BBG and Broadcast Entity Mission Statements
As part of the BBG Strategic Review, the Board will examine the mission statements of not only the BBG, but those of the five broadcast entities, as currently written…
To promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding through multi-media communication of accurate, objective, and balanced news, information, and other programming about America and the world audience overseas.
The long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the world by radio. To be effective, the Voice of America must win the attention and respect of listeners. These principles will therefore govern Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts:
1. VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. VOA news will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive.
2. VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.
3. VOA will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies. (Public Law 94-350)
[Editor's note: The above reflects the VOA Charter, signed into law July 12, 1976]
The mission of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks is to provide objective, accurate, and relevant news and information to the people of the Middle East about the region, the world, and the United States. MBN supports democratic values by expanding the spectrum of ideas, opinions, and perspectives available in the region’s media.
RFE/RL’s mission is to promote democratic values and institutions by reporting the news in countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established. Our journalists provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible, discussion, and open debate.
Radio Free Asia’s mission is to provide accurate and timely news and information to Asian countries whose governments prohibit access to a free press. Guided by the core principles of freedom of expression and opinion, RFA serves its listeners by providing information critical for informed decision-making.
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting’s mission is to promote freedom and democracy by providing the people of Cuba with objective news and information.
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Category: Mission, Strategic Review
[...] Read all broadcaster mission statements here. [...]
If, as the Voice of America mission statement clearly states, “The long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the worlds by RADIO [emphasis added], why is the Broadcasting Board of Governors eliminating RADIO, the only secure and reliable channel of communicating DIRECTLY with those living in countries whose regimes practice media censorship, which includes Internet censorship, as it is being used in China.
The Internet is not a substitute for radio, each has its own advantages. Millions of individuals and NGOs manage to launch websites, some of them highly popular, for very little money. Only governments can afford to fund non-commercial international radio and TV broadcasts.
Why does the BBG claim that VOA needs millions of dollars to have Internet presence in China and must drop its radio and TV broadcasts to have new media presence, which it already has. Just take a look at the current VOA Chinese website. The problem is that the VOA websites are and will continue to be blocked in China.
If the BBG cannot protect VOA’s own websites from an Iranian cyber attack, it is highly doubtful it can ever pierce the Great Chinese Internet Firewall.
How will you communicate with 750 million Chinese who have no Internet access and hundreds of millions more whose Internet access is censored or blocked?
How do you propose to communicate with dissidents under house arrest? How would you communicate with a future Chinese reform-minded government leader placed under house arrest by Chinese Communist Party hardliners, as it happened to Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1990s. His telephone was disconnected, but he had a radio and listened to BBC and the Voice of America.
Just image present-day Chinese free trade union leader like Poland’s Lech Walesa in the late 1970s and 1980s. Your strategy would not target him in China because he has no Internet access, is over 30 years old, has no higher or even complete high school education, and is poor. Walesa had no access to a fax machine or satellite TV — the latest communications innovations at that time — but he did listen to Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America.
What would Lech Walesa say if told that the United States is dropping Voice of America radio and will target young opinion makers in Poland by sending them faxes with news bulletins?
You may argue that he would still listen to Radio Free Europe or, if he were in China, to Radio Free Asia.
But you do know that RFA is not nearly as popular in China as VOA — in Poland RFE was far more popular than VOA in the 1970s, only later VOA became as popular as RFE and it was always viiewed as more trustworthy.The Chinese will be jamming RFA even more effectively. What kind of signal does your proposal to end on the air VOA radio and TV to China send to those who are fighting for democracy and media freedom?
Finally, you can’t claim that you know how many Chinese are listening to shortwave radio and to VOA and RFA. Few Chinese will reveal such information to strangers. Even your own experts say that media market research results in China are highly unreliable because the regime presents listening to VOA and RFA as almost a crime against the state.
I would also suggest you take a look at the 80 percent drop in weekly audience reach in Russia for VOA after the BBG eliminated VOA radio to Russia. Even with spending money on online advertising, VOA Russian website has very few visitors from Russia who actually stay and read whole articles. And the BBG cannot blame this drop on Mr. Putin
Thanks Ted,
There’s a lot here, but let’s start with correcting a few misconceptions that are reinforced in your comments.
First, the BBG is not eliminating radio, and not eliminating radio to China. What has been proposed is a re-purposing of VOA Mandarin shortwave funds to other tactics. Radio Free Asia would continue to broadcast via shortwave to China, with additional frequencies.
Second, to suggest that radio is “the only secure and reliable channel of communicating DIRECTLY with those living in countries whose regimes practice media censorship” is incorrect, and you acknowledge this yourself in reference to jamming.
