Im going to come in over the top with a topdown focus on overtime we will get this throughout the navy and i think thats just one example of how we can leave forward. Before as the final question admiral i would like to present you with the National Press club mug, highly valued, precious gift and for the purposes of today i noted that this is navy blue in color. [applause] final question, navy has beaten army on the football field for 14 years in a row. Is that right . [applause] simple question. Well army ever win again . [laughter] while this is sort of a oneword answer as well, yes but not on my watch. [applause] we thank you admiral for coming today. [applause] i want to thank our audience and id also like to thank the National Press club staff including its Journalism Institute and Broadcast Center for all the work that went into organizing todays event. If you would like a copy of this program or to learn more about the National Press club, go to our web site bats press. Org. Thank you. We are adjourned. [applause] host this week on the communicators want to introduce you to john lansing who is the new ceo of the broadcasting board of governors. Mr. Lansing what is the bbg . What do you do . Guest the bbg has five entities that are federally funded with the international media. The voice of america broadcasting Radio Free Europe radio free asia and the office of cuba broadcasting. Host and what is the budget . Guest is roughly 750 million. Host where does that money go . Guest the vast majority goes to voice of america. Its the largest, about 70 goes there. Host what kind of technology does the bbg or voice of america or any of these entities use . Guest all broadcast media platforms anything from radio to tv but increasingly nervous as will be on digital platforms social media as we expand around the world but anyway we can reach an audience and inform that audience is importantly use it. Host who can listen to voa . Guest radio marquee is on the island, available to audiences on the island. Voice of america is the route central africa, eastern europe, afghanistan, asia, indonesia. Its really a global use. Host what kind of news is reported . Guest voice of america has a mission to tell americas story around the world but to be clear all of the bbg entities including voice of america are engaged in professional journalism and our daily 3000 journalists around the world that are working every day to tell stories whether it be inside of the country as a surrogate rod caster meaning they tell the stories within a particular country that may not be reported because of their repression of the press and certain parts of the world or terry telling americas story. Host john lansing i know you to start in september but the question you get us quite a bit, with all the new Technology Available has the mission become obsolete for the broadcasting board of governors . Guest i think quite the opposite. Never been more critical. With the growth of propaganda around the world whether it be russia, china or isis the world is awash in information much of that information is propaganda and for many people there is a concern that the bbg is perhaps not stepping up and fighting directly with without propaganda but our view is in my personal view is the best representation of the values of United States is bringing professional journalism and truth telling into regions of the world that dont have that. Host joining our conversation today is ron nixon who is the washington correspondent. Guest thank you. Let me just jump in and ask you get a lot of criticism out the bg about the bbg, chairman royce Affairs Committee former secretary clinton criticized the agency and you hear words like practically defunct or dysfunctional. Your position is fairly new. It was created to corral all of these entities together and have the person they today. Can you tell us what you doing to address some of these criticisms that have been leveled against the agencys . Guest before i accepted the position, then in the roles in september and as you know the role is new. There was somebody in that prior to my being the ceo. My observation is i looked at the opportunity last summer and spoke with all the constituencies on the hill, the white house, the state department. The fact that the bbg was originally without a ceo took me out of the conversation per minute. Its not about me but the role of ceo. Imagine running an agency by a local media brand 3000 employees without a fulltime manager to lead it but rather a board that would be a managing board. To say that it was dysfunctional almost suggest that could have been functional if you will and i think thats really the issue. I think having a professional Management Structure and by the way the board we have now and the reason im here is the high functioning highquality board and their board chair jeff shell who is chairman of Nbc Universal pictures is doing a fantastic job leading our board and leading our Management Team to create more functionality. Now, any media entity is going to have some dysfunction. Im sure there are some of the New York Times and i know from past experience and experiences i have had and to some extent a good newsroom will always have a little dysfunction because a good newsroom is made of people are skeptical by nation and to ask hard questions. So i welcome that and one of the first things i did in september was made with the newsroom of the doa. At this time there was concern about pushing less objective coverage and it was a very hearty conversation, very honest and i felt very much in my element and found it to be welcoming. People felt that they could say it out loud. Guest lets go back to the point you brought up to four of this idea of eating awash in information and a lot of the propaganda. There has been concern in congress that epg and feel a in particular has not done enough to counter russia or counter the chinese are isil or boko haram or any other groups out there that you utilize social media in their recruitment of westerners. As an example, there are others as well, it can you say what kinds of things that epg is doing or planning to do to push back against those kinds of propaganda efforts . Guest the first thing i would say about propaganda is its a fancy word for liar and there are really two sides to a light to a lie so this notion that you push back against propaganda suggest that you are taking something thats fundamentally untrue in giving it credibility by holding it up and explaining why and dealing with the truth. I would say the best counter of that propaganda is independent, highquality journalism that is in the business of truth telling whether that be about Foreign Government or our own government but in terms of what can we do, i know theres a lot of discussion on the hill about the organization and whether or not to reorganize and i think thats interesting conversation. In fact i think with armed his eyes a good thing with the media entity and performing of bbg. As a matter of fact the reforms that i see in their Management Team and board sees is the need to push more of our content into mobile and social