After a speaking tour a couple of weeks ago that took me to Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles, California and Pullman, Washington, my main takeaway is that most people in America’s West are unaware that 70 years after its founding, the largest US-funded broadcaster is still on the air, with a larger audience and bigger impact than ever before.

Heads nodded when I spoke about the proud history of Voice of America and its role in helping to win the Cold War, but most Americans have no idea that VOA currently reaches over 135 million people worldwide, or that VOA-TV today is watched at least once each week by one in five adults in Iran.  

It is time to reach out to our own countrymen and build greater understanding of what we do.

At a speech to the Oregon World Affairs Council in Portland, audience members expressed delight that our country is broadcasting reliable news to countries where it is rare, and information about US life and American values in 45 languages.  

“You’ve been out of sight and out of mind for too long,” one person told me, and he urged VOA to do more to make Americans aware of the tremendous “soft power” impact of their taxpayer dollars spent reaching the world through radio, TV, internet, mobile and social media.

A key legislator here in Washington knows it well:

“I think that we in the United States need VOA to show to the peoples of different oppressed countries what America is all about,” Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY) said at the May 7^th event celebrating the 70^th anniversary of our first broadcast in the Albanian language.  “Every dollar that we give to VOA comes back to us with hundreds of dollars of goodwill for America, hundreds of dollars of good faith for what America is and what it stands for.” Engel is the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and an influential voice for democracy in the Balkans.

At VOA, we are not accustomed to talking about ourselves much, or reaching out to our fellow citizens. Our audience—our mission­—­is overseas. Under the 1948 legislation that has come to be known as Smith-Mundt, VOA was not even permitted to make its programs available in the US. That law was amended earlier this year, and starting in July, in certain circumstances, VOA and other US funded broadcasters will be able to offer programs for listening or viewing here, upon request.

The change in the law is in part a recognition of the new reality. Through the Internet, anyone in the world can already log on and see any VOA website they want to, and can often download a TV or radio report, too. Technologically, the web has changed the way media are consumed.

The Portland talk was a chance to bring people interested in world affairs up to date on today’s VOA, as were a talk at the University of Southern California’s School of Public Diplomacy and a commencement speech at Washington State University.  At WSU, I urged graduates of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, and the Colleges of Education and Business to “keep in mind public service.”

“Some of my deepest satisfaction comes from doing it”, I told them, referring to my time working at the US Embassy in Kabul “helping the Afghan people put their country back together, and now, helping people around the world through the Voice of America—with everything from reliable news to life saving health information.”
In the audience in Portland were a number of recent immigrants to this country: naturalized Americans who grew up in Burma, Pakistan or Afghanistan and know well the impact VOA has in those countries, and how many lives have been helped by its broadcasts. Many of them grew up listening to VOA.  

Many Somali Americans are well aware that VOA and Google recently collaborated on a pioneering telephone survey in Somalia that helped shape that nation’s draft constitution in some significant ways, and that Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud participated May 9^th in a lively question and answer session with students at a VOA-organized town hall meeting held in London, where he admitted that young people are still joining the al-Shabab militant group because of a “weakness on our part as politicians, religious leaders, elders and women’s groups.”

Ethiopian, Chinese, and Iranian Americans know that VOA continues to provide objective reporting to nations where the local media is controlled by the government and truly independent outlets are banned. America’s diverse diasporas understand better than most the value of what VOA and its sister organizations—Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and TV and Radio Marti—do for our country.

After the talk in Portland, a dozen or more of these “new” Americans came up to the podium, to urge me to keep VOA strong and to ask what they could do to help. They are natural allies in any US effort to inform, engage and connect with the world around us.

In a time honored tradition, the President of the United States today delivers a State of the Union address to Congress. It is an opportunity to take stock of where we are, and where we are going. Taking advantage of the news peg, here is a look at how the Voice of America is doing and some of our plans for 2013.

