The new voice of America breaks his silence

In 2018, President Trump nominated Michael Pack, a veteran documentary filmmaker, to be the new chief executive at USAGM. Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, who that same year was “severely admonished” by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting gifts that “violated Senate rules, federal law, and applicable standards of conduct,” set out to stop the Pack nomination.

A senator as powerful as Menendez is — he’s the minority’s ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — can do a lot to stall a nomination, especially one at a relatively small agency. Menendez managed to block the nomination until the Senate finally confirmed Pack on June 4.

Democrats and their allies in the media portray Pack as the leading edge of a “right-wing” takeover of USAGM. Pack is universally referred to as an “ally” or “acolyte” of Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign and White House adviser who also headed Breitbart News. Thus do Democrats worry Pack will destroy an American beacon of freedom for the world.

Some of the news coverage has bordered on slander. The Week ran a story under the headline “Is Trump putting fascists in charge of the Voice of America?” An article at the Atlantic alleged that “Pack’s coup d’etat” has “actually set out to destroy America’s international broadcasters.” According to one writer at Vox, “Pack could ruin one of America’s best foreign policy tools.”

The commentary seems surreal when one looks at Pack’s career. In the course of 40 years as a documentary filmmaker, Pack has made more than a dozen films that have been shown on the Public Broadcasting Service. That is PBS — not Breitbart, not One America News, not a right-wing outlet. His most recent effort is this year’s well-received Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, which premiered on PBS in May, in which the famously media-shy Supreme Court justice opened up about his life.

Pack also made Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power, about Adm. Hyman Rickover’s quest to bring nuclear power to the Navy. It was broadcast on PBS in 2014. He made two documentaries on America’s founders, one on Alexander Hamilton that aired on PBS in 2011 and one on George Washington that aired on PBS in 2002.

He also made The Last 600 Meters, a film about the Battle of Fallujah in the Iraq War, which, although made in 2008, has yet to be released. “This film, uncaptured by politics or ideology, reveals the most bruising ethical environment on Earth and the character of the young men that our nation sends in harm’s way,” Marine Gen. James Mattis said. “[It] is a classic, unique in its approach and unique in what it reveals.”

And it was all decidedly mainstream.

In 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Pack to serve on the National Council on the Humanities. He was confirmed by the Senate and served until 2005. Overlapping with that time, 2003 to 2006, he headed television programming at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, creating America at a Crossroads, a series of 20 documentary films that balanced a number of ideological perspectives. It premiered on PBS in 2007.

Again, all mainstream. No fascism, no coups d’etat, no ruination.

The Bannon charge came from Pack’s enlisting Bannon to help on two of his pictures — the Rickover film, finished in 2014, and the one about Fallujah, finished six years before that. “He was essentially an unpaid consultant,” Pack told the Washington Examiner. “He gave me advice. I did not work for him. He worked for me.”

Bannon has not been a part of any Pack project since then, nor has Pack been a part of any Bannon project. There is simply nothing to the “acolyte” charge — Pack was making documentaries for 30 years before his limited association with Bannon. But the real test is the pictures themselves. Please watch them, Pack said. “I encourage everybody to search for the Bannonism in them,” he said. “Steve gave me creative and development advice on these films. Not political opinion — they weren’t about immigration or any other hot-button issue.”

There were also rumors, spread by CNN, that Pack would bring former Trump aide and current radio host Sebastian Gorka to USAGM. “There is nothing to those rumors,” Pack said. “I never approached Seb Gorka. I think those rumors are a variation of the Bannon rumors.”

It is a measure of the opposition to Pack that adversaries note darkly that he is under “criminal investigation” for allegedly funneling donations to a nonprofit organization he runs into his private film company. In fact, he is not under “criminal investigation” but is embroiled in a civil matter that is clearly rooted in the controversy over his appointment.

On the eve of a critical hearing to consider his nomination, the attorney general of the District of Columbia served Pack with a subpoena for a decade’s worth of financial information. It made for headlines and allowed Pack’s opponents to say he should not be confirmed because of an ongoing investigation, but it appears to be much ado about nothing.

