MUMBAI: Interntaional broadcaster The Voice of America plans to eliminate seven radio language services this year, including radio broadcasts in Hindi, Ukrainian, Serbian, Macedonian, Bosnian and Georgian.
According to Internet resource ProPublica, the cuts are an indirect fallout of the hundreds of millions of dollars absorbed by Alhurra, the US government-funded Arabic television news channel.
VOA employees have long been unhappy with the direction of the agency, which currently broadcasts in 45 languages, says ProPublica.
More than a third of VOA employees, nearly 500, signed a petition in 2004 protesting the “dismantling” of the agency. The protest came after the creation of Alhurra and Radio Sawa, the Arab radio service that VOA employees say relies on popular music and entertainment at the expense of substantive news programming, VOA’s hallmark. The services replaced VOA’s Arabic programming, which cost no more than $seven million a year.
Alhurra and Radio Sawa have received nearly $500 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars since 2004, says the report.
Tish King, a spokeswoman for Voice of America, said the language services cuts are the result of “painful decisions” that reflect a focus on “places where, based on research, we can be most effective.”
The administration has been seeking cuts to various language services for years, only to be rebuffed by Congress. In 2006, the administration’s proposed budget for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (the agency that oversees Alhurra and VOA) included reductions or eliminations in “non-war on terror related language services.” When the 2007 budget proposed reductions to even more services, Congress stepped in and provided funding to prevent it.
Among the reductions sought that year were broadcasts in Tibetan by VOA and Radio Free Asia, another U.S.-backed effort. A contingent of Tibetan monks visited Capitol Hill to lobby the House appropriations committee not to reduce the broadcasts, and ultimately the broadcasts were spared. In fact, VOA and Radio Free Asia increased their broadcasts this spring in light of unrest in the country, King said. She said the shift was just part of the “very dynamic” nature of international broadcasting.
The agency’s funding increased annually between 2006 and 2008, although the administration’s proposed 2009 VOA budget is $185.6 million, about $10 million less than in 2008, the report adds.