As I write this, President Trump has recently issued an Executive Order* defunding the Voice of America to the greatest extent possible within the power of the Executive Branch, along with Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. (All under the United States Agency for Global Media.)
He appears to bear some personal animus toward VOA, as may be seen in this clip from a few days ago, prior to the EO. A White House Press release cites a number of complaints about VOA, all but one in the period between 2016 to 2022, mostly from partisan sources, alleging bias.
It's an interesting quirk of VOA that while it is somewhat isolated from being told what to cover by the Federal government, it is quite firmly required to be accurate and objective, -- and can be held to account when it is not. VOA is America's face to the rest of the world, and while they can at times be a little bland and overly upbeat, they take their mission seriously. You can go to their website and judge for yourself -- for instance, this explainer covering the circumstances under which Permanent Resident status can be revoked. Or at least you could do so at the time I wrote this. There's little reason to believe the VOA website will still be around next week.
The Voice of America dates back to the Second World War -- and yes, it's propaganda, but it's honest propaganda, demonstrating the workings of a free press and a representative democracy to the entire planet, delivering truth to people who were often being lied to. Shutting it down is hiding our light under a bushel. It has been an inexpensive effort, measured on the scale of Federal projects, and has paid off over and over. If the President thinks they're slanting the news, he's got the power (via their overseeing agency) to get them back on track. If he doesn't like how they cover him, he can restrict their access to White House events. Pulling the plug instead sends the wrong message to the world -- and while VOA directly operates only a few transmitting facilities these days, once you walk away from a high-power shortwave transmitter and antenna installation, it can be tricky bringing it back up again.
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* The same order yanks the rug out from under the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a big source of funding for public libraries, especially in areas where the population is too thin to support much of a library. Plus several other Federal organizations, none of which amounts to much more than a rounding error in a budget dominated by defense spending, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. It all seems more mean-spirited than frugal, more culture war than penny-pinching.
Update
2 months ago
7 comments:
There is no such thing as honest propaganda.
Either it's the truth, or it's propaganda.
Incorrect. Here's an overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
Sad news on all counts.
From the Wikipedia:
"Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented."
Truth is objective reality.
Honesty is adherence to objective reality.
If the information being presented is selective or subjective, it isn't the whole truth, and therefore, it cannot be completely honest.
I'm getting the impression you are overlooking or misunderstanding the use of the word "may" in this definition.
There's a lot of "white" propaganda out there, stuff that tells no lies, material that describes the best aspirations of a society or enterprise and omits its worst failings -- but unlike "black" or "gray" propaganda, it does not seek to deceive as a primary goal.
But this is absolutely purposeful and done with conscious intent: in a fact-free world, conmen, fraudster and tyrants flourish.. And after a while, facts and truth are lost in the weeds. There's this WaPo oped
https://wapo.st/3XXARK3
...which asserts that Trump isn't so much lying as BSing us. Me:
BS and word salad. Yes, and the point is?
Because it really doesn't matter, any more than when you're killed by 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree murder or involuntary manslaughter, you're still dead.
And my feeling 🙂🙁 is that WaPo, the NYT and all the others played a big part in this train wreck by studiously observing and explaining our way down the drain....as if explaining everything, reporting everything instead of relentlessly calling out the rape in progress was OK. Even now, when the disaster is all around us, the WaPo fires Ann Telnaes, refuses ads criticizing Trump...the conversion is complete.
This isn't the journalism of Murrow, Sevareid, Huntley-Brinkley, Cronkite (who would have shouted down the house)...it's an institutionalized sensationalized corporatized social media that sells. They are accessories before and after the fact to the rape of democracy. They don't yell HELP! MURDER! POLICE!, they rationally analyze, they breathlessly explain their unique insight. It's bleeding and they're selling.
Mourning (and rage) in America. Me, I cancelled all my subscription except The Guardian. The Grey Lady is running a brothel.
Stewart Dean; Well said.
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." Edward R. Murrow
He also said, "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 ... We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
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