BBG Watch Media
Helle C. Dale, the Heritage Foundation’s senior fellow in public diplomacy, writes in The Daily Signal on EU countries’ plans to provide “an alternative to the relentless bombardment of Russian media, which produces a highly distorted version of the news aimed at Russian speakers.”
Ms. Dale reports that at the meeting in Brussels, ministers tasked foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini with creating a strategic plan for an integrated media campaign by June.
She also writes that “the U.S. broadcasters, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the British BBC, the German Deutche Welle, etc., have not been able to counter the avalanche of well-funded broadcasting from Russia.”
But she notes that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, in collaboration with Voice of America, launched a 30-minute long Russian language TV news program “Nastoyashchee Vremya,” or “Current Time” aimed at countries bordering Russia. The program is carried by television channels and Internet portals in Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia.
HELLE DALE: “It will be necessary to deal with the challenge from Russian propaganda strategically and collaboratively, both in Europe and across the Atlantic. Nobody needs to imitate Russia’s propaganda offensive, though. The success of the West in the Cold War with truthful news and information to audiences behind the Iron Curtain shows the way forward.”
READ MORE: Europeans Agree to Counter Russian Propaganda War, Helle Dale, The Daily Signal, March 26, 2015