First of all, VOA gives America real global impact. The nation’s oldest and largest U.S.-funded international broadcaster has an estimated weekly audience of 134 million people. Admittedly this is an imperfect comparison, but to put that in some perspective, the three largest U.S. domestic cable news channels, FOX, CNN, and MSNBC, have a combined prime-time audience of just under four million (Cable News Ratings from Thursday Feb 7, 2013).

VOA currently broadcasts in 43 separate languages (plus two pilot projects in Africa). It is a complex multi-media broadcaster providing world-wide coverage, with eight 24-hour television satellite network streams, numerous AM, FM and shortwave radio transmitters, and many radio and TV affiliate stations around the world.  VOA provides music, cultural, news magazine and language teaching programs, and a wide variety of podcasts and specialty shows in both conventional radio and TV formats as well as on social and broadcast media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and iTunes.  In the past year, we started simulcasting certain radio shows -- in Pashto, Kurdish and Farsi -- on television.

Since 1942, Voice of America has been a beacon of hope for people in places like Iran, North Korea or Mali, suffering from government repression, censorship, and turmoil.  Last year, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi visited the staff of VOA’s Burmese Service in Washington to personally thank them for the daily broadcasts that she says informed and sustained her during her decades of house arrest. 

For dissidents, people trapped in war zones, or isolated by governments that block outside sources of information, VOA is an information lifeline. Our congressionally-mandated Charter requires us to be balanced and comprehensive. We don’t cherry-pick the people we interview to make them fit U.S. government views -- or any other view for that matter -- and we don’t tailor programs to espouse -- or oppose -- some particular policy goal. We aim, as always, for balance -- and truth.
This past year, our journalists around the world covered the news with creativity -- and courage. They included Scott Bobb, Paige Kollock, Sebastian Meyer, Rudi Bakhtiar, Ali Javanmardi and Afshin Nariman in rebel-held Syria, Elizabeth Arrott and Japhet Weeks in Libya, and Idriss Fall and Anne Look in Mali.

There is an increased focus at VOA on producing more of our own original stories, and there are plans to strengthen and multiply the Central News beats, and to deepen coverage of business and economic news from New York.  Our coverage of the U.S. elections, Hurricane Sandy and the inauguration of President Obama reached record audiences worldwide.  In the past year, VOA has also upgraded its television operations with a new 12 channel, all digital and fully automated master control, modernized its TV studios, installed a dedicated video link to the U.S. Capitol, and begun renovation on the New York News Bureau, which will include a new set with a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline.

VOA’s China Branch launched an ambitious new two-hour television program this past year, which is now carried on the most popular direct-to-home satellite provider in the region. One Mandarin language segment, OMG! Meiyu, an exciting youthful video blog that teaches American slang expressions, has enjoyed exponential growth in online popularity. The Chinese government, with free access to the U.S. market, is reported to be spending billions of dollars on CCTV and Xinhua, including a new state of the art bureau in Washington and a ten-fold increase in its overseas staff.  The Chinese government also imposes a concerted Internet censorship program and a systematic campaign to destroy private satellite dishes, especially in areas with large Tibetan populations.  Despite these efforts, VOA continues to find new ways to penetrate the Chinese market with reliable, balanced information in Mandarin, Tibetan and Cantonese.

VOA has also been building this year on decades of audience loyalty in Burma, where our English language radio teaching segments are now being carried on state-run media -- unthinkable until very recently -- and some of our television programs can now be seen on a local dish TV network.  In Vietnam, the VOA website, recorded 2.2 million visits in December, making it one of the most popular in the country.  In Indonesia, VOA programs have an extraordinary weekly audience of more than 21 million people, and the VOA Indonesian Service Facebook pages have more than one million fans.

