Club Online Zoom Event: The Opportunities and Challenges Facing Radio Free Asia

ONLINE ZOOM EVENT The Opportunities and Challenges Facing Radio Free Asia

SPEAKER BAY FANG President, Radio Free Asia Thursday, March 18, 2021 8:00pm HKT on Zoom

For the last 25 years, the U.S.-government funded Radio Free Asia has been broadcasting and publishing online news and commentary in Asian countries where citizens living under authoritarian governments have little access to critical, uncensored information. RFA’s mission has become even more challenging lately, as authoritarians have begun to use social media to spin their own webs of disinformation while discrediting any independent reporting as “fake news.” Meanwhile, publicly-funded broadcasters worldwide are being challenged by their own governments who chafe at critical coverage and want them to stick more closely to the “official” line. Our speaker, RFA President Bay Fang, will talk about the challenges of covering a region where democracy appears in retreat, RFA’s efforts to uphold its own editorial independence, and being an Asian-American woman at the top of an award-winning American news organization. Moderated by FCC President Keith Richburg.

Bay Fang is President of Radio Free Asia, where she oversees award-winning journalism with the mission of bringing free press to closed societies in Asia. A former Beijing bureau chief for US News and World Report who also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, she has the added perspective of having served in government during the Obama Administration as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for press and public diplomacy. Ms. Fang earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard University, was a visiting fellow at Oxford University and a Fulbright scholar in Hong Kong. She trained as a French chef at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and holds a brown belt in kung fu.