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Voice of America broadcaster balanced truth, political agenda by D Spellman 
'Always walking a tightrope' Voice of America broadcaster balanced truth, political agendas By Derek Spellman Globe Staff Writer July 3rd 2005 SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - Bob Chancellor thought he might lose his job as a Voice of America broadcaster after airing a radio news story about the Watergate controversy. At the time, protesters had gathered in Washington, D.C., clamoring for Richard Nixon's impeachment. Chancellor, then stationed in the nation's capital, wrote a news brief about the protest. He said it was probably the first time someone at the organization had inserted the words "impeachment" and "Nixon" into the same sentence, and since the VOA was a government-funded news outlet, the piece drew his superiors' ire. "That was a very tense time," Chancellor, 69, said of the VOA's coverage of Watergate. "(But) I think we played it as straight as could be." Chancellor survived, and continued a career that earned him a spot as the latest inductee into the Webb City R-7 School District's Hall of Fame. Chancellor recalled moving to Webb City with his parents when he was in second grade. He attended Webb City schools, graduating in 1954. Work on his college paper stirred an interest in journalism, and after college he worked for television stations in Springfield and St. Joseph. An advertisement led him to a position with the VOA in 1963, where he remained until his retirement in 1989. VOA is a multimedia broadcasting service funded by the United States government with a budget of $151 million in 2004. News and informational programs are produced and broadcast in 44 languages through AM, FM and short-wave radio. VOA also produces satellite television and Internet programs. VOA was, and remains, a hybrid news outlet and government agency. The dual roles fueled a "constant struggle," Chancellor said, between supervisors and correspondents over the composition of the broadcasts. Because the VOA broadcast news - often about the United States - into other countries, some considered it a foreign-policy organ. VOA reporters such as Chancellor saw themselves as disciples of a free press. "We were all professional journalists and considered ourselves such," he said. "It was always walking a tightrope. That's what made it interesting." Chancellor's work with the VOA took him all over the world. From 1966 to 1969, he covered the Vietnam War and the South Vietnamese government's futile efforts to foster democracy amid corruption. Between 1969 and 1972, he was in the VOA's Tokyo bureau and covered events such as the Winter Olympics and the World's Fair in Japan. He returned to the United States to work in Washington D.C. for several years and covered the Watergate saga, including some of the early hearings and trials. Watergate emerged as a watershed moment for the VOA, Chancellor said. VOA broadcasts were informing people in other countries about allegations of abuse of power by U.S officials, but the agency's coverage did not gloss over anything, he said. During a trip to the Middle East a few years later, Chancellor said Iranian journalists told him how much they admired that. After Watergate and other projects, Chancellor resumed work as an overseas correspondent. He went to Kenya and Israel. He spent four years in South Africa during the 1980s, when international pressure began mounting to end apartheid. The nature of his work meant Chancellor often relied on translators when interviewing subjects and largely spoke to government officials. Otherwise, Chancellor was left to navigate a foreign country with his wife and children, who attended schools in those countries while he worked. He returned to the United States in 1984 to open a VOA bureau in Houston, Texas, and retired in 1989. The VOA has floundered a bit since the end of the Cold War, Chancellor said. Without an adversary such as the Soviet Union's propaganda machine, some thought the VOA lost its role, Chancellor said. The agency was reorganized and restructured during the Clinton administration, and lately Chancellor said he thought the VOA was becoming politicized. Watching the agency's decline has been painful, he said, because "a lot of us fought for a long time to make it something that was special." Chancellor now lives in Springfield but has visited Webb City several times since retiring. He will return in October to accept his induction into the hall of fame during a Chamber of Commerce banquet. Terry James, a member of the school board and the Hall of Fame nominating committee, was a neighbor and classmate who remembered Chancellor as a "go-getter." But Chancellor said he never thought of journalism as work. "If they didn't pay me to do this, I would still be doing it," he said. © 2005 The Joplin Globe. |