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In a surprising move, the US government’s venerable Voice of America is shutting down its Jerusalem bureau, according to government budget documents. Under the fiscal year 2015 budget signed by President Obama in December, the bureau will be shuttered sometime this year.
VOA is a news entity, but it is also a government one; shutting bureaus can have diplomatic as well as journalistic repercussions.
Multiple sources still with or now retired from VOA say the closure is an unintended consequence of a game of political chicken. They say that the bureau closure was inserted as a “poison pill” in the budget to get Congress to restore funds cut under the budget tool known as sequester. If it was, either the White House and Congress didn’t notice–or they didn’t care.
“(VOA Director) David Ensor led me to believe he was going to call Congress’ bluff,” said former VOA News chief Sonja Pace. “To my mind, he took a high-risk gamble, and he lost.”
VOA spokesperson Letitia King said she has “no information” that the Jerusalem closure was a “poison pill” designed to get Congress to give additional funding. But King denied that that closure of the Jerusalem bureau will have a negative impact on news operations.
“In terms of the region, a stringer remains in Jerusalem and the Cairo correspondent will travel extensively,” she said. “Cairo becomes the regional hub. It’s not as if we’re abandoning the region.”
VOA is a federal agency under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which also oversees other grantee broadcast entities. Its mission is both journalistic and governmental. Under its Charter, enacted by Congress, it is charged with broadcasting unbiased news to the world and especially to countries lacking free media and, at the same time, explaining US policies to those audiences. Like other government agencies, the BBG has to submit to the sequester. So, when time came to draft the 2015 budget proposal for the White House and Congress, each BBG entity had to come up with proposed cuts.
In 2013–when the 2015 proposal was under discussion–Pace, then the VOA news director, was summoned to the VOA director’s office to hear budget proposals, including the news that Jerusalem was on the block. Of its 21 bureaus, 11 of which are overseas, only the Jerusalem bureau and the one in Houston, TX, are scheduled to close this year. (Those 11 overseas bureaus are the ones staffed by VOA Central News correspondents, who provide material for all language services. Some language services have their own overseas bureaus.)
“It wasn’t, ‘What do you think about this,'” she said. “I came away with the impression that it was a done deal and was going to be put up to the Hill after going to the White House” and the Office of Management and Budget. Pace said she argued forcefully against the closure.
“I expressed, why would you do that?” she said. “Anything in the Middle East is crucial. Giving that up is like a global news organization retreating from the world stage.”
With the closure of Jerusalem, Cairo will be the only VOA staff bureau staffed by a Central News correspondent in the Middle East. There are stringers and freelancers, but no other correspondent bureaus in the region. (There were plans some years back to open a bureau in Dubai for Iranian coverage, but the idea was shelved for unknown reasons.)
Given the state of affairs in the Middle East, Pace argued that an experienced VOA News staff correspondent is essential to providing in-depth coverage and analysis. But Ensor, she said, was adamant that the region could be sufficiently covered out of Cairo with a stringer in Jerusalem.
So BBG submitted a budget request of $721.26 million, which included savings by various means, including a line (page 41) to close Jerusalem. The listed savings was $290,000, although King says the actual savings is closer to $500,000.
The wrinkle is that BBG actually did get extra funds in the budget. What was actually appropriated and enacted into law in December was a budget of $742 million, a $21 million increase. Asked about that, King said the additional funds are for “countering ISIL through contingency funds for Iraq and elsewhere,” as well as internet anti-censorship and broadcasting “capital improvements.” But the line item that mandates cutting Jerusalem is still there. As things now stand, the closure plan will be submitted to Congress in the next week or so.
The grantee entities of the Middle East Broadcasting Network still have what King called “a very robust presence” in the region, including 14 staffers in Jerusalem. Those numbers include staffers for Alhurra, a US government Arabic-language channel based in the US.
But, says Sonja Pace, a stringer along with Alhurra staff in Jerusalem and coverage from Cairo cannot substitute for a seasoned VOA correspondent based in Jerusalem.
“You can rewrite the wires from Cairo, but that’s not the kind of coverage you get from a good staff correspondent,” she said. “Insofar as a stringer, the likelihood is that you will get someone very green, or some has-been, or someone who just wasn’t very good.”
The budget battle over VOA is played out amidst a wider debate about the future direction of US international broadcasting. A bill introduced last year that would have overhauled the broadcasting apparatus, but the proposal sparked an outcry among VOA journalists for language that would have directed VOA to “promote” US foreign policy. The bill passed the House with no debate but was never taken up by the Senate.
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