For Iran, which has been the focus of international tensions over its nuclear program, VOA embarked this year on a wide-ranging update of its Persian programs, and we have built a dynamic new management team.  More than a dozen new or revamped TV shows now fill a 24-hour satellite stream that can be watched on direct-to-home satellite, Livestation.com or social media sites.
Because of its importance and impact, VOA Persian television is closely watched -- and critiqued. Recently, a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece accused our journalists of being ‘too soft’ on the regime, pointing to an interview on the program Ofogh of a former Iranian nuclear official. The column built its argument on quotes taken out of context from the interview, in which the official was in fact closely and pointedly questioned by the VOA anchor. Our programs are rigorously analyzed each year by independent analysts, for their journalistic integrity. VOA journalism strives to be hard hitting but fair—in clear contrast with Iranian state media outlets.  

That approach clearly has credibility. Twenty-one percent of Iranians watch VOA TV each week -- one in five Iranian adults.  VOA Persian attracts that large audience despite ongoing regime efforts to block Internet access, interfere with our satellite broadcasts, and threaten the family members of U.S. international broadcasters.
The continent of Africa offers VOA some of our greatest opportunities for audience growth and impact in a part of the world with increasing importance to U.S. national security.  VOA has demonstrated a creative approach that combines our strong  traditional radio and TV programming with cutting edge mobile technology to reach audiences in some of the most remote and hostile environments.

In Mali, for example, when radical Islamists took over the northern part of the country last year, shutting down independent affiliate stations and intimidating reporters, VOA established a mobile website (Mali 1) that offered cell phone users special reports in French and Songhai, the local language spoken in the North.  Usage soared during the recent fighting. What began as a fledgling effort to augment our shortwave broadcasts, has blossomed into a popular service. Plans are also in place to create a ‘dial up’ radio service that can be accessed using even the most basic mobile phones, and a new FM transmitter has been installed in Mali’s capital, Bamako. We will soon begin broadcasts in an additional local language, Bambara. A new daily radio segment Sahel Plus has just gone on the air in French. 

Reporting on this region is not without risk. In August, one of our local contract reporters was brutally beaten and left for dead by the radical Islamists, who have since been pushed out of many areas by French forces.

Last year in Somalia, once one of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones, VOA helped to provide citizens with knowledge and understanding about the country’s emerging new constitution.  In partnership with Google Ideas, VOA conducted a nationwide telephone survey to ask people what they thought of the new constitution, then broadcast and published the findings and analysis on a special radio show.

In other African countries with major challenges, like Nigeria, South Sudan and Zimbabwe, VOA enjoys substantial audiences. In order to better report on Nigerian news in Hausa and English, VOA plans to open a news bureau soon in Abuja.
 
In Latin America, VOA has gone to extraordinary lengths to rebuild its audience. In 2012, VOA’s Spanish Service added 56 new affiliate stations, and is providing them with a rich stream of in-depth coverage of the U.S.  Live VOA radio and TV reports on the U.S. presidential election could be seen throughout Latin America, on networks and stations that have come to rely on VOA as their “Washington Bureau.”  Independent TV ratings from key markets in Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Guatemala, Panama and Mexico, indicate VOA’s weekly combined audience in those countries is more than 10 million.

In Russia, once the prime target of Cold War broadcasts, VOA is carving out a new, younger audience with a web-based strategy and a highly ambitious new live television program called Podelis, which allows audience members to participate by Skype, or Facebook or Twitter. Popular cable and Internet television stations are beginning to turn to us for reporting about the United States. With the recent deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations, and the growing aggressiveness of the Kremlin’s foreign policy, it is fortunate that the VOA Russian Service is nimble and creative -- continually refining its programming and distribution strategies to meet new demands.

VOA is making an important difference in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the 2014 transition looms, our Afghan Service has a large, loyal audience (60% of adults weekly) on radio and television and a new -- but seasoned -- Afghan service chief.  VOA’s Urdu Service, with broadcasts to Pakistan, has unveiled four fresh television programs in the past year.  VOA’s new youth-oriented shows are being scooped up by independent cable outlets and provide audiences in a troubled part of the world with a dramatically different picture of what America is like than they find on local stations.  They show some of the best of American life and culture, and offer a chance for people to interact with U.S. officials and experts.  And another new TV product for Pakistan, the Urdu VOA News Minute, is an outgrowth of the successful “VOA60” news minute pioneered in 2011 by our VOA Media Lab.

