One of the World’s Most Important News Sources
By David on Dec 23, 2008 in Featured, Leadership, News Media
(Prague, Czech Republic) I heard a lot about Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) during the Cold War. I was at CBS News at the time, and aware of the fine work done by RFE/RL journalists to inform the Russian people of what was really happening in their country, despite continuous attempts by the Soviet government to block RFE/RL’s broadcasts.
After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, RFE/RL seemed to fall off my screen of awareness, mostly because I only knew of one facet of the news organization’s work. Yet, in the intervening years, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has quietly grown to become one of the world’s most important news services.
I recently toured RFE/RL’s headquarters in Prague with my wife, Kit Bigelow, as guests of Jeff Gedmin (right), the news organization’s President and CEO. RFE/RL’s news service into Iran, Radio Farda, was interested in interviewing Kit because of her role as Washington representative for the Baha’i Faith, a religion whose members in Iran are persecuted by the government.
We sat-in on the daily editorial meeting, attended by representatives from all of RFE/RL’s news teams. It was perhaps the highest level world news briefing I have ever witnessed.
Jeff and Abbas Djavadi, RFE/RL’s Associate Director of Broadcasting, gave us an eye-opening briefing on RFE/RL’s current and massive news operations around the world to deliver news to people in countries where a free flow of news and information is restricted, such as Iran and the countries of Central and South Asia, including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. RFE/RL reaches into 21 countries in 28 languages, using short and medium-wave broadcasts, FM radio, and the Internet.
Unlike the Voice of America, which broadcasts news about the United States to countries around the world, RFE/RL’s role is more challenging … it is to cover the news in those frequently hostile places where governments work to suppress the media and free speech. Those governments sometimes take measures to stop RFE/RL’s news coverage by threat or murder. An RFE/RL journalist was gunned down just a block away from the news organization’s heavily guarded studios in downtown Prague. Other RFE/RL journalists have been detained or held for ransom in recent years.
In a fast-changing media, when we are seeing the demise of mainstream newspapers and broadcast around the world, RFE/RL’s role as a practitioner of solid journalism has never been more important. If it were not for this news source, millions of people around the world would have no voice, free or otherwise.
It’s a 24-hour non-stop news operation that includes listening to a continuous flow of news dispatches sent out of those countries to RFE/RL via SMS, email and other online methods, either by RFE/RL’s own reporters or ordinary people who take a risk by speaking out for freedom of speech.
RFE/RL, with a staff worldwide of 550 journalists, is funded by the United States Congress on a rather meager budget of around $80-million. By today’s news media standards, that’s not a lot of money. I believe it is among the most important funding done by the U.S. government.
I have written numerous times before on this blog about the dire need to repair America’s reputation around the world, which has been damaged beyond imagination during the last eight years. While Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s assignment has never been to propagandize or to promote the U.S., it’s work is more critical than ever now, and here’s why … RFE/RL’s legacy is free speech and balanced, credible journalism. The daily work done by this fine organization quietly and credibly represents what America is truly all about.
Lev Roitman | Dec 24, 2008 | Reply
RFE/RL LEADERSHIP:BRING A DOER,NOT A TALKER
[NOTE FROM DAVID HENDERSON: THIS COMMENT CONTAINS A PERSONAL ATTACK ON AN INDIVIDUAL WHICH I DO NOT CONDONE. WHILE THE COMMENT IS POSTED, I HAVE EDITED THE CONTENT TO REMOVE THE PERSONAL ATTACK] Yes, there is a “dire need to repair America’s reputation around the world”. Unfortunately, … RFE/RL became a part of the problem. Consider an editorial in the oldest Czech national (incidentally, quite proAmerican) newspaper LN ”Equality with Precondition. Practice of Free Europe Contradicts Its Ideals”:”Prague headquarters of RFE/RL, which pretends to be a messenger of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, behaves as an employer in such a way as if the principles it heralds are relevant “just” for the whole planet but not for what is going on inside that estimable organization itself”. That editorial (add here prime-time TV broadcasts, an open letter to Vaclav Havel, former political prisoner turned Czech President, etc), is just an echo of ugly lawsuits brought against RFE/RL … One of the plaintiffs is a mother of three minors. The Radio is being sued for violations of its foreign employees’ labor and civil rights (national equality), and of legislative sovereignty of the Czech Republic, RFE/RL’s host country. [ENTIRE PARAGRAPH REMOVED - DH]
Hopefully (for American message and for RFE/RL, a highly visible American institution abroad), the RFE/RL leader assigned under president Obama, will start not with the grand politically correct words but with small practically correct deeds. The first such a deed should be the purge of double standards tarnishing RFE/RL and U.S. image abroad: swallow bureaucratic pride and put an end to the shameful court cases against American RFE/RL in its host country. This country is our important ally in Afghanistan and Kosovo; in less than ten days it will assume the presidency of the European Union; its public opinion is bitterly divided over eventual construction of the American antimissile radar here, for the U.S. trustworthiness is not taken for granted anymore. Publicly exposed RFE/RL’s double standards under Gedmin only contributed to that mistrust.
You are right, Mr. Henderson, American image abroad “has been damaged beyond imagination”. But not beyond repair. And the repairman matters. A doer, not a talker.