I saw an article about the two VOA execs and wondered what was going on.
Now this.
Hello, Goebbels?
quote:
Earlier this month, a Steve Bannon ally and conservative filmmaker appointed by President Donald Trump took over running the vast global network of news agencies funded and operated by the US government.
Within hours of introducing himself to employees, he’d purged four top officials — and critics are calling it a blatant effort to turn America’s state-run news organizations into Trump-friendly propaganda outlets.
But Steve Bannon, who was deeply involved with getting Trump to nominate his ally Michael Pack, sees the ousters as a reckoning for an agency that he believes has been too soft on covering China.
“We are going hard on the charge,” Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and executive chairman of Breitbart, told me. “Pack’s over there to clean house.”
Michael Pack was confirmed this month as the new CEO of the US Agency for Global Media, a government department that oversees five media organizations — Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Open Technology Fund — and is collectively one of the largest media networks in the world.
In an instant, Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Open Technology Fund were leaderless. The two chiefs of Voice of America (VOA), the most prominent outlet in the agency, resigned on Monday over Pack’s appointment.
Do you listen to the podcast "The Argument," Jon? They had an interesting segment yesterday or the day before on the controversy about publishing that op-ed.
My personal opinion is that it should have been edited slightly and published. But there are good arguments on both sides. You should listen if you can.
And at least the NYT is discussing things publicly, and explaining themselves--whether you agree or not. And, of course, they aren't taxpayer-funded.
Posts: 35428 | Location: West: North and South! | Registered: 20 April 2005
It's just one more way that the I-1 administration is ruining the US's reputation in the world.
I don't know who listens to VOA now, but back in the Soviet era, Russians were very keen to pick it up. And the Soviet government spent a lot of money and electricity jamming it.
I haven’t. I wish that were still a print feature instead of a podcast.
Anyway it goes much further than the Cotton op ed. A friend of mine is a high level editor there (roughly a peer of Bennet) and essentially confirms that Bari Weiss’ take on the schism is accurate. Many people internally are afraid to speak up. The atmosphere is deeply illiberal.
-------------------------------- If you think looting is bad wait until I tell you about civil forfeiture.
Posts: 33811 | Location: On the Hudson | Registered: 20 April 2005
The chief executive over the Voice of America and its sister networks has acted unconstitutionally in investigating what he claimed was a deep-seated bias against President Trump by his own journalists, a federal judge has ruled.
Citing the journalists' First Amendment protections, U.S. Judge Beryl Howell on Friday evening ordered U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack to stop interfering in the news service's news coverage and editorial personnel matters. She struck a deep blow at Pack's authority to continue to force the news agency to cover the president more sympathetically.
Actions by Pack and his aides have likely "violated and continue to violate [journalists'] First Amendment rights because, among other unconstitutional effects, they result in self-censorship and the chilling of First Amendment expression," Howell wrote in her opinion. "These current and unanticipated harms are sufficient to demonstrate irreparable harm."
Michael Pack resigned Wednesday as the CEO of the federal agency over the Voice of America and other federally funded international broadcasters after a turbulent seven-month tenure. He leaves the U.S. Agency for Global Media with a Trumpian legacy of ideological strife, lawsuits and scandal, his departure effective just two hours after the swearing-in of President Biden, who requested him to leave.
Pack came to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media with the support of former President Donald Trump; his appointment was delayed more than two years in the U.S. Senate by lawmakers who feared he was too ideological and also who questioned his finances. The soft-spoken conservative documentary maker proved to be an ideological warrior in the mold of his patron, taking to one conservative news outlet after another to denounce his own staff, all in the name of fairness.
In his resignation letter, Pack said he was "solely focused upon reorienting the agency toward its missions." And he attacked the request for his resignation as "a partisan act," saying the leadership of the agency and its networks "is meant to be non-partisan, untethered to alternations in the political regime."
He added, "I had no political agenda coming into USAGM, and I still do not have one."
quote:
Pack routinely accused journalists of anti-Trump bias, sought to fire top executives as part of a "deep state," ominously accused the networks of being receptive to foreign spies and denied requests for visa extensions from his own staffers who are foreign nationals.
He initiated investigations over the bias claims, reaching into Voice of America's newsroom in ways a federal judge said broke the law and the First Amendment. Pack hired a Richmond, Va., law firm to investigate top U.S. Agency for Global Media executives after already seeking to oust them; new allegations, backed by correspondence reviewed by NPR, suggest he paid more than $2 million to that firm to conduct such reviews. (The lead partner on the investigation, John D. Adams, was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the subject of a sympathetic 2020 documentary by Pack.) Pack even fired White House aides assigned to help him by the Trump administration, suspecting them of disloyalty.
Throughout, he kept all but a small circle of advisers in the dark as to what he was doing. Former U.S. Agency for Global Media general counsel David Kligerman said the agency would have to work hard to put a "terrible chapter" behind it. Kligerman, who resigned late last month, had been suspended by Pack in August, along with other senior executives after Pack was unable to fire them more immediately.
"Pack seemed only to know how to destroy," Kligerman wrote in a statement to NPR, citing the CEO's record of "firing or otherwise pushing out so many talented journalists, network heads, grantee board members, and civil servants."
"It was wanton destruction, and shocking disregard for the most basic civility or norms," Kligerman wrote. "Political staff targeted and terrorized career staff and others. It is hard to overstate the climate of fear and dread that existed at the Agency. It is then particularly ironic that in his letter of resignation Pack warns of future politicalization of the Agency: it is hard to see how one could have attempted to do more to politicize the Agency than Pack."
Pack sought to ensure his influence endured after his departure by forcing the networks the agency funds but does not own to accept new boards of directors stocked with conservative activists and writers. The networks include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. (VOA and Radio/TV Marti are owned by the federal government.)
The new board members, announced this month, include Roger L. Simon, a columnist for the pro-Trump and conspiracy-theory recycling newspaper The Epoch Times who has written he believes the Jan. 6 attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob was actually done by leftists in disguise, and Christian Whiton, a conservative foreign policy expert who has defended Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
According to three people with knowledge, the new Biden team appears poised to bring suspended executives back into the agency fold, replace the network chiefs appointed by Pack last month and to appoint new boards. The Biden administration did not immediately comment on Pack's departure or name an acting replacement. A permanent CEO for the U.S. Agency for Global Media will require approval by the Senate, now led by Democrats rather than Republicans, though Pack inspired an outcry on both sides of the aisle.
