In March this year, the Trump administration effectively shuttered the Voice of America, a broadcasting vehicle for the selective promotion of US policy and culture for over eight decades. Nearly all of its 1,300 staff of producers, journalists and assistants, including those working at the US Agency for Global Media, were placed on administrative leave. Kari Lake, President Donald Trump’s appointment to lead the Voice, was unflattering about that “giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer.” Last month, Lake confirmed that layoff notices had been sent to 639 employees.
The motivations for attacking VOA were hardly budgetary. The White House cited a number of sources to back the claim that the organisation had become an outlet of “radical propaganda.” VOA veteran Dan Robinson features, calling it “a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting leftist bias aligned with partisan national media.” The Daily Caller moaningly remarks 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.” The Voice, not aligned with MAGA, had to be silenced.
The measure by Trump drew its inevitable disapproval. VOA director, Michael Abramowitz, stuck to the customary 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 see the Voice as one dedicated to propaganda. However, he misunderstands most nuttily that the propaganda in question overwhelmingly favours US policies and programs. His quibble is that they are not favourable enough.
Prohibited from broadcasting in the United States, VOA’s propaganda role was always a full-fledged one, promoting the US as a spanking, virtuous brand of democratic good living in the face of garden variety 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 (NPR), the US Congress was content to fork out for what was effectively an information arm of government sloganeering for Freedom’s Land.
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. America was to be represented in whole and not as any single segment of society, with the 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. The Voice 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, it continued its work during the Cold War, its primary task that of fending off any appeal communism might have. Till 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 Carter administration. Furthermore, prominent positions at the Voice tended to be filled by career members of the diplomatic corps.
Given that role, it was rather rich to have the likes of Republican Congresswoman Young Kim of California question Trump’s executive order, worried that closing the Voice would effectively silence a body dedicated to the selfless distribution of accurate information. Accuracy in that sense, alloyed by US interests, would always walk to the dictates of power. Kim errs in assuming that reporting via such outlets, emanating from a “free” society, must therefore 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 such truth and information is curated by an adjunct of the State Department, such people would be advised to be a tad sceptical.
The falling out of favour with Trump, not just of the Voice, but such anti-communist creations of the Cold War like 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, correctives to the disinformation and misinformation of adversaries, are deludedly slanted. All forms of disinformation and misinformation should be battled and neither the Voice’s critics, nor its fans, seem to understand what they are. VOA and its sister stations could never be relied upon to subject US foreign and domestic policy to rigorous critique. Empires are not in the business of truth but power and effect. Radio stations created in their name must always be viewed with that in mind.
