Tag Archives: Why Radio

In Zimbabwe, “if you want to hear the truth…listen to Shortwave Radio Africa…listen to VOA”

This is a brilliant piece on the lack of press freedom in Zimbabwe and the importance of shortwave radio. It was broadcast yesterday on Weekend All Things Considered. Links to the show and audio are below.

(Source: NPR)

In Seke, a rural community 40 miles outside Harare, James Chidakwa and his father eat roasted nuts and cornmeal inside a small brick hut. They’re farmers who rely heavily on maize and chickens to survive. James Chidakwa says that like many, his family refuses to listen to government TV or radio broadcasts.

“They always lie to the people,” he says. “Everything they say is a lie.”

So at 6 p.m. most evenings, they turn on a battery-powered, short-wave radio and tune in to a “pirate radio station.” Chidakwa says Shortwave Radio Africa and Voice of America are their favorites.

“If you want to hear the truth, wait for the end of the day to listen to Shortwave Radio Africa, to listen to VOA,” he says.

The stations, which are based in the U.K. and the U.S., send their signals through radio towers in countries that border Zimbabwe. That means Zimbabwean officials — who claim these broadcasts are illegal — have little recourse. In the past, they’ve confiscated short-wave radios. Chidakwa says that forces some people to listen undercover.

“Some of them, they will take the radios into their bedrooms and, low volume, they listen to the news. But the truth is, there is fear in them,” he says.

But for Chidakwa and his father, it’s a risk they are prepared to take.

The stations, which are based in the U.K. and the U.S., send their signals through radio towers in countries that border Zimbabwe. That means Zimbabwean officials — who claim these broadcasts are illegal — have little recourse. In the past, they’ve confiscated short-wave radios. Chidakwa says that forces some people to listen undercover.

“Some of them, they will take the radios into their bedrooms and, low volume, they listen to the news. But the truth is, there is fear in them,” he says.

But for Chidakwa and his father, it’s a risk they are prepared to take.

You can listen to the full story from Weekend All Things Considered, by clicking here (mp3), or read the transcript on this page.

This is just one more story we’ll file under “Why Shortwave Radio.”

RCI, and others, I wish you were listening. Those in Zimbabwe certainly are.

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“Shortwave listening like a fishing expedition”

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(Source: Ventura County Star)

Shortwave listening like a fishing expedition
Trading clicks for turns, clarity for static … and really loving it

It starts with a high-pitched squeal followed by a burst of static.

[…]We’re living in the richest time the world has ever known when it comes to the availability of information from around the globe. But much of it arrives filtered – downsized into sound bites and a few seconds of video carefully selected and massaged by an editor. Almost everything you see and read has been interpreted and edited by professionals.

But when I spin the dial on my shortwave I travel to the source. Perhaps it’s the voice of an airline captain over the Atlantic reporting his position to an operator in New York. Or I may happen on music from a country I couldn’t even begin to spell. At other times I’ll come across news broadcasts from around the world — news that is told with the built-in biases and prejudices of the originating country. It’s all unfiltered, all coming to me as it happens. It’s such a random smorgasbord of information that there would be no way to duplicate it with a television or computer.

Unlike TV or the Web, shortwave listening is a lot like fishing. You never know what you’ll catch. Those who try it for the first time often find satisfaction and even excitement as they troll these waters and make their own catches for the first time.

Read the full article at the Ventura County Star.

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China blocks foreign websites for one hour

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(Photo: International Herald Tribune)

(Source: The Guardian)

China’s internet users have been cut off from accessing all foreign websites for around an hour in an unexplained incident that sparked speculation the country’s censorship system was being tested or further tightened.

The “great firewall” already blocks many sites hosted from other countries, but users in Beijing, Shanghai and other parts of China reported that they could not reach any foreign sites whatsoever on Thursday morning – although it was not clear whether the problems were universal.

Meanwhile, users abroad and in Hong Kong – which is part of China but not subject to Beijing’s net censorship – said they were unable to reach any sites on the Chinese mainland.

