BBG Watch

Recent developments suggest that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages U.S government-funded international broadcasts, has chosen health reporting and English lessons as a partial substitute for political and human rights news to countries like China and Ethiopia. These countries are among those that block VOA news websites and jam shortwave radio broadcasts.

The BBG strategy, according to critics, is driven by private Internet consultants and the BBG’s marketing focus on expanding audiences with programming that can pass Internet and broadcasting censors overseas. Critics have charged that the BBG’s push of health programming to Africa has led to censoring of VOA news reports to Ethiopia, denial of coverage of political events, and the dismissal of the VOA Horn of Africa service chief who revealed the details of the BBG negotiations with the Ethiopian regime about local media placement of VOA health reports.

Three BBG members travelled to Africa to promote VOA health reporting. The BBG also paid for a special website to highlight the trip and the health programming initiative. At the same time, the BBG plans to fire 45 VOA Chinese Branch journalists who specialize in political and human rights reporting. The Ethiopian regime had earlier threatened VOA journalists who work in Washington but who may be Ethiopian or dual citizens with the death penalty for their political reporting. Ethiopian Americans and media freedom advocates organized the largest ever anti-censorship demonstration in VOA’s history to protest BBG’s actions. A VOA official said later that there is no censorship of VOA news. BBG member Michael Meehan reported that the BBG was "disturbed by some activity” surrounding the visit to Ethiopia, but he denied that he had anything to do with "appropriate actions,” which he said were taken by the VOA management.

While the BBG is pushing health reporting and English lessons as more suitable for the Internet and countries practicing cyber censorship, it had announced earlier its intention to end all VOA radio and TV broadcasts to China in Mandarin and Cantonese, claiming that almost no one listens to these programs on shortwave. This claim has been challenged by Chinese human rights activists and members of Congress who are trying to block the BBG plan to end the broadcasts.

Ted Lipien, a former VOA executive who now runs a media freedom NGO Free Media Online, said that "the BBG has lost its sense of mission, which used to be providing uncensored political news to those living under repressive regimes but is now being reduced to placating foreign censors in line with recommendations from BBG social media consultants and in the hope of gaining a larger audience.” "The BBG is now dependent on a marketing strategy which drives programming decisions and downplays political and human rights reporting because the latter triggers jamming and Internet censorship and thus limits a potential audience only to those most dedicated to such causes. The BBG fails to ask what is the price of losing the human rights focus of U.S. international broadcasting,” Lipien said.