OPINION Cold War Radio Museum How Voice of America Censored Solzhenitsyn China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea By Ted Lipien When in 1974 the Voice of America (VOA) banned Alexandr Solzhenitsyn from its programs, the push for the ban may have originated with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Today, personal, ideological and partisan preferences of VOA managers and…
OPINION Cold War Radio Museum How Voice of America Censored Solzhenitsyn The Obama “Reset” with Russia By Ted Lipien Hillary Clinton seemed to have had some understanding of how Russian propaganda works when she made her critical comments about the Broadcasting Board of Governors in 2013 to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, calling the U.S.…
OPINION How Voice of America Censored Solzhenitsyn Radio Liberty Fails on Russian Interference By Ted Lipien The vast majority of political propaganda and disinformation in U.S. media is originated domestically by American commentators, partisan think-tanks, reporters and social media users. But all too often, U.S. government officials, as well as journalists, both government-hired as in the Voice…
Digital Journal, International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy, RFE, RL, Russia
Op-Ed: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty can’t cope with Putin propaganda | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published May 8, 2016 by Digital Journal Arguing that the United States has so far failed to invest seriously in understanding or pushing back against the problem of Russian propaganda and disinformation, Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Washington Post columnist, and Edward Lucas, a senior editor at the Economist, are launching this week a counter-disinformation initiative at the Center for European Policy…
Digital Journal, Featured, International Broadcasting, RFE, RL, VOA
Op-Ed: Voice of America or Voice of Castro without any balance? | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published April 20, 2016 by Digital Journal John Kerry is wrong and what Hillary Clinton had said three years ago about U.S. government media outreach abroad is still true. She called the effort “practically defunct.” According to Secretary Kerry when he spoke on April 19, 2016, “Today’s Broadcasting Board of Governors is not the BBG of a few years ago.” The BBG…
Digital Journal, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA
Op-Ed: Anti-Israel RFE/RL Facebook message may inspire terrorists | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published March 28, 2016 by Digital Journal Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the independent federal agency in Washington, DC, wrote in an introduction to its Facebook post on March 25, 2016 that there is “wholesale racism” in Israel. [Emphasis added.] This stunning and, in my view, false and irresponsible message from a…
Digital Journal, International Broadcasting, OWI, Public Diplomacy, RFE, RL, VOA
Op-Ed: Reform and adult supervision for Broadcasting Board of Governors | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published November 30, 2015 by Digital Journal U.S. overseas broadcasting in support of freedom has a long and distinguished history. People who know it well, including Kevin Klose, a former Washington Post foreign correspondent, former National Public Radio (NPR) president and, most importantly, someone who successfully ran Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and worked briefly for the…
Cold War, Digital Journal, Featured, History, International Broadcasting, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA
Op-Ed: Voice of America in intellectual twilight zone against Putin | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published August 12, 2015 in Digital Journal The Voice of America, one of America’s taxpayer-funded weapons against Russian propaganda, had something in common with Russia’s propaganda weapon RT last week. RT (formerly Russia Today), a multimedia English-language website, still looked vastly more polished, more frequently updated and far more visually appealing than VOA’s late 20th century GI (Government…
Cold War, Digital Journal, International Broadcasting, RFE, RL, Russia
Op-Ed: Kudos to RFE/RL | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published July 31, 2015 in Digital Journal Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is one of America’s best investments in peaceful backing of freedom abroad, which brings security at home. Funded by U.S. taxpayers through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), RFE/RL “serves as a ‘surrogate’ free press in 21 countries where the free flow of information is either…
Digital Journal, History, International Broadcasting, Poland, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA
Op-Ed: Voice of America disappoints | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published May 12, 2015 by Digital Journal To no great surprise, I did not find any Voice of America English News (VOA News – voanews.com) reports posted Monday on President Putin defending the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact. The secret protocol to the non-aggression pact between the two dictators led to the outbreak of World War II and the attack on…
Digital Journal, International Broadcasting, RFE, RL, Russia
American journalist rejects Russia’s claims for visa denial | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published January 14, 2014 by Digital Journal David Satter, an American journalist and advisor at U.S. taxpayer-funded Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), has posted a statement on his website rejecting official Russian explanations for the denial of his journalist’s visa to work in Russia. Satter said that he had complied completely with all instructions from the…
Digital Journal, Featured, Highlights, International Broadcasting, RFE, RL, Russia, VOA
Op-Ed: America’s radios dancing to Putin’s tune in Moscow SPECIAL | Digital Journal
By Ted Lipien Published March 2, 2012 by Digital Journal Moscow – Voice of America and Radio Liberty, funded by US taxpayers to promote media freedom abroad, self-censor news on two stations in Moscow to comply with Russian media law prior to Russia’s presidential elections on March 4. US government-funded media freedom broadcasters, Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe and Radio…
International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy
Who is the leader of the Free World? – Reagan, Bush, Obama – lessons in public diplomacy in response to anti-democracy crackdown in Belarus
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?
International Broadcasting, Public Diplomacy
Czech Court Rules RFE/RL Cannot Discriminate Against Its Own Foreign Journalists
FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, December 02, 2010 — A court in the Czech Republic has ruled that a former Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Armenian broadcaster Anna Karapetian should not have been fired using RFE/RL’s personnel procedures which deprive non-American and non-Czech employees of some of the protections of Czech labor laws. [quote_right]Czech senator Jaromir Stetina, deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, called discrimination of RFE/RL foreign employees “patently indecent, unfair, cynical and hypocritical.”[/quote_right] RFE/RL is a semi-private entity funded and managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. government agency.
International Broadcasting
Armenian journalist appeals to Obama to protect rights of foreign journalists at U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Armenian journalist Anna Karapetian (photo) has written a letter to President Obama asking him to protect the rights of foreign journalists employed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which is managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and funded by U.S. Congress. IT’S THE MORALITY, STUPID a commentary by Lev Roitman Evidently, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) bureaucrats (President…