The fired journalists of Radio Liberty’s (RL) Moscow office are finally seeing a deep injustice reversed. Following a visit to Moscow, Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) members Susan McCue and Michael Meehan announced: Given the rapidly shrinking independent media across Russia over the past few months, we have asked the …
U.S. international broadcasting strategy again landed under congressional scrutiny in Wednesday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. Representative Brad Sherman (D–CA) wanted to know why the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) ignored the congressional mandate to keep broadcasting to Pakistan in several local languages. In spite of a specific $1.5 million …
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) recently informed its workforce about sequestration cuts to Voice of America’s (VOA) shortwave and medium-wave broadcasting. Ironically, the Board is cutting the most cost-effective part of its organization: radio. It would be more rational to cut the bloated management and administration of the International …
Two new reports have delivered a one-two punch to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). One of the reports, by the State Department’s Inspector General (IG), focused narrowly on the functioning of the BBG itself, which it concluded is failing in its mandated duties, including implementation of key aspects of …
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Senate and House hearings on the terrorist attack on Benghazi, Libya, yesterday did not throw much more light on the affair or its aftermath. There was plenty of heat, though. Clinton’s totally inappropriate sarcasm and theatrics in response to a line of questioning by Senator …
The recent layoff of Voice of America (VOA) employees in Russia comes at a time when U.S. international broadcasting is also losing ground to bureaucratic overkill. Despite a continually expanding budget, many mission-critical broadcasting services are being cut, personnel are being let go, and broadcasters are being required to do …
Americans deserve transparency about what their government is doing, as long as that transparency doesn’t threaten national security. Transparency should also be the guiding principle of the State Department’s public diplomacy and U.S. international broadcasting. But since 1948, the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act, also know as the Smith–Mundt …
What in the world is going on at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the Voice of America (VOA)? The BBG has started to exhibit a level of secrecy worthy of the CIA, clamping down heavy-handedly on internal communications. VOA, meanwhile, has joined other news organizations at the United …
An outdated U.S. law adopted in the aftermath of World War II prevents Americans from listening to broadcasts on Voice of America and other taxpayer-supported broadcasters. Yet when two lawmakers offered a bipartisan solution to reverse that prohibition, critics on the right and left complained that our own government would …
Controversy has swirled around the Smith–Mundt Modernization Act since it passed mark-up as an amendment to the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act last Friday. Smith–Mundt has prohibited U.S. citizens from accessing the public diplomacy products of the U.S. government, whether in print or on the airwaves, since 1948. Critics on the left …
