[Swprograms] Fwd: VOA TO OUTSOURCE NEWS TO HONG KONG CONTRACTORS?

[John Figliozzi <jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What I'd really like to say about this would be unprintable.  The 
dismantling continues apace even as the know-nothings that are doing it 
continue to out and out lie about their intentions.

John Figliozzi

Begin forwarded message:
>
> Subject: VOA TO OUTSOURCE  NEWS TO HONG KONG CONTRACTORS?
>
> VOA Director David Jackson has announced that every day 
> between midnight until  7 a.m., Washington time, the Voice's new state 
> of the art multimedia newsroom  will be closed.  The news will be 
> “contracted out” to a team of eight editors and writers (reportedly 
> Americans, British and Australians) in Hong Kong, Peoples Republic of 
> China.  Some sources project cost savings at about $300,000 annually, 
> in a VOA budget of approximately $168 million.
>
> If implemented, the proposed schedule will mark the first time since 
> at least the early 1950s that the VOA headquarters newsroom has gone 
> dark. Today, the news center continues to provide information for 
> hourly newscasts for VOA's 44 language services and its newly 
> consolidated VOA-TV and website operations.
>
> Relocating VOA central news operations in the PRC for nearly a third 
> of each day poses significant risks.  In the event of another 
> Tiananmen uprising or a Beijing assault on Taiwan, the Chinese regime 
> could shut down VOA's worldwide news service in a flash, either by 
> cutting communications or by expelling staff.  In June 1989, the PRC 
> expelled two VOA Beijing correspondents after the Tiananmen massacre. 
> VOA has an audience estimated at nearly 100 million each week and 
> hundreds of FM and TV affiliates around the world.
>
> A start date for the Hong Kong news operation has yet to be announced. 
> Jackson told his senior managers April 7 that training will be given 
> to newly-hired contractors in Washington later this year.  An 
> overnight shift supervisor in Washington will continue to monitor 
> production.  It is unclear how or when real time communications will 
> be set up between that editor and Hong Kong to ensure accountability 
> for a high quality newsfile.
>
> The proposed outsourcing of news services to PRC-based contractors  
> appears to be the latest in a series of measures aimed at dismantling 
> the Voice and  its global reach.  Since 1999, the U.S. Broadcasting 
> Board of Governors, which oversees VOA, has cut the number of its 
> worldwide shortwave frequencies in English from 354 to 52.  VOA 
> English broadcasts can no longer be heard in Latin America or Europe 
> (East and West) and are barely audible in the Middle East.  The BBC 
> meanwhile, has two 24/7 streams in English, the universal language of 
> trade and commerce.  The PRC and Germany recently expanded their 
> English services.
>
> Alan Heil
>
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