Because of this support by the Office of
Engineering, says VOA East Asia Division
Director Jay Henderson, the VOA Chinese
Branch now sends more than a million and a
half emails a day. “We’ve easily surpassed our
goal for this year and hope that at the rate
we’re going,” Henderson adds, “we might
reach five million a day long before our 2005
deadline to attain that goal.”
As for the ‘pull’ element of the program, on
each of those emails sent, there are links with
two to six different proxy sites, those not
prohibited by Chinese censors. The proxy
sites contain a wealth of information, including
VOA and RFA websites, and can be changed
from day to day, just as broadcast engineers
over the years have switched from some
frequencies to others to confuse jammers.
The struggle is ongoing. Reporters San
Frontieres, in a report just released, notes that
Chinese specialists in April sent emails
containing speciallydesignedviruses to theVOA
Chinese website, and that other sites such as
those of the Falunggong movement and pro-
Tibet organizations, also were attacked. The
Australian TV networkABC reported onApril
23 that its website also had been blocked for
the first time, just a fewweeks before the Dalai
Lama was to visit Australia.
But countermeasures to blockage of the
Internet and the courage of people with a need
to know have combined to demonstrate again
that no nation can seal itself off electronically
in the digital, satellite age of communications.
Radio FreeAsiaVice President of Programming
Dan Southerland says that China’s decision to
finally announce the gravity of the SARS crisis
came after a retired military doctor, Jiang
Yanyong, revealed to RFAand
TimeMagazine
that those infected in Beijing were “a dozen
timesmore numerous than topChinese officials
had admitted” between January andApril 2003.
“As unfortunate as SARS is,” engineer Ken
Berman observes, “it has been a boon to the
freedomof Internet informationmovement. Our
news is anxiously followed, the VOAand RFA
Chinese language traffic has doubled, and has
allowed Chinese citizens free and unfettered
access to a wide range of previously censored
information. Email news (as of June 5) includes
daily SARS reports and statistics, and links to
theWorld Health Organisation and other sites.”
In the end, VOA’s Jay Henderson told the
Commission’s June hearing, “let us ask the
Chinese every day between now and the
opening of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing how
they can expect the world to send its best
athletes into their care if their government thinks
the proper response to a health crisis is to cover
it up. I hope,” he concluded, “that the next
time a SARS-like crisis hits China, the first
response will be: ‘Let’s get the word out’.”
China, Iran and the Internet
RFA Tibetan service broadcaster
Kalden Lodoe interviews the Dalai
Lama’s special envoy, Lodi Gyari
Alan L. Heil Jr. is a former deputy director of
VOA. His book, “Voice of America: A History”
is being published this summer by Columbia
University Press, New York and Chichester,
West Sussex.
START HERE.
ENPS is the news production
system of choice in almost
500 newsrooms in 42
countries, operating on 43,000
desktops and integrating with
production hardware and
software from dozens
of vendors.
Visit ENPS.com
It’s all about control.
If you have just one chance
where do you start?
to build the perfect newsroom,
