VIENNA, 24 September 2010 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatovic, said today that she is alarmed by the unrelenting judicial pressure exerted on independent journalists in Uzbekistan. In a letter sent to Uzbekistan’s Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov, Mijatovic expressed her concern over the fate of two prosecuted journalists: Abdumalik Boboyev, a freelance reporter for the…
TedLipien.com, Truckee, CA — A funeral Mass for Zofia Korbonska, a heroine of the Polish underground resistance against Nazi occupation, participant in the Warsaw Rising of 1944, political activist against Communist rule after World War II, and former Voice of America (VOA) Polish Service broadcaster, was held at the Our Lady Queen of Poland Catholic Church in Silver Spring, MD…
FreeMediaOnline.org, September 8, 2010 –Thirty-two years ago this week, on September 7, 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré journalist, who lived and worked in London, was assaulted in broad daylight on London’s Waterloo Bridge and later died. In February 2010, Time magazine ranked the murder of Georgi Markov at number 5 of the “top 10 assassination plots”, just below the…
FreeMediaOnline.org September 6, 2010 — In an unusual case of government insider expose, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) employee Kim Andrew Elliott reported in his private blog that the taxpayer-supported Federal agency in charge of US international broadcasting, including television and radio programs to the Middle East — which in the past aired views of Holocaust deniers — is…
From Senator Lugar’s website: On June 9, 2010, Senator Dick Lugar released a report prepared by the minority staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In his letter accompanying the report, Senator Lugar wrote: “A key component of any nation’s public diplomacy effort is its ability to communicate with the rest of the world — either through people-to-people initiatives…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, September 15, 2009, San Francisco — We have reported earlier that Radio Liberty’s Russian Service, Radio Svoboda, website had ignored for a number of days the news story of Conde Nast censorship of a critical article about Mr. Putin by Scott Anderson. The article was banned by Conde Nast executives in New York from the Russian edition of the GQ magazine in Russia and from GQ websites, including its American website.
After FreeMediaOnline.org published its report pointing out limited coverage by Russian websites of both Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, VOA, both broadcasting stations devoted a lot of attention to the GQ story, albeit several days after it had been first reported by NPR on September 4, and after independent bloggers in the US and in Russia had already translated
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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.
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…
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…
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…
‘I am not happy . . . but it is good that I get famous,’ Georgian Cyxymu says of the onslaught that brought down Twitter and crippled Facebook and other online services. The Los Angeles Times and other American newspapers reported that the massive cyber attack last week, seen by security experts as aimed at silencing a single blogger in…
FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, July 23, 2009, San Francisco — Voice of America director Dan Austin had a hard job explaining before Congress the broadcasting and program delivery strategy for Russia and the cyber attack that shut down the VOA website, including its Russian-language site, for at least two full days during President Obama’s visit to Russia earlier…
This post by Jonathan Liedl of the Heritage Foundation on the SZONE.US Forum includes several links to FreeMediaOnline.org reports. With VOA Left Voiceless, Obama Fails to Reach Russian Public President Obama’s foreign policy thus far has been marked by an emphasis on public diplomacy. As a result, successfully engaging foreign publics has become a top priority of his administration. The…
AS RELEASED BY THE WHITE HOUSE, FRI, JULY 17, 12:51 PM EST Highlights from the President’s Trip to Russia Posted by Katherine Brandon Get a behind-the-scenes look at the highlights of the President’s trip to Moscow earlier this month. See images of his trip, and listen to the President speak at the New Economic School. You can read the whole…
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has put all the eggs of broadcasts to Russia from the U.S. in one basket. FreeMediaOnline.org, Free Media Online Blog, GovoritAmerika.us, Commentary by Ted Lipien, July 10, 2009, San Francisco — Established in 1942 in response to wartime emergency, the Voice of America (VOA) has been the official U.S. broadcaster, funded by American taxpayers…