Has Bush Relinquished Control of 'Voice of America'?

Has Bush Relinquished Control of 'Voice of America'?

Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002

Part one of series: Voice of America Silent as Terrorist Threat Looms South of the Border. Part two: Voice of America Becomes 'Voice of Taliban.' Part three: VOA Bites the Hand That Feeds It.

WASHINGTON – At the very time the U.S. is contemplating war with Iraq and is trying to tell its story to the rest of the world, there is confusion as to how much control the Bush administration has over Voice of America. The White House apparently has acquiesced on whether it has the right to pick the VOA director.

The continuing presence of Clinton holdovers at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees the VOA, has added to the concern that America’s message to allies and captive peoples around the world is being blurred.

While Senate plurality leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has been hindering the president’s effort to create an efficient Department of Homeland Security, it turns out that he is able to pick four of the nine members of the powerful BBG.

As explained by BBG Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson in an interview with NewsMax.com: "The president appoints both the Democrats and Republicans on the board. But by tradition, when we had a Democratic president, [Senate GOP leader] Trent Lott recommended names to the White House for the Republicans. And now that we have a Republican president, Tom Daschle recommends the Democratic names for the board.”

Tomlinson says it is important that the BBG, created by legislation co-sponsored by Sens. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Joseph Biden D-Del., remain bipartisan.

During the Reagan years, the old International Broadcasting Board (IBB) was also, by law, bipartisan. However, a key national security official of those years told NewsMax that at that time "the president would be the one to pick the Democrats as well as the Republicans.”

Among the Democrats Reagan appointed was then AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, an economic liberal who was also strongly anti-communist in the tradition of his predecessor, George Meany. This resulted in a board that "would be a little more realistic when it came to dealing with the communists,” says this onetime Reagan administration operative.

At this crucial time in U.S. and world history, the overseas broadcast authorities have:

Cut off broadcasts to Brazil just as a Castroite leads in the polls in the presidential campaign.

Beamed foulmouthed pop music to Arabs, who already have a negative view of American culture. (We'll offer some pro and con on that in a future report.)

Reduced VOA’s news output, which features taxpayer-supported journalists who "tilt against the government” to show their independence – a long-standing culture clash that has lasted for decades.

Chairman Tomlinson, whose own confirmation on the Hill took months, says he intends to restart the broadcasts to Brazil, although "money is incredibly tight.” In any event, it would be too late for VOA to reach the Brazilian people with the truth about the pro-Castro candidate, favored to win the election Sunday. It seems the damage has been done.

Snafu

Add to this a major legal snarl that has further hindered the Bush administration’s efforts to keep others informed as to why it is pursuing the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots.

The BBG directly challenged President Bush’s right to appoint the VOA director.

In fact, within a matter of months, two different people have been named to that job. One, Robert Reilly, was appointed by the president. When Reilly was making his exit, his successor, David Jackson, formerly of Time magazine, was selected by the BBG.

"No law has been changed,” Robert Schadler of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation told NewsMax.com, "but the means by which an important government position is filled has apparently willy-nilly been changed. And it shows in the confusion at the highest levels about how an important job is filled. And it further means [that] how this person does his job and who he tries to please [are] dramatically changed without any law being changed.”

Sometime between the appointment of Reilly and the appointment of Jackson, the White House and the BBG apparently came to an agreement that it is the BBG, and not the White House, that has the authority to appoint the VOA director. That would suggest the White House has quietly agreed to that interpretation of the law regarding this pivotal position. Whether that interpretation holds water, it leaves the lines of authority blurred.

Tomlinson says, however, that Jackson "was fully vetted by the White House.”

Further, just when fighting Iraq is contemplated as the next step in the war on terrorism, "one of the most important means of reaching the public audience [overseas] is now in confusion as to who the director of the Voice of America works for,” complained Shadler.

Clinton Cling-on

The difficulty the Bush administration has had in putting its own stamp on VOA policy was evident almost from the day the new president took office. The Clinton-era VOA Director Sanford Unger "announced rather peculiarly” that he would stay on until July, six months into the new administration.

"It would have been a scandal if Madeline Albright had announced that she was going to remain secretary of state until July,” observed Schadler. But that is what Unger did at VOA.

It is that kind of confusion that Free Congress Foundation President Paul M. Weyrich describes as "Management by the Marx Brothers.” It raises questions not only as to who is minding the store, but also as to who should be in charge, and to what extent a new president has the right to have his administration’s views and policies represented in an entity that calls itself the "Voice of America.”

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Editor's note:
"Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism"