The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) recently released its 2013 budget request, which slashes Voice of America (VOA) funding by more than $17 million while increasing funding for major bureaucratic offices inside the International Broadcasting Bureau. A reprioritization is clearly necessary. (article continued below chart) This disturbing trend focuses on …
Rolling up her sleeves should be new Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Tara Sonenshine’s first act in office. For the chief of the U.S. government’s outreach to the foreign public, urgent business is waiting. Moving into her office at the State Department on Monday, with her swearing in scheduled for April …
More than 30 years have passed since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about the “Soft Voice of America” in an article that first appeared in National Review on April 30, 1982. Incredibly, today we appear again to be headed in the direction bemoaned by Solzhenitsyn all those years ago. While the budget …
The decision to cut Voice of America (VOA) Broadcasting to China has attracted a good deal of congressional attention, as well it should. While China has launched a worldwide public diplomacy and media offensive, the United States is looking at a greatly reduced international media presence if the projected cuts …
The Broadcasting Board of Governors will receive $10 million under the compromise spending deal reached last week. President Obama effectively sided with the BBG over his own State Department in a funding dispute involving Internet circumvention work. Obama and lawmakers agreed to language in the fiscal 2011 spending bill cutting the …
The ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wants to know why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is sitting on millions of dollars in taxpayer money rather than shifting it to the Broadcasting Board of Governors for anti-censorship work in China and other repressive regimes. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) wrote to …
Just weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton complained to Congress that America is losing the information war against Al Qaeda, China and Russia, it appears that Clinton’s own State Department is one of the impediments to success. For more than 18 months, the State Department has hoarded nearly $30 million, …
Three weeks ago the BBC World Service Trust, a charity for the British network, was angling for a share of State Department funding to promote Internet freedom. But after Americans revolted at the idea, the organization has pulled out entirely, failing to even submit a grant proposal. The BBC charity …
Just what is it with the Obama Administration and state broadcasters? Not content with sticking by NPR after the House of Representatives voted to cut off its funding, it now emerges that the administration has been giving money to the BBC and, according to one report, is considering increasing that …
