Trump Administration Actions and Words, by Jim Fry
The Blog is where members of the Public Diplomacy Council of America state their views on diplomacy in the public sphere. Blog posts will be diverse but nonpartisan. The opinions expressed here belong to their authors and do not represent positions taken by the PDCA.It seems time to revisit recent articles on this blog, following Elon Musk’s jarring social media post Sunday morning proposing Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty be shut down. Musk reposted an X influencer purporting to quote Trump administration diplomat, Richard Grennell, calling the journalists “far left activists.”
The social media activity targeted the broadcast arm of U.S. public diplomacy following the Trump administration’s shutdown of another traditional tool of America’s soft power, the U.S. Agency for International Development. Hours after Musk’s online comment, Grennell labeled as “treasonous” a respected VOA journalist’s coverage of domestic opposition to the elimination of USAID.
Even if VOA is ultimately spared, President Trump’s choice of L. Brent Bozell III, an activist and media watchdog, as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Government Media and his preference for Arizonan Kari Lake to lead Voice of America, are worthy of discussion in the context of public diplomacy and recent points made on this blog.
In appointing Bozell, Trump picked an activist who has made a career of hurling hyperbole at the mainstream news media in the U.S. In Lake, the VOA would be led by a twice-defeated candidate in Arizona who refused to recognize her election losses, a former local anchorwoman who regularly accuses the media of “lies” and calls journalists “monsters.”
Both have maintained President Donald Trump was not defeated in 2020, a falsehood that would not seem to fit with VOA’s charter stating its journalism “…will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive.”
As is the case with most appointees, both now speak with a more muted voice, Lake telling CBS last month, "I'm not there to make it Trump TV and MAGA TV.” And Lake posted Sunday in favor of keeping VOA open in the face of “anti-American garbage being broadcast to the world… (to) provide an alternative.”
Should the new Trump administration follow the script provided by the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” it would place “the entire agency under the supervision of the NSC, the State Department, or both…” The author of Project 2025’s blueprint for VOA in a second Trump term objected to VOA’s coverage of the president in 2020. He lamented that the such coverage was “personally insulting” to the president. While Heritage pays lip service to “journalistic integrity and unbiased reporting,” it states “messaging” by VOA “should be coordinated with the existing foreign language social media platforms at the State Department.” This goal set down for the new administration clearly is at odds with the charter established in a nearly 50-year old law -- that VOA be “a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news … [that is] accurate, objective, and comprehensive.”
At stake is VOA’s journalistic independence and its future as one of the U.S government’s effective tools in the exercise of soft power and public diplomacy. PDCA states on its mission page that it advocates for the role of public diplomacy. The PDCA blog article critical of VOA posted on January 1, “New Trump Administration Faces Decision on Global Media,” appears at odds with the PDCA mission. The blogger pushes to dismantle VOA’s “firewall,” which is intended to ensure the separation of independent government journalism from politics. The blogger’s conclusion seems based on a laundry list of perceived ills at VOA and USAGM. To be sure, some of what was cited has been worthy of consideration, discussion, and correction. Other alleged failings are years old and do not reflect current realities. For example, the article cites as “waste” the circumstances surrounding the jailing of a former USAGM official for falsifying invoices and billing the government for personal trips. Those crimes date back as far as three-quarters of a decade ago, discovered by the agency itself and federally adjudicated – hardly a current concern.
Curiously, the blog posting is silent about the record of Trump’s first CEO, Michael Pack, which some might judge more relevant at this moment. Pack’s record prompted a lawsuit and judicial ruling, as well government investigations.
A whistleblower lawsuit, filed just three months into Pack’s short tenure, claimed Pack and his team breached the “firewall” in the following ways:
- Removal of VOA’s standards editor, leaving journalists without support during a crucial election campaign;
- USAGM’s unprecedented takeover from VOA of an investigation of the Urdu language service social media posting of candidate Joe Biden’s comments at an American Muslim group, with no Trump-related context;
- Attorney Sam Dewey, a political appointee, demanding to know which news stories were being developed and who was working on them;
- Dewey and USAGM HR’s investigating reporters and editors involved in campaign profiles of the then-first lady and prospective first lady;
- USAGM’s “retaliatory” investigation into the reporting of VOA’s White House bureau chief.