Third, while Cold War references may offer up occasional lessons, when it comes to an overall media strategy and individual tactics, most Cold War anecdotes are simply dated. Over the past five to ten years, the explosion of traditional media options, sophisticated competitors, and the arrival of new media has changed consumer habits beyond what many long-time media veterans are willing to acknowledge.
We agree that new media is not a substitute for radio.
The BBG is a platform agnostic organization that will use any distribution method available, when and where appropriate, to reach target audiences.
For example, multiple research studies show that all radio listening in China stands at about 8%. FM is at 7%; MW less, and shortwave at less than a half of 1%.
In a world of unlimited funding, certainly the BBG would continue and increase shortwave broadcasts wherever possible. Unfortunately, unlimited funding is unlikely, requiring the BBG to assess its return on investment– as well as explore all options for reaching significant audiences.
When the audience is telling us that they do not use a medium on a large scale, such as shortwave in China, perhaps we should listen to them.
To reiterate, radio – even shortwave – remains a viable tool for BBG broadcasters. But its use will be driven by target audience habits, market forces, and available transmission opportunities in each individual market.
Thanks again for writing. As the site develops, we hope to hear more from you.
What follows is a response to Ted Lipien’s opinion pieces regarding U.S. International Broadcasting in China from Governor Enders Wimbush. His original post to us is above, and his similar Washington Times piece is below.
A Rebuttal on How to Reach China
Ted Lipien’s attack on the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ efforts to realign U.S. international broadcasting (Washington Times, April 1) comes down to this: The BBG is wrong to curtail shortwave broadcasts to China by the Voice of America in favor of a strategy that emphasizes the Internet because the Internet can be blocked. Research used by the BBG is inaccurate, except when he cites it. Chinese voices are proclaiming this a victory for China’s regime. The BBG is responsible for similar mistakes affecting Tibet and Russia several years ago.
Let’s begin where this argument is demonstrably false. Lipien writes that “the same group of BBG bureaucrats proposed reducing radio to Tibet” and “they cut VOA programs to Russia in 2008.” By “bureaucrats”, he presumably is referring to the BBG professional staff. A casual scan of Lipien’s past writings demonstrates his obsession that this small group of civil servants conspires successfully to manipulate the presidentially appointed board, even on issues that require the board’s authority, like realigning broadcasts. Apparently, in his view, the last appointed BBG had nothing to do with changes to broadcasting to Russia and proposals to change broadcasting to Tibet. It was all “the staff.” This narrative doesn’t pass the reality check. Here’s the real story: the current BBG, not the staff, agreed unanimously–Democrats and Republicans–to the realignment of U.S. broadcasting to China.
Lipien dismisses research that demonstrates a dramatic drop-off in shortwave listening in China, not just to U.S. international broadcasters but to all international broadcasters. He and others who contest this research, which comes not just from the BBG but from other international broadcasters BBC, DW and Radio France International, argue that its conclusions cannot be correct. Yet no one to date, including Lipien, has produced research that contradicts these findings. We would love to see it, if it exists.
His argument that “unlike radio, the Internet in China is being censored,” is misleading. The Chinese government has jammed shortwave radio broadcasts for many years. Shortwave listening not only is in dramatic decline but it is regularly jammed: a double whammy. Meanwhile the Internet is censored but not completely blocked. VOA Mandarin language streams had 432,000 views in January 2011. Its English and Special English websites and media content are not blocked by the Chinese government.
The correct approach to China, this BBG believes, is not an either-or strategy, but rather one that concentrates VOA’s resources to reach a larger audience on the Internet and mobile devices, while hedging our bets with continued and strengthened shortwave broadcasts by America’s other broadcaster to China, Radio Free Asia.
Lipien’s beef against Radio Free Asia, and all of the other Radio Frees that the BBG supervises, is longstanding. He sees them competing detrimentally for resources with his alma mater, the Voice of America. This is a debate worth having, especially in the constrained financial conditions we face as a country. But Lipien wants it both ways when he insists that RFA shortwave broadcasts “are far less known, less popular than VOA programs and more successfully jammed by the regime.” Really? Presumably Lipien knows all this on the basis of the audience research he hastily dismisses when it doesn’t fit his argument.
The BBG believes that Radio Free Asia is one of America’s most effective and dynamic networks. To bolster it, as part of this realignment the BBG will assign RFA the best available frequencies and times for broadcasting in Mandarin. RFA is a hard-hitting, no-nonsense broadcaster of news and analysis about China and the world, which may be why the Chinese find it particularly bothersome. If Lipien believes that, despite regular citations of RFA’s breaking news by the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, and others, RFA is not up to the task, he should explain why.
