"How did the Trump administration capture one of the world’s most important public service news networks? This book uses rare interviews and an analysis of private correspondence and internal documents to explain why and how Voice of America (VOA) became intensely politicized from 2020 to 2021. It
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analyzes how political appointees, White House officials, and right-wing media influenced VOA—changing its reporting of the Black Lives Matter movement, the presidential election, and its contested aftermath. Trump allies took control of the network’s financial and human resources, dominated its governance structures, and instigated intimidating investigations into journalistic bias. Some journalists tried to resist, but others were too exhausted and fearful, particularly those in the organization’s language services. The book puts these events in historical and international context—and develops a new analytical framework for understanding government capture and its connection to broader processes of democratic backsliding. It argues that there is currently too little to prevent a future US administration with authoritarian tendencies from capturing VOA and converting it into a major domestic news organization. For this reason, it uses empirical research to recommend practical ways of protecting the network and other international public service media better in future." (Publisher description)
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"This book is a fascinating look at how the United States waged the Cold War through the international broadcasting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Mark G. Pomar served in senior positions at VOA and RFE/RL from 1982 to 1993, during which time the Reagan and B
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ush administrations made VOA and RFE/RL an important part of their foreign policy. VOA is America's "national voice," broadcasting in more than forty languages, and is charged with explaining U.S. government policies and telling America's story with the aim of gaining the respect and goodwill of its target audience. During the Cold War, the VOA Russian Service broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. RFE/RL is a private corporation, funded until 1971 by the CIA and afterward through open congressional appropriations. It broadcast in more than twenty languages of Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia and functioned as a "home service" located abroad. Its Russian Service broadcast news, feature programming, and op-eds that would have been part of daily political discourse if Russia had free media. Pomar takes readers inside the two radio stations to show how the broadcasts were conceived and developed and the impact they had on international broadcasting, U.S.-Soviet relations, Russian political and cultural history, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Pomar provides nuanced analysis of the broadcasts and sheds light on the multifaceted role the radios played during the Cold War, ranging from instruments of U.S. Cold War policy to repositories of independent Russian culture, literature, philosophy, religion, and the arts. The volume breaks new ground as Pomar integrates his analysis of Cold War radio programming with the long-term aims of U.S. foreign policy, illuminating the role of radio in the peaceful end of the Cold War." (Publisher description)
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"How do journalists working for different state-funded international news organizations legitimize their relationship to the governments which support them? In what circumstances might such journalists resist the diplomatic strategies of their funding states? We address these questions through a com
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parative study of journalists working for international news organizations funded by the Chinese, US, UK and Qatari governments. Using 52 interviews with journalists covering humanitarian issues, we explain how they minimized tensions between their diplomatic role and dominant norms of journalistic autonomy by drawing on three – broadly shared – legitimizing narratives, involving different kinds of boundary-work. In the first ‘exclusionary’ narrative, journalists differentiated their ‘truthful’ news reporting from the ‘false’ state ‘propaganda’ of a common Other, the Russian-funded network, RT. In the second ‘fuzzifying’ narrative, journalists deployed the ambiguous notion of ‘soft power’ as an ambivalent ‘boundary concept’, to defuse conflicts between journalistic and diplomatic agendas. In the final ‘inversion’ narrative, journalists argued that, paradoxically, their dependence on funding states gave them greater ‘operational autonomy’. Even when journalists did resist their funding states, this was hidden or partial, and prompted less by journalists’ concerns about the political effects of their work, than by serious threats to their personal cultural capital." (Abstract)
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"This study examines Voice of America’s (VOA) services in the post-Cold War era within the framework of the information revolution and globalization. The use of new information venues has caused VOA to evolve from a pure propaganda machine to a notion of informational soft power. However, this stu
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dy finds that not only is there a gap between VOA’s target audiences and its actual website visitors but its website attracts more American and western users than users in the societies it intends to influence the most. The role of informational soft power in articulating appealing ideas, values, norms and ethics through all manners of media and new information and communication technology to create the perception that US hegemony is benign poses challenges for the US’s information strategy." (Abstract)
