Voice of America Is Gone, a Voice Once Listened to from Under a Pillow
Which is somewhat of a personal loss from my point of view, as I moved to the Czech Republic in January of 1993, just four years after it emerged from behind the Iron Curtain.
Remember the “Iron Curtain countries?” Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. For most Americans they were a remote part of post WWII history, myself as well, until I moved.
But the West was not remote to those ‘grayed out’ parts of Europe, and the reason was the Voice of America.
Yes, that’s Louis Armstrong at the Voice of America mic in the title photo. Can you possibly think of a better man to represent America’s voice than Louis? Voice of America and Radio Free Europe reached a weekly global audience of 354 million people across 49 languages.
But more personally for me, I’m now married to a Czech lady, who was only fifteen when the Velvet Revolution occurred in 1989 Czechoslovakia.
Her memories are the ones that count.
As a youngster, Misha recalls her father listening to Voice of America on his battery radio from under a pillow. Why that? Because in those days you couldn’t trust that a neighbor wouldn’t turn you in to the authorities, and VOA was a serious offense. Misha’s parents had steadfastly refused to join the communist party, and needed to be extra careful.
(BBC) Hundreds of journalists for Voice of America (VOA) - most of its remaining staff - have been fired by President Donald Trump's administration, effectively shutting down the US-funded news outlet.
The administration said the layoffs were because the agency was "riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste,” which sounds to me more like a self-description than an accusation. But the Orange Man does as the Orange Man pleases.
Steve Herman, VOA's chief national correspondent, called the dismantling of the outlet, which was set up during World War Two to counter Nazi propaganda, a "historic act of self-sabotage". Among those axed were Persian-language reporters who had been on administrative leave, but were called back to work last week after Israel attacked Iran. According to the Associated Press news agency, the Persian reporters had left the office on Friday for a cigarette break, and were not allowed to re-enter the building after the termination notices went out. In total, more than 85% of the agency's employees - about 1,400 staff - have lost their jobs since March.
A skinny kid named Martina Navratilova, listened to it on a red plastic radio in a small Czech country village. “It was what we listened to, (to) find out what was really going on around the world.” It came to Martina as it did to Misha’s dad, in their native language.
Decades after the Iron Curtain fell away, consider the surge in global interest in VOA coverage in the first five weeks following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – more than 800 million video views, tens of millions interactions and 21 million readers of contextual web stories. Audiences stayed at historic levels inside Russia even after Putin blocked the VOA Russian Service online sites.
And now, it’s any port in a storm for the Orange Man, as Voice of America rehired its Persian language staff following an escalating military conflict between Iran and Israel Thursday and Friday.
After all, someone has to decide what is fake news and what is not.
Now you see it…now you don’t.