Comments on: Voice of America? Or Megaphone for Iran and the Burmese Junta? http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/why_is_voice_of_america_speaki/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:03:34 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Joseph O'Connell http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/why_is_voice_of_america_speaki/comment-page-1/#comment-816 Joseph O'Connell Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:57:57 +0000 http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/2007/10/08/voice-of-america-or-megaphone-for-iran-and-the-burmese-junta/#comment-816 (Dear Editor: I am sending along a letter from James K. Glassman, Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, in response to Claudia's 10/8/07 piece about the Voice of America. Thanks in advance. Joe O'Connell Director Office of Public Affairs) To the Editor PajamasMedia.com It is hard for me to understand how Claudia Rosett could have written her piece in the Oct. 8 Pajamas.com website (“Voice of America? Megaphone for Iran and the Burmese Junta?”) about the coverage of the Burmese crisis by the Voice of America (VOA). I could not be more proud of the courageous work of VOA over the past two months on the Burma story. Simply put, the Burmese regime is having a fit over the work of VOA (as well as that of Radio Free Asia (RFA)). VOA has just been called “assassins of the air,” and the junta is doing its best to stop people from listening, as reports by AP over the weekend confirm. Meanwhile, VOA and RFA have people who, at this very minute, are risking their lives to get information, including video, out of Burma. The Burmese have made it clear that reporters with both of our organizations (and the BBC) are to be regarded as spies and saboteurs and will be imprisoned and perhaps killed if caught. Ms. Rosett wrote about a VOA piece on Burma and said that it reports an official statement “before making any specific mention of the junta’s murder of protesters.” The truth is that VOA and RFA have been THE main source of information for the Burmese people about just these murders from the time the protests began and well before. We have been properly praised by the Administration (Mrs. Bush did a sharp, exhorting interview on VOA just the other day) and cited by people like Sen. Joseph Lieberman for the work we have been doing. Just as VOA did during the Cold War, we have been holding the hands of the Burmese people in a dark time, telling them what the rest of the world is doing to support them and providing the facts on the ground. As Newsweek.com said last week, “Everyone in the country…listens to the Burmese-language shortwave broadcasts from stations like the BBC, Radio Free Asia, Voice of American and…Democratic Voice of Burma.” In order to establish and preserve the credibility in Burma that RFA has maintained for the past 10 years and VOA for the past 60, we do indeed broadcast straight news, even absurd government proclamations of the sort that Ms. Rosett cherry-picked. But our listeners have the context that Ms. Rosett obviously does not, having heard hundreds or thousands of hours of our broadcasts. Last week, Than Lwin Htun, the head of VOA’s Burmese Service and himself a student leader during the 1988 uprising in Burma in which 3,000 died, testified before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. He ended his testimony this way: “What we are doing at the Voice of America is to keep this communication going. We tell the world what is happening inside Burma. And we do our best to let all Burmese citizens know that they are not alone. We are proud to be able to empower the people of Burma with accurate news about how the world is responding to events inside Burma. We feel our reporting sustains the hope that they need to keep alive so that when their day finally arrives, they will prevail.” Sincerely, James K. Glassman Chairman Broadcasting Board of Governors (Dear Editor:
I am sending along a letter from James K. Glassman, Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, in response to Claudia’s 10/8/07 piece about the Voice of America. Thanks in advance.
Joe O’Connell
Director
Office of Public Affairs)

To the Editor
PajamasMedia.com
It is hard for me to understand how Claudia Rosett could have written her piece in the Oct. 8 Pajamas.com website (“Voice of America? Megaphone for Iran and the Burmese Junta?”) about the coverage of the Burmese crisis by the Voice of America (VOA). I could not be more proud of the courageous work of VOA over the past two months on the Burma story.

Simply put, the Burmese regime is having a fit over the work of VOA (as well as that of Radio Free Asia (RFA)). VOA has just been called “assassins of the air,” and the junta is doing its best to stop people from listening, as reports by AP over the weekend confirm. Meanwhile, VOA and RFA have people who, at this very minute, are risking their lives to get information, including video, out of Burma. The Burmese have made it clear that reporters with both of our organizations (and the BBC) are to be regarded as spies and saboteurs and will be imprisoned and perhaps killed if caught.

Ms. Rosett wrote about a VOA piece on Burma and said that it reports an official statement “before making any specific mention of the junta’s murder of protesters.” The truth is that VOA and RFA have been THE main source of information for the Burmese people about just these murders from the time the protests began and well before. We have been properly praised by the Administration (Mrs. Bush did a sharp, exhorting interview on VOA just the other day) and cited by people like Sen. Joseph Lieberman for the work we have been doing.

Just as VOA did during the Cold War, we have been holding the hands of the Burmese people in a dark time, telling them what the rest of the world is doing to support them and providing the facts on the ground. As Newsweek.com said last week, “Everyone in the country…listens to the Burmese-language shortwave broadcasts from stations like the BBC, Radio Free Asia, Voice of American and…Democratic Voice of Burma.”

In order to establish and preserve the credibility in Burma that RFA has maintained for the past 10 years and VOA for the past 60, we do indeed broadcast straight news, even absurd government proclamations of the sort that Ms. Rosett cherry-picked. But our listeners have the context that Ms. Rosett obviously does not, having heard hundreds or thousands of hours of our broadcasts.

Last week, Than Lwin Htun, the head of VOA’s Burmese Service and himself a student leader during the 1988 uprising in Burma in which 3,000 died, testified before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. He ended his testimony this way: “What we are doing at the Voice of America is to keep this communication going. We tell the world what is happening inside Burma. And we do our best to let all Burmese citizens know that they are not alone. We are proud to be able to empower the people of Burma with accurate news about how the world is responding to events inside Burma. We feel our reporting sustains the hope that they need to keep alive so that when their day finally arrives, they will prevail.”

Sincerely,
James K. Glassman
Chairman
Broadcasting Board of Governors

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