En ce moment, il n’y a plus de pilote dans l’avion. [At the moment, there is no longer a pilot on the plane.] — A European comment on President Obama as a leader of the Free World.
TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, USA, January 03, 2011 — Who is the leader of the Free World when democracy is under threat? Read more…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, May 02, 2010, San Francisco — Armenian genocide and Holocaust denials in radio and TV reports generated by private contractors working for the Broadcasting Board of Governors are linked to mismanagement and flawed programming policy at this US taxpayer-funded Federal agency, says FreeMediaOnline, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization which works to promote independent journalism and media freedom worldwide.
“Ahmadinejad denies Holocaust, madam from Istanbul denies Armenian Genocide. Congratulations to Radio Liberty – you are in a good company!”
Also read Foreign Policy Blog post about mismanagement at the BBG.
Radio Liberty Radio Free Europe listeners have been reacting with dismay to RFE/RL Russian Service radio report from Turkey which repeatedly questioned the Armenian genocide as a historical fact. RFE/RL is funded by U.S. taxpayers and managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG, an independent agency consistently rated by the US Office of Personnel Management, OPM, as the worst-managed in the Federal government.
In an effort to transfer the bulk of US government international broadcasting operations to private contractors, political appointees and their executive staff running the BBG have eliminated or severely reduced the Voice of America (VOA) programs in Arabic, Russian and other languages. VOA operates under a Congressional Charter which guarantees its journalistic independence and imposes strict standards of programming accuracy and balance.
BBG’s private broadcasting entities such as Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa lack the same degree of editorial and fiscal controls as VOA. This lack of oversight, however, has made them vastly preferable to VOA among most BBG members who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the US Senate. It allows them and their staff to more easily impose their personal programming ideas and to find jobs and contracting assignments for their former and current associates in the private and public sectors.
During the Bush Administration, Republicans and Democrats appointed to the BBG joined forces to support privately-run US broadcasting to the Muslim world and completely shut down Voice of America Arabic broadcasts.
The strongest supporters of outsourcing US international broadcasting to private contractors were Norman Pattiz and Edward “Ted” E. Kaufman, both Democrats. They no longer serve on the BBG. Kaufman, a close friend of Vice President Biden, now holds Biden’s former US Senate seat in Delaware. Pattiz, the founder and chairman of Westwood One, America’s largest radio network company, has been a major contributor to the Democratic Party, but both he and Kaufman had worked closely with the Bush White House in creating Alhurra and Radio Sawa.
The same BBG political appointees and executives have put in place a commercial, ratings-driven programming policy which resulted in pandering to popular but often extremist, anti-American and anti-democratic audience viewpoints in semi-authoritarian countries like Russia and in the Middle East. A Russian human rights organization has accused Radio Liberty of spreading racist views in Russia.
The BBG-managed and contractor-run Alhurra Arabic language television network aired a report denying the Jewish Holocaust. The airing of the Armenian genocide denials by the Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Russian Service can also be explained by the desire to include the views of extremist nationalists in Russia who deny that Stalin was also guilty of genocide.
Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Russian Service veteran editors who had defended the human rights programming focus at RFE/RL and tried to counter extremist views were accused by BBG-appointed managers and their consultants as being out of step with the nationalistically-minded radio listeners in Mr. Putin’s Russia.
The same executives who fired these journalists were responsible for terminating Voice of America Russian radio programs in July 2008, just 12 days before Russia’s military attack on Georgia. Only one BBG member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, a Republican and the only working journalist among the Bush-era BBG political appointees, was said to have voted against terminating VOA radio programs to Russia and opposed plans of other BBG members to hire high-profile media personalities to help improve the agency’s public image. They are also responsible for personnel policies at RFE/RL which deny most foreign journalists the full protection of American and Czech labor laws. RFE/RL has its headquarters in the Czech Republic. A legal anti-discrimination case against RFE/RL and the BBG filed by former RFE/RL non-American employees is now pending before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Free Media Online president Ted Lipien, who had previously worked at the BBG and VOA, said that the airing of Holocaust and Armenian Genocide denials is an expected result of misguided policies governing US international broadcasting in recent years. These include the selection of most BBG members from among political party operatives and loyalists who lack experience in journalism, foreign affairs, and media freedom and human rights activism. One of the current candidates to the BBG nominated by President Obama is Michael P. Meehan, a Democratic Party operative who has been accused of physically attacking a journalist who tried to ask questions of the former Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts.
According to Ted Lipien, the surrogate broadcasting model worked well during the Cold War when the goal was to undermine the local regimes by providing news not available from communist media sources. At that time, surrogate broadcasters such as RFE/RL were well managed, first by CIA personnel, and later by professional journalists dedicated to defending freedom of expression and other human rights and democratic values.
Lipien said that most of the recent BBG members could not grasp that their surrogate broadcasters, such as Alhurra, are still perceived by the audience as speaking on behalf of the United States when they air Holocaust and Armenian Genocide denials.
In the past, officials in charge of US international broadcasting were able to provide both leadership and effective management at these surrogate stations, but the BBG has failed to do that for more than a decade, Lipien said.
Members of the BBG have also not grasped that the surrogate broadcasting model is largely inappropriate for the Internet age and for audiences, which — unlike the Cold War audiences in Eastern Europe — are not supportive of American values and foreign policy objectives. According to the Free Media Online president, the Congress would do better by providing support for truly independent free media outlets abroad and the United States and by allowing the Voice of America to represent the full spectrum of responsible U.S. opinions. A station like Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty could still play a useful journalistic role in promoting free and democratic media in some countries if the BBG stops interfering with its programming policy and allows RFE/RL to put in place effective editorial controls, Lipien said, but he added that this seems unlikely unless the BBG itself undergoes major reforms.
FreeMediaOnline.org, 
Free Media Online Blog, January 13, 2010, San Francisco — Link to Video
The Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack believes that the man who pushed him on the street in Washington, D.C. Tuesday night to prevent him from asking questions of Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley may have been Michael P. Meehan who works for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Michael Meehan is also one of President Obama’s nominees to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG. The bipartisan Board is responsible for promoting free flow of news and information abroad through U.S. government-funded broadcasts such as the Voice of America, VOA, Alhurra Television, and Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, RFE/RL.