Voice of America plays a critical role on the world stage, but receives little attention at home, and our journalistic mission is often misunderstood.  Amendments to the Smith-Mundt legislation which were made in the recent Defense Authorization Act will allow us to build greater awareness of our impact, particularly in this country’s large and influential diaspora communities.  In the past, if a radio station requested -- for example -- a VOA Somali language program to broadcast to Somali immigrants in Minnesota, VOA had to refuse.  Our general counsel’s office is examining the precise implications of the new amendments and we await that interpretation.  In general however, the changes recognize that in the digital age, complete bans on domestic dissemination of materials produced for overseas audiences are outdated. That should make it easier for Americans to learn more about what we do.

In a world where too many governments still try to keep their people ignorant and afraid, VOA --and its sister organizations Radio Free Europe (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN) and the Office of Cuban Broadcasting (OCB) -- are among some of our nation’s best investments.  Around the world, VOA remains a trusted source of unfiltered news, and of information about America.  

For millions of people, it is a source of hope.

David Ensor

Today The Wall Street Journal published a shortened version of my response to criticism of VOA by Sohrab Ahmari in his January 7 op-ed “At Voice of America, Complaints About Its Iranian Coverage.”  The full text of my letter to the editors follows below.

Sohrab Ahmari (At Voice of America, Complaints about Its Iranian Coverage 1/7/2013) is quite wrong to suggest that news coverage by Voice of America’s Persian Service is “often distorted by an editorial line favoring rapprochement with the mullahs.”  In his opinion piece, Mr. Ahmari bases this premise on a pair of sound bites--ten seconds or less--taken out of context from an extensive interview with former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian.  Mr. Ahmari’s assertion that opinions by Mr. Mousavian went unchallenged in the interview is simply not supported by the full transcript of the program, which shows a former Iranian official being obliged to defend his assertions, under pointed questioning by the VOA interviewer.

Mr. Ahmari correctly cites a quote from Mr. Mousavian asserting  that Iran “is in full compliance” with the IAEA safeguard agreement but he does not tell his readers that the very next question by VOA journalist Siamak Dehghanpour was, in that case: “Should Iran let inspectors visit Parchin military complex?” Throughout the interview, Mr. Dehghanpour repeatedly pressed Mr. Mousavian, asking: “Given the history of mistrust and lack of confidence on both sides, how can Iran assure the U.S. that its intentions are peaceful, especially since Iran’s nuclear activities re-started covertly with individuals such as Abdul Qadir Khan in Pakistan?”

At one point Mr. Dehghanpour asks the former Iranian official:  “Why not come clean?” and also: “Is the Supreme Leader genuinely worried that compromise will eventually lead to the end of the Islamic Republic?”

The Mousavian interview was followed by another with Dr. Ali Vaez, head of the Iran Project at The Crisis Group who supports the U.S.-led international sanctions, which he said, “Have remarkably affected Iran’s nuclear program itself.”  Dr. Vaez offered a rebuttal to Mr. Mousavian’s arguments.

It is also not true, as Mr. Ahmari quotes an anonymous source claiming, that the terms of the interview were “dictated” by Mr. Mousavian.  Mr. Ahmari could have asked, and we would have been pleased to tell him that there were no interview preconditions agreed to by VOA.  

The Ofogh show that day featured a former top Iranian official forced to defend his assertions under pointed questioning, and then being contradicted by a subsequent interviewee.   Our job is difficult and our coverage is not always perfect, but on the day Mr. Ahmari wrote about, it was “accurate, objective and comprehensive,” just as the VOA Charter from Congress requires.  

