“WASHINGTON — A conservative filmmaker who recently took over a United States global media agency removed the chiefs of four news organizations under its purview on Wednesday night, according to people with knowledge of the decision, in an action that raises questions about their editorial independence.
The filmmaker, Michael Pack, also dismissed the head of a technology group and replaced the bipartisan boards that govern and advise those five organizations. The boards, which all have the same members, are now filled largely with political appointees of the Trump administration, including Mr. Pack as chairman. One board member works for a conservative advocacy organization, Liberty Counsel Action.
The moves were criticized by congressional officials, including a leading Democratic senator, and former diplomats as an effort to turn the news organizations under the United States Agency for Global Media into partisan outlets. The organizations receive funding from the American government but operate independently.”
“Mr. Pack also dissolved the boards of the first three of those networks, which operate as grantees of the U.S. government; a bipartisan cast of luminaries including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former ambassador Ryan Crocker was replaced by low-level Trump political appointees from unrelated federal agencies, along with Mr. Pack and his chief of staff. The sole outside board member comes from the far-right Christian group Liberty Counsel Action, which is known for its militant anti-LGBTQ advocacy.
Mr. Pack offered no explanation for his actions, but issued a self-congratulatory news release quoting himself as saying that “every action I will carry out will be geared toward rebuilding the USAGM’s reputation, boosting morale and improving content.”
In fact, in a stroke, he has accomplished the opposite. Disheartened agency insiders tell us that the new CEO seems bent on carrying out a purge of what Mr. Bannon has described as an outpost of the “deep state” and converting it into another vehicle for promoting Mr. Trump.
The president has made no secret of his contempt for the “disgusting” VOA; in April, a White House statement falsely and ludicrously claimed its news reports had disseminated Chinese propaganda. After Mr. Trump bullied supine Senate Republicans into confirming Mr. Pack, despite unresolved ethical questions, it was a foregone conclusion that VOA’s top leadership, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Amanda Bennett, would be forced out. But Mr. Pack’s purge also extended to respected RFE/RL head Jamie Fly, a former Republican Senate staffer, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks’ Alberto Fernandez, another Republican. Was it because they can’t be counted on to convert their organizations into Breitbart-like propaganda outlets?”
Given the president's corrupt, self-serving partisanship and his blatant contempt for truth, it is reasonable to believe that those taxpayer-funded broadcast operations will become radical partisan propaganda operations focused on serving to help the president’s re-election campaign and his own financial situation.
The president can help himself financially by having foreign government and businesses patronize his commercial properties, including paying bribes to them under cover of doing legitimate business, in return for flattering coverage by America’s official but now corrupted and subverted broadcast voice. This will be an appealing option in corrupt countries and/or by American enemies like Russia and China.
What about Russia and the secret phone calls?
On June 1, various media sources reported that the president had spoken by phone with Russian president (probably for life) and dictator-kleptocrat Vladimir Putin. A few days ago, media sources reported that the president had decided to withdraw many American troops from Germany, something that Putin very much wants to see. Putin wants to clear US influence from Europe as much as he can so that Russia can step in to fill the void that a US withdrawal will create. In essence, Putin wants to destroy all Western European democracies and convert them to a murderous dictatorial kleptocracy like Russia.
Beginning at about 5:10 of a 10 minute interview shown here, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates discusses the need for soft or non-military American power, including a broadcast voice to counter propaganda from authoritarian powers Russia and China. Gates argues that the decay of American soft power has been going on for decades, and the American broadcasting voice is now weak and incapable of adequately defending democracy or truth. Gates argues that if countries do not go to war, they fight using propaganda. Gates’ comments were prompted by what is happening with the appointment of Pack to head US foreign broadcast operations. Gates argues that we have eliminated or greatly reduced funding for all of America’s sources of non-military power.
Under these circumstances, it is very likely that part of what the US president is doing is gutting what is left of US soft power to open the door more for Putin to try to destroy European democracies and to divide Europe from the US. In return for that favor, Putin will reward the president in various ways, including financially. My guess that (i) getting US troops out of Germany, and (ii) gutting and corrupting the American foreign broadcast are the major parts of what the president and Putin discussed in their secret phone call a few weeks ago.
America is in deadly serious trouble. We have what amounts to a Russian agent in the White House, a corrupt, spineless GOP in congress and a sick society where about 30% of republicans believe the president is doing his job so well that he qualifies as the best US president.
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