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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, СІЧЕНЬ 2009 27 They Knew I Would Tell the Truth by Adrianna Melnyk Hankewycz Voice of America, a broadcasting service funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors of the U.S. government, has provided objective, reliable, and balanced radio and television (and now Internet) programming in 45 languages to an esti- mated audience of 134 million people worldwide. Created in 1942, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Voice of America was originally a corner- stone of a U.S. wartime initiative: Its first short- wave radio broadcast was in German, and was intended to counter Nazi propoganda. The purpose of VOA was to spread democracy — through example, not through propoganda — and to promote understanding of the United States throughout the world. By the end of World War II, VOA was broadcasting in 40 languages each week. VOA began its shortwave Ukrainian- language radio broadcasts to Ukraine on December 12, 1949. As part of a broader strategy of infor- mation warfare intended to conquer communism, VOA devoted a large portion of its resources throughout the cold war to reaching the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Describing the mission and activities of VOA, a May 1950 Time magazine article stated that “the Voice has its biggest impact in Iron Curtain countries, where, along with BBC, it [was] almost the only source of truthful news. Listening to the Voice [was] not technically illegal, but people caught listening [were] of ten fined or jailed under some pretext.” Through the years, shortwave radio pro- gramming into Ukraine and other Soviet states faced many challenges. According to the Time article cited above, in 1950, “the Voice's biggest technical problem [was] Moscow's furious attempts to jam the round-the-clock Voice broadcasts to Russia, and U.S. monitors estimate that Russian jamming has been between 70% and 80% effective. Voice officials hope to do better when the new U.S. transmitters go into operation.” And so began an almost fifty-year battle against the Soviet authorities to keep VOA programming from being jammed. The Soviet practice of jamming VOA would not be halted until 1987, under Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost. In a recent interview, Anya-Dydyk Pet- renko, a 24- year veteran program anchor of VOA’s Ukrainian radio broadcast, described the evolution she experienced firsthand: “When I first came to VOA — February 3, 1985 — our radio programs were jammed by the Soviet government. We had five hours of programming a day and about forty staffers. As of December 31, 2008, we no longer have radio programs. We air a fifteen minute daily television program ( Chas Time ) and a twenty minute weekly magazine show, Window on America . We have an active Web site and are recognized by the government of independent Ukraine.” In 1992, in accordance with a decree issued by Ukraine’s National Council on TV and Radio Broadcasting, Voice of America’s radio programs began to be carried on Ukrainian airwaves. And in 1999, Voice of America began staffing its program with Ukraine-based reporters, who gathered news with their Washington, D.C.-based counterparts. Mrs. Dydyk-Petrenko shared one of her most salient memories from a 1995 summer tem- porary assignment in VOA’s Kyiv Bureau, which was also her apartment. She spoke of the events surrounding Patriarch Volodymyr’s death: “During his funeral Ukrainian special forces Berkut fired tear gas and beat mourners. I followed the story all day but my deadline was approaching and I had to get back to my apartment to file for the 11 PM show (4 PM in Washington). As they were lowering the casket into a makeshift grave in front of St. Sophia's, the gates swung open and all hell broke loose. Berkut came running out clubbing and beating and chasing [mourners]. My driver was waiting for me around the corner. As I ran toward the car, I could not believe what I had just witnessed . . . this was a free and independent Ukraine . . . WHY? I made my deadline and filed my story on exactly what had happened. To my surprise, the local evening news did not mention this event. The following day at a press conference about the previous day's events, a few of the local Ukrainian reporters approached me and thanked me for reporting what they felt that they could not. They saw me at the funeral and listened to my VOA radio report, because — in their words — they knew I ‘would tell the truth’. I covered many events those summer months in Ukraine, but those words stuck with me the entire time.”
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