Finally there is the canard that the realignment described above is a victory for the Chinese regime. China’s press and blogosphere are full of a different view. For example, a professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism and Communications, quoted in the China Youth Daily, cites the influence of Internet activities on events in Tunis and Egypt, and cautions that one should “not misunderstand America’s purpose in shutting down VOA radio, because with the development of new internet tools, shortwave radio is no longer necessary.” Or in the pro-PRC Chinese-language Macau Daily news, “The West changes its propaganda strategy toward China,” which concludes that, “It is clear that in the near future public spaces like the Internet will be an area where China and the West will strive for influence, launching an attack-defense tussle.” Or the Huanqui Shibao’s summary of the discussion there about ending of VOA’s shortwave broadcasts to China: “Chinese scholars said that obviously the U.S. has found a new battlefield where they occupy advantages. In the future, the fight for dominating public opinions will be even more dangerous…Closing the Voice of America has been the result of exactly such a strategy.”
The BBG realigned its broadcasts to China not because it wants to go easy on China’s regime but the opposite: the new strategy increases America’s competitive advantages while not diminishing its legacy capabilities. This presents the Chinese with a tougher, not an easier challenge. In contrast, Chinese authorities no doubt find comfort in Lipien’s “strategy”, which is to keep pouring scarce resources into broadcasts with virtually no audience.
S. Enders Wimbush
Broadcasting Board of Governors
——————————————————-
Don’t silence Voice of America radio to China
By Ted Lipien
The Washington Times
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Government executives who advise part-time presidential appointees at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) would want you to believe that silencing Voice of America radio to China is a great political and technological idea that is bound to displease the communist regime in Beijing. The savings would be used to expand Internet presence, or so they claim.
But theirs is a misguided proposal that would harm both the United States and pro-democracy forces abroad. It sends a strong signal to authoritarian regimes that Americans either don’t care about human rights or don’t know how to defend them. Not surprisingly, the Chinese communists already have greeted the BBG announcement as a defeat for America.
In justifying their decision, BBG officials claim that the audience for shortwave radio in China is small and declining. They base their claim on market research, which even their own analysts describe as unreliable. Those listening to VOA radio in China or Tibet are not likely to reveal such potentially harmful information about themselves to strangers.
Unlike radio, the Internet in China is being censored, and its use is monitored by 50,000 cyberpolice. Uncensored radio and the Internet are not competing against each other in countries without free media. Each has its own advantages. A similar attempt by the BBG in Russia to broaden the audience by downplaying human rights reporting in favor of more entertaining Web content while silencing VOA radio has produced an 80 percent drop in weekly audience reach.
The Internet is inaccessible for 750 million Chinese. A listener to VOA radio programs in China is not likely to be a Chinese with an iPhone who goes on shopping trips to New York but someone like Liu Xia, wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Kept under house arrest, she once succeeded in sending an email to a friend, in which she wrote, “I don’t know how I managed to get online.” She then warned her friend, “Don’t go online. Otherwise my whole family is in danger.” BBG officials turn their backs on people like Liu Xia when they claim that ending VOA radio to China would help them develop new media tools to reach a younger, Internet-using audience.
A Chinese free labor union leader like Poland’s Lech Walesa could be declared expendable by the BBG because he has no Internet and no higher education, is older than 30 and is poor. In the 1980s, Mr. Walesa did not have a fax machine, but he listened to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. The BBG points out that Radio Free Asia will continue shortwave broadcasts to China, but those are far less known, less popular than VOAprograms and more successfully jammed by the regime.
The same group of BBG bureaucrats proposed reducing radio to Tibet shortly before a violent crushing of demonstrations in the region. They cut VOA radio programs to Russia in 2008 just days before the Russian military attack on the Republic of Georgia. They made their proposal to end VOA radio and TV to China not too long before the outbreak of the Jasmine Revolution. Can they be trusted with piercing the “Great Firewall” of Internet censorship in China if they cannot even protect VOA’s own websites from an Iranian cyber-attack?
The ability of the BBG executive staff to make wrong decisions has been so uncanny that simply by examining their program-cutting proposals, members of Congress easily could have predicted new outbreaks of unrest and assaults on free media shortly before they happened. Congress should not allow this group of managers to commit yet another blunder with a gift to the Chinese Communist Party as it celebrates its national holiday on Oct. 1, the proposed date for ending VOA radio to China.
Ted Lipien is a former acting associate director of the Voice of America. He runs Free Media Online.
Some observations regarding the BBG/Editor response to Mr. Lipien’s comments:
Misconceptions begin and end on the Third Floor of the Cohen Building: with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the senior elements of the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) and Voice of America (VOA).
The BBG/Editor is being somewhat disingenuous regarding US government radio broadcasting. As part of its “strategic plan,” the BBG intends as an outcome the elimination of all radio broadcasting by the Voice of America. Statements attributed to senior VOA officials have made that pronouncement going back to 2008 when the BBG eliminated radio broadcasts of the VOA Russian Service…a “model” for VOA’s future, so the story goes.
