Don't give up on saving honest journalism at USAGM

Elon Musk's tweet showing support for former Ambassador Richard Grenell's call for shutting down Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty and the Voice of America would harm U.S. national and international security interests.

It does not seem to be in line with President Trump's plans for these congressionally supported, taxpayer-funded media outlets. I say that as a longtime critic of the U.S. Agency for Global Media's mismanagement of these entities.

Musk and Grenell are correct that the Obama and Biden administrations' appointees politicized much of government-employed journalists' work to advance their partisan and ideological agenda. The actions and failures of the former USAGM management caused tremendous harm to objective journalism, and support for freedom, a free press and democracy abroad. 

However, giving up and getting rid of these national security assets — because honest and fair journalism is truly an asset — would be a gift to America's enemies.

To squander America's ability to compete with China, Russia and Iran, and our ability to address them and their populations immediately and authoritatively in the event of an emergency, would be an abrogation of the duty to govern responsibly. It would waste existing national security resources that must be drastically realigned and reformed but not discarded.

Communicating American and Western values and priorities to the world with honest, fair and comprehensive journalism can improve America's security abroad and advance our interests peacefully at a relatively low cost with proper management and effective oversight.

President Trump has designated Kari Lake to lead Voice of America and L. Brent Bozell III to be the USAGM CEO. Having volunteered to serve as RFE-RL CEO toward the very end of the first Trump administration as a non-partisan international media expert, I discovered that the campaign of media vilification hysteria against his first USAGM CEO, Michael Pack, was nothing more than a desperate attempt to stop him from fixing security breaches and the enormous waste he uncovered at the agency.

Pack assured me there were no plans to turn VOA into Trump TV and expressed unconditional support for the VOA Charter. I would not have volunteered for the job if I had not believed he was sincere.

Kari Lake, despite her partisan public persona, in an interview for CBS News gave the same assurances for VOA's journalistic independence and necessary reforms to restore the VOA Charter, which is U.S. law. Pack also strongly defends the importance of maintaining U.S. international media assets if they are well managed, despite having every reason to be bitter. The attacks on him by the former USAGM management and some VOA English newsroom journalists were unconscionable. And they are even worse considering that the latter went on to find excuses for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel and refused to call Hamas terrorists.  

There is definitely a value in U.S. international broadcasting. We know that our adversaries are using information to weaken America. However, serious reform is needed at these taxpayer-funded outlets. And, frankly, reform is needed at all government agencies. 

I share most of Ambassador Grenell's and Elon Musk's concerns. The recent USAGM leadership hired Putinist propaganda media operatives. It fired journalists after pressure from Beijing. It censored the news in response to pressure from communist Vietnam. It even hired an alleged Russian spy to be a freelance reporter for the Voice of America.

USAGM management also failed spectacularly in Afghanistan and in Africa, where many countries are siding with China against the U.S. 

Grenell, who now serves as President Trump's envoy for special missions, could help free RFE-RL journalists whom the former USAGM leadership failed to protect. I was trying to free them when a Biden administration appointee dismissed me without warning in an email sent in the middle of the night by a USAGM office assistant. I had informed the USAGM appointee in Washington a day earlier about discovering millions of dollars wasted in legal fees and other questionable payments in Russia. I guess that was a bad idea.

But not all VOA and RFE-RL staff are corrupt. Biased and partisan news reporting is limited mainly to its English-language content, duplicating what is already available online, and can be easily reduced and reformed. Concerned journalists in the VOA Russian Service, for example, revealed the hiring of Russian propagandists. Whistleblowers in the VOA Vietnamese Service disclosed news tampering by the VOA's senior management during the Biden administration.

Europe, excluding Belarus, is indeed free. But Russia and China are not. Not even Europe and America are free from Vladimir Putin's hybrid warfare to destabilize constitutional democracies and their media on the left and on the right. Meanwhile, Africa and the rest of the developing world are not free from China's aggressive influence buying. 

My advice, as someone who had led the most successful VOA foreign language service during the Cold War and won without having to resort to propaganda, is to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Just because these organizations serving U.S. national interests have become dangerously corrupted at the senior levels and among the members of some of its oversight boards (including individuals doing private business in China and Russia), that is no reason to give hostile foreign governments the satisfaction and the advantage of seeing these potentially effective institutions dismantled.

With bipartisan support in Congress, scale these agencies down to their most essential functions, remove layers-upon-layers of useless bureaucracy, and reform them to serve their original media freedom and national security purpose, upon which all Americans can agree.

Ted Lipien was Voice of America's Polish service chief during Poland's struggle for democracy and VOA's acting associate director. He served briefly in 2020-2021 as Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty president.