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Wednesday Morning Rant

Poisoned Wells

Big news over the weekend on the propaganda front. VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and various smaller official US state media are no more. Oh, they still exist on paper and the enabling legislation is still there, but Trump ordered the outlets cut to the bone, to do no more than the legally-mandatory minimum. And laid most of them off on Saturday morning, including suspending numerous contracts.

The official US propaganda outlet for foreign lands - sort of - has been suspended and will, like USAID, probably never recover. Barring some change in the law, the next guy can resurrect it if he wants to, but there is probably no point. It was a death strike and it will probably have worked. The order goes far beyond just the United States Agency for Global Media (the office behind VOA and various others).

The order shutters seven agencies or programs in pursuit of its title - "Continuing Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy." Unlike some Trump orders, this one is quite tame. It doesn't call out anyone in particular for wrongdoing, but the party is simply over for these agencies. The list makes it obvious, however, why these particular outfits are being targeted. The real point of it might be VOA, though.

Voice of America and its adjuncts have been on the air for generations, ostensibly to promote American interests abroad and combat state-controlled propaganda in enemy or neutral territory. For a long time, they were forbidden from operating on American soil because government-produced propaganda was illegal in the domestic market. Various changes over the years modified its mission. In 1994, the International Broadcasting Act ostensibly divorced VOA's editorial content from political operations. At the beginning of the second Obama Administration, they changed the law to allow these networks to operate on American soil, too. In 2017 - in celebration of You Know Who - the joint defense authorization reaffirmed the VOA "firewall."

VOA and its relatives have not exactly been neutral or unabashedly pro-American. They dragged Trump over the coals for his so-called "Muslim Ban" in the first administration and for basically everything from tariffs to USAID in this administration. Over the years VOA became what it had no choice but to become, which is yet another undifferentiated organ saying the same things as all the other undifferentiated organs. VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and its various adjuncts may once have served a purpose but they serve little purpose now. How can they, when people can get the same thing from CNN or the BBC?

The gloating and lamentations alike are illustrative as the state of what were once policy tools. Kari Lake - who is Trump's "advisor" for that agency - was not exactly kind about what she found there. Calling it a "giant rot and a burden to the American taxpayer" and a "national security risk" is not putting too fine a point on it. The EU is scrambling to possibly plug the new funding gap and shore up Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. They balk at their NATO funding obligations, but may pony up for a cast-off propaganda organ? That, to me, looks like a tell.

The greatest tell of all, though, comes from the HuffPo:

Since 1942, VOA has shared news globally from the American perspective and sought to fight propaganda through the broadcasting of uncensored information to people around the world living under oppressive regimes. On its website, VOA touts itself as "the largest U.S. international broadcaster, providing news and information in nearly 50 languages to an estimated weekly audience of more than 354 million people," and emphasizes that its reporting will always be "accurate, objective, and comprehensive."

Its shuttering, the Society for Professional Journalists said Monday, should frighten all Americans who cherish their freedoms.

No, you're not insane and you're not in some parallel dimension. This is in fact the hard-left Huffington Post lamenting the shuttering of an official US government propaganda organ. Seems a tad backward, doesn't it? HuffPo isn't alone, either. From Politico:

High-profile journalists and news associations have blasted the move, questioning what the shuttering of VOA will mean for press freedom under the second Trump administration.

"VOA journalists in our [White House] press corps are smart, dedicated and shine lights on vital issues," Kelly O'Donnell, an NBC News correspondent and former president of the White House Correspondents' Association, wrote on X. "I am proud of their dedication. If you believe in a free press, stand with VOA."

The National Press Club put out a statement on Saturday, pressing Congress to call for transparency and accountability and to make sure that VOA continues to be operational.

This is "through the looking glass" stuff. The domestic press standing shoulder to shoulder in lament over the death of a state-owned foreign propaganda complex and calling it a death knell for the "free press" says everything that needs to be said about it. These people are unironically decrying the end of a state-owned press agency as dangerous to a free press. The mind fairly boggles.

Whatever its mission was, and whatever its past performance was, it had poisoned its own well and become just another skin suit. And now it's over.