Letter to the Editor: How closing down Voice of America trickles down to Quincy

Very little has been said about the Trump administration’s order to pull the plug on the Voice of America (VOA) operations on March 15. Elon Musk dismissed the organization, founded during World War II, as no longer relevant and too liberal. Listen to VOA World Service’s last programming content to judge for yourself (until our government takes it down).

A friend of mine who worked at the VOA in technical operations confirmed he was locked out March 15.

Times have changed technically in how many people around the world get information on what is happening near and far.

It all started for the VOA in February 1942 with its first transmission into Nazi Germany of news spoken in German counter to the narrative of what was being preached by the German government.

These were medium wave and short wave (AM) amplitude modulated transmissions day and night to people’s ears who could use the same radios that their government was using to spread their lies. Unlike the internet and other forms of communication today, it was very hard to detect who was listing for prosecution. 

During the past 20 years or so, all short-wave broadcasting has ended for the VOA and almost all government agencies around the world, including the BBC world service.  Harris GatesAir sold its last Shortwave SW100A transmitter in 1993.

When I was about 15, I got my first radio with the short wave band.  Listen to old VOA content including the playing of Yankee Doodle Transmission Introduction to Programing of the VOA worldwide back in time. 

I could hear, at night and even daytime, the transmissions from Greenville, N.C., and Bethany, Ohio, beamed around the world and compare them to what I was hearing out of Moscow and Havana. While everything I heard out of Russia and Cuba was always positive of what was going on in their country, the VOA gave me information both of good things and not so good things happing in the U.S. I guess I was supposed to believe that while some places were perfect, the USA was flawed.  I first heard of the counties like Rhodesia and terms like apartheid in those newscasts.  

What I came away with was that I lived in a Democracy while some people did not.

The VOA had continued FM broadcasting as well as streaming service. In some 30 transmission sites in Africa, FM transmissions were programmed both in the population’s primary languages as well as English spoken in a slow deliberate manner to the ears of people who know English as their second or third language.

Unlike events in the past, when the VOA stated their end of transmissions and how to continue to listen weeks ahead of time for medium and short-wave transmissions, the FM transmissions within Africa and other areas around the world ended without notice March 15. Hard to tell what will happen to these facilities if they are left abandoned in their locations now. It is interesting to note that while most people in this world have some form of access to electricity, some 685 million people don’t. Some 570 million are in Africa. Battery-operated FM radios, however, are still everywhere.

So how does all this affect us living in Quincy Community right now? Check out the video above produced by GatesAir. GatesAir and Broadcast Electronics in Quincy both supply equipment worldwide to broadcasters that included the VOA.   Rich Redmond, shown in the video, now works for BE, having moved from GatesAir awhile back.

Don Carpenter
Quincy, Illinois