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[HCDX] Voice Of America's Role In Internet Age
Voice Of America's Role In Internet Age
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/03/140163727/voice-of-americas-role-in-internet-age
September 3, 2011
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September 3, 2011
Host Scott Simon speaks with David Ensor, who took over directorship of Voice of America
last month. A longtime journalist for NPR, CNN and ABC News, his most recent post was in
Afghanistan, where he was director for communications and public diplomacy at the U.S.
Embassy in Kabul.
Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See
Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
SCOTT SIMON, host: The Voice of America has a weekly audience of 123 million people
around the world. Its highly-regarded news and music programs are heard in 44 different
languages, from Afan Oromo and Bosnian to Uzbek and Vietnamese. But in this day of the
Internet and social media, and a time of shrinking budgets, what interest does the United
States have in spending $200 million dollars on a government broadcast service when there
are so many sources of information and entertainment available around the world? We're
joined in our studios now by the new head of the Voice of America, David Ensor, who was a
correspondent for ABC, CNN, even NPR. Most recently, he was director of communications
and public diplomacy for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Mr. Director, thanks for being with us.
DAVID ENSOR: Scott, thank you so much for having me here.
SIMON: I wanted to read a quote to you that New York Times had earlier this summer. They
said, quote, "Digital technology risk turning these services" - and they meant VOA, Radio
Marti, Radio Sawa in the Middle East - "turning these services into relics of a bygone era
when dissidents in closed societies huddled over their transistor radios for scraps of
information from the West. Now, dissidents these days we know get a lot of news from
Facebook and Twitter, so is the Voice of America still necessary?
ENSOR: It's still very necessary and it's on Facebook and Twitter. And in fact, the dissidents
you're speaking of in many of the countries that you just mentioned are tuning in to us
through those media. There are lots of new platforms now. The ways that humans
communicate with each other are diversifying and changing rapidly. Some people think if a
golden era when Voice of America was on shortwave radio and there were the huddled
masses listening and then looking for the secret police to knock on the door and hide the
radio. That's not where we're at now.
SIMON: Well then let me come at you from the other direction, because next month the VOA
plans to end all radio and TV broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese. There's been some
criticism of that. The Californian congressman Dana Rohrabacher says it looks like we're
succumbing to the wants of the communist Chinese. Now, particularly in a society where
Internet communication is so tightly suppressed, isn't there still a lot to be said for those
shortwave services?
ENSOR: We had to look at them on a case-by-case basis. Our data shows, for example, that
shortwave is still a very good way to reach quite a bit of Africa. It's still probably one of the
best ways to reach the North Korean population. It has become far less effective in China. My
personal feeling is that China's one of the most important places for us to reach, and some of
these new platforms that you're talking about - social media, satellite television - are where
we need to be headed in China.
SIMON: I was very moved when I was reading up for this interview to read the first words that
the Voice of America ever broadcast. Are you familiar with those?
ENSOR: I'm not.
SIMON: February 1, 1942 - obviously, early days of World War II for this country - they
played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and said today and every day from now on, we will
be with you from America to talk about the war. The news may be good or bad for us. We will
always tell you the truth.
ENSOR: We're still doing that. And we need to do more of it. And what I want to try to help
my colleagues to do is get more people out doing more reporting from stories. We've done
some very good stuff out of Libya recently. We're telling the story of the drought in the Horn
of Africa, which frankly the commercial networks are not covering very well. It's a story that
needs to be told. And, by the way, on September 6th, we'll start some special broadcasting.
This is kind of surge broadcasting, if you will, where we're going to use the frequencies of
one of our sister stations and start broadcasting information that's useful to the refugees. Tell
them about where to find shelter, food, medical help and so forth, try to help the NGOs that
are working with the starving people of the Horn of Africa to sort of organize things better and
help people know what's going on.
SIMON: You expect calls for cutbacks?
ENSOR: At VOA?
SIMON: Yeah.
ENSOR: I think the whole federal government is going to have to look closely at its budgets. I
don't think we're immune. The United States has got a serious economic problem and the
government has to do - and we are going to do - more on less. But trying to make a virtue out
of it, when you have to cut the budget a bit, you can also make change at the same time. We
mentioned shortwave radio. You know, it is less and less useful, and there's a certain amount
of money being spent on it that should move quickly, and I will try to accelerate that process,
into, you know, new media, into Internet sites that are mobile device-friendly, into satellite
television broadcasts that can reach in some of these countries. So, we're working on that
hard.
SIMON: David Ensor, new director of the Voice of America. Thanks so much.
ENSOR: It's a pleasure.
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david swerdloff (davearlington)
david swerdloff (davearlington) wrote:
I have not worked for VOA for several years. But I would like to assure skeptics that nearly all
the people I worked alongside were very careful to live up to the Charter -- which was really
captured by those first words broadcast during WWII on VOA. Nearly everyone was focused
on telling the truth - warts and all - about the world and our country. I helped to host and
produce daily programs specifically about America that followed a similar format to NPR's
Morning Edition and All Things Considered (longer reports, features and interviews). We tried
each day to be honest about the challenges within the USA, and how they were or were not
being addressed. We were not shills for the government or corporations, no matter what
some of the comments below might argue. And, I suspect, much of the same attitude still
prevails--even as my former colleagues try to reach people largely through new media. That
being said, I wish Mr. Ensor had known the early history of VOA.
ÊõñéáêÞ, 4 ÓåðôÝìâñéïò 2011 11:05:03 ðì
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Martha Hyde (Ratcatcher)
Martha Hyde (Ratcatcher) wrote:
...They may also be only using publicly available computers to avoid being tracked.
