Musk: "shut [VOA, RFE/RL] down... Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy)"
Sensible talk when your friends are Russia, China, and other autocracies
Two days ago, I wrote about a possible and logical future rearrangement of the US Agency for Global Media. The short of it was I could see the administration 1) moving the Voice of America (VOA) back into the State Department and under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and 2) consolidating the “grantee” networks – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) – under RFE/RL.1 The consolidation was scoped out in detail in 2011. It could and should have been done then or subsequently when I was on the Broadcasting Board of Governors (2013-2017), the agency that subsequently had the board removed and renamed the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).2
My comments were predicated on what appeared to be the administration’s intent to keep some semblance of the agency. The Project 2025 handbook dedicated ten pages (albeit at times sophomoric3) to the US Agency for Global Media. Project 2025 recommended keeping the agency. Also, the administration nominated Brent Bozell III to be the USAGM CEO. The administration also stated it would appoint Kari Lake as the Director of the Voice of America, but this appointment has little to no weight as it seems more like a temporary parking spot.
By the way, Project 2025 recommended possibly placing VOA in the State Department under the Bureau of Global Public Affairs (GPA). That’s naïve and worse than attaching it to the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs as effectively a sister bureau to GPA. Then again, I’ll be the first to admit that empowering this under secretary is wishful thinking, considering that administrations going back to 1999 when the office was established only confirmed a person to the position only 55% of the time. Would Lake still want to be the VOA Director reporting to the Assistant Secretary for GPA?
However, this administration demonstrably lacks any semblance of logic, practicality, planning, coordination, or any other word remotely related to coherent consideration of ways, means, and objectives. We know this to be true. Today, the Eye of Musk gazed upon USAGM.
“Yes, shut them down,” he tweeted, referring to RFE/RL and VOA, maybe because he knows only what’s tweeted at him. In this case, the “host of the largest show on X” attributed Ric Grennell as saying “Radio Free Europe and Voice of America are media outlets paid for by the American taxpayers. It is state-owned media.4 These outlets are filled with far left activists. I’ve worked with these reporters for decades. It’s a relic of the past. We don’t need government paid media outlets.”
Musk, the head of “DOGE” wrote, “Europe is free now (not counting the stifling bureaucracy)… Nobody listens to them anymore… It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.”
The past that created these so-called relics – by the way, Senator Fulbright called these “Cold War relics” when he tried to shutter them in 1972 because, in part, he felt they antagonized an otherwise peaceful Russia – is still with us, that past-which-is-present is why they are still with us. The purpose of USAGM’s networks, including VOA and RFE/RL, is to provide accurate and trustworthy news and information to audiences suffering under censorship, audiences inundated by massive amounts of disinformation, and audiences lacking access to professional journalism. The networks report the news truthfully from the perspective of the target audience, not a US perspective shipped abroad, about what’s happening locally, regionally, globally, and, sometimes, the news refers to the United States (note: not everything is about the US) as it matters to the audience. In short, the networks support US national security by attacking the disinformation, misinformation, and gaps of information that do and might undermine our security now and in the near future. They do this through professional journalism and stories focused on the principles of democracy.5
To describe the geographic places, I’ve long used the shorthand that USAGM’s markets are those places Special Operations Command is, could be, or recently was operating in.
I’d write that “Europe is free now” is an ignorant statement to make, but doing so grants the benefit of the doubt, and that is not earned for someone that reason would demand is or can be thoroughly informed. Russia intensely dislikes both RFE/RL and VOA and has worked aggressively against both. It was not merely my role as Governor on the former Broadcasting Board of Governors, now the US Agency for Global Media since the board was removed, that led Russia to sanction me (was it their first or second sanctions list?), but my engagement in that position with the countries on the frontline of Russia’s attacks that probably led to them sanctioning me. (I am not aware of any other BBG Governor getting sanctioned by Moscow. Surely there are others.)
In short, autocratic regimes and wannabe autocrats do not like USAGM’s operations.
That said, there are many problems, which I’ve discussed briefly in many posts here, including the one two days ago positing a restructuring (rather than termination) of US international broadcasting.
I’ve also long pointed out that the fundamental objective of USAGM going back to the original legislative authority for VOA passed in January 1948 was to become unnecessary when private media was deemed adequate. This is why VOA and the other USAGM networks provide their content for free to local media and audiences and why VOA conducts media training for local press: to develop local journalism because that’s a key pillar to whatever form of democracy will spring up in that land. This latest attack on USAGM embodies why information freedom has dropped this century.
If you want some serious details on why VOA was kept after World War II, see Part I: Why We Have the Voice of America. I intended that post to be part one of three, but now I’m unsure if it matters.
Taking a step back, yesterday, a person close to USAGM I’ve known for a dozen years emailed about my prediction the grantees would be consolidated. This person said the grantees tried to get language in the National Defense Authorization Act last year to protect their independent status. That was not a surprise. In discussions, I often refer to the grantees’ politicking to preserve their fiefdoms, and I did so in the earlier post about USAGM.
I searched the language my correspondent emailed and discovered two things. First, it sure looks like the fiefdom protection language is law, though not through the NDAA (see page 10 of this or find Sec. 7401 here ), which Biden signed into law. Here is the critical line: “…a grantee may not be debarred or suspended without consultation with the Chief Executive Officer and a three-fourths majority vote of the Advisory Board in support of such action.” (Something doesn’t seem right here. I don’t know what, but something seems off with this.)
Remember, this administration fired the Advisory Board, so the three-fourths majority vote is impossible. The money spigot can always be turned off or nearly so.
