington, D.C. But we are empowered by the unflinching courage of six million Tibetans who struggle against Chinese oppression every day and by the leadership of His Holiness the Dalai Lama whose life’s work is the advancement of non-violence, human-dignity and a just solution for Tibet.

Congressional leaders from Speaker Boehner to Senator Feinstein have stood next to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and pledged their solidarity with the Tibetan cause, and Presidents Obama and Bush have publicly supported the Dalai Lama’s approach.

At this time of crisis, concerted Congressional action will signal to Tibetans and Chinese that the world is listening.

You can show your support for Tibet by:
1. (Senate) Cosponsor S. Res. 356, calling on the Chinese government to end its crackdown and address the legitimate grievances of the Tibetan people.
>> Bipartisan resolution (Feinstein-McCain-Lieberman) urges Chinese officials to end repressive policies targeting Tibetans and allow unrestricted access to foreign journalists and diplomats to Tibet.

2. Preserve Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcasting, and sustain funding for other Tibet support programs in the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill.
>> VOA radio, proposed for elimination, offers perhaps the only uncensored source of world news in Tibet, due to the Chinese government’s severe restrictions on media.
>> The other small but indispensable investments in Tibetan communities support the Dalai Lama’s vision of preserving the Tibetan identity until a political solution is achieved.

3. Update the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 to respond to new developments in Tibet and within the Tibetan exile community.
>> New legislation should (a) articulate a relationship with the democratically-elected Central Tibetan Administration, (b) take a clear position that the reincarnation/succession of the Dalai Lama is up to him and the Tibetan people, not the Chinese government, (c) require the State Department to establish a consulate in Lhasa, Tibet, (d) urge a multi-lateral approach to resolving the Tibet issue and (e) include objection to forced resettlement of Tibetan nomads in “Tibet Project Principles.”

4. Advocate on behalf of Tibetan political prisoners, including Dhondup Wangchen, Lobsang Tenzin, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, Runggye Adak, Norzin Wangmo and Gendun Choekyi Nyima (Panchen Lama).
>> See www.savetibet.org for more information

5. (House) Cosponsor immigration legislation, H.R. 699 to provide 3,000 immigrant visas to qualified Tibetans over a 3-year period.
>> This bill (Sensenbrenner-George Miller), would further the Dalai Lama’s goal of helping preserve Tibetan culture in exile. Immigrants would be easily absorbed by established Tibetan-American communities.

Thank you for your support for Tibet.

Sincerely,

[ NAME ]

Governor Ashe with VOA reporting team in Phnom Penh

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) senior Republican member Ambassador Victor Ashe is visiting Asia where the BBG is planning major reductions in Voice of America broadcasts. Ashe is believed to be opposed to some of these cuts and reductions already approved by the majority of BBG members in their FY2013 budget plan. These plans also face a stiff bipartisan opposition in Congress and among human rights organizations and media freedom groups.

Ashe is visiting Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. The Communist Party in Laos has been in power since 1975 and tightly controls the local media. The BBG wants to reduce the Voice of America Lao Service to two staffers by cutting four broadcasting positions and eliminating shortwave radio programs.

During his current trip to Asia, Ashe is not visiting Vietnam, where the BBG plans to eliminate 17 and a half hours of weekly VOA Vietnamese radio broadcasts, leaving only Internet VOA news service to a country where all the media are controlled by the Communist Party. The VOA Vietnamese Service will lose 10 broadcasting positions under the BBG proposal.

At the last BBG open meeting, Ashe questioned the wisdom of the most controversial among recent BBG proposals which calls for the elimination of all Voice of America Tibetan radio broadcasts at the time when more and more Tibetan monks are setting themselves on fire to protest increasing repression of the Tibetans by the communist regime in Beijing. The BBG wants to eliminate seven VOA Tibetan broadcasting positions. It also wants to eliminate one broadcasting position in the VOA Burmese Service and six positions in the VOA Bangla Service.

The BBG is also proposing halving Voice of America radio broadcasts to Afghanistan from 12 to 6 hours daily and eliminating 10 broadcasting positions. The same BBG budget proposal also calls for completely abolishing the Voice of America Cantonese Service, which has seven full time broadcasters and serves Cantonese speakers in China where they face increasing Chinese Communist Party restrictions on their language and culture.

The Voice of America English Newsroom and VOA English radio broadcasts which are heard in Asia are set to lose 71 journalistic and broadcast support positions. VOA English radio broadcasts on shortwave, AM and FM would be silenced to all areas of the world except Africa. That includes strategically important broadcasts to China and Tibet where VOA English is the only USG broadcast service that is not jammed.

It is not clear to what extent Ashe’s Asian trip and his opposition to some of the BBG proposed cuts in broadcasting services to Asia may influence further discussions among BBG members about these controversial reductions. He faces an uphill battle against an alliance of BBG and IBB bureaucrats and several BBG members, including some of Ashe’s Republican colleagues

Critics of this plan accuse the BBG, and particularly the International Broadcasting Bureau executive staff under the leadership of IBB director Richard Lobo of ignoring strategic US interests in the region and cutting critical programs while expanding the IBB bureaucracy. There is a bipartisan effort in Congress to stop at least some of the proposed BBG program cuts in Asia.

A letter addressed to Congresswoman Kay Granger (R – TX), Chairman of the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the House Committee on Appropriations and to Ranking Member Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D – NY) criticizes the Broadcasting Board of Governors for expanding their bureaucracy at the expense of critical overseas broadcasts and U.S. strategic interests:

The proposed reductions are driven not by a considered strategic world view, but by bureaucratic expedience and a fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of VOA. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, the staff level for VOA will be reduced by 13.2% from the current year. In contrast, only 3.3% of the positions from the International Broadcasting Board (IBB), which provides administrative support to the BBG, will be cut. If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted the number of full time equivalent (FTE) positions for the IBB will rise from 593.2 in fiscal year 2011 to 678.2. In the same time period VOA will lose 121.2 FTE positions. The general trend of the IBB has been to grow larger while the number of language services they support is being reduced. Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support. The eliminations and reductions in broadcasting to Tibet, China, Laos, and Vietnam alone will cut 28 positions from VOA.

Link to the Letter

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The following press release is from the official BBG website.

For BBG Gov. Ashe, A Busy SE Asia Agenda

BBG Governor Victor Ashe is in Southeast Asia, visiting BBG facilities, meeting with agency staff and holding talks with U.S. embassy officials and local authorities in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.

In the Udon Thani province of northeast Thailand, Ashe toured a BBG transmission facility and presented 30-year and 20-year service awards to staff members.

He spoke about the BBG’s mission and praised staff for its work in support of U.S. international broadcasting.

Ashe, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, took particular interest in the activities undertaken by BBG officials to build and maintain relationships with local communities.

Ashe also met with Michael Honnold, acting public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok.

At Voice of America offices in Phnom Penh, Ashe met toured the facilities and met with staff, including Poly Sam, director of the RFA’s Cambodian Service.

He heads now to Laos for further consultations on RFA and VOA operations.