The Truth Dies with Him
Another voice didn’t toe the Trump line
In another sad-but-true-to-form attempt by Donald Trump to silence the truth, he’s gutted a federal agency that broadcasts news around the world — because it wasn’t pro-Trump news or Fox propaganda, but pro-democracy journalism that provides information to parts of the globe where a free press is threatened or nonexistent.
He signed an executive order on Friday evening that effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for Global Media. It is an umbrella organization for federally funded news outlets like Voice of America, which collectively reach 420 million people, in 100 countries, in 63 languages.
USAGM’s programming can be read, seen, or heard in dictatorships such as Cuba, China, Russia, and Afghanistan, though not always easily. In North Korea in 2020, a fisherman was executed for secretly listening to Radio Free Asia while at sea.
By Monday, 1,000 journalists were placed on indefinite leave for not being MAGA cheerleaders. Others were locked out of their Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The mission of USAGM is threefold: to disseminate news to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access; to aid American diplomacy by extolling the tenets of democracy; and to model independent journalism.
Grant Turner, the former chief financial officer of USAGM, called the shutdown “Bloody Saturday.” “USAGM networks share important news, information and American values around the world. It took decades to build this goodwill and an audience of hundreds of millions every week. Seeing arsonists just set fire to it all is awful,” he told NPR.
Steve Capus, the president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said in a statement, “The Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years. Handing our adversaries a win would make them stronger and America weaker.”
You need no more evidence of this than Andy Boreham’s reaction to the news. He is a reporter for an English-language newspaper in China controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. “EXCELLENT NEWS,” Boreham wrote on X. Radio Free Asia is “one of the U.S.’s most insidious anti-China propaganda outlets.”
U.S. government-run media outlets got their start during some of the darkest days for democracy. On February 1, 1942, in the middle of World War II, the Roosevelt administration launched Voice of America (VOA), a radio service created to broadcast stories about democracy to Germans and others living under Nazi rule.
During that first broadcast, VOA made a pledge: “Today, and every day from now on, we will be with you from America to talk about the war ... The news may be good or bad for us — We will always tell you the truth.”
Trump’s antipathy toward VOA and its brethren is long and ugly. During his first administration, he attacked VOA as he did other mainstream media, accusing it of inaccurate and deceptive reporting. Unhappy with its coverage of the Covid pandemic, he had outlets investigated, journalists suspended, and visas revoked.
During an Oval Office news conference last week with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, a reporter asked about Palestinian displacement in Gaza. Trump interrupted, asking the reporter who she worked for. She answered, “Voice of America.” “No wonder,” Trump retorted. She didn’t file the story. VOA used a wire story from Reuters instead.
Trump’s pick to run Voice of America was longtime local news anchor and failed MAGA Arizona gubernatorial and Senate candidate Kari Lake. She reportedly lobbied hard for a prominent role in the administration. Lake was given the job of director of VOA, only to find out she will be overseeing the dismantling of the agency.
When Trump announced her appointment on December 11, it didn’t sound like he was going to axe it. He said Lake would “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”
Trump’s autocratic friends have long been opponents of the international pro-democracy news networks, and they have made their displeasure known to the president. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin of Russia have also given Trump an anti-free press playbook. Journalists working for USAGM have been detained in Russia, Russian-controlled Crimea, Belarus, and Azerbaijan. In 2022, Orbán told a roomful of MAGA faithful, “We must have our own media,” meaning media he controls.
My long-ago mentor from CBS News, Edward R. Murrow, was appointed by President Kennedy to head the United States Information Agency, the group that oversaw Voice of America in the 1960s. Murrow’s famous quote about Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt is as relevant now as it was seven decades ago.
“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.”
When someone is fearful of the truth, they take control of information dissemination or eliminate it if they can. To date, Trump has employed both tactics. He has already heavily damaged independent journalism in America. How much more he can do remains an open question.
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Dan
We are starting to rise up against this tyranny. I hope it grows more quickly now. We cannot give up. Thanks, Dan, for being out in front and with us.
If anyone needed any more proof that this toad is Putin’s puppet, well here it is. Thank you, Mr Rather, for continuing to speak truth to power. We need you now more than ever.