Broadcasting Board of Governors

History

The BBG was formed in 1994 with the passing of the International Broadcasting Act. The act established a bipartisan board that consisted of nine voting members, eight of whom were to be appointed by the President for a three year term. The ninth was the Secretary of State who would serve as an ex officio board member for the duration of his or her term as secretary. At this point, BBG was considered a part of the U.S. Information Agency.

The first voting members of the BBG, confirmed on August 11, 1995, were David W. Burke, Ted Kaufman, Tom C. Korologos, Bette Bao Lord, Alberto J. Mora, Cheryl Halpern, Marc Nathanson, and Carl Spielvogel.

On October 1, 1999, the BBG became an independent agency through the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act. Despite this change, the act maintained that the BBG would remain under the supervision of the Inspector General of the State Department and the Foreign Service.

Since the formation of BBG, U.S. international broadcasting expanded greatly, particularly in the post 9/11 foreign policy focus on the Middle East. In 2002, BBG launched Radio Sawa, a 24/7 Arabic language radio network that broadcasts news and a mix of Western and Arabic music in the Middle East. According to the BBG website, Radio Sawa is "one of the most popular radio stations" where it’s available on FM radio. In 2004, Alhurra TV was created as a televised sister network to Radio Sawa and began broadcasting throughout the Middle East. Since its founding, it grew to establish programs like Al Youm (“Today” in English), a daily three hour news program broadcast from five countries on three different continents, and Musawat (Equality in English), a program that focuses on women’s issues and rights in the Arab world.

In 2005, the Middle East Broadcasting Network, Inc (MBN) was initiated with the purpose of overseeing Arabic broadcasts. Under MBN, Arabic broadcasting had expanded, including the 2009 establishment of the groundbreaking program Al Youm, expanding programming in Egypt, and covering the Iraq War, the first Egyptian democratic elections, Arab viewpoints on U.S. elections, and more.

But it was not only Arabic broadcasting that grew under BBG, other networks grew significantly as well. Voice of America worked with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to launch Radio Farda, an Iranian Radio program targeting youth. In 2006, VOA initiated TV Ashna, a one hour televised news broadcast, and Radio Deewa, a daily radio program of sports, music, and local and international news.

Organization

The BBG was headed by a bi-partisan board with nine members; eight are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The ninth member ex officio is the Secretary of State. By law, no more than four members could be from the same political party. The president designated one member (other than the Secretary of State) to serve as Chairman. The Board served as a "firewall" against political interference in the journalistic product.

As of June 2016, the board members were:

Past members of the board have included:

Reach

According to a 2016 fact-sheet, BBG had a weekly, unduplicated audience of 226 million people through television, radio, and internet media. BBG networks broadcast in 100 countries and 61 languages.

Funding

The BBG solicited annual funding from Congress via a proposed budget summary, which can be found on the BBG website. The Board submitted an annual budget submission in which they lay out specific initiatives. Initiatives in 2011 included improving the global satellite distribution capacity, creating Radio Free Asia video programming and improving distribution of Voice of America content.

Announced in April 2011, the BBG would receive $10 million from Congress for the purpose of fighting Internet censorship. During the federal funding dispute for the fiscal year 2011, President Barack Obama sided with the BBG agreeing to language that the organization would "expand unrestricted access to information on the Internet." This work includes anti-censorships campaigns in China and other repressive regimes.

Their operating budget for FY 2016 was US $752 million.

Controversy and criticisms

In February 2010, BBG Executive Director Jeff Trimble collaborated with the National Security Council to publish a VOA statement about Iran's jamming of international satellites. Critics accused BBG of toning down their criticism to suit the foreign policy goals of the administration, violating the "firewall" that the BBG was supposed to provide between the government and the journalism it sponsors. In an email to Foreign Policy magazine, BBG's Public Affairs Director responded to the controversy, stating "the BBG 'firewall' served to protect the integrity and credibility of our journalistic products. An official policy statement by a senior management official of the agency is not a journalistic product."

Later that year, Senator Tom Coburn held up the Obama administration's appointments of Michael P. Meehan and Dana Perino to the board, with the aim of drawing attention to the organization's perceived ineffectiveness, stating in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine: "The BBG is the most worthless organization in the federal government. It's full of people who know nothing about media or foreign policy." Senator Jim DeMint also attempted to use the nominations to force a hearing on the BBG after frustrations with a perceived lack of congressional oversight over the organization. Coburn had written an open letter to then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in August 2010 citing "longstanding concerns regarding transparency and effectiveness of our taxpayer funded international broadcasting agencies under the purview of the Broadcasting Board of Governors." Though a report on BBG was eventually given to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Coburn was ultimately unsuccessful in trying to block the appointments to the board.

In a January 2015 interview with The New York Times, the newly-appointed CEO of the BBG, Andrew Lack, said ""We are facing a number of challenges from entities like Russia Today which is out there pushing a point of view, the Islamic State in the Middle East and groups like Boko Haram." Russia Today responded with a comment from their editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan saying "We are extremely outraged that the new head of the BBG mentions RT in the same breath asworld’s [sic] number one terrorist army. We see this as an international scandal and demand an explanation." State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki clarified Lack's statement in her January 23 press briefing, saying "would the U.S. Government put those three in the same category? No, we wouldn’t. However, there are concerns...that Russia’s own independent media space is shrinking and the Kremlin continues to apply pressure on the few remaining outlets."

In July 2016, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Jeff Shell, was denied entry into Russia. Matt Novak, writing for the tech blog Gizmodo, referred to the BBG as the "propaganda arm" of the U.S. Government and speculated that its alleged role in propagating propaganda on behalf of the U.S. Government was a reason for the denied entry of Jeff Shell into Russia.