“If Michael P. Meehan is positively identified as the person who had attacked The Weekly Standard reporter while the journalist tried to ask questions of a candidate for a political office, President Obama should immediately withdraw Mr. Meehan’s nomination to the Broadcasting Board of Governors,” said Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based NGO which promotes media freedom worldwide. Michael Meehan’s nomination has not yet been confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
“The BBG needs leaders who are fully committed to the concept of journalistic freedom,” Lipien said.
According to the White House press release, “Michael P. Meehan currently serves as President of Blue Line Strategic Communications, Inc. and as Senior Vice President at Virilion, a digital media company. For over two decades, Meehan served in senior roles for U.S. Senators John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, two presidential campaigns, two U.S. House offices and congressional campaigns in 25 states. Mr. Meehan earned a B.A. in political science from Bates College.”
Former U.S. presidents have also nominated political operatives to serve on the BBG, a practice which Free Media Online blames for making the Broadcasting Board of Governors one of the worst managed U.S. federal agencies.
In November 2009, President Obama had announced his intention to nominate former CNN chairman and CEO Walter Isaacson, a Democrat, to chair the BBG. The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency in charge of all U.S. civilian international news broadcasting. President Obama had also nominated seven other new members of the bipartisan board, including Dana Perino, the former White House Press Secretary to President George W. Bush, and former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor H. Ashe. They would be among four new Republican members of the BBG.
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the eight new appointees would replace the current BBG leadership with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who serves as an ex officio member.
The BBG manages the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. All are funded exclusively by U.S. taxpayers.
The agency with the estimated $717.4 million budget in FY 2009 and nearly 3,800 employees has been consistently rated by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, OPM, in employee surveys as one of the worst managed within the federal government. Some of the current BBG members and their executive staff have tried to withhold from the U.S. Congress and journalists independent taxpayer-funded studies revealing cases of serious mismanagement at the BBG and its privatized broadcasting entities, especially Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. One of the studies described substandard journalistic practices at Alhurra, including broadcasting stattements from Holocaust deniers, and its failure to attract a meaningful audience in the Middle East.
To pay private media contractors favored by the Bush Administration, the BBG eliminated all Voice of America Arabic news programs and cut broadcasts to many other countries without free media. VOA Russian-language radio broadcasts were terminiated in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia.
Both Republicans and Democrats appointed to the BBG by President Bush approved these controversial decisions. The effort to create contractor-managed broadcasting to the Muslim world, as opposed to broadcasting by the Voice of America, which operates under a Congressional charter as a U.S. government entity with guarantees of journalistic independence, was led by former Democratic BBG members: Norman Pattiz and Edward E. Kaufman. Mr. Kaufman, a close friend of Vice President Joe Biden, is now a U.S. senator from Delaware.
The alliance of Democratic BBG members with neoconservatives in the Bush administration was essential for carrying out plans to privatize much of U.S. international broadcasting. Only one current Board member, conservative radio host Blanquita Walsh Cullum who is also the only working journalist on the BBG, was reported to have opposed some of the questionable management practices at the BBG, particularly the push to eliminate Voice of America broadcasts to countries without independent media.
According to Ted Lipien, the BBG needs leaders who are willing to end mismanagement and politicization of U.S. international broadcasting. FreeMediaOnline.org has been advocating for selecting future members of the BBG who have journalistic experience and have demonstrated their commitment to press freedom and human rights.
Sourced from: Free Media Online
Censorship and self-censorship have become a permanent feature of the media scene in Russia under Mr. Putin’s rule. Many Americans, however, were surprised last week that this kind of censorship with origins in Moscow has now reached corporate boardrooms in their own country and even put limits on news generated by US taxpayer supported Radio Liberty, which broadcasts to Russia.
There is clear evidence that censorship at Conde Nast was aimed not only at readers in Russia but also at consumers of news media in the United States and throughout the world. The publishers of the GQ magazine not only prevented the printing in Russia of Scott Anderson’s article about Prime Minister Putin but also banned it from the Internet. It cannot be read even on the GQ’s American website.
Obviously, Conde Nast executives were afraid that they could be prevented by the Russian authorities from selling their magazines and generating future advertising revenues in Russia. Perhaps they were also concerned about their Russian employees losing their jobs, or worse, being sued for libel or physically attacked. These things have happened to other publishers and journalists in Russia, but by now most have learned their lesson. If corporate executives in New York can be so easily intimidated, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of Russian media outlets also hold on to their publishing profits and protect jobs by practicing similar self-censorship.
Americans with some knowledge of these things may have thought that at least Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, which are funded by the US Congress, are not guided by commercial concerns and are still broadcasting uncensored news to Russia quickly and extensively. If they assumed that to be true in recent years, they would be sadly mistaken.
The Russian websites of both stations completely ignored the GQ censorship story for a number of days after it broke in the mainstream US media with an NPR report on Friday, September 4. VOA and the RFE/RL Russian website waited several days to report on the story and did it only after FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, exposed their silence and pointed out that independent bloggers in the US had already translated the banned article into Russian and posted it online.
One should ask why would Radio Liberty Russian Service ignore such a story on its news website for several days and would not offer a full translation or at least extensive excerpts from the banned article?
The answer to this question lies with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan board which manages Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. The BBG made a decision several years ago to operate in Russia the same way as Conde Nast and other Western commercial media. It opened a large news bureau for Radio Liberty in Moscow, hired hundreds of local reporters, and declared that the US radios’ success in Russia will be measured by the size of their audience. There was no plan B — and there still isn’t any — to protect Radio Liberty journalists and their news operations in Russia from intimidation by the FSB and from self-censorship.
