New Trump Administration Faces Decision on Global Media Agency, by Dan Robinson
Over the next four years, the new Trump administration will decide the extent to which the U.S. Agency for Global Media, under which sits the Voice of America, will continue at its current size and scope of operations.
Since the end of the Cold War, the agency effectively lobbied and persuaded members of Congress, via well-packaged PR presentations and offers of access to USAGM’s broadcast and online platforms, that the agency remains relevant.
Major cuts proposed by Democratic or Republican administrations largely went nowhere, with the FY2025 budget level for the agency at just under the $1 billion mark. Lawmakers asked few if any detailed questions about claims of ever-increasing audiences, “impact” and “reach.” Congress simply accepted metrics for such things as online engagement, without challenging claims of tens of millions of users of USAGM content.
With its frequent scandals and questions about mismanagement, and breaking news coverage failures, VOA should not escape the cost-cutting axe. VOA’s online presence and reporting still pale in quality comparisons with the BBC. Meanwhile, USAGM as a whole is full of duplication that could be eliminated.
There’s another problem: politicization. Many VOA staff have come to think of themselves as working for just another version of MSNBC, CNN and NPR. The agency has embedded itself more deeply with major non-government media and related advocacy organizations, and we must add, public diplomacy groups that never question the agency’s effectiveness claims.
Disturbingly, in recent years we saw USAGM and VOA weaponize themselves against former employees who became key critics. The agency inked an agreement with UK-based authors on a book that amounted to a hit piece against Donald Trump's first USAGM CEO and citizen critics (I was one). In it, VOA staffers are quoted as saying that they found our inquiries “annoying.”
Agency officials also dismissed Republican members of Congress seeking greater accountability from VOA on journalistic and management matters as “silly” and “troublemakers.” VOA failed to detect repeated violations of its journalistic guidelines, including anti-Trump social media content and posts that pandered to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
After all of this became public thanks to the work of citizen journalists, the agency hired The Poynter Institute for Media Studies to conduct “anti-bias” training at VOA. But in these sessions, employees were told not to feel obligated to include false or “insignificant” views in reporting. For many staff, that meant ignoring pro-Trump, America First and MAGA opinion.
Having opposed Trump during his first term, anti-Trump employees got to work leaking to sympathetic media on hit pieces against the president-elect’s choice of Kari Lake as VOA director. Their overall goal is to outlast the new administration.
There’s yet another area of concern. VOA’s Charter requiring objective, accurate and comprehensive content, is codified in law. But the “firewall” designed to prevent “political interference” is but a connected principle. However, as part of a Trump-proofing operation, agency officials – with encouragement from the above-mentioned UK authors and some law firms – want Congress to turn the “firewall” into law. The problem is that the agency has used the “firewall” to avoid greater scrutiny into its journalism and management.
When Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who conducted a two year investigation of VOA, inquired about the deletion of paragraphs from a story linked to his probe, VOA staff and managers cited the “firewall” as a shield.
After VOA’s puzzling refusal to use the term Hamas terrorists after the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel, staff again cited the firewall. By the way, only Republicans, including the incoming secretary of State, voiced public outrage. Democrats regularly ignore problems at the agency.
While it’s remained mostly under the radar, the effort to convert the firewall into law was discussed in public at a National Press Club event attended by the aforementioned British authors promoting their book.
As attractive as it may sound, converting the “firewall” would make it virtually impossible for taxpayers through their representatives in Congress to obtain greater accountability about how USAGM and its media outlets, who currently police themselves, do their work.
Congress should reject the effort. Otherwise, the public will never know about future violations of journalistic standards, and such things as security lapses, such as the revelation in 2020 that USAGM had violated background security investigation regulations over a period of years.
Meanwhile, USAGM is full of examples of cover ups and waste. The agency has lost discrimination lawsuits, keeping settlements quiet. One top official was convicted of theft of government funds and jailed. Recently two officials received $600,000 payouts as they departed – reasons still unclear.
Employees and managers at USAGM media outlets should be disabused of the notion that they work for "an independent news/media company." Staff who think they’re working for another version of MSNBC, NPR or CNN might consider seeking jobs elsewhere.
Consider this: a senior VOA editor recently warned reporters during an internal meeting to stop using their stories to “snipe” at the Trump team. As the saying goes, where there is smoke, there is fire. This points to the extent of anti-Trump hubris in VOA’s central news operation, at a level not seen since the early years of the Reagan presidency.
In the end, VOA staff are Federal employees. This message should be delivered quickly, in such a setting as the first Town Hall by a new VOA director. Whether it’s Lake or someone else, that person should be under no illusions about the level of animus at VOA and USAGM toward Donald Trump.
Dan Robinson spent 34 years with Voice of America as chief White House, congressional and foreign correspondent and head of its Myanmar Service.