President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Kari Lake as the next director of the Voice of America brought criticism and applause from partisan media — more proof that the top VOA position has become highly politicized.
Lake, a former television anchor and unsuccessful political candidate in Arizona, will inherit a handful. Since 2016, VOA English-language programs have portrayed Trump in numerous news reports as a fascist threat to American democracy and the world, greater even than Russia’s autocrat Vladimir Putin and China’s Communist Party.
In the 2024 elections, most American voters rejected such vilification. Trump became familiar with VOA’s tax-subsidized attacks on him and didn’t appreciate them. No one would if they were called “punk,” “dog,” “pig,” “blatantly stupid,” and threatened with physical violence, as he was in a VOA broadcast, or if VOA’s government-employed reporters streamed sex jokes about his wife from a federal building.
Trump’s selection of Lake shows that he wants to do something about it. But what?
The right answer is to restore respect for the congressional VOA Charter, which is U.S. law. The director must ensure that the journalism at the Voice of America is sound and that its programs reach countries where they are most needed and can be most effective. She must not allow activist journalists favoring radical ideologies to use VOA to interfere in U.S. domestic politics or to repeat foreign propaganda without challenge, as VOA has done in recent years.
To set an example, Lake must remain publicly neutral on controversial domestic political issues. Her job is not to be the president’s spokesperson but to restore VOA’s editorial independence and adherence to the highest professional standards and ethics of journalism.
We will see whether Lake can resist attempting to move VOA from one extreme to another — whether she is the person who can restore the nonpartisan professionalism that its parent agency’s current leadership has destroyed.
I hope Lake successfully moves the organization from its current left-wing radicalism to resemble and reflect America’s diverse political culture. Showing more diversity of opinion and moving VOA closer to the center would make it more credible and journalistically sound. Moving it to the radical right, on the other hand, would not, and it would also violate the VOA Charter.
Michael Abramowitz, the recently appointed VOA director who successfully headed the human rights NGO Freedom House, has at least brought some measure of competence and civility back to VOA. However, he was the choice of the embattled current CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media and former VOA Director Amanda Bennett, an Obama and Biden appointee whom House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) has rightly criticized for tolerating corruption.
I suspect the selection of Abramowitz for the VOA directorship was intended to mollify congressional critics after VOA’s managers, editors, and reporters refused to call Hamas murderers “terrorists” in the wake of their Oct. 7 massacre. One VOA employee posted “death to Israel” memes on social media following the massacre of defenseless Jewish civilians. Another VOA reporter suggested President Biden should be concerned that he may be “on the wrong side of history” in supporting Israel. That comment came after Hamas’ brutal murders, rapes, and kidnappings.
Few Americans understand the challenging job of managing the Voice of America with its 49 language services. Having worked there when it had its most tremendous success in multiplying audiences and contributing to the fall of the Soviet empire, I know that under exemplary leadership, it can still make a big difference in projecting American opinions and interests in some countries.
The obstacle has been bad governance. In recent years, a VOA English newsroom reporter who did not speak Chinese or have any experience in China was promoted to manage the Chinese Service. Another one, put in charge of defending press freedom, posted obscene anti-Trump memes on social media.
VOA editors hired former Putin state media propagandists, used an alleged Russian spy as a freelance contributor of news reports for VOA English language programs, aired a fake interview supposedly with the late Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, protected a high-level manager with questionable academic credentials, and allowed VOA reporters to lampoon Melania Trump with lewd jokes.
Not surprisingly, Congress has reduced VOA’s budget and that of its parent agency. Bennett told her staff it had nothing to do with her leadership, but Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) came right out and said that VOA’s coverage of Hamas had prompted Congress to cut appropriations to the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Some of the most substandard reporting has been in the VOA English Service, which largely duplicates private U.S. media output that widely available worldwide anyway. VOA news is often late. Some stories have not been reported or have been self-censored to protect the Biden administration. The VOA English newsroom is where, for many years, partisan managers have been putting loyalists and private-sector friends who do not speak any foreign languages.
I doubt there are now more than two or three Republicans left among the dozens of its editors and reporters. It is an undiversified workplace, as is the Agency for Global Media’s bloated bureaucracy, which needs a drastic reduction. Abusing government resources, some of its officials even tried to smear the reputation of former VOA reporters who, as independent journalists, uncovered waste and abuse within USAGM. They even attempted to discredit our contributions to winning the Cold War.
Elections have consequences. The electorate gave Trump the right to put the people he wants in essential government positions, but his choices must still be vetted. By statute, the bipartisan International Broadcasting Advisory Board has to approve Lake by a majority vote. She needs enough Republicans on the board to vote for her before she can assume her duties and is unlikely to start working on the Inauguration Day.
Changing VOA’s culture of radical ideological bias and managerial incompetence won’t be easy when she takes her position. Still, she must do the job right to save VOA’s congressional funding and make it effective again in representing America to the world.
Ted Lipien is a journalist and media freedom advocate who was chief of the Voice of America’s Polish Service during Poland’s successful struggle for democracy and later served as VOA’s acting associate director and President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