I was not surprised at all to see that no one among those responsible for editing Radio Liberty’s Russian language website wanted to be the first one to write about the GQ story involving Prime Minister Putin and the FSB. There are many stories that Radio Liberty reporters can safely write about, and they do — some of them critical of the Kremlin and the human rights situation — but many of us in the NGO community have noticed during the last few years a remarkable reluctance among some BBG members and Radio Liberty managers to publicly criticize Mr. Putin and the Russian government, even when faced with most serious violations of media freedom. The only explanation can be that they do not want to threaten their continued presence in Russia.
FreeMediaOnline.org reported for example that shortly after the brutal assassination of anti-Kremlin investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006, Radio Liberty’s Russian Service managers have expressed hope that the Kremlin will allow them to report and broadcast. These comments, which seemed clearly motivated by fear of the Russian authorities, were made despite overwhelming evidence of President Putin’s’ growing crackdown on independent media.
RFE/RL Moscow bureau chief said at the time that this optimism was based on her belief in the common sense of the current Russian leadership. Radio Liberty Russian Service director at the RFE/RL home office in Prague also expressed confidence that Radio Liberty’s future in Russia looks good. The Moscow-based manager said that the work of local Radio Liberty journalists cannot cause Russia any harm since they are Russian citizens who respect and love their country.
Members of the human rights and media freedom community in Russia and in the US were appalled by these self-serving and apologetic comments coming so close after the murder of a prominent opposition journalist. This happened after veteran journalists who had opposed BBG-imposed programming changes at Radio Liberty were either fired or forced out. BBG-hired consultants advised less emphasis on human rights, culture, and intellectual discussions and more on programs that would please an average Russian listener who is highly nationalistic and pro-Putin. Not surprisingly, after these programming changes were put into place, Russian human rights activists criticized Radio Liberty for giving extensive airtime to a Russian nationalist politician known for his racist views and warned that such programs promote violence against Africans and other foreigners. Read about a similar development at the BBG-managed Alhurra Television for the Middle East.
None of this could not have been predicted. If US taxpayer-supported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has a large number of reporters who are Russian citizens and live in Russia without any protection from their employer; if the radio station maintains extensive news gathering facilities in Russia; and if its governing body declares that the station can only be successful if it can reach a wide audience in Russia and must have a large presence there and use local media channels — the Broadcasting Board of Governors should have anticipated that under such arrangements and the corporate culture they helped to create, many Radio Liberty employees would chose their safety, their families, their jobs, their pay and benefits, and continued employment in Russia over the need to fight censorship by exposing crimes of high-level FSB and other government officials, especially if these officials have the legal power to order them to cooperate or to arrest them.
The BBG has not only failed to protect their reporters who are Russian citizens, it deprives them of some of the same protections and benefits which it grants to RFE/RL’s American and Czech employees, thus making them more likely victims of the FSB. Third-country journalists working for RFE/RL in the Czech Republic can be dismissed at any time. It’s hardly surprising that faced with a radioactive news story about Mr. Putin, they did not want to take risks that both the BBG and the Russian authorities might find for different reasons unwelcome.
The question is why the Broadcasting Board of Governors did not see this and why American taxpayers should continue to give it hundreds of millions of dollars if the NGO media freedom community and independent bloggers have to do the job that BBG-managed broadcasters have been paid to do but are afraid to do it.
As one of my contacts with links to Radio Liberty pointed out in response to my question: “Why the Russian Web Desk at Radio Liberty ignored GQ?” — “Do you really think that the present RFE/RL is more adventurous than Conde Nast, having a bureau in Moscow that can be closed at the whim of, say, pozharnika?” The last word refers to Russian fire safety inspectors whom the FSB uses to put out of business radio and TV stations that run afoul of the Kremlin.
Even though they were left far behind on this story by independent American and Russian bloggers, America still needs uncensored and effective Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. NGOs have no resources to match local languages radio and TV broadcasting by RFE/RL and VOA, nor can they speak as an authoritative voice of the US government and the American people, which VOA is by law required to do. It is unfortunate that when censorship is growing in Russia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America are not doing what American taxpayers hired them to do.
Another ironic twist to this story is that the BBG has been cutting budgets for radio and TV broadcasting in favor of Internet journalism and ignoring the fact that the FSB has a major operation designed to block offending websites in case of a political or military emergency, which they demonstrated during the Russian-Georgian war.
Of course, not everybody at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has been affected to the same degree by the FSB and the BBG broadcasting strategy. The RFE/RL English-language website, which exists largely to generate support for the station on Capital Hill, did report quickly on the GQ-Putin-FSB story. Unfortunately, this is not the website most Russians turn to for uncensored news and information.
The Voice of America’s role in this journalistic fiasco is somewhat different. VOA is based in Washington, DC and its reporters cannot be easily intimidated by the FSB. But they also cannot be fully protected from the BBG’s misguided models, which were taken from commercial broadcasting but which cannot be used to fight censorship. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has the power to do what it wants. In August 2008, it terminated all VOA Russian radio broadcasts just 12 days before the Russian military launched an military attack on Georgia. After going through BBG-ordered program and staff reductions, VOA is no longer able to sustain a 24/7 news operation and was not able to respond to the GQ censorship story in a timely and effective manner.
FreeMediaOnline.org has learned that no experienced editor was available for duty at the VOA Russian Service over the Labor Day weekend to write an in-depth report for the web on this or any other sensitive news story. After being criticized by FreeMediaOnline.org, the Russian Service managed to place on its website a short news item about Scott Anderson’s article one day earlier than Radio Liberty, but in-depth coverage had to wait until Monday and Tuesday, more than three days after the NPR story and the posting of the full article in Russian translation by independent bloggers in the US.
It is also interesting to examine what happened after criticism from Free Media Online. Russian services at both VOA and RFE/RL went overboard in reporting on the story — posting interviews with Scott Anderson (both RFE/RL and VOA) and with his main source, a former FSB officer turned critic (VOA) — but in the rush to rectify their earlier sins of omission, they were not as sophisticated as they should have been in pointing out which charges against Mr. Putin are real, which are unproven, and which may simply be advanced without any proof by Mr. Berezovsky and others among Mr. Putin’s political rivals whom he had imprisoned or forced to leave Russia.
