Imagine a packed monsoon-drenched refugee tent camp in eastern Bangladesh, where more than 700,000 souls were forced to flee a year and a half ago from military oppression in their impoverished villages in neighboring Burma. Focusing a spotlight on their plight is a key challenge for public diplomacy in 2019. Aerial views of the…
In late August, the world noted the one year anniversary of the beginning of Myanmar’s brutal expulsion of more than 700 thousand Rohingya residents from the western part of their country, until recently known as Burma. Those expelled now crowd into a flood-threatened temporary refugee camps at a site called Cox’s Bazar in neighboring Bangladesh.…
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…
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…
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…
“Words are sacred,” British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard once wrote. “They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world.” Or, in the words of George Washington: “The truth will ultimately prevail, when there are pains to bring it to light.” Solid bits of advice spanning three centuries. They are clearly…
“A lie can travel halfway around the world,” Mark Twain once wrote, “while the truth is putting its shoes on.” In this new media age, one wonders what the famed author might have thought about the truth’s instantaneous global, multimedia reach during the recent ten-day eruption of anti-government protests in Iran. The latest…
How is informational power that states employ in today’s turbulent world making an impression on increasing billions of people in this multimedia age? DEFINITIONS OF POWER AND HOW IT IS USED Hard power, or sheer military might: applied internationally in times of crisis. Soft power, or public diplomacy: designed to persuade and listen to those…