Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America journalist and former VOA acting associate director. He co-founded Free Media Online and the Committee for US International Broadcasting. In an Op-Ed, Mr Lipien says:
“US government-funded media freedom broadcasters, Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, RFE RL), have resorted to self-censorship of their news to keep broadcasting on two leased radio stations in Moscow in the days leading up to Russian presidential elections. Self-censorship affects only their radio newscasts on two AM Moscow transmitters, which are leased and paid for by the US government to rebroadcast VOA and RL programs. It does not extend to their other program delivery options, such as their websites. The newscasts on these stations were changed in response to a request from Russian operators of the transmitters who had warned that broadcasting political programming or poll results several days before the elections would violate Russian media law.”
Mr Lipien supports this claim with a copy of a letter sent out by the Voice of Russia warning the US broadcasters that breaching the regulations could result in them losing their licence to broadcast.
A BBG spokesperson commented “The VOA Russian Service intends to report on the elections and update its website and blogs throughout the election cycle, without any restriction on its activities. The VOA Russian Service prepares, however, a 30 minute radio program that gets broadcast Monday through Friday on another AM station in Moscow. The rest of VOA’s programming on the Moscow medium-wave station is in English. Because the frequency is on a local lease, it is subject to the Russian law. To comply, in the five days before the election the VOA English Service is making a change to the 24/7 stream sent to Moscow - replacing its five-minute hourly newscast with a pre-recorded segment that invites audiences to go online to VOANews.com for news and information about Russia and the world. The remainder of English stream to Moscow is unchanged.”
(Source : Media Network Weblog/Digital Journal) 
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