VOA’s and RFE/RL’s subsequent reporting also lacked a measure of sophistication in explaining how the FSB could have manipulated the terrorist bombings to Mr. Putin’s advantage without any direct orders from the Kremlin. Again, independent bloggers in the US and in Russia have done a much better job than either of the Congressionally-funded US broadcasters. And again, American taxpayers should not be surprised. The US Government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been consistently rating the Broadcasting Board of Governors as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies.
FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, 
GovoritAmerika.us, September 9, 2009, San Francisco — A former employee of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has asked the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to look into charges that the US taxpayer-funded radio station broadcasting to countries without free media discriminates against foreign-born journalists and other workers by denying them the same legal protections available to American and Czech employees. Snjezana Pelivan, a Croatian citizen, had challenged her dismissal by RFE/RL and filed an unlawful discrimination suit in a court in the Czech Republic, where the American radio station has its headquarters and where she was employed by RFE/RL as a marketing specialist to help place its programs on local radio stations throughout Eurasia.
The Czech court sided with RFE/RL, ruling that the station’s non-Czech and non-American employees, including many journalists who fled persecution by authoritarian regimes in their native countries, can be treated differently under the Czech law than their Czech and American colleagues. Americans and Czechs working for RFE/RL are entitled to much greater legal protections and employment benefits than citizens of other countries. Ms. Pelivan and others at RFE/RL view this as a discriminatory measure used against journalists who come mostly from poorer nations, are not familiar with American legal system, and have few other options of working as journalists in their native languages.
The picture is far different for American citizens at RFE/RL. Under an arrangement worked out with the Czech government, they enjoy some of the same privileges as US diplomats although they are not Federal workers. One of the benefits reserved for American employees at the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague is being exempt from paying Czech income taxes. RFE/RL employees who are Czech citizens are protected by liberal Czech labor laws.
The US taxpayer-supported radio station is technically a private journalistic institution, incorporated in Delaware, and receives US government grants. Ms. Pelivan had asked the Czech court to request the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to appear as a witness in her case to explain how the US government can “allow journalists from countries without democracy and free media to be treated as ‘second class’ citizens when working abroad for an American radio station funded by the US Congress with a mission to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Secretary Clinton is a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a US Federal agency, which provides grants to RFE/RL and is responsible for programming and management policies at the radio station. The Czech court did not respond to her request to submit questions to Secretary Clinton.
In her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, Ms. Pelivan wrote that the Czech court ruling empowers American management of RFE/RL to practice in the Czech Republic arbitrary terminations of its foreign employees without a need to justify such actions in any court of law. She expects that the European Court of Human Rights will ask the government of Croatia, her native country, to support her suit against the Czech Republic and RFE/RL. Croatia is entitled to present to the court in Strasbourg written comments and participate in hearings concerning the rights of its citizens.
A similar unlawful discrimination case filed by a former RFE/RL journalist Anna Karapetian, an Armenian citizen, is still pending before Czech courts. Both Snjezana Pelivan and Anna Karapetian have petitioned U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder to open a criminal civil rights investigation into RFE/RL employment practices in the Czech Republic. Their petition notes that “actions of RFE/RL, financed by U.S. taxpayers money as a tool of American public diplomacy, make a mockery of its Mission Statement… ‘to promote democratic values and institutions… strengthen[ing] civil societies by projecting democratic values… [and]provid[ing] a model for local media…”
Both women have received excellent performance evaluations prior to their dismissals. Both claim that the RFE/RL management has not provided them with a clear explanation for their firings and tried to get them to agree not to discuss publicly their treatment at the radio station in Prague. They were not charged with violations of any work rules and were considered model employees.
The employment policies promoted by the BBG at Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty in the Czech Republic are believed to be part of a larger effort to privatize US international broadcasting and to limit the role of the Washington, DC-based Voice of America (VOA), which is a Federal government international radio also managed by the BBG. Federal workers at the Voice of America told FreeMediaOnline.org that during the last two years they have noticed an alarming number of veteran VOA journalists, employed in areas which the BBG wants to downsize, being dismissed for minor disciplinary violations. They suspect that these personnel practices have been adopted by the BBG executive staff from employment policies at RFE/RL and at some of the other BBG-managed private broadcasting entities. VOA journalists also report continued attempts by the BBG to replace Federal VOA employees, who do have some job security protections, with private contractors who can be dismissed at any time without any explanation. These practices are common at most of the BBG’s privately-run broadcasting stations. The current BBG Executive Director Jeff Trimble came from RFE/RL, where his jobs included Acting President, Counselor to the President for Programs and Policy, Director of Policy and Strategic Planning, and Director of Broadcasting.
In a government-wide survey of employees conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the BBG has been consistently rated as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies. In addition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the bipartisan board currently has four other members: Joaquin F.Blaya, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, D. Jeffrey Hirschberg, and Steven J. Simmons. Despite its bipartisan membership, most of the Democrats serving on the board, including former members Norman Pattiz and now US Senator from Delaware Ted (Edward E.) Kaufman, strongly supported privatization of US international broadcasting and downsizing of the Voice of America.
Norman Pattiz, chairman and founder of radio industry giant Westwood One, and Ted Kaufman, who took over Vice President Biden’s Senate seat and was at one time his chief of staff, were the primary authors of the Bush Administration’s plans for Alhurra Television privatized broadcasting to the Middle East and were responsible for the elimination of the Voice of America’s highly-regarded Arabic Service. A study conducted by The University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School determined that Alhurra TV has been a journalistic failure and is unable to attract a wider audience. The BBG tried to keep the Center on Public Diplomacy report secret but was eventually forced by Congressional and media criticism to make it available on its website.(http://www.bbg.gov/reports/others/uscreport.pdf)
Kaufman and a former BBG Republican Chairman, James Glassman, who was President Bush’s last Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, were primarily responsible for terminating Voice of America radio broadcasts to Russia just 12 days before the Russian army attacked Georgia in August 2008. Only one board member, Blanquita Walsh Cullum, the only working journalist among the current BBG members, was reported to be opposed to programming cuts at VOA and was said to have criticized some of the controversial BBG decisions at closed board meetings. According to FreeMediaOnline.org sources, she was outvoted by other Republicans and all Democrats. There have been unconfirmed rumors that the Obama Administration wants to replace most of the current BBG members. Republican leaders in Congress would have to be consulted which Republican BBG members should stay or be replaced.
