Posted on Fri, Nov. 19, 2004
WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press
...
"We're becoming just another bunch of blah-blah-blah on the air," Lev Roitman, a senior commentator for the private U.S.-funded station, said Thursday. "They must be idiots to do something like this at this critical time in Russia."
...
The station's primary target is urban, employed, university-educated Russians aged 35 and up. Key changes include more call-in shows, a Web site overhaul to appeal to the 18-plus crowd, and a shift from longer evening programs on human rights and other issues to shorter, snappier spots aired throughout the day.
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The broadcaster, which gets $75 million a year from Congress, has moved key positions to Moscow and now broadcasts 70 percent of its material from the Russian capital. Critics say that exposes the station known Radio Svoboda - Russian for "Liberty" - to government intimidation and the threat of censorship.
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"The rationale for some of the changes is reasonable. But how can you establish credibility when you're misleading people?" Corti said. "We're a paragon, perceived to be independent because we're a foreign station that doesn't belong to the oligarchs. We had something unique. Now we're becoming like everyone else."
RFE/RL, whose 600 employees and network of 3,000 freelancers were overseen and funded by the CIA until 1971, now answers to the Washington-based Broadcasting Board of Governors. Besides its transmissions to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, which are rebroadcast by affiliates to far-flung regions, it also airs broadcasts in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
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She said the revamp sprang from the perception that the station nominated in 1991 for the Nobel Peace Prize is foreign, aloof and run by Russian dissidents and expatriates "who hate Russia" and spout American propaganda.
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http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/10221861.htm 
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