The second thing I discovered is the Senate wants USAGM to look into establishing a new organization. The African Broadcasting Networks is “…to promote democratic values and institutions in Africa by providing objective, accurate, and relevant news and information to the people of Africa and counter disinformation from malign actors, especially in countries in which a free press is banned by the government or not fully established, about the region, the world, and the United States through uncensored news, responsible discussion, and open debate.”
Why the Senate wants to create a new grantee, especially when, generally speaking, VOA is quite good across Africa, is beyond me. I can only guess it’s because people behind grantees have better relations with Congress than VOA does.
Note the language for the ABN above. That’s identical to the spirit and principle behind VOA, RFE/RL, and the other networks.
No doubt that the attacks on USAGM will increase. Today, Grenell tweeted or retweeted (X’d? re-x’d?) about this several times, including once where he suggests a VOA reporter is “treasonous” for posting a quote from someone else about USAID.
A couple of closing thoughts. First, any meaningful discussion may be moot because Musk’s attention on USAGM may be functionally fatal. Such an agency will be hard, if not impossible, to rebuild. Which, it’s reasonable to surmise, is the point. Second, this potentially tees up a confrontation between Republicans aggressively against Chinese influence operations where USAGM’s networks VOA and RFA are engaged. While the effectiveness of RFA is questionable, it’ll be interesting if House Republicans who have held hearings on Chinese political warfare, I testified at one a while ago, will be happy with dissolving or bankrupting RFA’s, RFE/RL’s, and VOA’s programs combating the People’s Republic of China’s malign influence operations across Asia, Latin America, and Africa (yes, RFE/RL territories are included here, they don’t just operate in Europe). Third, I think it’s increasingly likely USAGM as a whole will vanish into the night, much to the great pleasure and astonishment of Russia, China, Iran, smaller countries, and many terrorist and insurgent groups.
Last, the “far-left” claim is absurd. This claim is anchored in dislike or discomfort for the truth. It is sloganeering in place of raising legitimate concerns about the need to manage the organization and its subcomponents better. That latter part is a leadership issue, and I can go on and on discussing problems that have and have not been addressed. When you see someone throw that charge out there, realize they don’t want a real conversation or to make the hard decisions involving actual leadership, management, and strategy.
These networks provide real value to US national security, but I’ll be the first to assert aggressively, based on my firsthand experience, that they need leadership.
Leadership doesn’t come from pithy tweets.
It’s fine to claim USAGM and its networks are “relics,” but back it up. “Europe is free” is a non-starter, a strawman that reveals ignorance and a failure to engage with the subject, at the very least. More likely, it’s a gift to adversaries.
I still think we’ll likely see some restructuring with the grantees and probably a shift with VOA. If so, it’ll look more like the attempt to create the Freedom News Network (see my discussion of that attempt here), which, for some, will have a better ring than Radio Free something.
I should note there were discussions during the Obama administration about restructuring. I mentioned in a previous post the OMB’s interest in subsidizing up to half of the then-BBG’s budget through advertising. And then there was the guy with the Secretary of State’s ear who had the bright idea it would be wonderful to reduce BBG to just 5, 6, or 7 languages and surge into others as necessary. I have no idea what was discussed during the Biden administration, but I do know – and stated to those who asked – that the wrong people were picked for key leadership positions, and they harmed the agency’s reputation and potential.
At this point, since any effective governance, strategizing, resourcing, planning, legal maneuvering, or any sort of needs-based assessment is nowhere to be seen or even hinted at, we can only guess what will happen tomorrow.
Thanks for reading. I'm now back to what I should have been doing: finishing editing and rewriting my PhD dissertation.
The Voice of America was at the State Department from September 1945 through August 1953. From September 1945, VOA was under the authority of the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. From January 1952 until August 1953, it was under the authority of the Administrator of the International Information Administration, a semi-autonomous organization created by Secretary of State Dean Acheson to protect from and elevate relative to the State Department’s bureaucracy that was hindering the broad international information efforts at every chance. In August 1953, the State Department eagerly ejected most of its global engagement operations to the newly created US Information Agency.
These networks are called grantees because they are independent non-profit organizations funded by individual grants from the US Agency for Global Media.
The removal of the oversight board, which was a functional firewall against political interference in operations, was an inside job that included deception and lies to the Senate and the State Department, willful violation of directions from the majority of the board, and willful withholding and attempted obfuscation of progress of the bill to eliminate the board. No serious analysis was done, let alone expert review or comment. One major proponent and possibly the key enabler told me after I called out the issue, though by then, it was too late as I then learned of the deceptions, not to worry. Though the CEO would now be a political appointee nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate rather than serving at the pleasure of the bipartisan board, he asserted ahistorically it would be just like the USIA Director, which was not a political position.
I was surprised to read the bio of the author of these ten pages. If they had submitted that as a paper in the graduate course on public diplomacy I taught years ago at the Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication, I’d have given it a B-. Of the many issues with the text, one described an arrangement as “historically” a certain way. I don’t think it’s historically accurate to portray something I caused to be created in 2016 (or perhaps it was 2015), for the reasons the author calls out. Perhaps that example if petty of me.
I can’t say that I know Ric Grennell, but we traded an email to two in the prior decade. He contacted me in 2010, or possibly 2011, to discuss a negative article he was writing about RFE/RL (I am pretty sure it was RFE/RL, though it could have been the BBG or VOA). I distinctly remember a) sitting at my kitchen table while talking to him on the phone and b) refusing to agree with his argument. I pushed back, saying his arguments were unfounded and inaccurate as I countered with operational and statutory facts.
I strongly prefer “democratic principles” or some variation rather than simply “democracy.” After all, are we talking about US, UK, German, French, Japanese, or someone else’s version of democracy? None, the basic principles of the rule of law, accountability, transparency, etc.