Link to unedited English translation of the ICCEE (Information Center Caucasus-Eastern Europe) Press Release, Prague, the Czech Republic September 9, 2009. ICCEE is a nonprofit organization which publishes in Europe Europe Orer (“Europe Days”), an Armenian news magazine.
ICCEE Press Release in Russian: Американское «Радио Свобода» и его страна пребывания Чехия обвиняются в Европейском суде по правам человека в национальной дискриминации
Thirty-one years ago this week, on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré journalist who wrote for Radio Free Europe, BBC and Deutsche Welle, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge. Markov’s murder happened during the Cold War, but in more recent years the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and of numerous other journalists in Russia, as well as the assassination in London of former KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who became a vocal critic of Mr. Putin, have brought into focus the question of how safe it is in the post-Cold War world to criticize Russian leaders, especially for journalists living in Russia, but also for anybody living in the West who has ties to Russia.
As the Markov’s case illustrates, Russian spy and security services have a long history of recruting, intimidating and sometimes murdering journalists and others who have run afoul of the Kremlin. This concern was largely forgotten during the Yeltsin years when the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a mismanaged Federal US agency in charge of US government-funded international civilian broadcasting, placed Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty – RFE/RL) Russian language facilities and staff at a large news bureau in Moscow right under the nose of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.
Some of us who had worked in Russia at the time observed a marked increase in the intimidation and infiltration of the Russian media by the FSB right about the time Mr. Putin, a former KGB spy, consolidated his power. Seeing how FSB officers forced owners of private radio statios to stop using news programs from the Voice of America and Radio Liberty, we wondered what kind of threats they were making in confidential conversations with Radio Liberty reporters and other employees who are Russian citizens living in Russia. It was difficult to get more information about the extent of FSB media manipulation because Russian law prevented Russian citizens approached by the state security services from disclosing these contacts. Still, some of our Russian friends told us in confidence about being visited and threatened by the secret police.
During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was based in Munich, West Germany, and RFE/RL journalists were not allowed to travel to the Soviet Union as a measure of protection against arrest, intimidation and possible recruitment by the KGB. As the Cold War ended, the BBG moved RFE/RL headquarters to Prague, the Czech Republic, and decided it was safe to have a larger number of employees and news gathering operations based in Russia.
Whether this is still a safe option has been brought into question by a number of recent events in Russia, including murders of prominent anti-Kremlin journalists. Obviously a news organization like Radio Liberty can no longer operate without some presence in Russia if it wants to be an effective news source, but many of us have argued that the BBG should have taken strong measures to protect its Russian employees from intimidation by the FSB and to make sure that Radio Liberty programs are not subject to self-censorship.
That self-censorship brought on by intimidation and justifiable fear of the FSB has affected Radio Liberty’s Russian radio and web content seems obvious to many of us who are monitoring these programs and reports for the web originating by RFE/RL staff in Moscow and in Prague. The most recent example was Radio Liberty’s failure for a number of days to post on its Russian-language website any in-depth reports about the banning in Russia of Scott Anderson’s “GQ” magazine article, which was highly critical of Mr. Putin and accused the FSB of instigating terrorist attacks to help his rise to power.
Russian officials strongly deny the charges that FSB agents have been involved in any terrorist attacks, but the topic remain a taboo for journalists in Russia who want to keep their jobs and stay out of trouble with the authorities. This might explain why Conde Nast, the publisher of “GQ” kept Scott Anderson’s article out of the Russian edition and why it took days for Radio Liberty’s Russian editors to notice the story.
Anyone curious about the workings of the Soviet and now Russian secret police the impact of fear on journalists should read a very well-documented book Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings who for 15 years was the Director of Security for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL in Munich, Germany, and later was a security and safety consultant for RFE/RL in Prague until 1998. He has also published online an article about the murder of Bulgarian journalist Georgi Markov in London in 1978.
The Murder of Georgi Markov: The Mystery Remains
Thirty-one years ago this week, on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré, who lived and worked in London, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge.
Georgi Markov had been a prolific and successful literary figure in Bulgaria before defecting to the West in 1969. He settled in England and became a broadcast journalist for Radio Free Europe, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), and the German international broadcast service Deutsche Welle.
Markov had a large listening audience in Bulgaria, who listened to his prime-time Sunday-night broadcasts over Radio Free Europe. He dared to tell his audience that Bulgarian President and Communist Party chief Todor Zhivkov wore no clothes.
In June 1977, Communist Party Chairman Zhivkov chaired a Politburo meeting, and stated he wanted the activities of Markov stopped. The Interior Minister reacted and requested KGB assistance in the killing of Markov. Though he wanted Markov killed, he wanted no trace to Bulgaria. The Chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, agreed to the assassination, as long as there would be no trace back to the Soviets. Thus, the Bulgarians and Soviets were operating under a double case of “plausible denial. “
A former KGB general has publicly admitted his role and the role of the KGB in supplying the Bulgarian intelligence service with both the weapon and the poison. Purportedly, the highly secret KGB laboratory known as the “Chamber” developed both the weapon, concealed in a US-manufactured umbrella, and biotoxin ricin impregnated in a wax-coated pellet the size of a pinhead.
Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 by Richard H Cummings
During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcast uncensored news and commentary to people living in communist nations. As critical elements of the CIA’s early covert activities against communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Munich-based stations drew a large audience despite efforts to jam the broadcasts and ban citizens from listening to them. This history of the stations in the Cold War era reveals the perils their staff faced from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania and other communist states. It recounts in detail the murder of writer Georgi Markov, the 1981 bombing of the stations by “Carlos the Jackal,” infiltration by KGB agent Oleg Tumanov and other events. Appendices include security reports, letters between Carlos the Jackal and German terrorist Johannes Weinrich and other documents, many of which have never been published.
