Recent VOA Charter Violations by the Voice of America and U S Agency for Global Media USAGM

Last month (February 2022), the Voice of America observed the 80th anniversary of its founding during World War II. At that time, it immediately fell under the influence of pro-Soviet propagandists hired by Robert E. Sherwood, Joseph Barnes, and the man who was later somewhat erroneously called the first VOA Director, future Hollywood actor John Houseman. It was Houseman who recruited for VOA jobs many of his pro-Soviet communist friends. The Roosevelt administration quietly forced Houseman to resign. Other fellow travelers at the Voice of America, including officials in charge and journalists, were not pushed out until the Truman administration took over in 1944. The process of reforming the Voice of America took several years. Some fellow travelers continued to work for VOA until 1947 when the Smith-Mundt Act imposed stricter security rules for VOA employees. A few later ended up serving communist regimes in Eastern Europe as diplomats and propagandists. They were Soviet agents of influence who, while working for VOA, were manipulated by actual KGB agents with whom they were in close contact.

Vladimir Putin is an ex-KGB officer. The KGB and its successor agencies have targeted the West with propaganda and disinformation for decades. Today, Russia’s war on Ukraine U.S. government-funded reporting is in the hands of the dysfunctional U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The agency is known for its lax security and multiple scandals in recent years. Its authority to conduct background checks on prospective employees has been revoked due to massive security violations.

In 2014, under its previous name, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of the Voice of America (VOA), conducted a faulty poll in Russian-occupied Crimea. BBG went into great lengths to report its misleading results obtained under the terror of the Russian occupation – something the BBG and the USAGM have failed to disclose. Independent experts in Ukraine, Russia, and the United States criticized the BBG poll and the way it was conducted.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media still shows a press release about its poll in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine, as well as the results of its faulty U.S. government-funded research, which helped to reinforce Putin's propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine and Crimea.

Looking at this U.S. government agency from a historical perspective, the Voice of America management has never admitted that one of its pioneer journalists was Howard Fast. He was later a Communist Party USA activist and the 1953 winner of the Stalin Peace Prize. The VOA and the U.S. Agency for Global Media management are also covering up their more recent scandals, involving multiple violations of the VOA Charter, which is U.S. law. The same U.S. government executives are endeavoring to get Congress to further weaken the Smith-Mundt Act and to allow them to propagandize more effectively in the United States.