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"From a research perspective, this case study highlights the need for further research into BBG-sponsored international broadcast services, both individually and collectively. Such studies could include quantitative content analyses of program content, survey research of listeners and viewers, inter
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view-based research with present and former BBG journalists and managers; and documentary studies into the history and politics of the services. In addition, there is a need for more comparative examination of Western international broadcasters, such as BBC, Deutsche Welle, VOA, and RFE/RL. Yet another area ripe for examination is the role of Russian international broadcasts into Central Asia and other parts of the former Soviet Union and their role as instruments of Russia’s foreign policy, public diplomacy, and propaganda. The battle for survival of the Uzbek Service continues, despite the fact that evaluations by VOA’s Office of Research for three successive years praised the quality of its radio and television shows. While the Service has been promised that it will survive, it faces crucial questions: How can excellent programs be most effectively delivered? How can VOA boost its presence and expand outreach and penetration? What options exist for better marketing and promotion? Should it mainly rely on the Internet or concentrate on improving reception through shortwave radio? Does its limited TV programming, available only on satellite and stations in neighboring countries, have a future? Technological changes beyond VOA’s control will also play a role in determining the Service’s future as the Internet becomes more accessible." (Conclusions and implications, page 124)
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"Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda investigates the role of international radio broadcasting in diplomacy during the Cold War period and, in particular, the contribution of the BBC and the Voice of America in the construction and projection of foreign policy, together with their role in the disseminati
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on of international propaganda. In addition the radio broadcasts which were monitored in Britain and the US are scrutinized to ascertain how they contributed to the formulation of foreign policy objectives and reactionary propaganda." (Publisher description)
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"A commissioned report on the work of the Russian-language broadcasting services of Radio Liberty and the Voice of America by a former Soviet historian who was one of the founders of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Committee, emigrated to the U.S. and is now a consultant to the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committ
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ee. Contains an overview, a general background, a section of each of the services, general conclusions and two appendixes: "Russia Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" and a discussion of "Religious Programs." The author's conclusions are highly critical of the organization and content of the programs. Footnotes." (Eleanor Blum, Frances G. Wilhoit: Mass media bibliography. 3rd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990 Nr. 475)
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"Through content analysis Frederick examines the ideological confrontation between the United States and Cuba as seen in their respective international radio newscasts on Voice of America and Radio Havana Cuba, accompanied by detailed explanations of his methodology." (Eleanor Blum, Frances G. Wilho
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it: Mass media bibliography. 3rd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990 Nr. 611)
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"Browne calls this book a selective history of international radio broadcasting designed to help the reader 'understand better the reasons for the birth and growth of international stations in particular and international radio in general, the sorts of internal and external pressures that bear upon
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stations, the sorts of messages they broadcast, and the types of listeners they reach.' Documentation varies because it is sometimes unavailable, but it is richest for the Western stations, including Communist ones, and thinnest for the Third World stations. Contents include a general discussion of structure and growth; stations in specific countries or parts of the world; religious stations; audience research; and conclusions, speculations and suggestions. Appendixes give: International Broadcasting Program Categories; Language Services Added (and dropped) by Six Major International Broadcasters - 1960-1980; Estimated Weekly Broadcast Hours for Some Leading International Radio Stations; and Six Major Broadcasters and Their Services in Some of the World's Major Languages. There is also a bibliographical essay and an index." (Eleanor Blum, Frances G. Wilhoit: Mass media bibliography. 3rd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990 Nr. 536)
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"An introduction to the practice of overseas broadcasting as propaganda and the various ideological philosophies back of it, in terms both of sender and receiver. Analysis centers around Nazi Germany, the Communist countries, the U.S.'s Voice of America, Britain's BBC, and the undeveloped parts of t
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he world. A large section is devoted to factors affecting success or failure. Appendixes give a table of radio sets and ownership around the world in 1973; external broadcasting statistics in 1950, 1960, 1970, and 1973; extracts from internal Policy Guidelines of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty; and extracts from a BBC unpublished monitoring report." (Eleanor Blum, Frances G. Wilhoit: Mass media bibliography. 3rd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990 Nr. 641)
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