Furthermore, their own English is not good enough to formulate comments themselves, so
they copy and paste comments by someone else that sound something like what they would
say in response. They may also be using Google Translate, which itself may be a poor
performer of that task for the foreign language in question. (I do not know if Google Translate
is available for translating into English from all foreign languages.)
There must be a whole other world for young people from these countries, who hear about
the Arab Spring, and see what others can say about their own countries, and these "spam"
comments may be reflecting that reality. We have seen that there are thousands of voices
desperate to be heard in this new e-global world, that could not be heard when Radio-Free
Europe and Voice of America was established. It would be great if our news reporters were to
ask if people are doing as I describe in many of these countries, but obviously, the person
interviewed is often not in a position to speak freely.
ÊõñéáêÞ, 4 ÓåðôÝìâñéïò 2011 1:32:53 ðì
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Martha Hyde (Ratcatcher)
Martha Hyde (Ratcatcher) wrote:
...There is no reliability of getting that response at a blog or other "comment-able" forum on
the web, nor are these comments causing any denial-of-service attack. Obviously they are
not advertising the company whose URL is associated with their email address because it
doesn't exist. In fact, I got a comment from someone who worked at a company offering pills
for male reproductive organs who thought my blog was too "spammy", because I allowed
many such comments as I described. This "spammy" comment provoked my wondering "Is
spam in the eye of the beholder?".
I wonder if the people whose comments are filtered by my blogsite prover as spam are from
any kind of Western, freely democratic country, or if they are just young people who have no
safe access to the internet at home. They may fear being found out that they are visiting
websites where opinions are freely given, so they make up a name, a valid but temporary
email address, and a company website to gain entry to the comment section (even though
providing a URL is not required)--all to be taken seriously. The different comments from the
same fake URL may actually be the same person who makes up new names and email
addresses for every comment....
ÊõñéáêÞ, 4 ÓåðôÝìâñéïò 2011 1:31:07 ðì
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Martha Hyde (Ratcatcher)
Martha Hyde (Ratcatcher) wrote:
David Ensor is right to say that now dissidents have a lot of other avenues for communicating
with the outside world. That is also true for those not necessarily dissident, but just wanting to
"join the rest of the world" when they live in countries where they feel they just cannot speak
out at all or feel too isolated. I have seen comments classified as "spam" by my blog server
which I strongly suspect are not "spam" simply because the filters assume conditions as we
see in Western free democracies. Yes, these commenters claim to have websites that do not
exist and there are a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes in them. Furthermore, when you
do a search on the website provided, you see a lot of other people under other names with
the same website and exactly the same or very much similar comments on other blogs. Many
of these comments are more substantive than just "I love your website", or "I agree". Thus I
have to take what they say seriously, even if it is often difficult to interpret.
However, to call them spam begs a question. Spam implies that the person wants a
response of some kind...
ÊõñéáêÞ, 4 ÓåðôÝìâñéïò 2011 1:30:00 ðì
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beth aaron (bethaaron)
beth aaron (bethaaron) wrote:
VOA what is your intent? To push western consumerism to all the so called "developing"
nations so we can then say, the world runs on Dunkin, which, if translated, really means the
world rund on chemical additives, processed sugar and caffine? Now that's some billing.
ÓÜââáôï, 3 ÓåðôÝìâñéïò 2011 6:58:16 ìì
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beth aaron (bethaaron)
beth aaron (bethaaron) wrote:
TRUTH AND LIBERTY!!! Where are you?
Liberty of corporations to sell toxic food made in labs! Liberty to demolish any environmental
regulations that might curb increases in respiratory diseases in children, lung diseases in
every age group, asthma! Liberty to pay taxes that are used to bail out multi-national banks
that use every loophole to lend money so people can have "The American Dream," even if
they can't pay it back and call it a free market system?
American Gd!!!! Gd weeps at what this nations ethics, values, consumerism, commodity
driven destruction of HIS CREATION is doing by our systematic RAPE of Mother Earth.
Truth! The TRUTH is that we are at war for energy, war to take over the global food system ,
forcing genetically modified poisonous seeds, "TERMINATOR" seeds, what an evil name for
Gds gift to humankind, down the throats of other nations...Truth, we sicken our own infants in
the womb with thousands of carcinogens approved and legalized by the FDA, a corrupt,
industry friendly, TAX fuded agency that protects drug companies, approves toxic food
additives, and food from science labs. Got ADD/ADHD, Immunological disorders?
ÓÜââáôï, 3 ÓåðôÝìâñéïò 2011 6:56:12 ìì
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Frumpy Demon (LudicrousMeanie)
Frumpy Demon (LudicrousMeanie) wrote:
This makes so proud I have to thump the pecs of my red, white and blue American heart.
The brilliant voice of America proclaiming the righteous truth of liberty for all the world to
hear. New media is the new weapon of choice and will blaze a new path in the tradition of
Kenneth Tomlinson. Thank our lucky American God for the brave souls like Scott Simon who
combat the proliferation of Islamic extremist philosophy. Make those insurgents confess their
crimes on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks to stalwart American Patriots like Michael McManus
, Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Jeff Gannon, Karen Ryan and Scott Simon, the
VOA now can bravely speak it's name to it's own people. Hallelujah!Standard rig : ICOM R75
/ 2x16 V / m@h40 heads Sennheiser
Please read and distribute this 15 year research article http://tinyurl.com/5vzg7e
Please read my article on SINPO at http://tinyurl.com/yt7qjd
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Zacharias Liangas , Thessaloniki Greece
greekdx @ otenet dot gr ---
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