Next Wednesday (August 22), the Broadcasting Board of Governors overseeing five U.S.-funded international networks will announce it is re-christening itself the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That will be a significant event in the nearly quarter of a century since the BBG was established by the Administration and Congress in 1994. “New Name, Same Mission — Come…
The lid has been lifted on at least part of Russia’s “Internet Research Agency” in St. Petersburg as disaffected Internet trolls have been telling reporters how the covert corps of cyber-provocateurs has been spreading propaganda in favor of President Vladimir Putin and attacking his perceived enemies on international blogs and news and opinion websites. But…
There’s been a growing tendency lately (particularly on BBGWatch, an online watchdog) to compare, unfavorably, VOA’s performance, as measured by number of stories or live reports from the scene of breaking news, with other national and international news organizations. Behind much of this criticism is an implicit expectation that VOA’s coverage should be as fast…
Since last year there has been an effort at the Voice of America to expand into “investigative reporting”. The best response by VOA’s stakeholders to this effort should be a firm and unequivocal No. Why? Just look at VOA’s website. Every day this government agency distributes stories to audiences around the world that are not…
More than seven decades ago, fascism was in its death throes. Nearly three decades ago, the Berlin Wall fell, setting in motion the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In this century, however, those world-shaking events seem to be “history” as our nation faces an array of grave new…
Here is the first of a series of factual updates about United States public diplomacy and broadcasting. A link to each will be posted on our Advocacy page. GUTS: USG Broadcasting Fiscal Year 2018 spending level: $793,808,000 including capital improvements 2018 audience: 278,000,000 unduplicated users a week (TV, radio and internet) Since the end of…
“WHEN THE DOOR IS OPEN, GO IN… IT’S THE LAST THREE FEET THAT MATTERS” That’s the motto of the late Leo Sarkisian, the legendary music show host and master portrait artist of the Voice of America Africa Division for more than a half century. Leo, 97, passed away at his home near Boston June 8…
Noted columnist David Brooks recently asserted that what he termed “an American renaissance is already happening.” He noted that as the national government appears to be divided and polarized, cities far from Washington’s corridors of power are working to transform their communities — large and small. I recently experienced this firsthand in Houston, Texas, America’s fourth…
Next Thursday, May 3rd, the world will celebrate Press Freedom Day. For America’s publicly-funded international broadcasters, the challenges have never been more formidable. Both Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House recently issued annual reports citing steady overall declines in press freedom globally in the past dozen years, with the Middle East and Eurasia registering the…
The name of the American poet and short story writer Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) should be known to all Public Diplomacy practitioners. When war came, he tirelessly applied his gifts to the American cause, so ardently that he died from overwork in 1943. A giant in American letters in the late 1920s and the…