Following Pack’s 2021 Inauguration Day resignation, USAGM officials who took over asked the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency, to look into the whistleblower allegations. The OSC directed an independent investigation which found that former USAGM CEO Michael Pack and his team of political appointees:
- Engaged in “gross mismanagement” by removing the VOA standards editor, preventing him from acting during the crucial presidential campaign, and “took actions that were inconsistent with the statutory mandate that he respect the networks’ journalistic independence and integrity.”
- Abused their authority in suspending the security clearances of several USAGM executives and other prohibited administrative actions directed at agency heads, advisory boards and the entity that develops tools journalists and audiences to circumvent censorship.
- Abused his authority when he attempted to shut down one of USAGM’s entities, the Open Technology Fund.
- Violated the Privacy Act in distributing to “non-government individuals” investigative information on six suspended executives.
While the full list provides the basic information, a deep reading into the 152-page OSC report reveals Pack’s systematic attempt to destroy from within the central mission of journalism free of interference by government policymakers and political actors – a mission crucial to the nation’s exercise of public diplomacy.
All of these transgressions came in a compact seven-month period.
Meanwhile, the January 1 blog asserts in little more than unsupported opinion, VOA journalists consider the news agency “just another version of MSNBC, CNN, and NPR.” In the Politico’s “West Wing Playbook” last week, however, journalists at VOA are quoted anonymously saying they are worried they will be blocked from upholding the agency’s journalistic mandate.
“We’re a part of the soft power of the U.S. in demonstrating that part of America is objective journalism. We’re trying to set an example for the rest of the world,” the journalist points out.
In a PDCA’s January “First Monday Forum,” Professor Joseph S. Nye, who coined the term “Soft Power,” said VOA “would be shooting itself in the foot” if its journalists were unable to report criticism of the U.S. government.
“It [VOA] was able to maintain itself with a fair degree of credibility because it was able to bite the hand that feeds it,” said Nye, the past dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former official in the Defense and State Departments as well as the National Security Council.
“The danger is if the government’s public diplomacy becomes seen as manipulative or pure propaganda, it no longer attracts [audiences],” Nye said.
Former VOA executive and journalist John Lennon, in his posting, pointed out that in his long career at VOA, journalists were in charge of the content.
“Journalistic output is prepared, supervised, and produced by both American and foreign-born personnel with backgrounds in journalism,” wrote Lennon. He dismissed the main theme of the January critique by briefly pointing out that the White House and Congress always review budgets: “Often, a new budget comes with changes. This is nothing new.”
Despite the lamentation that the “firewall” somehow hides bad actors, Lennon points out that routine federal processes give VOA managers the power to punish transgressions. The whistleblower lawsuit discussed a three-step procedure that, in fact, does end up at the USAGM level for the worst offenses.
While the investigations of the first Trump CEO established his transparent attempt to put political appointees in charge of the journalism, the OSC findings also reveal Pack’s abusive and lawless mismanagement of the government agency placed under his power:
- Improperly suspending six executives’ security clearances and placing them on administrative leave.
- Gross mismanagement by spending $1.6 Millon to investigate those executives.
- Violated the Privacy Act when he distributed investigative materials on the six executives “to non-government individuals.”
It is also self-evident that the shutdown of USAID would undermine soft power as would another attempt to turn VOA into a voice of Trump propaganda – not to mention a complete shutdown of VOA as suggested by Elon Musk.
Jim Fry was a journalist nearly 50 years before he retired in 2023. In nearly 17 years at Voice of America, he covered Washington, DC, and politics and for more than seven years directed national coverage for the English newsroom. After retirement, Jim volunteered in U.S. politics, supporting the Democratic Party ticket in 2024.