platform and to be in these conversations that are happening around the world. I think the old model of a big rock cast or Printing Press for that matter going out with one message to millions of people will still exist for a while but for younger audiences, and for influential younger audiences in parts of the world that are the most dangerous i think the most important platforms of those that are more peertopeer and we can be successful in bringing highquality professional journalism to influence those peertopeer conversations particularly among moderate, perhaps moderate muslims in syria and iraq, places like eastern ukraine, the china periphery. I think getting into those conversations and having a reputation as a truth teller in those conversations is the most important thing in the last thing i will say wrong to that is the investment that we have, the differences. Lets take a snapshot of russias investment in their state media versus the United States treated to really a 100 to one 11 difference and we are the one. We are under a billion dollars compared to hundreds of dollars. So rearranging that billion dollars is an interesting conversation. Its an interesting approach but the real reform would be to think about how serious we want investment messaging that is our messaging which is the value the United States is represented by highquality journalism. Guest lets talk again about delving a little further into this idea of countering propaganda with straight journalism. You know as you know there are those in congress and other areas who say why do we need a government funded to do that and the charter of doa calls for us to represent the american viewpoint but at the same time provide quality journalism. So how do you balance those two competing and often seemingly contradictory missions . Guest i will start with the first time. There is cnn and nbc news and fox news but the reality is where doa particularly has a bureau and our fda has a Bureau Reporting in china, reporting and cuba there is no cnn. I just returned from a trip to the ukraine. The most widely did influential journalist in ukraine works out of our building at the voice of america. Along with her voice of america theres a local reporter from Radio Free Europe is an influential investigative reporter. So in that one critical part of the world where russia, theres a hot war on the eastern front, the most influential journalist in that country are two entities of the United States, voice of america and Radio Free Europe. Cnn does a great job around the world and i admire the work that they do but there is no comparison to the climate of resources. The second of your question, i think the of londons of information that we are dealing with in terms of propaganda, i think its easy to overstate the influence it has and i think, i certainly take it seriously and i understand its voluminous but in the research we have done and in my own walking the streets of kiev and talking to government officials and key of, i spoke with the Foreign Relations chair of the parliament and she told me that the work that is being done is having an absolute critical effect in countering the volume of the propaganda because the credibility is real and as journalists sometimes it sounds a little idealistic. I still have a little of that idealism, but it really does matter when its credible and credibility is a heavyweight against volume in terms of tropicana. Lets talk about reform. Again as you know theres criticism about the duplication of efforts at the bbg say you have voa but then you have Radio Free Europe that will have people at the same so you have people from the same place recognizing that its a surrogate and i will ask you to explain that a little bit later. But is that part of reform just to look at, do we really need reporting rather than we are to have voa there . And if you could also explain that structure of how the surrogates differ. Guest the first thing i did my first two weeks when i came on board in september if they read the legislation, the founding legislation of the bbg and in it i noticed that it called for the formation of something called the International Coordinating Council. What is the International Coordinating Council . What it is the leader that the legislation of vision would come together and counsel on a regular basis and strategically aligned so that you remove duplicate of effort and create more impact. So i called that group together and i said, lets do that. So we did and so we formed the icc. It meets twice with me, twice a month. We are meeting tomorrow and that group of five Community Leaders has done a remarkable job just in his first four months together overly looking around the world at their various theaters of operation at the well and how they cooperate. What is an example of back . Middle east Broadcasting Network was doing a series of documentaries in iraq targeting moderate muslims of delusional paradigms and the idea was to show the dilution of this notion that leaving home and joining isis brings you to some situation of paradigm or he gets a wrenching series and it shows the families left a hind. In one scene that shows a Mother Holding her cell phone saying it just got a call from my sons cell phone but it wasnt my son. It was somebody else. A year ago that would have run in iraq and it would have put on a show. The International Coordinating Council came together and said can i run it into china and can i run it in eastern asia Radio Free Europe . Owcp around it, voice of America Randazzo became something that disseminated and put in contacts in various ways around the world so that investment in iraq paid off around the world. The United States elections are coming up obviously hinting of the iowa primaries council and coordinating coverage so four years ago the coverage would have been uncoordinated and duplicative. This cycle it will be strategic and it will be more impactful for less money. There are many more examples but the point is that there is never an effort to coordinate the strategy and it wasnt that hard the idea of having a central leader. Your question about what is a surrogate which i didnt know what it was either. A surrogate is an organization and the simply one that is doing journalism in the country where free press is either limited or nonexistent so there is a surrogate free press. Radio free europe is doing that in the balkans and central asia as a middle east Broadcasting Network and rfa is doing it around the periphery of china etc. , etc. Voa is not a surrogate. It tells americas story in places around the world that dont hear americas stories. Its journalism. Stories about america, often governmental stories and my hope is it will expand to a broader swath of information about america, entrepreneurialism, how , finance, how to start a business, stories that are not being told globally that are coming out of american can be told. But there are parts of the world where voa is also a surrogate and thats in central africa. So the only independent news in many parts of america doing surrogate news. When burkina faso had that problem the only