Word: vga
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...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...
...correspondent, Lawrence Freund, preparing a story on the trial of a group of Croatians accused of separatism, noted that Yugoslav security was being stepped up around President Tito's residence in Belgrade. USIA killed the story as "too sensitive" because it fostered the impression of political instability. Instead, VGA broadcast a toned-down story from the wire services...
...Advocacy. Because the Voice has always been a lifeline for dissidents in Communist countries, many apparently now feel let down. A prominent Yugoslav writer recently said: "The VGA is jamming itself-apparently out of some misguided spirit of detente." Pavel Litvinov, a Soviet intellectual now in exile in the U.S., gave a speech to Voice employees in the U.S.S.R. division in which he said: "The quality of your broadcasts to my country has declined 500% in the last few years." Astonishingly, the audience burst into applause...