Message to VOA staffers (02/08/04)

Message to VOA staffers

Following is the text of a message sent to Voice of America staffers on Tuesday, February 3, by VOA Director David Jackson.

With a mixture of sadness and pride, I am announcing today that VOA will end regularly scheduled programs in Bulgarian, Estonian, Czech, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak and Slovenian, along with many of our broadcast feeds to affiliate stations in Central and Southeastern Europe. This action, which will take effect on Friday, February 27, 2004, is in accordance with the recently passed FY 2004 federal budget, which endorsed the administration's proposal to close these services.

The sadness comes from the fact that we will be saying good-bye to many loyal friends and colleagues in these services. The pride reflects the job that they have done, both those who are with us today and the many men and women who have served with such distinction over the past 60 years. Their professionalism and dedication to freedom and truth have played an important role in the spread of democracy we're seeing today among their audiences.

As the world changes, however, our priorities at VOA also must change. Just as we have done throughout our history, we have to shift our focus to new audiences and new priorities. This inevitably means difficult decisions.

Other changes will affect our Ukrainian radio service, which will reduce its daily broadcast from two hours to one hour per day, beginning March 1, 2004. VOA Ukrainian will retool its programming and expand its multimedia capabilities. Together with an improved Ukrainian language "Window on America" TV program, the service will be well positioned to provide full multimedia coverage of this year's presidential elections, both in the United States and Ukraine this coming November.

Finally, VOA's Armenian language broadcast staff will be reduced to two positions. A review of the service is under way to determine how best to use its remaining resources to maximize its impact in the target region.

I know I speak for all of us at the Voice of America in thanking all of our colleagues who have been broadcasting to Central and Eastern Europe. Your contributions will always be remembered and honored.

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