The guest list for VOA’s Persian language programs is long and diverse, bringing many different voices and points of view to Iranian audiences.  Guests on VOA Persian over the past year have included Wall Street Journal writers Bret Stephens and Matthew Kroenig, authors of the Foreign Affairs piece “Time to Attack Iran,” as well as Iran nuclear program critic David Albright, Sen. Norm Coleman, advisor to the Romney Campaign, and many noted Iranian critics of the regime in Tehran. Mr. Ahmari quotes Georgetown professor and former Senate candidate Rob Sobhani as finding himself “appearing far less frequently after 2009” and believing it was because he was “too negative toward the regime.” In fact Mr. Sobhani has been invited by Ofogh to appear four times in the last four months. He appeared once, twice said he was not available and once canceled at the last minute.

Finally, Mr. Ahmari’s unnamed source is completely wrong to say that VOA does not care about its audience.  This is absurd.  For 70 years, VOA has been a beacon of hope to people in repressed and information denied areas, and we are proud that more than one in five adult Iranians tune in to VOA every week, making it one of the most popular international broadcasters in the country.
 
David Ensor

The work of independent journalists in Northern Mali has become increasingly dangerous.

On August 5th in the city of Gao, local reporter Malick Maiga, a regular contributor to VOA, was viciously beaten by armed men. The attackers burst into the studios of radio Adar Koima as Maiga was about to broadcast details of a demonstration that prevented Islamists from cutting off the hand of an alleged thief.

Maiga, one of the very few independent journalists still reporting from Northern Mali, was beaten with rifle butts and stomped on until he passed out.

The Voice of America condemns this vicious attack and urges an end to the targeting of journalists. The assault is another troubling sign of the lawlessness that has descended on Northern Mali.
 
Local residents, who heard the attack live on the radio, immediately banded together and went searching for Maiga, who was found unconscious in a cemetery and taken to a local hospital.

We applaud the local residents that came to the aid of Maiga, who has since courageously given an interview to VOA’s French to Africa Service from his hospital bed. In the interview, he describes how the attackers left him for dead, saying to each other, “he’ll never speak to VOA again.”

This is Maiga’s 3^rd beating at the hands of Islamists in Gao, where he has continued to report on the situation since a March coup in Mali, which has triggered a humanitarian crisis and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

In the first instance, Maiga was roughed up when Islamists arrived in Gao. He was then beaten for working with VOA French to Africa reporter Idrissa Fall, who did a series of reports from the region in July.  During that attack, Maiga’s equipment and money were taken.

We join with the Committee to Protect Journalists and others who have condemned these brutal and senseless acts of violence.  All of us at VOA honor and admire Malick Maiga and other  independent reporters who risk their lives every day to provide factual information from troubled regions like Northern Mali.

David Ensor

When Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng landed in the United States on May 19^th, there were cheers from people who had watched in anticipation as his struggle with the Chinese government unfolded in the western media.

That Chen Guangcheng is able to study law in New York is very good news, but his struggle to reach the West on terms acceptable to him is a cautionary tale: one that underscores the continued importance of international broadcasters like the Voice of America.

Chen’s improbable story: a blind, self-taught lawyer who fights for human rights and somehow managed to flee house arrest and take refuge at the U.S. Embassy, has been front page news just about everywhere in the world: everywhere except in China.

A search of China’s English language CCTV website, which describes itself as “the national TV station of the People’s Republic of China,” yields a handful of brief references to Chen Guangcheng.  Most are ministry statements demanding the U.S. apologize for interfering in the case.

By contrast, Voice of America’s Mandarin Service was one of the first international media outlets to report Chen had escaped, and our coverage has been extensive. VOA interviewed the wife of his brother, Chen Guangfu, who was beaten and detained following the escape.  There were also exclusive interviews with the woman who aided Chen, with Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and with Chen Guangcheng himself, who spoke to VOA repeatedly, including on live Mandarin language TV broadcasts.