Some believed it was purely a technical failure, with several suggesting that Wednesday’s massive earthquakes had hit an undersea cable, disrupting services. In 2007, a tremor hit a major cable and dramatically slowed access to overseas sites for months.

Xu Chuanchao, an executive at Sohu, one of the country’s biggest internet portals, wrote on his microblog: “This malfunction is caused by the failure of China’s backbone network and is under renovation.”

But one company, Data Centre for China Internet, posted: “Latest news: most foreign websites can’t be accessed. Analysis: for commonly known reasons, a large number of foreign URLs are blocked. It is possible that the great firewall is undergoing some readjustment, mistakenly adding many foreign websites to the blocking list. The details are unclear.” (Continue reading article…)

What is clear is that we know China actively blocks foreign websites that criticize their government. The Chinese website of the Voice of America and Radio Canada International have been blocked for years. China also censors search engine results.

I believe this incident was most likely a fault in their “great firewall” rather than any network backbone. International broadcasters should take note: as you pull shortwave services targeting China, how will your audience there hear you?

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Censorship in Djibouti: International broadcasters, take note

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I just caught wind of a now all-too-familiar story in international broadcasting–this time, via Reporters Without Borders.

While I encourage you to read the full press release below, the summarized story is that Reporters Without Borders has launched a mirror web site for La Voix de Djibouti, an independent news source in Djibouti. Why? Because the regime in power in Djibouti, in an effort to stifle the free press, have decided to block the primary website of La Voix de Djibouti.

The article states (we add the boldface):

A Europe-based exile radio station that supports the opposition Renewal and Development Movement (MRD), La Voix de Djibouti, began by broadcasting on the short wave and then switched to being a web radio, but the authorities have blocked access to its website from within Djibouti.

The decision to move off of shortwave has, in essence, severely limited their freedom of the press and their listeners’/subscribers’ access to information. Reporters Without Borders is addressing this censorship by actively creating mirror sites of La Voix de Djibouti that are hosted outside of the blocked domains.

This is admirable, and we strongly support their worthy efforts in creating mirror sites. However, this solution is, at best, full of holes:

How do those who wish to follow the news find each new mirror site after it has been blocked? And presuming they can do so, how long will this take to figure out?
Will the website reader be tracked by the government and/or punished for attempting to circumvent imposed blocking? (Hint: Most regimes now have tools to do this: read this and this.) Has anyone considered these consequences to any individual caught for circumventing a blocked site?
What if the regime decides to simply turn off the internet? Can they do this? Sure they can…and frustratingly, they may.

As we’ve stated here many times before, the Internet is a wonderful information resource and it is proliferating across the planet. But with the Internet, as with FM radio, cable TV and terrestrial TV, repressive regimes can and do hold the power button, as well as the ability to control the content, or even take it over.

Shortwave radio is comparatively immune to this, and moreover, is untraceable. When we eliminate the infrastructure that supports shortwave broadcasting (as is happening at RCI Sackville) we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Poor child.

Full article as follows:

(Source: Reporters Without Borders)

4 April 2012–Reporters Without Borders has today launched a mirror site of radio La Voix de Djibouti’s website, http://lavoixdedjibouti.com, in order to help circumvent the government’s censorship and allow the population to have access to a news sources to which it is being denied.

The media freedom organization invites Internet users to go to http://lavoixdedjibouti.rsf.org in order to access an exact copy of the original site.

“As this is a country without media freedom, where only government propaganda is tolerated, we think it is crucial to help the population to gain access to other news sources,” Reporters Without Borders said. “While it is true that the level of Internet use is still low in Djibouti, it is not negligible, and use of social networks in particular is growing. The population will now be able to read critical news bulletins online.”

A Europe-based exile radio station that supports the opposition Renewal and Development Movement (MRD), La Voix de Djibouti began by broadcasting on the short wave and then switched to being a web radio but the authorities have blocked access to its website from within Djibouti.