Update: Radio Liberty Russian website finally produced reports on the GQ story on Monday, full three days after the story broke in the mainstream media in the US, NPR no less. VOA Russian website had a very brief news item on the story by Sunday. Only on Tuesday, did the VOA Russian Service post an interview with Scott Anderson. The interview might have been done by the VOA English News Division or VOA English Programs.
By contrast, Gawker had most of the article translated into Russian and available online by Friday/Saturday. We at GovoritAmerika.us provided a summary of the story and a link to the translation. Needless to say, neither VOA nor Radio Liberty provided a translation of the article and I have not yet seen on their websites a link to the translation on Gawker or any other site.
In previous years, both VOA and Radio Liberty would have quickly posted a translation of a controversial article censored, not only in Russia but also by US publishers afraid of reprisals from the Kremlin. Since the BBG programming and marketing strategy exposed Radio Liberty to intimidation by the Russian security services and resulted in virtual elimination of VOA Russian Service broadcasting from the safety of Washington, D.C., it seems unlikely that Radio Liberty will post the article in Russian online or broadcast it on radio, or that VOA, which has few resources and suffers from major mismanagement, will be able to provide a transcript – I suspect VOA management will resist such a move by claiming that it would violate their journalistic standards or, even better, that there is nothing new in the story – an argument already made by the Russian editor of GQ. He would have us believe that he’s not afraid to publish articles critical of Mr. Putin and that all the articles on fashion in the Russian edition of GQ are always newsworthy and never have anything that is not new and would therefore disqualify them from being published.
When I was at VOA some years ago, the same argument would be made whenever the State Department leaned on VOA not to run a story or broadcast something from Solzhenitsyn.
(I would suggest that a member of Congress should place the translation of the GQ article in the Congressional Record and demand that Radio Liberty and VOA do the job expected from them by American taxpayers.)
Radio Liberty, of course, faces far greater threats to its staff not only in Moscow but also in Prague. It is also likely that if Radio Liberty had posted the article online, its website would have faced a cyber attack instigated by the Russian security services who have shown that they are capable of closing down websites. The same could happen to VOA, but at least VOA staff lives and works in the US. All in all, it is a very bad and unfortunate situation for press freedom in Russia, largely as a result of BBG mistakes and mismanagement.
FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, September 6, 2009, San Francisco — Neither the Voice of America nor Radio Liberty, both US government-funded international broadcasters, provided Internet users and radio listeners with a Russian translation of an article about Vladimir Putin which sparked a major controversy over censorship both in Russia and in the US. Conde Nast, the publisher of “GQ” magazine, reportedly banned the article from being printed in Russia because it is highly critical of Prime Minister Putin and suggests that Russian security services engaged in criminal activities to help him become an authoritarian ruler. The article was published only in the US edition of “GQ.”
While the two radio stations funded by US taxpayers to broadcast news for audiences abroad largely ignored the story, independent bloggers in the US volunteered to translate the article into Russian in a grass-root effort to combat press censorship. A popular New York news site Gawker posted their translations under the Russian title: “Вы можете прочитать запрещенную статью GQ про Путина здесь” (“Hey, you can read the forbidden GQ article about Putin here”)
US public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) reported Friday that Condé Nast prohibited republishing of the article, “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power” by veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson, in any of its magazines outside of the US, including Russia. According to NPR reporter David Folkenflik, Condé Nast also prevented the article from being posted on the “GQ” website in the U.S. The NPR report “Why ‘GQ’ Doesn’t Want Russians To Read Its Story,” quotes from a July 23 e-mail sent by one of the company’s top lawyers.
“Condé Nast management has decided that the September issue of U.S. GQ magazine containing Scott Anderson’s article ‘Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power’ should not be distributed in Russia,” the lawyer wrote.
According to NPR, Condé Nast “ordered that the article could not be posted to the magazine’s Web site. No copies of the American edition of the magazine could be sent to Russia or shown in any country to Russian government officials, journalists or advertisers. Additionally, the piece could not be published in other Condé Nast magazines abroad, nor publicized in any way,” NPR correspondent David Folkenflik reported.
Gawker has called the actions of Condé Nast executives “an act of publishing cowardice.” In addition to protecting their business interests in Russia, Condé Nast executives may have also been concerned about the safety of their Russian employees. Journalists who had written articles critical of the Kremlin have been murdered in recent years by unknown assailants. Most journalists in Russia practice self-censorship and because of the atmosphere of fear would not dare to write articles highly critical of Prime Minister Putin. Russian and Western-owned media outlets are also concerned that cyber attacks will disable their websites if their reporting displeases the Kremlin and its security services, which are known for being able to launch such attacks.
The censored “GQ” article deals with a series of bombings at apartment buildings that killed hundreds of people in Russia in 1999. The anti-terrorist campaign that followed the attacks helped Vladimir Putin to consolidate his power. In writing his article, Scott Anderson relied on information from Mikhail Trepashkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who investigated the bombings. Trepashkin suggests a possible link between the bombings and Russian officials who were interested in increasing Mr. Putin’s powers in running the country. Russian officials have always denied these charges as a complete fabrication and blame the bombings on Chechen terrorists.
After issuing its appeal for help, Gawker was posting parts of the Russian translation of the article as soon as they received them from volunteer translators. Gawker reported that the translation was completed by Sunday afternoon.
The speed with which independent bloggers in the US responded in making the text of the censored article available to Internet users in Russia was in stark contrast to how this story was handled by the two main US-government funded broadcasters responsible for delivering news in Russian. The Russian-language websites of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and the Voice of America (VOA) did not post any in-depth reports about the censorship controversy and neither provided any online excerpts from the article.
This has been the latest example of serious problems at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages both VOA and RFE/RL. The BBG terminated Voice of America Russian radio broadcasts in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military launched an attack on Georgia over a territorial dispute. The BBG has also cut funding for the VOA Russian Service staff still assigned to maintain a news website. Largely as a result of these moves, VOA’s annual audience reach in Russia has registered a 98% decline and is now estimated to be only 0.2%.
