[FRIAM] USAGM, VOA

Sat Jun 20 15:25:47 EDT 2020

I do hope his visitors in Tulsa get to know one another.   And also after the event, over a beer, across from one another, where they can really have a conversation.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Date: Saturday, June 20, 2020 at 12:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] USAGM, VOA

I just posted on Facebook that I fear this is potentially the most Goebbels-esq move in the Trump years.  If Trump can be defeated, it will take a decade at least to restore some of our positive presence amongst many around the world.
TJ

============================================
Tom Johnson - tom at jtjohnson.com<mailto:tom at jtjohnson.com>
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)                                    505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government<http://nmfog.org>
Check out It's The People's Data<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-The-Peoples-Data/1599854626919671>
============================================

On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 12:20 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com<mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
I was caught off guard this morning when I saw these latest headlines:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/18/voice-of-america-independence-fears-after-trump-ally-purges-senior-officials

I went straight to USAGM's website to get oriented on the full scope of
USAGM, of which I have only been vaguely aware.   I have heard plenty of
anecdotes about Voice of America during WWII and Radio Free Europe
during the Cold War as well as Armed Forces Network (especially during
the Vietnam War).    I was shocked (but not surprised) that the website
was already reflecting the "new management" and if I were not so lazy
(incompetent), I might go search for a snapshot from yesterday/last-week
of the website and see *just what all* was changed with the changing of
the guard.

I'm hoping Tom (and others) have some better understanding of the
implications of this.

As a child (6-12 years) my parents allowed me use of their classic
(circa 1950) Zenith "Wave Magnet"  Transoceanic multiband short-wave
radio in my bedroom.   We lived in an isolated location in the mountains
of western NM where there was no "normal" radio (or TV) reception.   The
ionosphere provides an interface for RF to reflect off of allowing
"skip" of signals around the curvature of the earth, oftentimes
*multiple* skips allowing *literally* reception from nearly halfway
around the world.  In more of a technical fascination with this idea
than with the sounds and in fact, voices and even messages coming out of
the speaker in front of the warmly glowing tubes as I tweaked the tuning
dial and waved the "magnet" (removeable antenna) around, I *did* listen
to what was dribbling out of the speaker (turned way down to avoid
disturbing the household).

WWV (time) was the most reliable signal to find (on several bands?),
partly because it was so easily recognized.  I doubt I knew what
languages I was hearing, but there were any number of foreign language
broadcasts fading in and out.   I was most fascinated by the BBC which
(like WWV) seemed to show up on multiple bands, and possibly also
because these sources may have been (and were sometimes identified) as
coming from the south Pacific.  I don't think I ever actually heard the
voice of Hanoi Hannah, or even knew of her.  I occasionally picked up a
whiff of Radio Free Europe or one of it's affiliates elsewhere in the
world, but never enough quantity to really follow much they were saying
(and I *was* just a kid).   What I understood was that THIS was the US's
voice to the world (or the other side of the Iron Curtain?).   The BBC
world service was perhaps *most* fascinating because British English of
course, but also because I seemed to understand that they were not
"censored" by the same assumptions our own media would be.   I thought
that because the BBC served so many colonial/commonwealth regions that
their message would somehow be "cleaner" or provide better "parallax"
than our own (implied to be?) singular voice.   Meanwhile i was getting
my first/only taste of broadcast news "on the hour" whilst trying to
listen to KOMA, KOA, or more interestingly one of the Pirate stations
along the US/MX border.   I didn't know what 50,000 Watts meant, but It
was pounded into my head by the announcers.

I was careful what I said to or asked of my parents, because like many
parents of that era, they could be fickle.   While they seemed to *want*
me to play with their radio, I knew implicitely that they wouldn't like
that I sometimes took the back off the radio, defeated the lockout
switch and layed in bed watching the tubes glow like they were TV, and
trying to "visualize" the radio signals impinging on the "wave Magnet"
and flowing through the wires, being rectified (a term I learned later)
and amplified by those glowing tubes before feeding the speaker.   I
also knew that what I might be hearing coming out of the speaker might
not be something they wanted me to hear.    I did ask them about he
various foreign languages which made me acutely aware that the whole
world (or the whole technologically advanced world) were not English
speakers.  I also asked them about the BBC which lead them to explain a
lot more about the Commonwealth and British Colonial power (past and
present).

When I asked them about Radio Free ?Europe, they were a little cagey...
indicating that their message wasn't intended for the US ears... it was
specifically crafted for the "poor fools living behind the Iron
Curtain", they tried to indicate that because of the conditions of
people living under the iron fist/boot of the Soviet Union were so
sparse, so dire, and because they had no access to "open information",
we had to be "careful" what and how we told them.  I think they likened
it to helping a starving person recover, giving them only the smallest
amounts of the blandest food (water and crackers) to start out, and
build them up.    It seemed reasonable.  I also didn't ask them why the
BBC seemed to talk about all kinds of things that I wasn't hearing in
the 5 minutes of news from the AM Mega Stations I could sometimes get.
I guessed it was because The UK commonwealth was so geographically
spread, they were worried about a broader array of issues (which was
likely true) but I Intuited that the BBC and the CBC were saying things
about the US that the US would never say about ourselves.... nothing
terribly harsh or critical... just things that probably didn't make us
look that good.   Most of what I heard was really a jumble of ideas, of
names and places I knew little of...  but I think I was sensitive to the
"shape" or the "tone" of these different sources.  I couldn't watch
their lips/jaws move though.

The first thing I ran into on *today's* version of the USAGM website was
that it was implied that their content was "illegal to consume in the
US" up until 2013 with the Smith-Mundt modernization bill.  Best I can
tell, what that bill really did was allow USAGM resources to make their
materials available to domestic outlets.   But as with my parent's
description, I do imagine that the content is significantly different
(hopefully not directly contradictory) with that which is pointed
inward.   Aside from the President's Press Secretary (and the equivalent
for the other branch's offices?) that we don't have a strong (overt)
message shaping out of our government?

- Steve

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