The use of the term “platform agnostic” is bizarre. Agnostic signifies doubt. On its face, the appearance is that the BBG represents a group of doubters regarding its choices of media platforms or its “strategic plan.” It’s a ridiculous expression.
One can also skip the spin about “repurposing” VOA Mandarin. That is nonsense. The BBG is destroying its best asset with a large broadcast footprint in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), larger than the now-silent British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Mandarin Service and larger still than the surrogate Radio Free Asia (RFA) Mandarin. To replace VOA Mandarin with a lagging effort is absurd. The end result is that RFA Mandarin, with less name recognition, will probably continue to perform poorly. True to precedent, the BBG will likely announce the termination of RFA Mandarin, based on survey results. Similar justifications for VOA language service closures have been used in the past…survey results that are indeterminate of real conditions in controlled societies or are tricked up by the wording of questions and manipulation of data. When considering the consequences of what the BBG wants to do, “repurposing” constitutes undermining mission effectiveness.
For the PRC government, this is a win-win situation: on top of the money it is already saving by not having to jam the now-defunct BBC Mandarin, it would reduce the expense of jamming two BBG entities to one, even if the BBG uses more frequencies as it claims…pilfered, of course, from VOA Mandarin and Cantonese. Even more fruitful, the PRC will have VOA Mandarin marginalized to Internet-only, where the Chinese government has already developed a robust cyber warfare infrastructure. According to the National Endowment for Democracy, the Chinese government has a workforce of 50-THOUSAND personnel involved in internal Internet surveillance. That number probably does not include personnel engaged in offensive cyber warfare operations.
And it gets worse for the BBG.
The PRC leadership has developed a rather sophisticated strategy regarding the Internet. The government is not blocking the Internet, as the BBG claims. It is controlling it. There’s a big difference. Indeed, the Chinese government has been rather forthright in stating as much. What they are saying to their people who have Internet accessibility is that the government wants its people to choose “stability” over unfettered Internet access. To this point, it seems to be working. Little news and information about the unrest in the Middle East is making its way into Chinese media or through Chinese Internet service providers (which are controlled by the Chinese government). Some Chinese seem to be questioning the relevance of what is happening elsewhere compared to their own situation. Should this strategy succeed with Chinese Internet users, the BBG will be on the losing side of this proposition and will no longer have relevance with a demographic that it claims it wants to reach.
Next, the BBG claims that the PRC government will be harmed politically and economically by blocking the Internet. This is absurd. There is no reason to believe that the Chinese industrial/economic juggernaut is going to be slowed in its tracks by its controlling of Internet access. This BBG statement is not supported in reality, given the huge scope of foreign investment in China at this point and with more likely to come. Owning a substantial amount of US debt doesn’t hurt the Chinese strategy either.
Thus, in China, the BBG has effectively boxed itself into a corner, partly by its own decisions and partly by an effective counter-strategy on the part of the Chinese government. The end result: the overall effectiveness of what the BBG is doing is about to be reduced to nil. And the Chinese government knows it. Already, in state media editorials the BBG decision is being described as a PRC victory and the BBG intentions “mission unfinished.” Regrettably, this appears to be an accurate assessment. Whoever is directing the PRC effort must be pleased.
As a saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.”
Maybe the phrase is Chinese in origin.
Thanks for the comments, Gary.
The BBG is certainly not pollyannish about overcoming the difficulties of reaching a Chinese audience in Mandarin — whether it be via shortwave or new media.
As noted previously, we base our decisions on data and not on traditions, emotional attachment to, or opinions about a given medium.
While the radio audience in China is fractional, it should be noted that VOA English actually outperformed VOA Mandarin in China. Further, Radio Free Asia Mandarin also slightly outperformed VOA Mandarin.
We can speculate as to why VOA English outperformed VOA Mandarin, but the likely answer is that the VOA English service is not as heavily jammed. Another possibility is the Chinese hunger for learning English. (Projections suggest that Chinese speaking English as a second language will outnumber the combined English speakers in the rest of the world by 2025.)
Worth re-iterating is the fact that the BBC reached the very same conclusion about shortwave radio in China and has pulled out completely. The BBG will continue to have two shortwave services in operation (VOA English and RFA Mandarin), while exploring new media options.
Lastly, the phrase “platform agnostic” is used widely. First used in the mid 90s to describe software that would run on any platform, “platform agnostic” was later adopted around 2006 to describe media organizations publishing content on multiple platforms.
Thanks again for adding to the discussion, and please take the time to read official BBG response to Ted Lipien’s comments.