Tag Archives: Why Shortwave Radio

Shortwave offers “the most physical resistance to interdiction of any medium available to international broadcasting”

Edward R. Murrow transmitting station site in Greenville, NC

I recently read the following comments by Kim Andrew Elliott regarding the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ strategic move away from shortwave radio. I think Kim is spot-on:

As a shortwave listener for nearly a half-century, I am saddened to see the reduction of shortwave broadcasting, especially by US international broadcasters. As an international broadcasting audience research analyst, however, I see much data showing a decline in the number of of people owning and and listening to shortwave radios. Even in rural areas, audiences are moving to FM radio, television, and mobile phones.

US international broadcasting should employ, if possible, the media preferred by its target audiences. If access to those media are denied in the target country, then the use of more robust but less popular media is necessary. Shortwave can be jammed, but it still offers the most physical resistance to interdiction of any medium available to international broadcasting. New digital modes allow text to be transmitted very efficiently via shortwave, requiring much less power than needed for voice. Shortwave could therefore be an alternative means of delivery when the internet is blocked. (On the subject of internet blocking, see previous posts re Iran and China.)

For future emergencies, when the internet, mobile networks, cable television, and other popular forms of communication will be disrupted, the United States should maintain an interagency global network of shortwave transmitters. These can be used by US international broadcasting to reach key target countries, by the State Department to reach Americans abroad and for public diplomacy tasks, and by the military for information operations and other purposes. The output of each agency would remain separate. Their functions would not be intermingled. The shortwave transmitter network would operate as a common carrier.

No doubt that shortwave radio listenership is on the decline. Still, as we point out so often, many around the world still rely on the medium. Indeed, should those of us who regularly use the internet ever experience a regional/national internet blackout or other potential communications disaster, shortwave radio would be a reliable communications medium of last resort.

Broadcasters (like RCI) should not dispose of their broadcasting infrastructure during cuts. Kim’s suggestion of an “inter-agency global network of shortwave transmitters” is a worthy option.

Spread the radio love

China blocks foreign websites for one hour

2 Replies

(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?

Spread the radio love

Censorship in Djibouti: International broadcasters, take note

1 Reply

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.

Spread the radio love

BBC World Service: A Lifetime of Shortwave Radio

Leave a reply

(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.[…]

Read the BBC World Service article in its entirety here. I have filed this article under our ever-growing tag “Why Shortwave Radio?”

Spread the radio love

RNW: radio = free access without app or web

Leave a reply

Brilliant article from Radio Netherlands Worldwide. Hat tip to SWLing Post reader Mike Taniwha!

(Source: RNW)

On World Radio Day, 13 February 2012, UNESCO will remind the world that there is a medium which reaches parts that other media can’t reach.

Radio is still a vital form of communication because a radio station can be set up much faster, and at much lower cost, than a terrestrial or satellite TV station. Radio is especially useful for reaching remote communities and vulnerable people such as the illiterate, the disabled and the poor. It also provides a platform for such groups to take part in the wider public debate.

Radio also plays a vital role in emergency communication and disaster relief, which was illustrated following the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December 2004. RNW was able to help several partner stations in Indonesia by sending out “radio stations in a box” – self-contained mobile FM stations providing a temporary studio and transmitter ready to be used by broadcasters whose own facilities had been destroyed.[continue reading…]

Thanks, RNW, for reminding us why radio is the the most effective information medium. Read the full article at Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

Spread the radio love

Radio República: shortwave broadcasting 24/7 on a budget

Leave a reply

In this Miami Herald Op Ed piece, Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, the national secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, defends his organization and their clandestine station, Radio Republica. It’s worth noting that in an effort to use their limited funds effectively, and to get their message into Cuba, they use shortwave radio as their medium of choice:

(Source: Miami Herald)

Radio República, the Directorate’s 24-hour, seven-day-a-week shortwave radio station, has provided a voice to Cuba’s resistance from the smallest provincial towns to the largest Havana neighborhoods. Its format has been strategically designed to enhance the natural self-defense mechanism of nonviolent struggle generated by Cuban society. Costing between $1.5 million to $2 million a year, Radio República’s budget accounts for over 50 percent of the Directorate’s annual funds from federal grants. These costs are far below the annual budgets of both public and commercial shortwave radio stations.

Likewise, it is undeniable that Directorio has made a vital contribution to the changing attitudes of the international community towards the Castro regime. The Cuban pro-democracy leadership has moved from international neglect to international recognition, winning prestigious awards like the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize and nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize in the process.

[…]The truth is that the testimony of hundreds of civic resistance leaders throughout the island shows that Radio República has become an essential tool for social organization.

Read the full Op Ed article on the Miami Herald website.

Though they carry a different message, the choice in shortwave radio is the same for Charles Caudill and WCB.

Spread the radio love

Charles Caudill believes in the power of shortwave radio

2 Replies

Charles Caudill, is president & CEO of World Christian Broadcasting. This week, he wrote a piece in Radio World about why his organization still firmly believes in shortwave radio.

(Source: Radio World)

In order to make [our] budget go as far as possible, there is no question that we can reach more people on a regular basis with shortwave than with any other method. With an annual budget of something over $3 million, we will be able to broadcast 50 to 60 hours daily from our two broadcast facilities. Those 50 to 60 hours will be produced by six different services: English, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Latin American and African.

Obviously, we cannot do everything on that limited budget, but we can literally talk to millions of people using shortwave. We don’t have the luxury of being able to cut $40 million or even $14 million from our budget as some international broadcasters can. Our idea is that God has given us the ionosphere. Our job is to make use of it.

There are millions of analog receivers in the world — some say 600 million, some say 1.5 billion, some say as many as three billion. Regardless of the number, those receivers will not be turned off tomorrow. Those receivers will have listeners for years and years.

Look around; even though technology advances with great rapidity, there are still newspapers. I receive mine every morning. There are still AM radios and FM receivers and they are still making more. And you can still buy books. They are still being published. Even though Amazon is making a fortune selling electronic digital reading devices, they still sell books.

[…]My point is, no medium disappears overnight. Our belief is that shortwave will be here for a long, long time.

Read Caudill’s full article on Radio World’s website.

Spread the radio love