Ted Lipien with his mentor, anti-Nazi underground Home Army radio coder in German-occupied Poland, journalist Zofia Korbońska, at the Voice of America Polish Service in Washington, DC, circa 1974. Faulty research by three British academics distorts the history of the Cold War. Tadeusz “Ted” Lipien This postcard was sent from Poland to the Voice of America Polish Service in the…
How Voice of America’s poor leadership entangled it in a spy scandal | Ted Lipien | THE HILL
Before Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, I wrote an op-ed for THE HILL on how the dangerous loopholes in security vetting of Voice of America (VOA) talent employed by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) led to the hiring of an alleged Russian spy to produce news reports for VOA from countries of the former Soviet Union. The alleged…
How hatred of a Trump official blinded Voice of America to Putin’s spying | my op-ed in The Washington Times
Former Voice of America (VOA) Russian-Spanish freelance news reporter Pablo Rubtsov González was greeted in Moscow by Russian President Vladimir Putin after exchange for American journalists imprisoned and held as hostages in Russia. Had I stayed at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty #RFERL, I would have continued to work for the release of imprisoned reporters and warned others in no uncertain…
End the culture of corruption at the US Agency for Global Media | Ted Lipien | THE HILL
In my new op-ed in THE HILL, I explain how U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) leaders and their careless or calculated personnel policies and disregard for employee and institutional security have undermined an institution that helped to win the Cold War. I was part of the winning team as a journalist and media executive. Since then, the agency’s leaders,…
The Hill Op-ed Against Anti-Semitism in Media and Walter Durnaty-Style Journalism at USAGM’s Voice of America (VOA)
USAGM Watch Commentary In his latest op-ed in The Hill, former Voice of America (VOA) acting associate director Ted Lipien, who also served briefly in 2020-2021 as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) president, quotes his former VOA Polish Service colleague, Jewish-American writer Henryk Grynberg: “the president of a leading American university cannot apologize for her lack of basic human values”…
Mark Pomar’s new book about the Cold War political radio could help American government officials unfamiliar with the history of U.S. international broadcasting. Mark Pomar’s book Cold War Radio [Mark G. Pomar, Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Lincoln: Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2022), Amazon Link] is, in my…
Jamming Was a Sign of Effectiveness of Western Broadcasts
Soviet jamming was a sign of the effectiveness of Western radio broadcasts. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were consistently jammed. The Voice of America was jammed only during some periods. Ted Lipien for Cold War Radio Museum In his book Operation Suicide: “Those Strange Bridges to Communism,” published in 1967, American journalist Eugene Lyons, a former communist sympathizer who interviewed Joseph Stalin…
Beware of Government Propaganda “Experts”
Disinformation governance by government propaganda experts can be dangerous, judging by the record of the early officials in charge of the Voice of America and journalists duped by Soviet propaganda. As the Voice of America (VOA), the United States government’s radio station for international audiences, observes its eightieth anniversary in 2022, it may surprise some Americans, assuming they have heard…
At Voice of America, history repeats itself — Part Two: Hidden History
By Ted Lipien As more and more questions are being asked by members of Congress and scandals reported by liberal and conservative press about the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) — the tax-funded, U.S. government-managed international broadcaster — I would strongly recommend that Voice of America (VOA) USAGM federally-employed managers and journalists read The Katyn Diaries, a book about one of World War II major genocide murders. I…
At Voice of America, history repeats itself
At Voice of America, history repeats itself because of poor USAGM leadership, partisan bias and violations of VOA Charter. USAGM Watch Media Commentary According to the former Voice of America journalist and manager who led the VOA Polish Service during the peaceful Solidarity revolution against communism and Soviet Russia’s control of Poland, “The taxpayer-funded Voice of America is increasingly being…