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Trump's Cronies Are Converting "Voice of America" Into Trump’s Personal Propaganda Mill
The story of Trump appointing a Steve Bannon associate, Michael Pack, to the parent agency of Voice of America is a big one that will only get bigger and more dangerous.
This is the Breitbartization of U.S. government media. That’s what dictators do. Read on....
New U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack swept into office like a man on a mission last week, firing the top executives and advisory boards of federally funded international broadcasters which weekly reach 340 million people abroad.
On June 9... Pack's aides ordered the international broadcasters under his agency's supervision to "freeze" all new hiring, staff promotions and other contractual obligations. The next day, Pack informed the heads of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Office of Cuba Broadcasting and the Open Technology Fund that they were fired, effective immediately.
He also disbanded their separate bipartisan advisory boards and replaced them with five Trump administration political appointees....
Pack, the Trump appointee and Bannon protege, wasted no time instituting political purge of yet another part of government traditionally independent of politics, firing chiefs of four news outlets and disbanding the bipartisan board overseeing them.
In what a former official described as a "Wednesday night massacre".... "They let go all of the heads of the networks. It's unprecedented," an agency source told CNN.
A source familiar with the situation said at least two of the removals... were unexpected. The head of the Open Technology Fund, Libby Liu, had resigned effective July, but was still fired Wednesday evening, one of the sources said.
Three sources with knowledge of the changes said that each of the organizations' boards were dissolved, and two of those sources said that one of the incoming board members is an official from Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian organization.
This is worrying on so many levels but the biggest is that if these outlets become cut-and-dry administration mouthpieces, millions will lose a trustworthy, independent source of news where there otherwise might not be one.
USAGM says its mission is "is to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy." In addition to VOA, it oversees Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Open Technology Fund, and other entities.
"Once they destroy the reputation of the agencies, it will be impossible to restore," the former official said.
"As feared, Michael Pack has confirmed he is on a political mission to destroy the USAGM's independence and undermine its historic role," Senator Bob Menendez wrote. "The wholesale firing of the Agency's network heads, and disbanding of corporate boards to install President Trump's political allies is an egregious breach of this organization's history and mission from which it may never recover."
There are deeply sinister elements to the moves at VOA and related agencies.
The news outlet -- which produces digital, radio and TV content -- is journalistically independent. Created in 1942, the outlet benefits from a "firewall" that is supposed to prevent any US government official from interfering with its reporting.
Trump has repeatedly railed against VOA and accused it of disseminating Chinese propaganda... Trump's attacks on Voice of America, which have heightened concerns that his administration wants to turn VOA into a right-wing propaganda machine.... the actions as part of Trump's drive to sweep out what he calls the "deep state" - the unfounded claim that people throughout the government are collaborating to undermine Trump and his policies.
That belief that USAGM is part of a conspiracy has been given full voice by former presidential political adviser Steve Bannon, an associate of Pack who has worked with him on two documentaries.
The Breitbartization of VOA is underway already. For example, while we slept VOA eliminated the coronavirus section on its homepage and replaced it with "editorials."
How is it possible that a critically important, multimillion-dollar U.S.-government-funded institution could be hijacked by the extremist and most ideological wing of a single political party?
Voice of America is a U.S.-based network that was originally created in 1942 to rally the troops. From the beginning it was always intended, as its mission statement still clearly says, to “represent America, not any single segment of American society.” VOA was never meant to be the tool of one political party, but rather to present America from a broad, nonpartisan perspective.
Until mid-June, however, no U.S. administration had actually set out to destroy America’s international broadcasters or remove their independence. But now, finally, one has.
There is also a large element of finding comfortable government jobs for the most radically unemployable pro-Trump loyalists.
Michael Pack, a colleague of Steve Bannon, producer of a documentary film on Clarence Thomas, and a person so indifferent to the subject of international broadcasting that several people who have met him told me they thought he didn’t really want the job...one congressional staffer who met Pack told me that he seemed to know nothing, had not bothered to “read a 101 on the agency.”
Pack is also under criminal investigation for allegedly misdirecting money from a nonprofit to his private company, normally the kind of thing that gives the Senate pause. Pack was finally confirmed, on a party-line vote, on June 4.
Jeffrey Shapiro, an ally of the ultra-conservative former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, is expected to be named to lead the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. Shapiro told colleagues in 2017 that his goal was to turn the entire USAGM -- then called the Broadcasting Board of Governors -- into a "Bannon legacy"...
Thank goodness, the ousted bipartisan leaders sued:
The lawsuit was filed by four former members of the advisory boards, including two former U.S. ambassadors with prominent roles in the Bush and Obama administrations, Ryan Crocker and Karen Kornbluh. They contend Pack has broken federal guarantees of the broadcasters' journalistic independence.
"Their independence from political interference is protected by a strict 'firewall' embodied in statutes, regulations, and binding contract provisions," the lawsuit states. "Mr. Pack's actions this past week constitute the most egregious breach of that firewall in history."
... the suit contends the specific broadcasters are actually private non-profit corporations that receive federal grants but are not owned by the government. Pack therefore lacks standing to fire them, they argue.
This demands more attention and fortunately, Biden and his team noticed. He has already stated he will reverse Trump turning U.S. taxpayer funded international broadcasting into OAN.
If Joe Biden wins the presidency, he’s promising at least one staffing change: firing the CEO of a US-funded global media agency who’s accused of trying to turn it into a propaganda shop aligned with Donald Trump’s ideology.
Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for the former vice president’s campaign, told me Biden will oust Michael Pack from his Senate-confirmed position at the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) soon after entering the White House. The reason is simple: Biden believes Pack is trying to turn one of the world’s largest media networks into something akin to Breitbart or Trump TV.
Sources and read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/media/us-agency-for-global-media-michael-pack/index.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/17/michael-park-voice-of-america-327713
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/voice-america-will-sound-like-trump/613321/
https://www.citizensforethics.org/foia/usagm-voa-michael-pack/
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/25/21302625/joe-biden-president-voice-america-fire-michael-pack