Word: vga
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...change in tone at the Voice of America. Until recently, as a matter of course, the Government radio network heard round the world in 36 languages reported on opposition stirring within Communist countries. Now Voice executives are trying to avoid "provocative" stories. In the process, they have restricted VGA correspondents to the point where many of the newsmen feel that legitimate stories are being suppressed. Some editors and reporters in the radio's U.S.S.R. division have grumbled about interference from the glavlit-the Russian term for official censor...
...practice, it has wobbled between its dual roles as Government propagandist and conveyor of straight news. James Keogh, the former executive editor of TIME who became USIA director in 1973, discarded the old Cold War attitudes of his hard line predecessor, Frank Shakespeare. Under Keogh, a skilled, seasoned newsman, VGA began finally to accept detente as a reality and to report evenhandedly on the new warmth in U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations. However, Keogh also tightened the policy reins on VGA correspondents. During Watergate, he forbade any stories that were attributed to unnamed sources, thereby preventing VGA's broadcast of some...
Today, many experienced journalists at the VGA are bitterly disappointed. Keogh and his deputy for the Soviet bloc, John Shirley, they say, have allowed political considerations to mute the Voice. Among recent examples they cite...
...VGA's Munich bureau suggested a series on young workers in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Washington turned the idea down, according to one VGA official, because "if it had been honest and accurate, it would have been offensive to the governments involved; it would have seemed gratuitous and ideologically polemical...
Strout, who has appeared as a moderator (at $75 a clip) on Voice of America broadcasts, told the board that he has no intention of abandoning radio: "I said that I thought the VGA was a pretty good thing. I told them that in my judgment, often fallible, they were making a mistake." The board did not agree. In response to the atmosphere created by Watergate, the rule was laid down to keep congressional reporters from being (or seeming to be) too cozy with business or Government. Says Hearst Correspondent Pat Sloyan, a retiring board member...