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BACK TO : INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING (see also Public Diplomacy)
Voice-Over America by Art Levine 
Voice-Over America You've read about what Kenneth Tomlinson is doing to public TV. What he's already done to the Voice of America is his other scandal. By Art Levine Issue Date: 09.10.05 The story of Kenneth Tomlinson's efforts to impose his right-tilting version of "balance" on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has incited national controversy. But while that tale is well-known, Tomlinson's malign inuence on another respected media institution, the Voice of America (VOA), has received far less attention. What's happened at the VOA -- which the longtime Karl Rove ally Tomlinson oversees as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) -- has done considerable damage to the value and credibility of international broadcasting. According to interviews with current and former VOA staffers and e-mails obtained by The American Prospect, under Tomlinson's watch, VOA administrators have pressed the agency's journalists to report pro-White House spin and too often directed them to downplay hard-hitting news in favor of puffery. In June, for example, when the VOA's experienced TV health reporter proposed an exclusive story covering the trial of a malaria vaccine in Kenya by doctors from Walter Reed Hospital, the network's administrators urged her to cover a joint anti-terrorism exercise in Senegal instead -- even though the VOA's Pentagon radio correspondent was already assigned to do the piece. Malaria kills 3 million Africans every year, even more than the number killed by AIDS, and 80 percent are children. Yet the VOA's acting news director, Ted Iliff, decided that the Walter Reed story would be too costly and was "not compelling" enough to send a reporter overseas. The correspondent was instructed to do the terrorism story -- despite the Pentagon correspondent's warning that she wouldn't get the visuals needed for good television, which turned out to be accurate. So why was the VOA correspondent sent on a pointless and expensive trip to Senegal? A supervisor told her that David Jackson, the VOA director handpicked by Tomlinson, wanted "to make a good impression on the Pentagon," VOA sources say. Morale at the VOA has plummeted, with management reportedly censoring critical stories and pushing material that will please the White House and the Pentagon. Says a former high-level staffer, "What's happening at the CPB [under Tomlinson] has already happened at the VOA -- and it's been done by the same people." According to Sanford Ungar, who directed the agency from 1999 to 2001, "The vast majority of people in the VOA newsroom believe there is political pressure of the sort that there hasn't been in decades." * * * The Voice of America is one of seven international broadcasting organizations overseen by Tomlinson, who was appointed chairman of the bipartisan Broadcasting Board of Governors in August 2002. A former executive editor of The Reader's Digest, he was also appointed to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2000 and selected as the BBG's chairman by President Bush in 2003. He will leave that post in September, but his troubled management of international broadcasting will continue. Contrary to the mistaken assumption of some in Congress and the media, the purpose of the VOA is not to spread propaganda for the U.S. government (that remains the province of FOX News). The 63-year-old agency is supposed to win respect for American values and appeal to its overseas audience -- numbering around 100 million -- by offering a model of honest and credible journalism. At today's VOA, however, staffers are instructed to avoid original, candid reporting about violence in Iraq in favor of more uplifting news. Current and former staffers say that management demands "positive stories" about the war, while discouraging more realistic ones that might conict with administration policy. In his down-home Virginia drawl, the amiable Tomlinson denies imposing any political agenda at the CPB or the BBG. "People like Jim Lehrer would never let that happen," he told me in a recent interview, praising Lehrer's NewsHour as a model broadcast. Pointing to his background as a VOA director during the Reagan years, when he claims to have resisted political pressures, Tomlinson says, "If I did see any [political interference], I'd be doing something about it." Yet critics say he's encouraging politicization with the approval of a board that was meant to prevent such meddling. "What was supposed to be a rewall to protect broadcasters," says Ungar, "has become a vehicle for political interference." Other former and current VOA staffers charge that Tomlinson's own bias is all too obvious. Among the few willing to speak publicly about the agency's troubling direction is retired VOA deputy director Alan Heil Jr., author of the denitive Voice of America: A History. Of the agency's journalists, Heil says, "The most valued asset they had was their