The document has become a cause célèbre in Britain, and the American media have belatedly given it some attention (though not enough).
Now finally, six weeks after its disclosure, the document has received its first mention on the Voice of America. In a story headlined "Congressman Tries to Renew Focus on US Justifications for War in Iraq," Congressional correspondent Dan Robinson reports on a forum called Thursday by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to "to shine a new spotlight on administration justifications for going to war in Iraq."
I wonder if that's the last we'll hear of the DSM on VOA.
Robinson's story was filed just hours before NPR's "Morning Edition" aired a piece by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik on "Changes at Voice of America," detailing political interference with news coverage at VOA. Although staff journalists asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, thay did provide Folkenflik with e-mails from VOA director David Jackson directing positive coverage of events that would show the Bush administration in a favorable light. Some of those story ideas came directly from military and White House press releases. As Jackson pointed out, a press release can certainly suggest a good story, but given Jackson's previous employment at the Pentagon, his motivation can't help but be viewed skeptically.
And speaking of the military, Pentagon correspondent Al Pessin has been traveling a lot lately. In Colorado Springs recently he filed a pair of pieces on the pervasive evangelical Christian atmosphere at the Air Force Academy. Only one ("US Air Force Cadets Work on Religious Tolerance Issue") made it to the VOA website. Both pieces — but especially the unpublished one — focus on Air Force efforts to resecularize the Academy while minimizing the history of intolerance for non-Protestants at what should be a secular institution.
Pessin also filed a couple of stories this week from Dakar, Senegal, (neither online as of this writing) on how American and African military forces are working together to combat terrorism and conducting joint exercises. Both read like Pentagon press releases, which is too bad. Pessin is one of VOA's most talented reporters. His assignments have included London, Jerusalem and Beijing (where Chinese authorities expelled him for his Tianamen Square reporting). He can do better, but admittedly it's difficult to keep your journalistic distance while on a Pentagon-organized trip. But why was he sent to West Africa at all? The military cooperation is a "story" that, according to a Google News search, has gotten approximately zero coverage in the mainstream press. Perhaps the idea came from one of David Jackson's Pentagon press releases?
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Former VOA program director Sid Davis had an op-ed in yesterday's edition of the Capitol Hill newspaper, The Hill ("Chinese scrutiny threat of VOA Hong Kong move"), where he suggests that VOA's bizarre plan to hire contract freelancers in Hong Kong could prompt unwanted attention from Beijing.
Davis, who has a somewhat uneven reputation from his stint at VOA, is exactly right: dramatically expanding the existing VOA Hong Kong news center "would surely draw attention, perhaps harassment, from newly invigorated Chinese thought police whose marching orders are becoming more strident." A Chinese administration that imprisons journalists, jams VOA's broadcasts, and severly restricts residents' Internet access could be tempted to act against VOA, which plans to put both radio news writers and web staff in Hong Kong.
"VoA faces becoming a laughing stock" writes Davis, with "dependence on the untested reliability of freelancers in Hong Kong." He concludes: "Outsourcing one-third of the VoA’s news shifts to rented writers in China, the country that smashed the pro-democracy movement in 1989, is the wrong move at the wrong time to the wrong place. Enough already." Amen, Brother Sid.
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