Enemies of the State Department?
� We expect Mr. As he moves upward in his career, our improved ties with him would mean a potentially important friend in positions of editorial influence.� [Editor’s Note: Mr. Lacayo’s name has been changed to protect his identity.]
The State Department had chosen the Venezuelan journalist to visit the U.S. under what is known as an IV grant � a cultural exchange program started in 1961 . Last year, the department brought some 467 journalists to the United States at a cost of about $ 10 million, according to a State Department official who requested anonymity.
FAIR’s MacDonald says that the ? � visits serve to build ties between the visiting foreign journalists and institutions that … are extremely uncritical of U.S. foreign policy and the corporate interests it serves.�
The State Department funds media development through several of its bureaus, including the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), as well as through its regional bureaus and embassies worldwide. It also funds foreign journalists through another section called the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Most importantly, the State Department usually decides where other agencies, such as USAID and NED, should invest their media development funds.
(The State Department did not respond to In These Times’ requests for information about its media development budget, but the 2007 CIMA study shows that in 2006 , DRL, for instance, received almost $ 12 million for media development alone.)
The case of Bolivia is a revealing example of a country in which the United States has been funding media development. According to DRL’s website, the bureau sponsored 15 workshops in Bolivia on freedom of the press and expression in 2006 . ? � The country’s journalists and journalism students discussed professional ethics, good reporting practices and the media’s role in a democracy,� the site says. ? � These programs were sent out to 200 radio stations in remote areas throughout the country.�
In 2006 , Bolivia elected Evo Morales, its first indigenous president, whose rise to power the U.S. government and Bolivia’s mainstream press has repeatedly tried to impede. Morales and his supporters allege that the U.S. government is backing a separatist movement in Bolivia’s gas-rich eastern states, and they allege that part of that backing involves media development meetings, according to journalist and former presidential spokesperson Alex Contreras. USAID’s Koscak denies the charge.
This is the BBG
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), is most famous as the funder of the Voice of America. According to its website, BBG is ? � responsible for all U.S. government and government-sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting� that brings ? � news and information to people around the world in 60 languages.�
In 1999 , BBG became an independent federal agency. By 2006 it received a $ 650 million budget, according to CIMA estimates, with about $ 1 . 5 million earent to train journalists in Argentina, Bolivia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Besides Voice of America, BBG also runs several other radio and TV stations. Alhurra television, based in Springfield, Va., ? � is a commercial-free Arabic-language satellite television network for the Middle East, devoted iphone hookup app primarily to news and information,� according to its website. Alhurra, which is Arabic for ? � the free one,� has been described by the Washington Post as ? � the U.S. government’s largest and most expensive effort to sway foreign opinion over the airwaves since the creation of Voice of America in 1942 .�
