BBG Watch News
“Matt Armstrong’s blog on public diplomacy, international journalism, and the struggle against propaganda” will resume publication, according to an announcement on his www.MountainRunner.us blog.
Matt Armstrong was confirmed as member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) on August 1, 2013.
In 2011, he served as executive director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Previously, Armstrong was an adjunct professor of public diplomacy at the Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Southern California. In 2010, he founded and served as President of the MountainRunner Institute and published a blog on public diplomacy and strategic communication.
Armstrong chairs the Special Committee on the Voice of America in the 21st Century and is a member of the Advisory Committee and the Special Committee on the Creation of a Chief Executive Officer. Andy Lack, who had been selected by the BBG Board for the CEO position, is expected to start working as the BBG Director next week.
Armstrong also served as the chair of the Special Committee on the Future of Shortwave Broadcasting, which on August 1, 2014, issued its report, To Be Where the Audience Is; The Future of Shortwave.
The independent NGO Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting criticized the report for not paying sufficient attention to the needs of some of the poorest and most repressed audiences worldwide and for not focusing first on mismanagement and waste within the BBG bureaucracy.
Armstrong, however, has been critical of management and news reporting failures at the Voice of America (VOA).
There has been one new post so far on his MountainRunner blog since the announcement of the blog’s relaunching. The post is on the early history of U.S. public diplomacy, the U.S. Information Service and the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). See: Public Diplomacy’s ‘Missing Years’.
MountainRunner Reboots