Bipartisan Board Stops U.S. Radio to Russia

FreeMediaOnline.org ^ | September 3, 2008 | Ted Lipien

[FreeMediaAdvocate]

The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is a little bipartisan body, which currently has six members. All but one, voted to terminate Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts to Russia and also wanted to end VOA radio broadcasts to Georgia and Ukraine.

Ignoring Congressional warnings, the BBG eliminated Russian radio broadcasts just 12 days before Russia invaded Georgia last August. They still refuse to resume them.

One of the BBG members who voted to stop VOA from broadcasting radio to Russia was Senator Biden's former chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, who now helps Biden with his vice presidential campaign. Biden's Senate staff was said to be involved in helping the BBG to end these broadcasts. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) based in Prague and Moscow, which might benefit from stopping VOA broadcasts from Washington, is incorporated in Delaware. But there is a problem. The majority of RFE/RL reporters who prepare Russian broadcasts live in Russia and are subject to intimidation by the Kremlin's secret police.

The only BBG member who voted against program cuts to countries with no free media or limited media freedom was conservative radio host Blanquita Cullum. Another Bush appointee, the former BBG chairman, James Glassman, who is now the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, voted to cut VOA radio programs to Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine. FreeMediaOnline.org is asking supporters of media freedom to register their protest by sending emails to the BBG: publicaffairs@bbg.gov.

FreeMediaOnline.org Joins Call for End of Impunity in Russia on Anniversary of Politkovskaya Killing

FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog October 3, 2008, San Francisco -- As journalists, their organisations, and human rights and press freedom groups are preparing to commemorate the second anniversary of the killing of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, the International Federation of Journalists urged Friday all its affiliates worldwide to join the call for renewed efforts to end impunity in Russia. Link In response to the IFJ appeal, the U.S.-based media freedom nonprofit, FreeMediaOnline.org, has called on the Russian authorities to stop their repressive actions aimed against independent journalists. FreeMediaOnline.org is also urging the U.S. government to reverse questionable decisions affecting the media situation in Russia made by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages U.S.-funded international broadcasts to media-at-risk countries.

Since its founding in 2006, FreeMediaOnline.org has been publicizing the dangers facing Russian journalists. Those at risk include managers and reporters of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, RFE/RL, many of whom are Russian citizens who work and live in Russia with their families within easy reach of the Kremlin's secret police.

FreeMediaOnline.org president Ted Lipien said that in light of the extreme dangers facing journalists in Russia, many are alarmed by the recent decision of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors to terminate all Voice of America (VOA) Russian-language radio broadcasts. These broadcasts originating in Washington, D.C., which helped to limit the Kremlin's media monopoly by featuring on air discussions of human rights abuses, ended on July 26 on orders from the BBG, just 12 days before the Russian military forces attacked Georgia. They have not been resumed despite protests and demands from VOA journalists, members of Congress, and press freedom groups.

This BBG decision, Lipien said, makes RFE/RL and all other journalists in Russia more vulnerable to blackmail by the Russian security services and represents a victory for those responsible for Anna Politkovskaya's murder. FreeMediaOnline.org urged supporters of media freedom to mark the anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya's death. The media freedom nonprofit also asked that they register their protest against the Broadcasting Board of Governors' decisions by sending emails to the BBG executive director Jeff Trimble: publicaffairs@bbg.gov.

[null and void]

Which country do these guys work for again?

[NTHockey]

I worked with, and crossed swords with Kaufman. He is a Libs Liberal. There is no position that he cannot take one more extreme. Intelligent he is, but not very tolerant of others views.

When the Catholic Church was “opening its doors”, Kaufman was there with an axe.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Another Bush-Condi Rice surrender.

Damned and I voted for him.

[The_Reader_David]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

Defeating the inhuman social system of Communism was worth American blood and treasure. Confronting Great Russian nationalism is not.

What would our tax dollars be buying in the continued broadcasts?

Beaming Soros-style ‘open society’ propaganda against the reestablishment of traditional Orthodox Christian society? Gay-rights propaganda? Arguments that a progressive income tax like we have is better than a flat tax like Russia has? Deprecation of religious education in state schools like Russia had instituted?

The Russians who would be inclined to get their news from Western sources, rather than Russian sources can all get the internet, the BBC World Service, and the like.

This relic of the fight against Communism has outlived its usefulness. We won. Let it go to an honored grave.

