Trump's decision to shut down Voice of America makes sense

President Trump has decided to shut down the Voice of America. He considers it highly partisan and prone to disseminating talking points that don’t present America in a good light.

I think he’s right about that. Whether VOA should be eliminated or reformed under Kari Lake, his extreme MAGA selection to head the agency, is a matter for debate.

My experience with DOA is exclusively from the mid-to-late 2000s when I appeared in debates it broadcasted. One of the debates was over the Bush administration’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina natural disaster.

My opponent claimed, without evidence and indeed falsely, that many thousands of people died as a result of Bush’s incompetence in responding to that hurricane. I called the guy on this gross exaggeration, but many listeners might well have taken his word for it.

Does it serve America’s interests to tell the world that our response to this natural disaster was itself a disaster? I don’t think so. Does it serve our interests to make false claims exaggerating the death toll? Clearly not.

In another debate, this one about the war in Iraq, my opponent accused President Bush of outright lying in order to bring about the war. Some of the administration’s key claims supporting the decision to go to war were mistaken, to be sure. But mistaken claims aren’t the same as lies.

Does it serve America’s interests to tell the world that the U.S. president lied in order to drag the country into a war of choice? I don’t see how.

The counter-argument is that by airing our dirty laundry in this way and in the context of a debate, we show the world how free and open we are. I don’t think we need to prove our bona fides as a free and open society. In any case, we shouldn’t be proving them by making false or dubious claims that cast America in a bad light.

Is the Voice of America still doing this? Is it still airing Democratic talking points with little regard for their truth?

I assume the people who run VOA are at least as anti-Trump as they were anti-Bush, and at least as prone to insert their bias into the news they broadcast in America’s name.

A considerable amount of evidence suggests that this is so. If anything, in the age of Trump VOA seems to have become more partisan than ever.

For example, a former White House reporter for VOA says:

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. It has sought to avoid accountability for violations of journalistic standards and mismanagement. The list includes:

• During President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, VOA allowed and often encouraged key correspondents to carry out opposition journalism against him. This included an uprising, growing out of VOA’s central newsroom, against Mr. Trump’s choice of chief USAGM executive in 2020.

• That newsroom and the agency have a known left-wing bias. Between 2016 and 2020, some VOA reporters did little to hide their disdain for Mr. Trump in their reports and social media posts.

• Since Amanda Bennett, VOA director from 2016 to mid-2020, returned as USAGM chief in 2022, managers and employees dissed Republicans in Congress who criticized VOA’s inexplicable refusal to refer to Hamas terrorists as terrorists. One agency official called lawmakers “silly.” VOA’s new director has equated congressional critics to troublemakers.

The Washington Post’s lead fact-checker, Glenn Kessler undertook an analysis of some of the Trump administration complaints about VOA. He concluded that the case against VOA is “flimsy.”

I consider Kessler’s case flimsy and marred by nit-picking. Consider this passage:

Voice of America’s management told staff not to call Hamas and its members terrorists, “except when quoting statements.”

This is false. After the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which is designated a terrorist group by the United States, Carol Guensburg, VOA’s associate editor for news standards, sent an email to staff. The Hamas attack could be called “terrorist acts” or “acts of terror,” she wrote. But she advised VOA to “avoid calling Hamas and its members terrorists,” except in direct quotations from sources.

“Avoid” is not the same as the White House claim of an order to “not” use the term, which a top official at the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), VOA’s parent organization, made clear at the time. “There is no policy prohibiting the use of the words ‘terror,’ ‘terrorism,’ or ‘terrorist’” at VOA or the other five news organizations under the agency’s umbrella, wrote Amanda Bennett. The organizations “counsel care and attention in the use of the words but do not place any restrictions on the appropriate use” of those words.

As a practical matter, I don’t see a great deal of difference between (1) an editor advising employees to avoid calling Hamas and its members terrorists or advising “care and attention’ in using the word and (2) an editor ordering them not to. In any case, why should VOA shy away from calling these mass murderers terrorists?

Hamas indisputably is a terrorist organization. It has been so designated by the American government — a designation that has firm bipartisan support. If VOA is to be the voice of America, it shouldn’t avoid, or pussyfoot around, applying America’s designated description of Hamas

Moreover, VOA’s policy was essentially the same as the Associated Press Stylebook, the main guide to word usage in news reporting. It says the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” have “become politicized, and often are applied inconsistently.” It therefore recommends that journalists avoid the words and instead describe “specific atrocities, massacres, bombings … and other such actions.”

Here, Kessler nails it, albeit inadvertently. VOA is just doing what America’s mainstream media does.

But the liberal left captured the mainstream media, including the Associated Press, decades ago. The Voice of America should be the voice of America, not voice of the liberal left.

In sum, Kessler has confirmed Trump’s view, and mine, that VOA is just another biased, left-wing media outlet. No wonder Trump has decided to shut it down.

But shutting down VOA is not without cost. Our enemies and adversaries aren’t going silent about America. Thus, it’s desirable for the world to hear what we have to say, even if the content leaves much to be desired. And if, under the Trump administration, the content could be made less partisan and less critical of America, that seems like a better outcome than a shutdown.

But there are three problems with this. First, it’s not clear that Kari Lake and her team could fully drain the VOA swamp. Second, even if she did, the swamp could be restored by the next Democrat who wins the White House. That task will be easier if VOA has not been shuttered.

Third, there’s the risk that under Lake, VOA would become the voice not of America, but of the MAGA right. Granted, the MAGA right would present better and more accurate picture of America than the liberal left, which tends to view America as incorrigibly racist, sexist, homophobic, and just plain mean.

But I don’t want taxpayers to fund a hyper-partisan, talking-point parroting VOA of any controversial ideological persuasion. Maybe it’s best just to call the whole thing off.