Marking a series of international broadcasting milestones, BBG Governor Victor Ashe and VOA Director David Ensor congratulated the staffs of VOA language services in Washington, DC.
Ashe noted, for example, that early broadcasts in Cantonese and Mandarin by what is now VOA’s China Branch actually predated the 1942 establishment of VOA itself.
“VOA Mandarin and Cantonese continue to inspire innovation and demonstrate team work and professional journalism as we look to the next seventy years,” said Ashe, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland.
Ashe also marked 60 years of broadcasting by VOA’s Armenian and Georgian Services; 35 years by VOA’s Portuguese to African Service; 15 years by VOA’s Bosnian Service, Central Africa Service, Afaan Oromoo Service to Ethiopia and Northern Kenya, and Tigrigna Service to Eritrea, Ethiopia and other African and Middle-Eastern nations.
“On behalf of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, I congratulate you all,” Ashe said.