[Rembrandt]

“This relic of the fight against Communism has outlived its usefulness. We won. Let it go to an honored grave.”
—
You obviously haven’t been to Cuba, Venezuela or Vietnam in the last decade or so. Communism is still wheezing; it’s hardly dead. It continues to make many millions miserable, imprisioning many, killing others while repressing everyone without a foreign passport, some with foreign passports. Given a chance, it will expand to the U.S. vigorously.

[The_Reader_David]

It was the Russian language broadcasts I was suggesting be allowed to rest in peace.

Hasn’t Vietnam gone the Chinese way: Communist in name, fascist in fact?

[DesertRhino]

Exactly sir. It became an anachronism when you could get on an airliner, fly there without even requesting a visa (Ukraine), say anything you want, wear a shirt with any slogan you want, bring in any books you want, etc.

IMO One of our worst policy blunders ever was to continue the cold war, long after they imploded. It seems we almost deliberately lost the peace and went out of our way to cultivate this nationalist resurgence.

Can’t speak for the ultra rich world billionare world, but for all the hullaballoo,, an average Ukrainian or Russian honestly has freedom to say things Britons, Canadians and Austrians (those three offhand) have recently been literally arrested for.

I got to tour the super-old orthodox churches in Kiev,,
They were owned by the state as historical treasures. They became state owned during the communist days when God only knows what they were used for. After the War, the state repaired the catastrophic WWII damage.
Now,, in current Ukraine, Orthodox priests were conducting liturgy in one old church i visited. Stupidly, i asked how was this possible since the buildings upkeep and restorations had been funded by the Ukrainian government. They looked at me like i must be a simpleton or something. I was very saddened at the realization, that if our government restored an old church from the 1700s, it would be forbidden to ever use it to pray in.

Theres an old saying that you should pick your enemies carefully, because you become like them.
The way religion is treated here in our schools, and by our Government is more of Stalin than Jefferson. Does it really sink in when you see 10 commandments chiseled off a public building? How about when innocent small crosses etc,,are removed from ornamental governmental seals because they reflect spanish missionary settlement 300 years ago?

Next time you see this kind of thing, see it for the totalitarian act that it is. They have turned a cornerstone of our freedom upside down in its meaning.

I hope things continually get better over there,, but its a certainty, they will never get the genie back in the bottle. Communism there is a joke now. It would be akin to advocating segregation here again.

I hope the day doesn’t come when they need to beam “Voice of Ukraine” this direction.

[DesertRhino]

Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, Red China, San Francisco, Manhatten,, beam it on in.

Maybe an interesting standard to judge freedom could be if you get the unfiltered version of Google in a particular country? Or maybe if Google hasnt helped their government imprison anyone for what they read or post,, excepting things like homicide,,child porn,,etc.

Or maybe if the in the country in questions government REALLY is the way the DU dummies like to PRETEND our is?

[FreeMediaAdvocate]

I'm afraid your comments oversimplify the purpose of U.S. sponsored broadcasts to Russia vis-a-vis Russian nationalism. Even though they are small, there are pro-democracy forces in Russia that look to the West for support, even though it may be only moral support. Just because nationalism is a powerful force in Russia, it does not mean that we should not help present ideas that might moderate its most extremist expressions. It might do some good and the cost is very low compared with military spending. Perhaps we should have been broadcasting to Nazi Germany before World War II. German nationalism was also a powerful force.

You might be right though that U.S. broadcasts need to be properly managed. A Russian human rights organization has criticized Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for giving extensive airtime to a Russian nationalist politician who is known for extremist and racist views.

[jer33 3]

August 18, 2008
The Sound of Silence: The Decline of the Voice of America in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia
by Helle C. Dale and Oliver Horn

http://www.heritage.org/Research/PublicDiplomacy/wm2029.cfm.

[Rembrandt]

“Maybe an interesting standard to judge freedom could be if you get the unfiltered version of Google in a particular country? Or maybe if Google hasnt helped their government imprison anyone for what they read or post,, excepting things like homicide,,child porn,,etc.”
—
Here’s an interesting tidbit. Several years ago, I took a swing thru the UK, Britain, Wales and Scotland. Each time I tried to bring up Free Republic in a public place (e.g., library, MacDonalds, etc.), the computer froze up, i.e., would not deliver a thing. You can decide the issue of freedom yourself from that. When I tried at a friend’s house, I could bring up FR with no problem but in a state controlled place - ohhh noo!