A Russian Service journalist, who wants to remain anonymous because VOA broadcasters are not authorized to speak to outside media, told FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, that many experienced journalists have left or have been forced out. The source said that there was nobody available Friday who would have been capable of producing an in-depth report on this story. According to the same source, none of the managers was able to write a report since they don’t speak Russian at all or not well enough to be able to post to the web. The management, according to this source, has hired some private contractors to maintain the Russian Service website and produce video clips, but they are incapable of professional reporting in Russian. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has rated the Broadcasting Board of Governors as one of the worst-managed Federal agencies. The broadcaster said that the few remaining Russian-speaking professional journalists at VOA are completely demoralized.
Radio Liberty, based in Prague, the Czech Republic, and in Moscow, has many more reporters and still receives much greater funding than the Russian Service of the Voice of America, which is based in Washington, D.C. FreeMediaOnline.org contacts familiar with RFE/RL believe that Radio Liberty reporters and managers are also practicing self-censorship because of justifiable fear that they or their family members might become targets of reprisals from the Kremlin’s secret police. Many RFE/RL reporters are Russian citizens living in Russia and those working at RFE/RL headquarters in Prague have family members in Russia and travel there frequently. The RFE/RL English-language website did carry an extensive report on the “GQ” story and issues of censorship, but the English site is not widely read in Russia and its main purpose is to help generate more Congressional support and funding for RFE/RL. What matters in Russia, FreeMediaOnline.org analysts said, is what appears on the Russian-language Radio Liberty website.
Not unlike the management’s interference with journalistic freedom at Condé Nast, both RFE/RL and VOA have been pressured by BBG strategic planners and private consultants, some of whom had business operations in Russia and links to BBG members (some of the BBG members involved in these decisions also had business interests in Russia) to make their reporting less critical of the Kremlin (the phrased used by the consultants was “anti-Russian”) in an effort to gain a wider audience among those Russians who are anti-Western and pro-Putin. A former director of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service Mario Corti, Italian journalist, management consultant for a major electronic media outlet in Russia and author of books about Russian culture, was forced out for resisting these pressures. Radio Liberty’s audience in Russia has declined significantly since his departure and the change of programming philosophy.
The non-Russian management’s editorial pressure on the Voice of America Russian Service journalistic staff to offer more popular culture programming was also evident in the web content produced over the Labor Day weekend. While the “GQ” censorship story was barely mentioned, VOA website had more than one story about Michael Jackson, a story about US Open tennis matches, and even a story about retirement reforms in the US.
Only a few years ago, it would have been highly unusual for Voice of America and Radio Liberty not to broadcast in-depth reports about such a significant case of press censorship and not to offer extensive excerpts from the banned article. Media freedom activists familiar with the BBG’s strategy and management in recent years are not surprised, however, that independent bloggers and other volunteers are now having to do the work previously done by US government-funded broadcasters who still receive millions of US taxpayers money every year.
Largely in response to the BBG-ordered program cuts and restrictions in news coverage for Russian-speaking audiences, FreeMediaOnline.org volunteers have launched a Russian-language multi-source news analysis website GovoritAmerika.us. The website, which receives no public funding, has provided links to the Russian translation of the “GQ” article banned in Russia.
Американские блоггеры предлагают русский перевод статьи о Путине, которая подверглась цензуре. Русскоязычные веб-сайты «Голоса Америки» и Радио «Свобода» игнорируют публикацию.
Conde Nast, американский издатель русскоязычной версии журнала GQ, побоялся напечатать в России статью с резкой критикой в адрес премьер-министра Путина. Веб-сайты «Голоса Америки» на русском и английском языках, а также русскоязычный веб-сайт Радио «Свобода» проигнорировали эту публикацию. Зато это сделали независимые блоггеры в США, которые перевели статью Скотта Андерсона на русский язык и разместили ее в Интернете. Инициатива перевода статьи принадлежит популярному нью-йоркскому новостному вебсайту Gawker.
GovoritAmerika.us – независимый аналитический веб-сайт на русском языке сообщил о цензуре статьи Скотта Андерсона. Предлагаем ссылку на русский перевод статьи, которая не могла быть опубликована в России.
Gawker: Вы можете прочитать запрещенную статью GQ про Путина здесь>>
The popular New York blog site Gawker is reporting that “in an act of publishing cowardice, Condé Nast has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent Russians from reading a “GQ” article criticizing Vladimir Putin.” Condé Nast publishes such widely read magazines as “Vanity Fair,” “The New Yorker,” and “Vogue.” In Russia, it publishes “GQ,” “Glamour,” “Tatler,” and “Vogue.” The Manhattan media news website is making the Russian translation of the article, which is being done by volunteers, available online. Gawker: “Hey, you can read the forbidden GQ article about Putin here” Вы можете прочитать запрещенную статью GQ про Путина здесь>>
“Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise To Power” by veteran investigative reporter Scott Anderson appears in the current U.S. issue of “GQ.” U.S. public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) reported that Condé Nast prohibited republishing of the article in any of its magazines in Russia and in other countries. According to NPR, Condé Nast also prevented the article from being posted on the “GQ” website in the U.S. The article deals with a series of bombings at apartment buildings that killed hundreds of people in Russia in 1999.
Scott Anderson relied on information from Mikhail Trepashkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who investigated the bombings. Trepashkin suggests a possible link between the bombings and Russian officials who were interested in increasing Mr. Putin’s powers as president and later as prime minister. Russian officials have always denied these charges as a complete fabrication.
According to media freedom advocates, Condé Nast executives may have been afraid what would hapen to their business interests and their employees in Russia if they had allowed the article to be published in Russian.
Ted Lipien, president of FreeMediaOnline.org, a San Francisco-based media freedom nonprofit, said that unsolved killings of many Russian journalists and a climate of fear among media professionals have resulted in self-censorship in Russia on a mass scale. “It is unfortunate but not surprising,” Lipien said, “that faced with intimidation by the secret police and killings of journalists by unknown assailants, even Western-owned and funded publications and institutions are practicing self-censorship in Mr. Putin’s Russia.” Ted Lipien was formerly acting associate director at the Voice of America (VOA). FreeMediaOnline.org publishes Russian-language news analysis website, ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us.