So that independent news websites that are targeted by cyber-attacks and government blocking can continue posting information online, Reporters Without Borders has started mirroring sites. The first sites to be mirrored were those of the Chechen magazine Dosh and the Sri Lankan online newspaper Lanka-e News. The organization has also been urging Internet users all over the world to create more mirrors of these sites in a chain of solidarity.

Mirror sites can be used to circumvent blocking by governments. Although the government of Djibouti is blocking access to La Voix de Djibouti’s site, http://lavoixdedjibouti.com, by blocking the site domain name or the hosting server’s IP address, Internet users can still access the Reporters Without Borders mirror site, http://lavoixdedjibouti.rsf.org, because it is hosted on another server with another domain name.

The mirror site will be regularly and automatically updated with all the new content posted on the original site. If the mirror is itself later also blocked, the creation of further mirror sites together with a regularly updated list of these mirrors will continue to render the blocking ineffective in what is known as a Streisand effect.

Reporters Without Borders urges Internet users who want to help combat censorship and have the ability to host a site on a web server to follow suit. Send the URL of the mirror site you have created to wefightcensorship [at] rsf.org. The next mirroring operations launched by Reporters Without Borders will be reported on the @RSF_RWB and @RSFNet Twitter accounts with the #RSFmirror hashtag.

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BBC World Service: A Lifetime of Shortwave Radio

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(photo: BBC World Service)

An Antarctic glaciologist, Burmese monk, communications professor and a Somalian tell their shortwave radio stories in this article posted by the BBC World Service in honor of 80 years of shortwave radio broadcasts. In my opinion, these stories are very much representative of the power of shortwave radio and why, for many parts of the world, it is still vital. Though this article focuses on a look into the past, there are still many parts of the world that have no access to the internet, nor reliable electricity and/or their people live under repressive regimes. Shortwave radio offers a lifeline of information. Shortwave listening habits are not traceable or trackable (like they are over the internet) by those in power. The story below, by a Burmese monk, could stand as an example.

(Source: BBC World Service)

[…]The BBC has been an integral part of my life for over two decades now – I believe I haven’t missed a single transmission in all those years. I even kept a diary of all broadcasts from 1988 to 2003, recording all new staff who joined in those years and their first ever broadcast.

I started listening to the BBC Burmese Service in 1988 when the whole country rose up against one-party rule.

I was living in western Burma’s Rakhine State, teaching Buddhist scripture to the student monks. I was fascinated by the BBC’s coverage of the news and was much impressed that the news I heard on BBC turned out to be exactly what was happening in the country.

I was a well-informed and knowledgeable monk, partly because of the BBC. The BBC, because of its reporting on Burma, was much hated by the military authorities and people had to secretly listen to it within their own homes. But luckily for me, I had my own monastery then and could listen to the broadcasts relatively undisturbed.

Then I left for India for further studies but continued to listen. On my return to Burma, I moved to Rangoon, the then capital and stayed at a monastery on the suburbs of the city. Rangoon was a hotbed of activism against military rule and the military government openly practised a “divide and rule” policy. People were suspicious of each other and that distrust spread to the monasteries as well.

The other monks in the monastery disapproved of my listening to the BBC, because they feared government reprisals, and some even said I was an “informer” providing information to foreign broadcasters. They dubbed me a “reporter monk”.

I took more precautions but never stopped listening. I would take my transistor radio and go outside to the farthest corner of the monastery compound, away from other monks, at the times of the broadcasts.

Every day I learned something from the radio. My morning teaching lessons start only after the BBC morning programme and I do my nightly prayer after the evening programme.

My radio is set at the frequencies on which the BBC Burmese broadcasts and I usually tune in a few minutes before the programme starts. I don’t want to miss anything. When the weather is bad, it takes more dedicated effort to tune into the shortwave signal, but I don’t mind that.

Some people frown on monks listening to the BBC. But I believe my life is enriched by it. The BBC has become a very important part of my life and I will continue listening to it until the end of my life. As Buddha has taught, we living beings must face the truth and bring about the truth. I believe the BBC is earning this merit every day by sharing the truth with millions of listeners.[…]