Anyone who hasn’t lived through the Cold War may find the Portuguese Netflix spy thriller series “Glória” unlikely.
Deep in the Portuguese countryside, in the small village of Glória, a complex radio transmission operation run by Portuguese and American engineers took shape in the 1950s, a branch of the organization. Munich-based news station called Radio Free Europe.
It broadcasts anti-communist news and messages in the languages of many of the Soviet republics, but, on show and in real life, that was only part of its original mission: It was also a front. of the CIA.
Until 1971, Radio Free Europe was a covert US intelligence operation seeking to penetrate the Iron Curtain and incite anti-communist dissidents in Czechoslovakia, in Poland and other places.
The CIA stopped funding Radio Free Europe when its operations were exposed. Since then, the news organization has been funded by the US Congress and has editorial independence.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — or RFE/RL — now bears little resemblance to its historical predecessor, as scripted in “Glória,” but it is still pursuing a journalistic mission based on on facts by local reporters, in local languages to local audiences across the former Soviet Union and Central Asia.
The organization is now based in Prague instead of Munich and is growing, opening a new office this month in Riga, Latvia, to host a large Russian-focused staff.
Today, RFE/RL is just a part of radio, although in some areas radio is still how people access it. The majority of Russian-speaking readers find the report online, especially through social media platforms.
At offices in Prague, high gates, tight security checks and American flags flying in front make visitors suspect that they are entering a building with American ties.
But this large cube of gray marble and concrete – perched right up a hill from Franz Kafka’s burial ground – is a modern newsroom that reaches millions of people every week.
It says it attracts an average of 40 million people a week through its programs and channels, broadcasting in 27 languages and 23 countries “where media freedom is limited or where professional journalism has not fully developed”.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February shook Radio Free Europe’s operations and underscored the importance of this mission. Within a few days of the invasion, the organization suspension of operations in Russia. It had faced years of growing pressure from Moscow and had evacuated most of its staff to Prague and other offices even before the outbreak of war.
Jamie Fly, the broadcaster’s president and chief executive officer, has long been in firefighting mode.
“The challenge we are facing, and the invasion of Ukraine, is just the latest iteration,” Mr. Fly said in an interview late last year. “We are increasingly under pressure to operate in these environments and in some cases we are pushed out of countries. It is always a challenge for us.”
Restrictions in Taliban-led Afghanistan and authoritarian Belarus are among the broadcaster’s other serious challenges.
According to RFE/RL, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has attracted many new audiences, despite the fact that its engineers have to work constantly to circumvent censors by finding new ways to circumvent censors. bans in Russia and elsewhere.
The organization said that in the first week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, traffic to RFE/RL’s websites nearly tripled to nearly 70 million compared to the same week in 2021. More than half the traffic. That access came from Russia and Ukraine.
Those gains have been steady since then. From the beginning of the war to the end of 2022, the viewership of Current timeRFE/RL’s flagship Russian-language channel has more than tripled on Facebook and more than quadrupled on YouTube, which is still accessible in Russia, according to RFE/RL.
The broadcaster’s work in Central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan has had a big impact, especially in detecting corruption. The local network was blocked by the Kyrgyz government for two months last year for allegedly violating the “fake news” law. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty denied the claims and, like in Russia, encouraged audiences to use VPNs to continue monitoring its journalism.
And while coverage of the war in Ukraine is an important part of its services, the organization’s most distinctive service is its regional-specific programs broadcast in local languages, including both programs focus on Russian regions such as Chechnya and Tatarstan.
This approach — even for languages spoken only by small populations — has long been a key feature of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s activities.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former Estonian president who worked for the broadcaster in Munich from 1984 to 1993, says that it is especially important to reach those audiences with quality, objective news in their own language. important.
“The role of the RFE/RL is most important in providing objective information in the native language — and just as it did 30 years ago,” he said in a phone interview on Friday. last week.
He added that this task becomes more important for an audience without the wide range of news outlets that the Russian-speaking world has. “There are very few sources of quality information for others, and being able to hear quality news reports in your language is very important,” he said.
And, like Ilves at the institution, its 21st-century embodiment is a sort of Noah’s ark for journalists and migrants from a large region going through a period. other epochal changes.
On March 6, 10 days after Russia invaded Ukraine, RFE/RL announced it would suspend operations in Moscow. after the local government began bankruptcy proceedings against it, citing millions of dollars in unpaid fines due to the organization’s refusal to comply with a 2021 order to label itself and some of its employees as agents. foreign agent.
“We are not an agent for anyone, and we have reviewed — and continue to review — this claim to label it as censorship, an attempt to interfere with editorial policy,” said Andrei Shary, director Director of the Russian Language Department of the RFE/RL, said at the time.
Mr. Shary, who describes himself as a “proud Russian”, has chosen to make his home in Prague, as have several of his other Russian colleagues.
Mr Fly, the chief executive, said Mr Shary would most likely be jailed if he returned to Russia. It’s a reality Mr. Shary has to face with stoicism, though, he said, “I’ll probably never see my mother again.”
Some of the younger journalists who had left the Moscow office were relieved to have been safely relocated before the invasion, avoiding the panic of their friends who had fled during the night.
Anastasia Tishchenko, 29, a human rights reporter, said she struggled with the decision to move to the broadcaster’s Prague office in 2021. It was a time when “you can feel a danger. some danger” because of Russian pressure on the network, she said. “But you still don’t see anything particularly dangerous to you.”
“Now I think it was one of the best decisions of my life,” she said in an interview, adding, “All my friends who are well educated, if given the opportunity, they ran away, living in Germany, Turkey, Portugal. – but not in Russia.”
Tishchenko’s heartbreak was that she had been at odds with her parents over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Her parents, who were born in Ukraine, believed in the Kremlin’s version of events – that Russia was waging a liberation campaign against an oppressive government in Kyiv and had won. It’s a division that is play outside among countless families.
She says she doesn’t know if she will ever be able to return home to Russia and is instead trying to focus on her work in Prague as part of a community that supports people like her. .
“Dreaming of going home one day, walking the streets I grew up in, playing with my sister’s children, it was just a dream,” she said.
