BBG Watch Media

#ReformBBG Twitter hashtag tweets include charges that Broadcasting Board of Governors’ (BBG) U.S. taxpayer-funded Voice of America (VOA) Persian News Network (PNN) and Radio Farda (operated within the BBG agency by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) parrot Iranian regime’s propaganda.

“US taxpayers fund @RadioFarda_ to provide an alternative to propaganda. Instead it parrots regime media. #ReformBBG,” says one of the #ReformBBG tweets.

Another tweet says: “As proud American taxpayers we demand #ReformBBG! Tax $ should promote freedom & #democracy not #Iran ‘s dictators!”

Here are a few additional examples, including posts by Sheema Kalbasi @IranianWoman, an Iranian poet, filmmaker and rights activist:
 

#ReformBBG

MORE #ReformBBG

 

Former director of Radio Liberty during the fall of communism in the Soviet block and former presidentially-appointed member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), S. Enders Wimbush, has published in the Wall Street Journal highly critical comments about Radio Farda, the Persian News Network (PNN) of the Voice of America (VOA) and the current administration of the BBG.

His comments were published next to the letter to the Editor from current president of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Thomas Kent. Kent was responding to Sohrab Ahmari’s June 12 Wall Street Journal commentary “In Iran, Radio Liberty Doesn’t Live Up to Its Name.”

“While we will acknowledge any individual story that falls short of our editorial standards, as any news organization should,” Thomas Kent wrote, “the suggestion that Radio Farda somehow mirrors the Iranian press is ludicrous.” His full letter can be seen here.

Many observers of current U.S. international media outreach by the BBG, including S. Enders Wimbush, do not think that the criticism of Radio Farda, which is run by RFE/RL, and the Voice of America’s PNN programs to Iran is in the least unjustified or exaggerated.

READ: Devastating criticism of Radio Farda, VOA, and BBG from former official, BBG Watch, June 23, 2017.