BBG Watch Commentary
U.S. taxpayer-funded Voice of America (VOA) had an “EBOLA Special Coverage” page which for close to two months was not being updated with any new audio and text news reports. Visitors to the page would see “There is no program for program page” or “Page does not contain any article. Link to latest date by clicking here.”
In November 2014, the Voice of America and its oversight agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), announced that the VOA and the BBC World Service “have entered into a ground-breaking partnership to pool resources and content about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, so as many people as possible receive factual information about the disease.” BBC has a functioning and updated page, “Ebola outbreak,” which shows features and analyses.
Voice of America “EBOLA Special Coverage” Page Screen Shot 2015-05-06 at 12:45 AM
Voice of America “EBOLA Special Coverage” Page Screen Shot 2015-05-06 at 12:45 AM
Apparently no one within the Voice of America management and staff noticed that the VOA “Ebola Special Coverage” page was not showing any news content and was not being updated for many weeks. VOA actually had a number Ebola-related news reports during that period, but they were not appearing on its special Ebola news page.
The page appears to have been removed from the Voice of America English language website in the last few days (early May 2015) after someone finally may have complained to the VOA management.
At the Broadcasting Board of Governors open board meeting on April 29, 2015, outgoing VOA Director David Ensor said that VOA faces “big challenges ahead, such as Vladimir Putin’s activities and those of ISIS,” but he also mentioned “challenges that come all of a sudden, out of the blue, like Ebola in Africa, or for that matter how to best cover Baltimore.”
Mr. Ensor is expected to leave VOA at the end of May, but in the meantime he and other VOA executives face an apparently still insurmountable challenge of actually looking through the Voice of America websites, or at least checking on its main English language news website, voanews.com, and spotting ubiquitous news reporting and website management errors and other deficiencies.