Q. John, when you retired from the Voice of America in 2012, you left a 45-year career in international broadcasting. Talk about a couple of the highs and lows you experienced.
 

A. I think the lowest point is the period we’re going through right now – and I say “we” because even though I’m retired, I’m still dedicated to the mission VOA has long served. There are many high points, too many to count – most of them linked to the people I worked with. One of many examples comes from my time in the VOA News Division in the early 1970s, when complaints from the White House shook the foundation of our mission. In those days, VOA's newsroom was an island in a storm... we were rocked by the reverberations of conflicts in South Asia, the Middle East, and Vietnam in particular, and the Cold War in general - and those battles were made all the more chaotic by the domestic political crisis of Watergate. 

Our News Director Bernie Kamenske, hardened by a previous career as a working journalist in New York, was the rock on which we stood. He was irrevocably committed to VOA's mission to faithfully, accurately, and factually report the news – and made sure we all understood that that commitment was more than just a job. 

 

When President Nixon was being bombarded daily by Woodward and Bernstein in The Washington Post, those of us assigned to the newly-created Watergate Desk noted the Post’s stories in our copy – until, one day Frank Shakespeare, the Director of USIA (then VOA’s parent agency), called to tell us to stop putting them out; to issue them, he said, was to violate our two-source rule. 

 

The next day, and for the week that followed, we held the Post's revelations until after the noon White House press briefing. At those briefings, [Press Secretary] Ron Ziegler would deny the accuracy of the Post’s reports (thereby providing a second source). VOA's news items would then lead by saying, "The White House today denied that...", followed by details from the Post. This pattern continued while our News Director fielded complaints – saying that it was our job to report White House statements, and that the details of the story were necessary to make it comprehensive and understandable for a foreign audience. Shakespeare finally relented... and eventually resigned (as did his boss, the President). VOA had weathered the storm; we continued to report on wars abroad and the presidential succession at home.

 

Later, on July 12, 1976, President Ford signed Public Law 94-350 – a charter requiring the Voice of America to continue to “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news” – and that the news “will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive.” That was perhaps the highest point in a long career.
 

A. VOA and its cousins in USAGM - RFE/RL, Radio-TV Martí, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and Radio Free Asia – have been drastically diminished and are all but gone.  Media have been silenced, staffs dispersed, audiences have moved on – with no indication that USAGM or its components can simply be revived. These are not the circumstances we would have wanted.

That being the case, I believe it's necessary to construct a plan that will excite some interest in a new administration and a new Congress. Such a plan will have to lay groundwork to advance American interests abroad through public diplomacy, mission-driven international media, modern technology, and up-to-date audience research. I believe such an effort will be needed to regain the trust and understanding that our audiences gave us for so many years. 
 

A.  Simply stated, America’s loss of a robust media agency means the loss of hundreds of millions of media consumers -- internet users, television viewers, and radio listeners. More broadly, the United States has forfeited its role as a media competitor in the struggle for the hearts and minds of populations around the world – whether they are free, constrained by authoritarian governments, or oppressed by poverty and starvation. In the modern world, media are essential to reach such populations in order to build a trustworthy international reputation.

Unlike the delivery of a meal to a hungry person, which has an immediate and observable benefit, the most lasting gains -- the ones hardest to achieve -- are trust and understanding among skeptical populations.Those gains -- once made -- are also hard to maintain and require sustained effort. My career at VOA taught me the value of this work -- value to long-time audiences, to the U.S., and to the American people. Now, we have to work to restore lost trust and understanding.
 

A. International politics, and media users – like nature – abhor a vacuum… if we leave the arena, the unfriendliest of our competitors will declare victory and fill that vacuum with disinformation and propaganda – and our audiences will move on. This damaging loss is not one we will be likely to correct by other means.
 

A.  A plan for a successor to USAGM will certainly focus on all media technologies – but also on key target areas, audience research, content and production requirements, staffing, international legal and political constraints, facilities and infrastructure needs in the U.S. and abroad, and budgets for all of the above.

Most importantly – and before a cogent and effective plan can be created – strong and capable minds and hands are needed. An effective strategic plan must be drawn up by knowledgeable, experienced, forward-looking practitioners – people drawn to the vision of what they would like their organization to become. A group’s members must assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; they must bring individual wisdom and capabilities to the table; they must be critical thinkers who are drawn to their work by a shared commitment to a mission that will enable an organization to achieve their vision.