#Voice Of America

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

🤢🤮

[colleendoran]

At the VOICE OF AMERICA, Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds is featured in a video segment. With work from more than 15 comics creators (including me, my short story is highlighted at the 47 second mark) all creators volunteered their services with all proceeds donated to Ukraine refugee relief via Operation USA.

With more than $100,000 raised prior to release and another $100,000 expected to be raised before the end of this year, editor Scott Dunbier received the 2023 Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award for his work on this project.

You may order it HERE.

It was an honor to contribute to this project.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern?

Authoritarian regimes tend to prioritize controlling certain institutions: bureaucracy, the legal system, and higher education. Trump has shown deep interest in all. They also seek to control the press. It is easy to assume this last threat does not apply to the US. The first amendment provides strong protections to private media (although conservatives are interested in eroding those protections). The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is vulnerable to right wing threats of defunding, but NPR and PBS have other sources of funding and play a less central role in American media than, for example, the BBC does in the UK. Conservatives have their own thriving media, have captured large areas of social media, including Twitter, and have been successful at working the ref when it comes to the mainstream media. It might therefore seem that there is little reason to worry about Trump further weaponizing the press. But there are aspects of the media that the US government does directly control and fund. Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to it, because it does not broadcast to them, but it has an outsize global presence. This is the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, and is the primary funder of several other regional broadcasting networks. It has a budget of about $1 billion and 4,000 employees. While it does not have the same brand recognition as other media, AGM has a vast global audience. It estimates that it reachers over 420 million people weekly in 64 different languages. So, the US government is very much in the media business, and on a global scale. To understand how that media can be weaponized by an authoritarian in the future, we just need to look back at the final months of the Trump administration.

“Gross Mismanagement” by a Trump Appointee

The tensions between journalistic integrity and politicization exploded with the arrival of Michael Pack, the chief executive of AGM. In Spring of 2020, Trump falsely accused VOA of peddling Chinese propaganda over Covid, and then pushed Pack’s nomination, which had been stalled because of Senate concerns about his ideological leanings, and financial improprieties in his business dealings. Pack headed the Claremont Institute, which has pushed anti-democratic messaging via fellows like John Eastman. Pack had also worked on documentaries produced by Steve Bannon.

Pack perfectly reflected the paranoid style of that took hold in Trump’s last year in office. After his first impeachment, loyalty mattered above all else to Trump. Pack fit that agenda. He promised “to drain the swamp, to root out corruption, and to deal with these issues of bias” — an ethos that defines how Trumpworld is approaching a second term.

The scale of Pack’s abuses only became evident after he left the agency. He profiled his employees, speculating on their political leanings, and met with officials to prioritize which of these officials should be fired because of those political beliefs. He pushed out senior officials, putting some on administrative leave for daring to disagree with him. Pack hired a conservative law firm on a no-bid contract to investigate his own employees. It cost $1.6 million dollars. He revoked security clearances from journalists who complained about his practices. He sought to put in place unqualified appointees to oversee overseas media networks, and make their tenure permanent. His political appointees either had no experience in journalism, or were aligned with right-wing media outlets such as The Daily Caller.

Pack improperly tried to block funding for one unit, The Open Technology Fund, that Congress had appropriated. He froze the funding of other units, and blocked their recruitment efforts. Pack also created instability by removing senior officials leading parts of his organization — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Office of Cuban Broadcasting, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Open Technology Fund.

[...] Making AGM a more explicitly partisan outlet would obviously undermine its reputation for providing quality journalism, undermining trust in the organization that is central for its ability to do its job. Its a clear example of how a more partisan operation reduces the quality of agency performance, and its ability to fulfill its mission. The mission of AGM “is to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” It is hard to do so if the agency is, itself, dancing to an authoritarian tune.

Don Moynihan’s Can We Still Govern? post reveals that the Voice Of America, which is targeted towards international listeners, could become a partisan propaganda organ if Donald Trump wins again.

[sowhatifiliveinfukuoka]

Cabaret Voltaire

Voice Of America (1980)

[oldshowbiz]

1969.

The Voice of America.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Grancel Fitz Untitled c. 1932

* * * *

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." [Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962]” ― John F. Kennedy

[flipjack]

Interview with Voice of America for “Angels in America, Part 1: Millenium Approaches”

[macmanx]

In sum, Pack's seven-and-a-half month stint running the agency exemplified Trump's contempt for the press and for the professional federal workforce that prides itself on nonpartisanship. (Pack echoed Trump's designation of that workforce as the "Deep State.")

[alaturkaamerika]

Trump’ın VOA’in Başına Getirmek İçin Düşünüğü Kari Lake Tartışma Yarattı

Donald Trump’ın Voice of America (VOA) başkanlığı için Kari Lake’i aday göstermesi, gazeteciler ve medya çevrelerinde tarafsızlık ve bağımsızlık endişelerini artırdı. Kari Lake ve VOA’nın İlkeleri Kari Lake’in Görev Vizyonu: Kari Lake’in “Amerika’nın başarılarını belgelemek” gibi bir misyonla öne çıkması, VOA’nın tarafsızlık ve bağımsızlık ilkelerine aykırı bulunuyor. VOA’nın Tüzüğü: 1976…

[newspro574]

Trump taps immigration hard-liner Kari Lake as head of Voice of America

[gwydionmisha]

She's spent the last 4 years lying and lying in public and she's going to destroy VOA by changing it from a balanced source of fact based news into a propaganda arm.

[mrwhitechocolatechast]

12.12.24 Daily Thought #voiceofamerica

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lee Moran at HuffPost:

President-elect Donald Trump stirred yet more controversy on Wednesday with another pick ― this time of the former news anchor-turned-two-time election loser Kari Lake to run the government-funded, historically nonpartisan Voice of America broadcast agency. Lake as director of VOA will help “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media,” Trump wrote in an announcement on his Truth Social platform. “Kari was a beloved News Anchor in Arizona, which supported me by record margins, for over 20 years,” he added. “Congratulations Kari!” Lake herself said she was “honored” and described VOA as “a vital international media outlet dedicated to advancing the interests of the United States by engaging directly with people across the globe and promoting democracy and truth.” “Under my leadership, the VOA will excel in its mission: chronicling America’s achievements worldwide,” she added. “Thank you for putting your trust in me, President Trump. I look forward to leading the Voice of America, and I can’t wait to get started.”

Donald Trump picks far-right loon and former local TV anchor Kari Lake to head up the Voice of America. Lake lost two elections in the last two cycles.

See Also:

MMFA: Kari Lake, Trump’s VOA pick, hates the “fake news” — and called Fox a “globalist network”

[oldshowbiz]

The Bombing of Radio Free Europe