The Future of America’s Global Voice: The Debate Surrounding the New VOA Budget

Iskra Kirova also provided invaluable research support for this report.

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On February 6, 2006, a Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) press release made clear that the proposed 2007 budget will result in dramatic changes at the Voice of America (VOA). In particular, the budget will mean the elimination of VOA’s main English transmission, VOA News Now Radio while retaining funding for VOA English to Africa, Special English, and VOA’s English website.  Other language broadcasts set for elimination include:  all VOA television and radio broadcasts in Croatian, Turkish, Thai, Greek and Georgian; and VOA radio broadcasts in Albanian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Serbian, Russian and Hindi.  These changes, particularly the demise of VOA English, have instigated a flurry of speculation about the direction of American international broadcasting and the future of all VOA programming.

Domestically the affair has widened the already considerable gap between those who feel that America should revive and expand the VOA broadcasts and believe that a news and information driven international broadcasting service model will best serve US public diplomacy goals, and those who see the VOA model as increasingly anachronistic in the face of rapid changes in communication technologies and the increasingly global presence of private news organizations such as CNN and Fox News. The latter believe that a more commercially oriented model of international broadcasting as represented by the recently launched FM station Radio Sawa and the television station AlHurra, represent the best way forward.  Climbing audience shares and credibility ratings as documented by an unreleased 2004 AC Nielsen survey of the Middle East are offered as key support of the Sawa/AlHurra formula.  According to the survey 21.5 million people in the Middle East now regularly tune into AlHurra and find the station credible or somewhat credible.  However, others question the implications of Nielsen results particularly in light of a 2005 poll conducted by Zogby International and public opinion scholar, Shibley Telhami, which found that only 1% of Middle Easterners surveyed cited AlHurra as their first choice for credible international news. 

VOA supporters cite VOA’s long-standing credibility throughout the Middle East and around the world, and caution that just because audiences may be tuning in to Radio Sawa and AlHurra they may not necessarily be buying the message.  They also caution that while the Internet provides a critical medium to engage foreign audiences, much of the world remains reliant on radio as its main source of news and information, and thus truncating VOA broadcasts is premature.  Many pundits not clearly affiliated with either side of the debate have greeted the closure of VOA English with ambivalence, questioning whether it is prudent to cut English broadcasting services at the same time that China Radio Broadcasting and Al-Jazeera are launching their own English stations.  Internationally, however, there has been very little discussion about the closure of VOA English, rather coverage has tended to focus on the BBG decision to cut other VOA specialized language services such as the Russian and Thai broadcasts and the strategic implications of the decision to expand farsi VOA programming in Iran.  While the blogosphere was slow to address the changes to VOA, an increasing number of cites are beginning to address the issue.  A new anonymous blog, Save VOA English provides ongoing coverage and commentary about the closure.