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Donald Trump passed the head of an international press agency to select your own candidate for its flagship publicly funded news network.
Asset wanna Lake Kari — failure republican candidate For Arizona governor and US senator who promised to be the media’s ‘worst nightmare’: run Voice of Americathe country’s oldest international broadcaster, reaching millions of people around the world.
During his first administrationTrump and his allies have been accused of trying to manipulate the network and the agency that runs it so that they can use it as his own propaganda machine, turn the exits that promote the free flow of information around the world on the White House’s integrated messaging platforms.
The director of Voice of America is chosen by the designated head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independent diplomatic arm of the government that oversees state-supported media outlets that broadcast in countries where press freedoms are limited and where information is difficult to access.
By law, VOA’s director can only be appointed or removed by a majority vote of a bipartisan board of directors that works alongside the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
But Trump announced that he wanted Lake to run the network before even naming a candidate for the agency. He said Lake “will serve” as director of the network.
Lake “will ensure that American values of freedom and liberty are delivered to the world fairly and accurately, contrary to the lies spread by the fake news media,” Trump announced on December 11.
The first Trump administration marked a turbulent and toxic time for agency staffwhich was overseen by Steve Bannon ally Michael Pack, who purged staff, disbanded advisory boards, replaced positions with Trump loyalists, refused to renew foreign journalists’ visas, and allegedly interfered with media coverage.
Trump himself said of VOA in 2020: “The things they say are disgusting to our country. »
An uncredited White House statement at the time accused VOA of amplifying “Beijing propaganda” for its coverage of Wuhan’s COVID-19 lockdown model, and asserted that “VOA too often speaks for adversaries of America – not of its citizens.”
Two months before President Joe Biden took office, Pack replaced acting VOA chief Elez Biberaj — a journalist at the network for more than 40 years — with former diplomat Robert Reilly, who was intensely scrutinized for his opinions on LGBT+ people and Islam.
Reilly had also pushed to use VOA to promote U.S. politics rather than providing a platform for independent media for a global audience — as required by law — sparking concerns that Trump and his allies were trying to transform the country’s global information network into a propaganda wing for his administration.
VOA was established in 1942 to transmit news, music and national programs to territories conquered by the Allies during World War II, then expanded across Europe and around the world with professional content. -democratic to counter homegrown propaganda and disinformation during the Cold War and in the digital age for a largely non-American audience.
With funding from the U.S. Agency for Global Media, VOA produces digital, radio and television content in more than 40 languages, reaching more than 300 million people per week, the network reported in 2022.
Biden named Amanda Bennett as the agency’s current head, and Michael Abramowitz was sworn in as VOA’s current director earlier this year.
If Abramowitz is fired and Lake is named director of VOA, she will oversee a budget of nearly $300 million with more than 2,000 employees worldwide, including hundreds of journalists.
During the election campaign, Lake ridiculed journalists as “monsters”, called the media “fake news” and “disgusting”, and suggested that journalists should be sent to Afghanistan. “Let’s stop funding the press, let’s stop funding the media,” she said during her campaign for governor.
When he took over as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Pack quickly fired management and claimed without evidence that his predecessors “ignored common national security protocols and essential government human resources practices.” which made the agency’s media vulnerable to espionage. He said VOA is “a great place to plant a foreign spy.”
VOA Staff said The Independent at the time that Pack’s actions risked threatening journalists in countries where their lives could be in danger, and that his focus on the pursuit of political power and personal vendettas was “bulldozing the firewall” intended to keep political operatives out outside of its editorial offices.
VOA’s “firewall” is enshrined in the U.S. International Broadcasting Act and it “prohibits interference by any U.S. government official in objective and independent news coverage.”
The employees then filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking an injunction preventing Pack from making personnel decisions. A judge granted the request, finding that the “First Amendment prohibits Mr. Pack and his team from attempting to take control of these media outlets, from investigating their journalists for alleged ‘bias’ and from attempting to influence or control the content of their reporting. ” AAccording to their lawyer Lee Crain.
A report of the Office of the Special Adviser later discovered that Pack had illegally breached these editorial firewalls, abused his authority, and engaged in gross mismanagement and abuse of funds.
Lake, meanwhile, was a television news anchor in Phoenix for nearly 30 years until 2021, when she left her job at a local Fox affiliate after a series of controversial statements on social media, including con COVID-19 conspiracy theories And accuse a campaign advocating for better teacher pay as a front for marijuana legalization.
She ran for governor in 2022 against Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs, who beat her Republican rival by about 17,000 votes. Lake refused to concedeechoing Trump’s election denialism and ultimately failing to overturn his defeat in court.
Lake then lost a 2024 Senate race to Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego, who defeated Lake by more than 80,000 votes.