Chen has thanked VOA for reporting on his case, and said he listened to Voice of America while under house arrest at home in Shandong and in the Beijing hospital when he was being treated for the injuries sustained during his escape.  Asked how he had managed to hear the broadcasts, he said, "There's always a way!"

Making sure there always is a way, and that more of the Chinese people have access to unfettered news, is not easy. VOA and other broadcasters work hard, with limited resources, to overcome restrictions such as shortwave radio jamming and efforts to filter and block the Internet.
 
Unlike well-funded Chinese state television, which has been opening bureaus around the world, including a shiny new one in Washington D.C. with dozens of journalists, VOA is currently allowed only two accredited reporters in all of China. Our longtime standing request for four journalist visas, including one for Shanghai, goes unanswered by Beijing.
 
Despite these obstacles, we are reaching people like Mr. Chen, with information they care about. These efforts cost money, and while China spends billions on an expanding global media empire, we face both increasing costs and tight budgets.

By some estimates, China will spend about $8 billion in the next couple of years to expand international radio and TV broadcasts, as well as the Xinhua News Agency, and its flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily.

By contrast, the United States government spends about $750 million on its entire international broadcasting and media effort, which includes the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and other stations reaching 187 million people in 59 languages around the globe.

Spending comparisons, though imperfect, do raise important questions: is the United States doing enough to effectively penetrate restricted media environments like China’s with uncensored information?  What is the most effective way to reach that audience?

We need to do more, and we are gearing up to do so. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees VOA, RFA and others, recently voted to recommend to Congress that spending on programming to China be held at present levels, despite budget tightening, and development of a more robust overall strategy for U.S. efforts to reach audiences in Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan and Uighur.

The best way to reach more people in China today may be satellite TV and radio, since more than ten percent of the population has a satellite dish or access to programming from one. VOA currently offers programming on shortwave radio, satellite radio and TV and the Internet, in addition to social media.  Soon, VOA will launch a new expanded two-hour daily satellite television program in Mandarin. The U.S. also works creatively to limit the impact of Chinese government efforts to censor international news sites on the Internet.

We cannot, and we do not need to match China dollar for dollar.  No matter how many billions they spend, the audience knows that CCTV does not offer objective news or a platform for open discussion.  There will always be an audience that does not want to be told what to think.

What we can do, is to match China’s “soft power” push to influence global public opinion, with a renewed and reinvigorated effort to reach more of the Chinese people with balanced, informative programming, and responsible discussion about the issues that affect us all.

David Ensor

The Obama administration has announced new guidelines that ease export controls on the transfer of certain modern communications tools to Iran.   

‘How could this be?’ you may ask, ‘when the United States and most of the world have slapped a broad trade embargo on Iran because of its nuclear program?’

Yes, the administration is trying to block Iran from acquiring technology that would be helpful to a nuclear weapons program, and it has promoted a tight economic embargo designed to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions.  But now one part of that embargo is being eased, in an effort to help the people of Iran to circumvent government censorship of the Internet and independent sources of reliable news, such as the Voice of America.

On March 20th, President Obama sent a message to millions of Iranians around the world who are celebrating Nowruz.  “There is no reason for the United States and Iran to be divided from one another,” Mr. Obama said.  In his remarks, which were carried by VOA’s Persian Service during an eleven-hour Nowruz TV special, the president also said, “The people of Iran should know that the United States of America seeks a future of deeper connections between our people.”

Unfortunately, the Iranian government lately has been intensifying its efforts to block access to information.  By jamming satellite news programs, censoring the Internet, and monitoring computers and cell phones, the regime is repressing its citizens with the very technologies that should empower them.  Because of these actions, Mr. Obama said, “An electronic curtain has fallen around Iran – a barrier that stops the free flow of information.”

