Quote Originally Posted by George L. Singleton View Post
Thanks for the guidance applicable to several of us, including me!

Question: Can someone tell me how this discussion [about Voice of America primarily, but discussions of Hamas are within it, too, somehow] is being posted on the open Internet?

Here is the open Internet updated posting I just found the second day in a row now? I guess the SWJ except for the "Members Only" section is open or public domain, but it is curious to me how fast these VOA headlined discussin are making it onto the open Internet, outside of the SWJ.

Any ideas who is posting us, which includes the full formatted SWJ page and such?

Thanks for any feedback on this question.
This may be an example of why you don't see the amount of concern you might like in how quickly or effectively the VOA arm of government policy is being pushed out. It's not that it doesn't represent a very important part of overall foriegn policy but rather the fact that it is no longer the only game in town for such information dissemination.

The internet has brought forth as you point out an amazing capability of providing direct feedback worldwide within less time than it takes to write this post. This means that although there may not be a laptop in every house there is someone almost anywhere who does have access.

Consider this the opportunity to put forth reasoned and well supported discourse in relation to what VOA has to offer and let it make it's case through standing up against it's competitors. Al Gezeera and others are in their own way representative of the areas they are covering. They tend to hire those who come to them volunteering and as such there will inevitably be somewhat biased reports which come out. But they are at least competing with other media not trying to silence them. So all in all things could be worse.

Also consider that many publications both here and abroad have some of the same problems and thus we find stories coming out which end up being fraudulent and have to be retracted. Again ,could be worse. Finally regardless what happens VOA should be anywhere we can get it simply because it's sole purpose is to give voice to our policies and to help avoid mis characterizations by others. Let's be honest though in understanding that few are going to be listening if locally they are not being made aware of it. So real involvement with the population is required in order to build awareness.

Allowing the discussion to degrade into attacks on personal affiliations or pre-established ideas of entities takes away the ability of the the readers to actually compare the points for and against to test for validity.

For me I ask three main questions

1- Can it help
2- Might it hurt
3-is it possible to accomplish without active participation by the areas being considered.

If the first is true and the second not then as long as the third works let's do it. If there are more things behind the curtain that I don't see that can show it to do more harm than good than lay them out and lets discuss them.