Pack, who has been a friend of mine for many years, runs a production company called Manifold Productions. He also has a nonprofit organization called the Public Media Lab. Corporations and wealthy individuals make tax-deductible donations to the Public Media Lab for the purpose of funding a specific project. The Public Media Lab then pays Manifold Productions to actually produce the film. That is a common way of doing things in the documentary-making world. Do you know all those films on PBS that say they are made possible by a generous grant from so-and-so? It is that kind of thing.

By the way, the films that Pack has made that aired on PBS always listed the donors in the credits. It is an entirely transparent process. But because of the subpoena, Pack’s opponents say he is under “criminal investigation.”

Now on the job, Pack has one big goal for USAGM, and that is to return the agency to its original mission. In 1977, Congress passed the VOA charter into law. It has three simple parts:

1) VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. VOA news will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive.

2) VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.

3) VOA will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies.

“There is a general perception that the information war, the war of ideas, is way more important at the moment than ever before,” Pack said. “China is stepping up its propaganda campaigns. So are other adversaries like Iran and North Korea. And I don’t think we’re doing as well as we should in the war of ideas, putting our values and our ideas out there — and that is the principal mission of these agencies.”

“It’s a legal obligation,” Pack continued. “And that’s the point, really. My plan is to bring this agency back to what it was legally required to do. I want them to adhere to the VOA charter. And it’s not my perception that they are quite doing that.”

Pack made headlines on virtually his first day on the job when he fired a number of top executives. First, the director and deputy director of the Voice of America resigned, writing that, “As the Senate-confirmed CEO, [Pack] has the right to replace us with his own VOA leadership.” (The headline of the New York Times report: “VOA Directors Resign After Bannon Ally Takes Charge of U.S. Media Agency.”)

Then, Pack dismissed the heads of the four news agencies under his command — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. The move was condemned on both the Left and the Right. Some on the Left said Pack was trying to clear out Obama holdovers to impose Trump’s worldview on USAGM, while some on the Right decried the fact that those fired included Alberto Fernandez, head of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, who was a favorite of conservatives.

Pack explained that the point was a fresh start, not to render judgment on any particular executive. “It was my view that on day one, by changing senior leadership, I could create this change,” Pack said. “It seemed better to clean house and start fresh. Far from being a witch hunt of Democrats, it is a very fair, let’s-start-over process.”

“It is not atypical to do that,” Pack continued, “especially at the beginning of an administration, when new leadership comes to a government agency. And it is far from atypical in the corporate world, and especially network television and news.”

Pack has a three-year appointment. But realistically speaking, because of Menendez’s delays, Pack is taking office in the last four months before the 2020 presidential election. The president who appointed him might, or might not, be reelected. If he wants to make changes at USAGM, with the administration’s support, Pack does not have much time to act.

That point was hammered home on Thursday, when Democratic candidate Joe Biden vowed that, if elected, he would fire Pack. Vox reported that Biden believes Pack — a “close ally … of Steve Bannon,” of course — is “trying to turn one of the world’s largest media networks into something akin to Breitbart or Trump TV.”

Despite the inevitably bumpy start, the hope is that he will make USAGM a better place. Certainly, its employees have been unhappy under the old order. Each year, the Office of Personnel Management conducts what it calls the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to measure attitudes among government workers. A nonprofit group, the Partnership for Public Service, compiles that information into a measure of employee morale, the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government Rankings.

In 2019, USAGM ranked 23rd out of 25 in morale in the mid-sized agency category. In 2018 and 2017, it ranked 25th out of 27. And in 2016, it ranked 27th out of 27.

Pack wants to change that. And he hopes that someday, his opponents will be able to get beyond their agitation to look at what he actually does.

“When I came to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it was widely reported that I was going to try to turn it into a right-wing news organization,” he said. “There was a piece in the New Yorker entitled ‘Big Bird Flies Right.’ But I did not do that. For CPB, just like for these agencies, I’ve tried to bring objectivity and balance to their programming. And it will be the same here at USAGM. All I’m trying to do is bring the agency back in keeping with its mission. And I think when I leave here, that’s the way it will be perceived.”

Byron York is chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner.