By now most people are familiar with the ongoing debate about how far government should be able to go in monitoring Internet communications. Such was the topic of a recent discussion at the Voice of America building in Washington, D.C. Judging by the remarks of the event’s panelists, especially those …
In the age of media saturation and extravagant federal budget deficits, the question does comes up: Why does the United States need to spend some $750 million on international broadcasting every year? As with every taxpayer dollar spent, this question deserves an answer, and rarely has a more eloquent one …
Since 1948, Cold War legislation has been tying the hands of practitioners of U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting. The law in question is the Smith-Mundt Act, which was intended to allow the State Department to counter Soviet propaganda in foreign media, while at the same time forbidding it from …
The new Broadcasting Board of Governors, announced on Friday by the Obama White House, have their work cut out for them. For a variety of not very satisfactory reasons, the U.S. broadcasting entities (Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, et al.) on whom the federal government spends $745 million a …
Well into the second year of the Obama administration, U.S. international broadcasting services remain in a leaderless state of vacuum. Nor are these important public diplomacy assets of the government likely to emerge from limbo anytime soon, which is deeply unfortunate given the intensifying global competition for information dominance. At …
While television and new technologies like Internet and cell phones are the focus of strategy at the Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversees the U.S. government’s international broadcasting assets, shortwave radio remains by far the most effective means of reaching audiences around the world, particularly in the developing countries. It …
