The Donald Trump administration in March effectively shuttered the Voice of America (VOA), a broadcasting vehicle for the promotion of United States policy and culture for more than eight decades.
Nearly all of its 1300 staff of producers, journalists and assistants, including those working at the US Agency for Global Media, were placed on administrative leave. Kari Lake, Trump’s appointment to lead VOA, was unflattering about the “giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer”. Lake confirmed last month that lay-off notices had been sent to 639 employees.
The motivation for attacking VOA was hardly budgetary. The White House cited a number of sources to back its claim that the organisation had become an outlet of “radical propaganda”.
VOA veteran Dan Robinson called it “a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting leftist bias aligned with partisan national media”. The Daily Caller remarked that VOA reporters had “repeatedly posted anti-Trump comments on their professional Twitter accounts, despite a social media policy requiring employee impartiality on social media platforms”.
VOA, which was not aligned with MAGA, had to be silenced.
Trump’s decision drew inevitable disapproval. VOA director Michael Abramowitz stuck to the line that his organisation “promotes freedom and democracy around the world by telling America’s story and by providing objective and balanced news and information, especially for those living under tyranny”.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the order “as a departure from the US’s historic role as a defender of free information and calls on the US government to restore VOA and urges Congress and the international community to take action against his unprecedented move”.
As with much criticism of Trump’s seemingly impulsive actions, these sentimental views proved misguided and disingenuous.
Trump is on uncontentious ground to describe VOA as dedicated to propaganda. However, he misunderstands that the propaganda in question overwhelmingly favours US policies and programs: his view is that they are not favourable enough.
Prohibited from broadcasting in the US, VOA’s propaganda role was always a full-fledged one, promoting the US as a virtuous brand of democratic good living in the face of tyrants — usually of the political left.
Blemishes were left unmentioned, the role of the US imperium in intervening in the affairs of other countries considered cautiously. Loath to adequately fund domestic public service providers, like National Public Radio, the US Congress was content to fork out for what was effectively an information arm of government sloganeering.
The VOA Charter, drafted in 1960 and signed into law as Public Law 94-350 by President Gerald Ford on July 12, 1976, expressed the view that the “long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the world by radio. To be effective, the Voice of America must win the attention and respect of listeners.”
It stipulated various aspirational and, at times, unattainable aims: be reliable on the news; have authoritative standing; pursue accuracy; objectivity; and be comprehensive.
The US was to be represented in its whole, with VOA representing “a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions”. US policies would be presented “clearly and effectively”, as would “responsible discussions and opinion on these policies”.
The aims of the charter were always subordinate to the original purpose of the radio outlet. VOA was born in the propaganda maelstrom of World War II, keen to win over audiences in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories.
Authorised to continue operating by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1946, its primary task during the Cold War was to fend off any appeal communism might have. Until October 1948, program content was governed under contract with the NBC and CBS radio networks. This troubled some members of Congress, notably regarding broadcasts to Latin America. The US state department then assumed control, authority of which passed on to the newly created United States Information Agency (USIA).
In such arrangements, the objective of fair dissemination of information was always subject to the dictates of US foreign policy.
What mattered most, according to R Peter Straus, who assumed the directorship of VOA in 1977, was to gather “a highly professional group of people and trying to excite them about making the freest democracy in the world understandable to the rest of the world — not necessarily loved by, nor even necessarily liked by but understood by the rest of the world”.
The state department left an enduring legacy in that regard, with the amalgamation of its Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs with the USIA in 1978 during the Jimmy Carter administration.
Furthermore, prominent positions at VOA tended to be filled by career members of the diplomatic corps.
Given that history, it was rich for Republican Congresswoman Young Kim of California to question Trump’s executive order, due to concerns that closing VOA would silence a body dedicated to the distribution of accurate information. The sort of accuracy, which is alloyed by US interests, will always walk to the dictates of power.
Kim assumes that reporting via outlets from a “free” society must be more truthful than authoritarian rivals. “For a long time now, our reporting has not been blocked by adversaries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea,” she claimed in March.
“Now, we are ourselves shutting off the ability to get the information into those oppressed regimes to the people that are dying for the real truth and information.”
As truth and information is curated by an adjunct of the state department, such people should be sceptical.
The falling out of favour with Trump, not just of VOA, but such anti-communist creations of the Cold War, such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, is a loss for the propagandists.
Arguments that stress the value of their continued existence as organs of veracity in news and accuracy are deluded.
All forms of disinformation and misinformation should be battled and neither VOA’s critics, nor its fans, seem to understand what they are.
VOA and its sister stations could never be relied on to subject US foreign and domestic policy to critique. Empires are not in the business of truth. Radio stations created in their name must always be viewed with that in mind.
[Binoy Kampmark lectures at RMIT University.]