Helle Dale of The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing US think tank, says that “the BBC World Service Trust, a separate development assistance entity of the British government, actually already is the recipient of American taxpayer funding - as mind-blowing as that concept might be. USAID is giving the BBC World Service Trust $4.5 million for “media support for strengthening advocacy, good governance and empowerment” worldwide, among other things training journalists in Nigeria. Furthermore, the State Department’s DRL has also approved $350,000 for BBC World Service Trust to do shortwave broadcasting into Burma. Needless to say, this largess is not going down well at Voice of America and the BBG, which itself also performs these functions.”
Andy Sennitt comments: I cannot verify whether the information published by Ms Dale is accurate. I note that the Democratic Voice of Burma, an independent radio/TV station run by Burmese dissidents, is facing cutbacks due to a funding shortfall. I would have thought that providing funding to enable Burmese journalists to provide an independent service to their fellow-countrymen would be a more appropriate way of spending the aid budget. BTW that’s a personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of RNW.
Related story:
on Mar 30th, 2011 at 12:41
And why does not the EU finance international broadcasts by European International stations like BBC, RNW, DW an RFI. EU could put a budget available to keep the transmitters on air, such as 648 and 6075.
Maybe not the cup of tea of the present stations, EU could start one big International operation, with the participation of all EU members. Like VOR and CRI……