Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor David Iurescia, who shares the following article from Radio Prague (in Spanish), which focuses on the history and relevance of Radio Free Europe. For the past 30 years, the station has been broadcasting from Prague, continuing its mission of providing uncensored news to regions where press freedom is severely restricted. The article explores the station’s enduring role in the fight against authoritarian censorship and the growing challenges it faces in today’s geopolitical landscape.
Read the full article on Radio Prague’s website (Google Translate can assist with translation).
As a SWL since the early 1960’s I never got worked up over the news or political content of different countries whether they were democracies, totalitarian regimes and anything in-between. Just hearing broadcasts from far-away places with announcers in their native language or heavily accented English was entertainment enough in itself. I knew the word propaganda at an early age and accepted it as part of life when spinning the VFO dial across the bands. Hearing differing opinions, including those diametrically opposed to my country made SW listening all the more entertaining.
Thank you David for he article and thank you Thomas for posting it.
Kari Lake, the incoming Goebbels of the Trump Administration and future head of VOA just ordered the VOA to cancel contracts with AP News, Reuters, and one other that escapes me, calling them ‘fake news.’ Her future mission as the head of the VOA is to keep Elon’s chainsaw away from it and focus on purging the whole operation of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” It’s probably the darkest day ever at VOA, with a complete abandonment of the pretense of objective reporting.
I listened to VOA the other week and it was HEAVILY dependent on AP Radio’s news service for actualities and reports, with a smattering of Reuters. It sounded more like AFRTS/AFN than VOA. Eliminating both news services leaves VOA with little more than reading press releases from the White House Press Office.
So much for free speech and supporting democracy while the new American administration is destroying same domestically. The same is true of VOA. As a kid I wrote to the radio Prague mailbag while Prague was in the East block. They read my mail on air which was quite a thrill for me ( although I had to ask my dad the USPS rural mail carrier), if the CIA would be on to me. He said “nah” to my relief as these were the so called “Cold War” days. This paled in comparison though to the time our (my wife and I), host in the former GDR (DDR, East Germany), during a weekend visit from the west, told us the Stasi wanted to interview us to recruit us. I was quite stunned and worried our hosts were now in some sort of trouble. The husband told me “no” and that he essentially told them to get lost as we were his guest, and the knew via “das Reisebüro der DDR” that they could talk to us elsewhere as they would know our total travel plans.
Worth knowing is that Radio Free Europe does not have uncensored news, but edited news. There are no media outlets that have completely uncensored news. The financier(s) always has the final say.