The CPD Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars and practitioners from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect CPD's views. For blogger guidelines, click here.

July 25, 2013
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Edward R. Murrow’s last broadcast on CBS occurred July 25, 1964, on “FAREWELL TO STUDIO NINE,” a 55-minute special broadcast on the radio network commemorating the closing of perhaps the most famous radio news studio in all of broadcasting, at least up to that time 49 years ago. Studio Nine, at 485 Madison Avenue in New York City, was the anchor studio-news center for CBS before, during, and after World War II, until the move of all of us in late July, 1964 to the new CBS Broadcast Center across town.

Public diplomacy mourns yet another practitioner who helped tear down the Berlin Wall during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Mo Rothman, a former top Hollywood film executive, died at the age of 92 in Los Angeles on September 15. Mo was a member of our volunteer Film Acquisitions Committee at the U.S. Information Agency in the 1980's.

With armies of reporters from Al Jazeera and Alhurra and slews of other news media organizations covering the Middle East, one wonders how the seeds of anti-government sentiment in Egypt were not detected before streets were filled with protesters and now police violence and death. Diplomats in Washington and other world capitals seem to have been similarly blindsided.

Adam Powell reports in his most recent CPD Blog post that the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors plans to investigate expanded program acquisitions for use overseas on the Voice of America and perhaps other U.S. government non-military international broadcasts under its aegis. The BBG plans to weigh this initiative in its yearly strategic review of broadcast operations. It is said to believe that airing the U.S.

December 22, 2010

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency that oversees U.S. government non-military international broadcast and Internet services, probably knows more than it's letting on. The good news is that it has released another in its series of expertly researched documents on viewing and listening habits related to its many language services abroad.

Edward R. Murrow's famous remark about the importance of "the last three feet" to bridge personal contact was not unexpectedly raised at last week's conference that I attended at George Washington University, on the 50th anniversary of the Nixon-Krushchev "Kitchen Debate" at the 1959 U.S. Exhibition in Moscow. But few may know that Murrow raised the last few feet issue informally, and more than once, with colleagues at CBS News in New York long before he uttered them as director of the U.S. Information Agency.

Each time the Iranian Islamic dictatorship condemns the Voice of America by name for broadcasting news of anti-government demonstrations into that country, it can only mean more dollars for the VOA's Persian News Network — and VOA in general — at budget time on Capitol Hill.

Women in public diplomacy have long been confronted with a glass ceiling in Washington. It seems that their male counterparts in PD now see such a ceiling as well.

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