From a Broadcaster
Nobody should miss the key point in the letter to Congress: The IBB — International Broadcasting Bureau as an element of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) — exists solely to provide administrative support to broadcasting.
Yet the IBB is getting bigger — at the same time that broadcasting units are being decimated. As the letter states, “Broadcasting should be the last thing to be cut. It makes little sense to grow the bureaucracy while cutting that which it is meant to support.”
Spelling it out in numbers: If the fiscal year 2013 proposal is enacted, Voice of America (VOA) staff levels will be cut 13.2%. But just 3.3% positions will be cut from the IBB.
In fact, the IBB’s full-time equivalent (FTE) positions will increase by 85 new position, for a total of 678 . At the same time, VOA will LOSE 121 positions.
It’s a crazy, upside-down agency run by managers intent on lining their own pockets while driving the mission into the ground.