In a move to circumvent this censorship, the Obama administration has published a list showing the kinds of software and services that are authorized for export to the people of Iran: tools that will make it easier for them to “connect with the rest of the world through modern communications methods.”

The list of items includes widely-used programs such as Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and Skype. It also includes updates to personal communications software, Internet browsers, plug-ins like Flashplayer, document readers like Acrobat, plus free mobile apps and RSS feed readers. Some of these programs have helped Iranians to watch VOA programs, such as the popular Persian TV show Parazit, which has been downloaded millions of times from its Facebook page, since Iran frequently jams VOA’s satellite television signal.

We hope the measures announced this week will make it easier for people in Iran to learn what is happening in the world around them, from VOA and others.

The Iranian state ‘Press TV’ broadcasts satellite television programs in multiple languages around the world, without interference from anyone, and they use western commercial satellites to do so.  It is time for satellite companies and the firms that broker space on them to agree on some industry self-regulation. They should agree together that if Iran continues to use uplink satellite jamming to disrupt the transmissions of scores of broadcasters as well as broadband capacity companies, then Iran’s ‘Press TV’ will no longer be permitted to book satellite transponders to send out its own programming.

Earlier this month, my counterpart at the BBC in London spoke out forcefully against the Iranian government’s harassment and intimidation against the family members of BBC journalists, a practice that journalists at VOA and other U.S. media outlets are all too familiar with.  During this season of Nowruz, we call on the Iranian government to end these dishonorable practices, and to draw back its “electronic curtain,” restoring the freedom of information to the Iranian people.

David Ensor

Every week, about 141 million people around the world, many of them in countries with no access to independent media, get their news from the Voice of America.  They count on us to get it right. That is why we must be open with them when we fall short.
 
On February 2nd, VOA’s Russian Service published an immediate apology for running a story that contained comments it attributed to well-known Russian opposition blogger Alexi Navalny, after he tweeted that the words were not his.
 
On its website, VOA Russian said, “Although we always stand by our efforts to source and verify information, we must be aware of the shifting landscape on these new frontiers of journalism.  Methods of verification that once seemed sufficient, even iron-clad, are now often outmoded.  As a result of this incident we will strengthen our editorial standards and enact additional safeguards.”

This kind of open and honest dialogue with our audience, though painful, should underscore that VOA will continue to serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. In the words of legendary wartime reporter and onetime U.S. Government broadcast official Edward R. Murrow:  “To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible, and to be credible we must be truthful.” 

The media landscape has changed, and not just in Russia.  Last June, a French TV channel ran a telephone interview with a woman identified as Syria’s ambassador to France, Lamia Shakkour.  She said she was resigning to protest attacks on civilians by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.  The station said it had called a telephone number on which it had spoken to Shakkour on previous occasions. After the broadcast, Reuters news agency said it had received an email that came via the website of the Syrian embassy in Paris, confirming the resignation.  The ambassador later denied giving the interview, saying it was faked.

Just last weekend, Mr. Navalny, the Russian blogger and protest leader, was the subject of what the New York Times headlined as a “Smear in Russia,” one that backfired.  The incident began with the publication of a photo of Navalny standing next to an exiled Russian financier who is wanted by police.  The use of the doctored photo backfired when the original was produced by the photographer, touching off a series of parodies on the Internet, including a picture of Navalny standing next to a space alien.

Today, the United States faces a political and social landscape around the world that is evolving at breakneck speed.  Regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt disintegrated on live television.  Information, disinformation, or misinformation, can be spread with the click of a mouse, a tweet, or a Facebook status update.  Ferreting out the facts in the digital age is a new kind of challenge, but as Edward R. Murrow also said, “difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.”   We may not know how an email sent to a blogger can land on the computer of someone else, who then fires off a response that appears genuine.  Or how many doctored photos are out there. What we do know is that these photos or comments can spread like wildfire and it is more important than ever to verify the facts.

