The taxpayer-funded Voice of America is increasingly being fooled into advancing hostile foreign propaganda and being used by agency officials and some partisan editors to propagandize to Americans.
Independent Russian journalists accuse the VOA of spreading President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda. In an interview with Forbes Russia, independent Russian journalist Galina Timchenko said that the Voice of America “listens to bulls***.” One of her colleagues tweeted that a recent VOA news report was “irresponsible and amazingly stupid” and that whoever approved it should be fired. In Africa and in the United States, the Tigrayans accuse VOA of ignoring the genocide in Ethiopia.
Recent VOA broadcasts glorified such communists as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro without mentioning their countless victims. Early VOA broadcasters glorified Joseph Stalin, who during World War II was in control of America’s most important military ally against Nazi Germany, but was also a mass murderer like Adolf Hitler.
The Democrats in Congress would be wrong to assume that partisan VOA videos, such as this one in 2016 and this one in 2020, which violate the VOA Charter and therefore U.S. law, are good for the Democratic Party in the long run. In combination with other VOA scandals, they will create a backlash in immigrant communities and among foreign audiences.
The same would be true if the Republicans tried to use VOA for their partisan domestic advantage. Longtime agency leaders accused a former Trump-appointed CEO, who was in charge for only a few months, of such violations, but they were themselves responsible for allowing anti-Republican partisan propaganda in VOA programs over several years in addition to permitting Chinese, Russian, and other foreign propaganda to seep unchallenged into some VOA programs.
Several Republican lawmakers allege that the agency’s management is creating a culture that tolerates substandard journalism and violations of professional ethics. Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, expressed his concern about some of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (which supervises VOA) personnel decisions with regard to Cuba. This time, calls for reforms also first came largely from immigrant communities.
As things stand now, the Democrats face a greater risk than the Republicans of paying the price at the ballot box if ethnic voters continue to be displeased with U.S. international broadcasting. The dishonesty about Voice of America’s history and its current news coverage open USAGM and VOA leaders to criticism from audiences abroad and from Americans. Recent immigrants from Iran, China, Russia, Cuba, and Ethiopia have expressed for several years their displeasure with some past and present VOA and USAGM executives and editors, as have many independent foreign journalists and human rights activists.
The failures of agency executives can harm the Democratic Party unless the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress intervene and together with the Republicans try to resolve the problems at USAGM and VOA. This was done successfully in the past, particularly during the Truman administration and the Reagan administration, when both parties had worked together to reform and strengthen the U.S. international broadcasting with good results for America’s security and for human rights abroad.
Being honest about history is the first step to being honest about the present and the future. Admitting past mistakes might help VOA and USAGM executives address current problems, rather than trying to hide them and attacking critics of their mismanagement. Recent scandals at USAGM included having leaders with corporate or family business interests in China and Russia, visits and calls to the Chinese Embassy, taking bribes from foreign officials, hiring journalists who previously produced anti-Western propaganda for Russian state media, plagiarism, and repeating Russian, Iranian, Cuban, Ethiopian and Chinese propaganda in Voice of America broadcasts.
The U.S. and other countries and regions (particularly Iran, China, Tibet, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Belarus, Ethiopia) can benefit from honest journalism supported with money from U.S. taxpayers, but don’t expect it from a government bureaucracy that refuses to learn its own history and hides information from media and members of Congress. The historical lesson for the Biden White House and the Democrats in Congress is that managerial and journalistic failures at the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Voice of America sooner or later will cause them to lose support among some ethnic voters in the U.S.
There are already thousands of posts on social media from Chinese Americans, Iranian Americans, and Tigrayan Americans highly critical of the current and recent agency leaders and managers. Mismanagement at USAGM is a bipartisan issue that needs a bipartisan solution based on the VOA Charter, which is U.S. law. The charter requires the Voice of America broadcasts to be completely free from partisan bias and free from foreign and domestic propaganda of any kind.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Voice of America’s management need to set an example for honesty in America if they want to become credible and relevant abroad. U.S. international broadcasters must have competent leaders who are honest about history, enjoy bipartisan support, don’t have business interests in China or Russia, and are untainted by scandals.
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 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s president.
