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USIA: Exchanges, Training and Technical Assistance The role of the United States Information Agency (USIA) is also quite important in determining the shape of U.S. government strategy with respect to the media in the former Soviet Union. The USIA’s budget for its regular programs for the NIS in 1992 totaled $42 million. In fiscal year 1993, the USIA has $97 million to spend, about $40 million of which originated from the Freedom Support Act. Only a portion of these funds go to contracts or grants for media-related activities. The Freedom Support Act funds have their origin—for USAID as well as USIA—in the Vancouver (Clinton-Yeltsin) Summit and the Tokyo (G-7) Summit. The USAID funds funneled through USIA largely go to increasing the numbers of people who would participate in the general run of USIA programs, like the international visitor program and exchanges of individuals. Some of the funds are specially budgeted for high level members of government. Ambassador Thomas W. Simons Jr. is the Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to the New Independent States (which does not include the Baltics). The office in USIA that is in charge of coordinating programs is a geographic bureau: East European and NIS Affairs. It is headed by Anne M. Sigmund, a long time USIA officer who has been stationed in Warsaw, Moscow, St. Petersburg and elsewhere in the region. Morris (Bud) Jacobs is the Deputy Director of the office; Joe Macmanus is the desk officer for Russia and Lorraine Predham is the program officer for NIS Technical Assistance. The principal mechanism USIA employs, in numbers of grants if not in terms of funds expended, is the exchange visit, ranging from short-term programs to academic degree support. It is frequently the case that the USIA office identifies promising journalists or persons who could benefit from exposure to American publishing techniques and then provides travel grants and organized tours for them. As examples, USIA provided funds for four Georgian journalists to tour the United States to study media-government relations for two weeks. There are similar efforts under the rubric of “media training.” USIA’s global television service, WORLDNET, brings NIS television crews to the US to produce documentaries, usually thirty minutes long, in which the NIS crew works with an American producer. USIA funds have been made available for American media practitioners to be professionals in residence at press and television organizations in the former Soviet Union. One such position has been funded for the Russian-American Press and Information Center in Moscow. The National Forum Foundation was awarded a grant to provide training for six Kyrgyz journalists to spend one month each in the United States in workshops and taking part in press internships. Internews was awarded several Citizen Exchanges grants to conduct journalism training seminars. The most recent grant is for what the agency describes as a series of intensive, hands-on management training programs for independent television station managers in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Central Asia. The Institute for International Education received a grant for a two-part media training program. And the USIA is currently advertising in the Federal Register for American universities who wish to establish partnerships with schools of journalism in Russia. |
Last Updated: 11/20/99 |
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© 1999 Post-Soviet Media Law &
Policy Newsletter |