credibility, but now there's gross interference in their journalistic integrity." Heil says that he has observed a level of daily interference in editorial decisions under Jackson that hasn't existed since the early and mid-'50s. Complaints about political slanting have been detailed in a recent stinging article and letter in Foreign Affairs magazine written by Ungar, as well as in internal e-mails obtained by the Prospect and extensive interviews with current and former VOA journalists. Jackson dismisses the critics as "people who think editing is censorship." While he defends the agency's practices as sound journalism, however, it is clear that the warping of the VOA's integrity has deprived overseas audiences of credible news stories. The agency's propaganda slant has resulted in such Pravda-style embarrassments as this recent headline on the VOA Web site: "U.S. Supports Democratic Aspirations of All People in the Mideast." In a letter widely circulated within the VOA offices near Capitol Hill, video reporter Carolyn Weaver upbraided Jackson: "There is no doubt that many staff members at VOA believe that news and features have been politicized on your orders, whether explicit or indirect, and that you were carrying out the wishes of the White House and Ken Tomlinson & ." Tomlinson and Jackson deny conferring about specic stories or taking orders from White House officials, although there is no doubt that Jackson is following the board's wishes. His approach to coverage of the Iraq War has been particularly controversial within the agency, where he stands accused of cutting real war coverage to push good-news gush. In an e-mail obtained by the Prospect, Jackson urged coverage of expanded cell-phone service in Iraq. "This story offers so many angles," he wrote. "CELL PHONE SERVICE COMES TO IRAQ. Improvements in telephone service are helping Iraq reintegrate into the international community and paving the way for the new economy & . Source: Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad." He sent similar messages promoting coverage of improved postal service and teacher training, passing out releases from the White House or the Coalition Provisional Authority. Jackson says he merely suggested worthwhile story ideas, just as he sends along ideas from The Washington Post or National Pubic Radio. "Nobody accuses me of having an NPR agenda," he says. His critics also point to Jackson's insistence on a dubious story about Salman Pak, a reputed terrorist training camp near Baghdad. Prior to the March 2003 invasion and for weeks afterward, some military officials believed the site was linked to al-Qaeda, providing much-needed justication for the war. By May 2003, however, when Jackson began pressing the VOA TV unit for coverage, The New Yorker and others had discredited the story. "Nobody believed it except the Rush Limbaugh wing, but Jackson kept hounding radio and television people to cover it," recalls a VOA staffer. Editors sought to wave Jackson off the story, according to agency sources, but he kept demanding that the story be pursued -- even after U.S. military officials in Baghdad no longer claimed any link, and the VOA's reporter on the ground had explained that the al-Qaeda connection was "bullshit." Jackson claims he was unaware of the skepticism at the VOA and in the media about Salman Pak. When he nally learned the story didn't check out, he says, "That was the end of it." Such incidents have created an atmosphere of self-censorship and partisan domination, according to Tim Shamble, president of the VOA local in the American Federation of Government Employees. "Reporters are under the impression that they should produce news favorable to the administration and the Iraq War," he says. Democratic board members have become so concerned, according to BBG sources, that they've pushed the board for an outside review to determine whether the VOA is complying with its charter. * * * Under Tomlinson, the VOA has been undermined in other ways. The agency has cut back 24-hour English-language broadcasting by nearly half to save money, thus depriving the world's educated population of American news in the leading international language. Meanwhile, nearly $70 million that the BBG spends annually on ambitious new Arabic-language services -- formerly provided in some degree by the VOA itself -- has largely been wasted on an "embarrassment," according to Middle East experts such as former Ambassador William Rugh. As a result of the political meddling and wrongheaded decisions under Tomlinson's board, Heil argues that the nation's agship broadcast network is being stripped of inuence, reach, and credibility. The VOA historian warns, "America is jamming itself." Art Levine is a Washington Monthly contributing editor who has also written for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, Slate, Salon, and other national publications. Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Art Levine, " Print Version -- Voice-Over America", The American Prospect Online, Aug 14, 2005. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org. |