While some critics long for the days when shortwave radio broadcasts were pumped behind the Iron Curtain, the fact is, listening habits in Russia have changed and so have the methods we use to gather information.  The Internet, blogging and social media tools like Twitter are here to stay.

Some years back, VOA radio and television programs were carried on a number of affiliate stations throughout Russia, but under government pressure almost all those broadcasts were stopped by the end of 2008. Since then we have developed a loyal audience on the Internet and on a wide variety of social media-based platforms.  A new program, Podelis, which means ‘share’ in Russian, is a social media-based TV program that allows the audience to choose the topics, and discuss them with VOA hosts.  VOA’s Russian audience has expanded rapidly because we engage them and offer a platform for views, including those not heard on state-controlled media.

As a correspondent for ABC News based in Warsaw and Moscow in the eighties and nineties, I saw firsthand the lengths to which the Soviet and Polish Communist authorities would go to try to prevent western journalists from communicating with regime critics. Covering dissident views in authoritarian countries is often extremely difficult work. It can require both journalists and dissidents themselves to accept risk. It is essential work that the Voice of America will never stop doing.

At VOA, we know that Edward R. Murrow was right. We must be truthful, and when there is reason to doubt our reporting, we must say so -- and we will. Our credibility depends on it.

David Ensor

Satellites are extraordinary devices, hovering quietly above the earth, beaming everyone’s favorite TV shows into living rooms around the world.

Satellites are one of the things I think about when I hear the term “global village.”  It’s technology that makes it possible to instantly share information and ideas.
 
We’ve come to depend on satellites to experience the great events of our time.  Whether it’s the opening ceremony of the international Olympic Games or live video of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan last year, satellites bring us together.

Unfortunately, some governments have decided they want to try to block this flow of information.
Since September, the Iranian government has radically increased its deliberate interference with satellites, a practice we all know as jamming.  It works like this.  Iran sends a bogus signal to a satellite, which overwhelms the legitimate signal and renders it useless to TV and radio audiences on the ground.

VOA’s Persian broadcasts have been a particular target.  In fact, the satirical VOA Persian program, Parazit, is a play on words that makes fun of this practice.  Parazit, which means static in Persian, is what many Iranians sometimes see when they try to watch this popular program. 

Other international broadcasters including BBC and BBC Persian TV, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Radio Farda, Radio France International, Germany’s Deutsche Welle and Radio Netherlands Worldwide have all suffered from radio, TV or web interference by Iran.

This week in Geneva, delegates to the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) begin a series of meetings that only come along once every four years. Satellite jamming is likely to be on the agenda at this important session in one form or another.

For VOA and other international broadcasters, it can’t come a moment too soon.  Satellites form the critical backbone of our ability to reach our audience.

It is however, much more than a broadcast industry issue. It goes to the very heart of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

That language couldn’t be clearer, and it is part and parcel of everything we do at the Voice of America.  By jamming satellites, Iran is limiting a fundamental human right of its own citizens.  
Unfortunately, jamming by Iran has increased. Worse, the practice seems to be spreading, with new reports of jamming by Syria, one of Iran’s few allies, and a regime increasingly at war with its own people.

VOA and other international broadcasters and organizations have been drawing attention to this issue at every opportunity. The WRC is one forum where governments, regulatory authorities and broadcasters from across the world can become more aware of this insidious problem, and act against it.

On January 24th, five of the world’s largest international broadcasting organizations, including the Voice of America’s parent organization, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, called on delegates meeting in Geneva to address the problem of Iranian uplink jamming.

The statement, issued by the Directors General of the British Broadcasting Corporation, Deutsche Welle, Audiovisuel Extérieur de la France, Radio Netherlands Worldwide and the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, appeals to member states to “work to end this increasingly prevalent practice.”  Other organizations, including the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, have urged delegates meeting in Geneva to act urgently.

Censorship and satellite jamming violate the fundamental right of access to the free flow of information enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and countries around the world should join together to end this practice.

David Ensor