Previously classified U.S. government documents show that following the start of Voice of America radio broadcasts in February 1942 in response to the dangers and the turmoil of the Second World War, the first group of VOA managers and journalists uncritically embraced various Soviet propaganda lies.
Among them was perhaps the biggest and the most lasting communist lie of the 20th century. For several decades the Kremlin’s propagandists and their supporters lied about the 1940 killing by the Soviet NKVD secret police of about 22,000 Polish military officers and government officials in what became known as the Katyn Forest massacre. VOA continued to promote the Soviet Katyn lie from April 1943 until the end of the war in 1945. Then for several more years after the war, Katyn was largely ignored in Voice of America broadcasts until President Harry Truman launched his “Campaign of Truth” in response to communist propaganda, and his administration replaced some of the pro-Soviet VOA officials and journalists.
The lesson is that government bureaucracies do not reform on their own. One way government officials hide their failures is by distorting history. The truth about Voice of America’s early years has remained hidden for decades. A misleading but still dominant narrative now prevents the new generation of VOA journalists from protecting their organization from foreign propaganda threats. The current leaders will not admit that they have allowed disinformation from Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and even Ethiopia to find its way into current VOA programs.
There has been no shortage of bad news about the Voice of America. The VOA Russian Service recently posted and then removed a false report about the independent Russian news website Meduza. VOA strongly and falsely implied that Meduza was closing down because President Vladimir Putin’s intimidation of free press has been successful. Outraged Meduza journalists condemned VOA reporting. One journalist editing independent news from Russia in English wrote that such VOA reporting is “irresponsible and amazingly stupid.”
VOA later corrected its original report, but it was not an isolated incident. In 2012, the Voice of America posted what was later exposed as a completely fake interview with Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is now in a Russian prison.
After the most recent false VOA news report, a Meduza journalist called for the resignation of the editor who approved the original posting. But resignations of low-ranking managers will not solve Voice of America’s long-standing problems. They are a reflection of a leadership crisis at the most senior level at VOA and at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, VOA’s dysfunctional federal overseer.
Even more worrisome is the threat from the entrenched USAGM/VOA bureaucracy to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where I had served for a few weeks in 2020 and 2021. RFE/RL is being increasingly micromanaged by USAGM’s federal officials, who try to avoid taking responsibility for multiple scandals under their watch, both at the agency and at VOA. They blame everything on the former Trump-appointed CEO who was in charge of the agency for only a few months. The current agency officials have been there for many years and, in some cases, for more than three decades.
Another recently reported scandal is VOA’s censorship of reports of genocide in Ethiopia and the promotion of the Ethiopian government’s propaganda. The current management team for months ignored warnings about this problem, as it ignored other warnings about plagiarism in some VOA reports. Leaders also allowed Chinese government propaganda to seep into Voice of America programs before, during, and after the Trump administration, and they continued to employ a freelancer who, prior to joining VOA, had produced Russian propaganda videos promoting anti-U.S. and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
As a former refugee from communism and a VOA broadcaster and manager during the Cold War, I know very well that U.S. government-funded international media outreach can be a force for good if it is properly managed. I was encouraged to learn that during his meeting in Geneva with Putin on June 16, President Joe Biden briefly mentioned Radio Liberty’s problems in Russia.
I have no illusions that Russia’s autocrat is going to make work easier for Radio Liberty journalists in response to any American protests, but Biden can do something to help RFE/RL. In 1993, as a U.S. senator from Delaware, Biden defended RFE/RL’s autonomy when the Clinton administration wanted to federalize it. In October 1993, he sent a letter to Joseph Duffey, then director of the United States Information Agency, informing him that Biden would not allow the independent grantee status to be taken away from RFE/RL and Radio Free Asia. As president, Biden can again help to protect RFE/RL’s effectiveness and independence by vastly reducing the USAGM bureaucracy and, even better, by working with Congress to dissolve the agency that has become a bureaucratic nightmare.
I’m encouraged to see Jamie Fly, my predecessor and successor as RFE/RL president, standing up to Putin’s blackmail. When I was briefly in charge of RFE/RL, I pushed hard to develop a plan to protect Radio Liberty journalists from intimidation by the Kremlin’s security services. Not everyone among longtime officials and managers supported my efforts.
It is difficult for the U.S. government to respond to Putin’s propaganda when even the Voice of America gets duped by his disinformation campaigns and, in some cases, hires journalists who expressed pride in their previous work for Russian state propaganda channels. The answer is not punishing individual reporters and editors.
What the Biden White House needs to do is appoint new leaders who are not naive about Russia, China, Iran, or Cuba. It must vastly reduce the agency’s federal bureaucracy and grant more independence and more money to RFE/RL until all of U.S. international broadcasting gets a complete overhaul.
I do not share the view of some conservatives and some liberals who think that the answer lies in more centralized administration and federalization of all U.S. government-funded media outlets. I believe strongly in the need for much more scrutiny and accountability, but it can be more easily achieved if the Voice of America retains its federal status while the surrogate broadcasters are removed from under the control of the federal agency.
Congress and the Biden administration should seriously consider breaking up the U.S. Agency for Global Media and creating a new structure in which surrogate broadcasters such as RFE/RL could operate more independently under the close supervision of carefully selected bipartisan boards. Private media executives who do business in Russia or China should not serve on these boards as they did before.
The Voice of America should resume its traditional role under the mandate of the VOA Charter. This 1976 bipartisan law needs to be strengthened and enforced to guard not only against foreign propaganda in VOA programs but also against domestic partisan bias.
History shows that VOA cannot be left unsupervised. It needs strong bipartisan oversight. We know that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were created at the start of the Cold War during the Truman administration because the Voice of America was incapable of responding to a global communist propaganda offensive. VOA was better at other forms of soft power diplomacy. It may be able to regain some of its former impact, but it must have a new vision and a new leadership.
Ted Lipien is a journalist, writer, and media freedom advocate. He was Voice of America’s Polish service chief during Poland’s struggle for democracy and VOA’s acting associate director. He also served briefly in 2020-2021 as RFE/RL’s president.
