The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

now a permanent feature of the media scene there. They have attracted substantial new, reform-minded audiences. The agency is also utilizing the digital age to capital- ize on the potential for instantaneous communication among expert studio guests in Washington and listen- ers, viewers and Internet gurus in every corner of the globe. Call-ins are regularly scheduled on 13 VOA for- eign-language services today, in addition to English. Some are radio-TV simulcasts videostreamed live on the Internet. Meanwhile, over the past year, the Office of Engineering and Technical Operations negotiated more than 20 around-the-clock leases of FM stations in the Middle East and Africa, helping to increase youth audi- ences for Radio Sawa and VOA services to Africa; set up FM stations in four cities in Iraq: Baghdad, Basra, Irbil and Suleymania; and constructed or leased powerful AM transmitters in Afghanistan, Cyprus and Djibouti. In some countries, notably the People’s Republic of China and Iran, the thought police continue to try to prevent Western broadcasts from reaching their citi- zens. Beijing has heavily jammed VOA shortwave broadcasts in Mandarin ever since the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989, and in Tibetan since that service was established in 1991. For the past several years, Chinese authorities have also blocked access to the Web sites of VOA, Radio Free Asia and other Western broadcasters. IBB Engineering has been active in exploring tech- nologies such as the use of proxy sites and expanded e- mail services to counter such interference by centrally controlled PRC service providers. As a result, VOA Chinese Branch e-mails to China have expanded from hundreds of thousands to millions of messages a day over the past year. (Using the same technology, Persian Service and Radio Farda daily e-mails to Iran now number in the thousands.) U.S. overseas broadcast network Web sites also have been blocked from time to time by Burma, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Laos, North Korea, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, prompting IBB to work on a global strategy to combat such interference. VOA News Central Looking ahead, Cropsey has won the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ approval for what he calls “Global Broadcasting Vision, 2010.” The blueprint is designed to flesh out and set tangible goals for implementing the BBG’s overall strategic plan. Its main points: • The need for U.S. international broadcasting has never been greater, and sufficient funding is essential to meet the challenges of a multimedia age. • U.S. must achieve market dominance as an inter- national broadcaster in parts of the world that are strategically important to American interests. • Managers of U.S. international broadcasting must address the perennial problem of time lags between when an international crisis erupts and when funding permits its managers to acquire and deploy equipment such as high-power, medium-wave transmitters for the necessary surge broadcasting. • IBB must make the most effective use of its phys- ical plant, both in the United States and overseas. This means providing the most cost effective services to VOA, VOA/TV and Worldnet, RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia, Radio/TV Marti, Radio Sawa, Radio Farda, and soon the Middle East Television Network. Cropsey singles out two challenges as particularly important: tracking expansion of the Net, and using cell phones as vehicles for transmitting information. Even in many poorer countries, he notes, there’s a tendency to “leapfrog” from rudimentary communications sys- tems directly to wireless. As he puts it: “IT technology is changing before our eyes every month.” This vision is already starting to become a reality. Very soon, IBB and VOA will complete a high-visibility project that has been five years in the making. Just as the 2004 presidential primaries start up, “VOA News Central” will be inaugurated, open to the viewing pub- lic from a new visitors’ center. The multimedia news- room will be located at the IBB-VOA headquarters building, just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Encompassing radio, television and Internet opera- tions, the facility will include a new specialized section designed to serve an innovative “24-hours-a-day” VOA multimedia broadcast service to Africa. The center will stand as a symbol of IBB’s and VOA’s ability — if left intact with their current cooperation sustained — to continue practicing in the 21st century what Henry Loomis had in mind when he promulgated the Voice of America’s Charter in 1959: a steady pursuit of knowledge, and a determination to share accurate, objective and comprehensive news and analysis with a curious and candid world. F O C U S 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4