In past years, U.S.-government-funded radio stations Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) would have provided quick translations of newsworthy articles which were censored in Russia. Their funding, however, has been greatly reduced in recent years by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a Federal agency managed by a group of bipartisan political appointees, who used the savings to pay for controversial radio and television projects in the Middle East ordered by the Bush Administration.
Independent studies and surveys found these projects, such as Alhurra Television, to be both ineffective in attracting a wider audience and journalistically substandard. One such study conducted by The University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School determined that Alhurra TV has been a failure. The BBG tried to keep the Center on Public Diplomacy report secret but was eventually forced by Congressional and media criticism to make it available on its website.(http://www.bbg.gov/reports/others/uscreport.pdf)
In one of its most controversial moves, the BBG had terminated VOA radio programs to Russia in July 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia over a territorial dispute. Some of the BBG members and their consultants have been involved in private business deals in Russia.
The Voice of America Russian and VOA English websites did not report on the “GQ” censorship story as of Saturday evening, Sept. 05, Washington D.C. time. After a series of BBG-ordered budget and personnel cuts, the VOA Russian Service operates with only a skeleton staff, especially on weekends.
Another U.S. taxpayer-funded and BBG-managed international broadcasting station, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), had a comprehensive homepage article on this story on its English-language website, Controversial Decision By U.S. Publisher Sparks Debate On Free Speech, Censorship. But RFE/RL’s Радио Свобода (Radio Liberty) Russian-language website – svobodanews.ru – which attracts most of the Internet traffic for RFE/RL in Russia, did not report on the “GQ” controversy as of Saturday. Radio Liberty receives more funding from the BBG than the VOA Russian Service and keeps news bureaus in Russia with a large staff of local reporters. A search of the RFE/RL Russian-language website produced a number of past reports with references to the Russian edition of “GQ,” but all of them dealt with fashion or other topics of popular culture. FreeMediaOnline.org reported that BBG-hired private consultants were putting pressure on Radio Liberty editors to make their radio and web content less politically controversial and more appealing to pro-Putin and anti-Western Russians. VOA website had stories on the 2009 US Open tennis matches and Labor Day celebrations but nothing on censorship at the Russian edition of “GQ.”
According to FreeMediaOnline.org media analysts, the BBG’s concern for the safety of their employees in Russia may have also contributed to self-censorship at Radio Liberty. Ted Lipien of FreeMediaOnline.org said that he’s encouraged by private Internet journalists trying to publicize this story but sees limited coverage by U.S.-taxpayer funded international broadcasters, managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, as an inadequate response to the serious threats to media freedom in Russia.
Выбор ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us. Вы можете скопировать и использовать эту статью. You can copy and use this report. 
Подписка на рассылку ГоворитАмерика.us.
FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, August 18, 2009, San Francisco — Ever since the United States Information Agency (USIA) was dismantled in a foolish post-Cold War cost-cutting move, the U.S. State Department and American diplomats abroad have not been able to present a coherent message to foreign audiences quickly and effectively. The latest example is the lame U.S. public response to the terrorist attack in Ingushetia — no phone call from President Obama to President Medvedev, just a short written statement which was not easily available. There was no statement from Secretary Clinton.
Even though the lack of a proper U.S. response was not deliberate and can be blamed on the distraction with the health care reform and just plain bureaucratic incompetence, the Russian leaders and the Russian public have a reason to wonder how badly the Obama Administration wants Russia’s support in combating terrorism and restraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Americans, on the other hand, should be concerned how professional and how effective is America’s public diplomacy, which aims to inform and influence public opinion abroad to make it more sympathetic to U.S. interests. The ultimate aim is to make America safer by strengthening and promoting security and democracy worldwide. Yet, few within the government bureaucracy in Washington seem to grasp that ineffective public diplomacy threatens America’s safety. FreeMediaOnline.org (Free Media Online Blog)>>
Выбор ГоворитАмерика.us GovoritAmerika.us. Вы можете скопировать и использовать эту статью. You can copy and use this report. Подписка на рассылку ГоворитАмерика.us.
The latest news about continuing turmoil at the US taxpayer-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which is managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — an independent U.S. Federal agency — comes from Anatoly Karlin’s blog Sublime Oblivion.
Translation: “Radio Liberty – The Liberty of Mendacity”
Published on August 16, 2009 in Da Russophile
Anatoly Karlin: “One of my readers, Fedia Kriukov, kindly pointed me to a LiveJournal blog post by Ksenia Larina from August 13th, 2009. She’s been working with the liberal “Echo of Moscow” radio station since 1991 and her husband, Rinat Valiulin, had accepted a position with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty in February 2009. In uncompromising language, she reveals her husband’s unpleasant experiences with RFERL in Радио Свобода – свобода подлости (Radio Liberty – The Freedom of Mendacity).
Her impression is that a once-respectable institution has degenerated into a nest of self-serving nepotism, neo-Soviet bureaucracy and US managerial fecklessness. Coming hard on the heels of Mario Corti’s revelations about its plummeting popularity, corruption and retreat from journalistic independence, RFERL will have an increasingly difficult time justifying the tens of millions of dollars of American taxpayer money going into supporting it.”
This article TRANSLATION: Ksenia Larina on “Radio Liberty – The Liberty of Mendacity” is available in pdf format.
TRANSLATION: Ksenia Larina on “Radio Liberty – The Liberty of Mendacity” (LJ post)
(http://xlarina.livejournal.com/117110.html; accessed August 15, 2009)
Translated by Anatoly Karlin.
Opinia.US
Anonymous: This is correct? How is he justifying this? To retain these employee...
Brahna: Like too many others, Mr. Lobo fell into step, following "past practic...
Anonymous: Horsecrap. Nothing says SES members have to get bonuses. Anyone earn...
VOA contractor: I am very happy to see the POV director at VOA has posted a survey lin...
Anonymous1: You're right. it is truly extraordinary. Victor Ashe is a courageous...