reporter in the air who went down with the voice recorder. When the shootings, the terrible shootings in paris went down it just so happened that a voice of america reporter was in paris and was able to do reporting for all the other entities from paris. And so voice of america wears two hats off in. Its a larger more Capable Organization but wearing to hats thats not to say in iran that there isnt remaining duplication but in my sense of the way we think about that the reform of that duplication without the two eliminates but rather to structure strategically greater impact. Back to the point that the russians are spending 100 billion we are spending 750 million coming think my first impulse would be to stop it but to take what we have been deployed more strategically. Host john lansing is it illegal to listen to radio free asia and china . Is the web site locked and are the heir wives airwaves blocked from people hearing are finding it . Guest for the most part, yes. Host how do you get around that . Guest in terms of the internet there are investments that we make inner Internet Freedom program that allows people to circumvent the censorship and access free content in places like china and thats another thing that bbg does that many people arent aware of and thats our open Technology Fund and our Internet Freedom office which invests through appropriations and technologies that helps people access the internet and other media. They otherwise couldnt access it without that technology. Host do you have any idea what the penetration of alpha radio is in iraq . Guest is fairly impressive. 25 to 20 on a weekly basis of audience members and i will say this, your question that weller reaches important whether its in iraq or anywhere else come increasingly my goal is for us to measure impact eons reach. Any media today is really measuring engagement more than how many newspapers and how many viewers watch the tv show. You have to reach them for the impact that we are going to be shifting resources in a Research Area so we can report back to congress and report to our board how we are impacting people in different parts of the world. Host can america read, listen or watch your stories . Guest in a way with structured to not be available to americans. I wasnt here at the time but i think its an important point that it not be viewed as a way for the federal government to influence people in america with journalism but through the internet now i think that had to be amended. It had to be amended to recognize that the internet is hard to block and we certainly wouldnt be in the business of doing that. You can go on voa. Org and get the latest version of voa any time. Host what is the future of radio given our warming relationship with cuba . Guest its a great question. We have thought about that a lot are they think why are we doing radio on the island and the reason is that there is a limited ability for people on the island to access for information. The warming relations i think are good thing and they think they will continue to point towards more, hopefully more freedom but relations havent warmed to any point where the cuban government is allowing freedom so for as the trigger point would be more proud the specific aspect of information freedom. Guest there is this notion and im not sure how true it is, that we produce it but its being blocked on the island. How true is that and what is their reach on the island . Guest its more difficult to do research in certain parts of the world and thats one of them. We have some ability with people coming up the island, anecdotal research and focus groups. Their reach is, cant give a specific number of the reach but it certainly is substantial and i think the best evidence of that is when you hear the government of cuba criticizing those cbs work and bleeping if you stop and shut down maybe the best measure impact is considering they have it there. Guest you talk about impact. It almost seems the work that you do isnt wellknown because as you say for a long time americans werent allowed to listen to voa or even to access any information about it but one of the things that i saw earlier talking to staffers is that the reporting they came out of nigeria about the former president hiring former apartheid african mercenaries to fight oconnor from was broken by reporters from voa, right . Why isnt it widely known . Why didnt the voa tell his story more so people say its 100 million. Given thats the kind of work being done. Guest i think its an artifact of originally there not being a Central Management system over the bbg run by individuals that met once or twice, maybe once a month or six times a year. Some of the the more natural things you do in setting up a professional Media Organization like having a department of health tell to the story but the organization is doing wasnt as fully formed and abundant. Thats not the most important thing but its important i think that businesses now have their tax dollars are being spent in the impact theyre having around the world. We are going to be investing in it and doing a better job like this telling our story of what we are out trying to do. Guest lets talk about the technological side here. Talking to a gentleman who used to work for the state Department Countering Violent Extremism and he mentioned isis is like a startup where voa and some of the other government efforts are like ibm by goldstar jeep and has no idea how to connect. One, do you think thats true and two what is your answer to that to what youre doing because we talk about mobile platforms and social media and those kinds of things but how do you actually know that is working and how do you know that you can actually access those people the same way that groups like isis can . Guest maybe by weyburn and it that we have a program in iraq called funded yes last year by the congress to radio and tv and it is a multiplatform effort to reach moderate iraq and interactive multimedia so it involves radio callin shows. The documentary i mentioned earlier facebook pages that are actively monitored with conversations, twitter feeds and the results of that program have been extraordinary in terms of the numbers of interaction in the hundreds of thousands and all these various platforms. So much so that we are hoping we can do more of it but i mean its a step along the way. Its an amick to pray to call isis a startup is a terminology that keeps americans interesting create division of somehow running the reality is we started 70 years ago as a radio enterprise. We still do some radio but our ability to shift and put resources behind it is certainly there and we are really no different than any other Media Company that you and i know about that had the same thing at times, just as well and have done a fantastic job. Thats our mission is to shift resources, energy, focus strategy to being as i said earlier more peertopeer conversation so that we can shift away from the stodgy old media to the new media. Now we cant leave people behind. There are parts of the world and today is a good day to discuss north korea. I know we are taping but the newsod