Bye VOA
VOA and me - shall we go apart?
Right Honorable Radio Friend,
Dear Dr Kim Andrew Elliott,
The first time I discovered that there was such a thing as the short wave band was way back in 1970, that is for 32 years ago. One of the first international short wave broadcasters I heard was the Voice of America which made an effort to beat the BBC in competition to teach me to pronounce English one or the other way. I was only 13 at the time, hence it did make a difference.
As my linguistic skills increased, I started gradually to pay more and more attention to the contents of the transmissons. Both VOA and BBC have ever since had a firm position as a source of news and information that I have learned to trust. That was essential those days when lie factories such as Radio Moscow and their affiliates made their utmost to pollute the minds of young people.
At the age of 44, I am today in the position of forwarding my views on the news by delivering my own commentaries through the World wide web. I do it every day in four different languages. Of course I want my positions to be based on balanced information from a number of independent sources, VOA included of course.
Refering to above I am sorry to say that after 32 years of partnership I now may have to give up the Voice of America as one of my trusted sources. The obvious reason to that is the fact that VOA has decided to discontinue the Communications World. I find that the only way to force the best DX and IT programme in English back to air is a comprehensive listener boycott.
I will not listen to VOA transmissions untill CW has returned to air. Nor will I forward any information from VOA on any of my web sites or refer to VOA as a source or otherwise. I will also call upon my readers to join the boycott.
In your capacity of audience research officer you will no doubt understand that this kind of web publicity is the last thing that VOA needs at this day and age of war against terrorism. My boycott is by no means directed against the US government or the alliance against terrorism. It is directed against bureaucracy and officials who do not understand the actual effects of their decisions.
I will of course start to propagate the listener boycott on my sites in all four languages A S A P. I shall explain the reasons as to why listening to the VOA is not the right thing to do at the moment. I will however declare that anybody choosing not to join the boycott will nevertheless receive accurate information on the global events through your transmissions. In fact I am asking people temporarily to give up the access to your accurate info.
I hope that this will be the first and last time in my life to voluntarily give up access to VOA. I also hope that this intermediate state of affairs will not last longer than a given number of weeks. I trust to be able to give up this nonsense very soon as the Communications World returns to air.
Sincerely yours,
posted by Larko at 08:37
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