Good day all. Once upon a time, the United States set up a radio network called the Voice of America. It was broadcast into communist controlled countries to provide them uncensored news and information. Like everything else the Progressive Liberal Democrats have touched in recent years, the VOA has gone solid Anti-American WOKE.
When President Trump returned to office, he asked that Kari Lake take over the VOA and clean it up. However, once Kari Lake arrived and started digging into things, she quickly found that the Voice of America was beyond salvage. The VOA is now being shut down. Here are the details from Fox News:
President Donald Trump ordered the dismantling of news agency Voice of America, the U.S.’s state-funded media outlet that Trump has railed against for promoting biased media reports.
“Voice of America has been out of step with America for years. It serves as the Voice for Radical America and has pushed divisive propaganda for years now,” a senior White House official told Fox News Digital.
That is the one thing that the VOA could not be. It had to be absolutely nonpartisan. (Pro-American and Pro-Freedom was fine and expected) For decades that was the case. Things changed some time ago when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. Add to that the rise of the Internet and the ability for most of the world to find new sources of information.
Trump signed an executive order on Friday that commands the dismantling of seven government offices, including the United States Agency for Global Media, which is the parent company of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
“The non-statutory components and functions of the following governmental entities shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, and such entities shall reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law,” the EO reads.
And the next step will probably be legislation closing the whole mess down permanently. In the mean time, the layoffs are beginning.
Kari Lake, whom Trump named as the VOA’s next chief in December, is currently serving as senior advisor at the U.S. Agency for Global Media and told employees to “check your email” for more information on their employment futures.
“The President has issued an Executive Order titled Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy. It affects USAGM and its outlets VOA and OCB. If you are an employee of the agency please check your email immediately for more information,” Lake, who is also a former news anchor and Republican Arizona political candidate, posted to X. OCB refers to the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which is a Spanish language, government-funded radio and TV broadcaster that operates Radio and TV Martí in Miami, Florida.
The emails basically said, “You’re fired.” Now a lot of people are wondering why the dramatic action. Wasn’t Kari Lake’s job to fix the issues? Apparently, she and others came in, took a deep look and determined that there was no way to salvage the VOA or any of the others networks.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media and Lake issued a press release on Saturday saying the agency is “not salvageable.”
“From top-to-bottom this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer—a national security risk for this nation—and irretrievably broken. While there are bright spots within the agency with personnel who are talented and dedicated public servants, this is the exception rather than the rule,” the press release said.
And that is the problem across Washington. You have a few dedicated people trying to do the job, but they are outnumbered by those who, frankly, shouldn’t be trusted with anything more than asking if you want fries with your order. I guess the question is, what will happen to those few good people? They’re probably gone as well.
Voice of America has come under scrutiny for promoting biased content, including for allegedly “sanitizing” Hamas when the outlet neglected to note in an article in January that residents in Gaza cheered the terrorist group when it brought out coffins holding the remains of Israeli hostages, including children.
“Let’s get the facts straight: Hamas paraded the dead bodies of innocent Israelis, including two children, in front of cheering crowds. American taxpayers should not be paying the salaries of Hamas apologists who spout terrorist propaganda,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., told National Review at the time of VOA’s coverage.
This is the problem. Voice of America and the other networks have, just like the legacy Main Stream Media, become nothing more then propagandists for the Democrats and the Hard Left. If any organization had to be as neutral as possible, it was the VOA.
Just days after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, VOA told its employees to “avoid calling Hamas and its members terrorists, except in quotes,” National Review reported that year.
That apparently wasn’t just the tip of the iceberg, but probably the straw that pulverized the camel’s back.
The government-funded news outlet has also come under fire for other stories across the years, including running an article in 2020 that asked, “What Is ‘White Privilege’ and Whom Does It Help?” It was also criticized over publishing a story and video that was compared to a Biden campaign video in 2020, and downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop controversy that rocked the 2020 presidential campaign in its waning days.
Who did they think they were? The New York Slimes? MSNBC? The Washington ComPost? Or CNN? What they did was make themselves another fake news agency.
“I have monitored the agency’s bureaucracy along with many of its reporters and concluded that it has essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias aligned with partisan national media,” a former VOA employee wrote in an op-ed last year calling for the outlet’s dismantling. “It has sought to avoid accountability for violations of journalistic standards and mismanagement.”
It sounds like he either quit in disgust or was pushed out. However, it’s obvious that he was right. President Trump and his team probably remembered, as I do, the commercials from the 60’s and 70’s talking about the good work that the VOA and other networks did during the cold war. That was probably what President Trump and Kari lake were thinking when President Trump hired Lake and told to see if the mess cold be fixed. Obviously, she determined, with others, that it couldn’t. Now the process to close it down is underway. I expect some Obama or Biden judge to order it all turned back on.
Thatisall
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...
~The Angry Webmaster~
