winning press freedom conference

One characteristic shared by all autocratic regimes is the monolithic nature of their news media.

There is an “official” version of events, and diverting from the party line is asking for a world of trouble.

And that is the job of Libby Liu, President of Radio Free Asia, a thorn on the side of many Asian regimes, including, of course, China, and in many instances, the only version of alternative radio in those countries.

The Whole New Meaning of Alternative Radio
By Libby Liu

Radio Free Asia is funded by US Congress, covering various countries in 4 languages. We do what these regimes hate most, get local and national information to people who don’t have access to it. We don’t choose our news, our audience in those countries do, and that’s what we tell governments who complain that all we carry is negative news.

When a person can’t talk about freedom and feelings, they feel so liberated when they listen to reports on our radio.

We’ve been doing this thanks to the bravery of our sources for 11 years. They tell us what’s going on in their country. If they have a story about civil rights or corruption, we investigate and find independent corroboration. We love our citizen journalists.

We want to look at every day life. We must be vigilant of our journalists’ ethics. We hold on to so many stories because of lack of context. Imagery without context is subject to manipulation.

If we make a mistake, the Chinese government will be all over us. We have multiple languages in China. We covered a demonstration regarding the rule to ban head-scarves. We made cold calls into the regions and after 60 phone calls we found an eyewitness who could confirm the story in a tiny village.

There’s interference to Radio Free Asia. Governments spend as much jamming our newscasts as we spend trying to stay on the air. Once we got our dialect broadcasting up, then China did as well.

We get letters from listeners but from outside the country. It’s impossible from within the country to send mail to us. We are part of the alleged Dalai Lama clique. We are condemned by the Cuban government who accuse us of being activists, something we don’t do. We have become targets of propaganda. We should question some of the basic assumptions that Tibet is part of China.

The cyber attacks? Does anyone think that the government isn’t complicit? The primary goal of this cyber attacks is to break the trust of the dissidents, NGOs and news sources. As the news gets out about the compromising of sources, it becomes more frightening. I can’t click on an attachment that comes from someone I know, I worry. It’s shocking this “nationalism” is causing fear and hysteria reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Citizens communicate to us asking us to tell the Tibetans that not all Han Chinese hate them.

Imagine the power of this propaganda machine where the Dalai Lama is a liar and we are terrorists.

Libby Liu is President of Radio Free Asia.