Leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, major media such as MSNBC, CNN and FOX interviewed numerous experts and pundits about Russian state propaganda, and how the U.S. government was responding. One regular on MSNBC is Richard Stengel, a former TIME magazine editor who served as under secretary of state for public diplomacy in the…
A little past midnight on February 1, 1942, a then rookie potential staff of the Voice of America was summoned to a New York studio to record VOA’s first-ever broadcast to the world. It was an incredible moment. A pair of startled Voice announcers wore tuxes, having been summoned from Manhattan operas for their long-awaited…
Next February 1, the nation’s largest publicly-funded international broadcasting network will celebrate its 80th anniversary. The U.S. Agency for Global Media (the USAGM), which oversees America’s Voice and four other government-funded international multimedia broadcast networks, announced the latest total on Nov. 16. As a USAGM press release put it: “While the COVID-19 pandemic raged around…
Gil worked for more than 30 years at the Voice of America, the nation’s largest public-funded international broadcaster. He was 86 years old. Distinguished VOA correspondent Butler passed away on Oct. 10 at his home in Waldorf, Maryland. During his years at the Voice, from 1978 until his retirement well into the 21st century, his…
Starting October 1st, the Biden administration is doubling the ceiling on Afghan refugees re-settling here, permitting local communities to expand aid to displaced Afghans arriving in the United States. Washington is expanding the total to 125,000, according to local newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. “It’s just the humane thing to do… they are humans…
The tiny ministate of 2.9 million citizens just due north from the western shore of the Gulf, joined on the Arabian Peninsula by a narrow border with Saudi Arabia. Yet its role in the region’s diplomacy is stunning for a country of its size. As an August 31 deadline approached for the United States and…
The scene: a platform at the base of the steps to the Lincoln Memorial on the northernmost end of the National Mall. The speaker: African-American Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., America’s most prominent civil rights leader at the time and for generations to come. A quarter of a million people gathered in D.C. shortly after…
As the Associated Press put it in a dispatch from Beirut on August 4: “United in grief and anger, families of the victims and several thousand Lebanese gathered at the port as the country marked the first anniversary of the horrific explosion of 2020. “That blast killed at least 214 people and devastated entire neighborhoods…
In a World Press Freedom Day message yesterday May 3, President Biden warned that “the truth is under attack” and that “authoritarians” are trying to undermine the media globally. In a statement on the White House website, the president praised objective journalists around the world and urged them “to continue holding those in power to…
Who are the Rohingyas? Short answer: more than a million displaced refugees who fled from Burma to neighboring Bangladesh to escape persecution four years ago, and whose future remains very uncertain even today. The Rohingyas have long have been a matter of regional, as well as international concern. On March 25, Pakistan, Bangladesh’s western neighbor,…