Miro Dobrovodsky passed away on July 23, 2009. FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, March 25, 2009, San Francisco — Miro Dobrovodsky, one of the best journalists who came to the U.S. from Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War to escape media censorship in their native countries, sent me an email pointing out that the process of silencing the Voice of America…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, March 18, 2009, San Francisco — My commentary on the poor state of U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting, Sexy Images from the Voice of America, has produced management backlash against the Voice of America Russian Service journalists. It was unfortunate but not unexpected that the Agency’s management, rated by its employees as one of the…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, March 16, 2009, San Francisco — BBC has recently made some reductions in its Russian-language radio broadcasts, but unlike the Voice of America (VOA), the British public broadcaster did not completely eliminate radio programs to Russia. The termination of VOA radio to Russia, which occurred last July, just 12 days before Russia invaded Georgia,…
No in-depth reports from the Voice of America or high-resolution photos from the State Department, but one can now find sexy images on the VOA Russian website. The Clinton-Lavrov meeting and the First Lady’s visit to the State Department revealed a sorry state of U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting. It took hours after Secretary Clinton and her Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Lavrov had finished their joint press conference in Geneva before the…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, March 4, 2009, San Francisco Senator Richard Lugar is right about past mistakes that had crippled U.S. public diplomacy, but new actions by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors also continue to silence America’s voice abroad Closed Down American Centers and Crippled Voice of America In an insightful and candid article posted on the Foreign Policy magazine blog,…