Thursday, December 03, 2020

Doing it Wrong at Voice of America

News which shouldn't be entirely surprising for any following the debacle that has been unfolding at VoA over the past twelve months. CEO Michael Pack was appointed by trump but came to the role as a "fakenews" acolyte and believed VoA - in all its versions - was too liberally biased and thus needed to be "cleaned up".  Naturally, the lack of any reliable data to support his claims didn't stop him but brains didn't get in the way either and it looks like more yet more crimes have been committed.  From NPR

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a federal watchdog, disclosed Wednesday that it had found "a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing" at the parent agency of the Voice of America under the leadership of the CEO appointed by President Trump.

Since taking over the U.S. Agency for Global Media, CEO Michael Pack has turned it upside down, sidelining top executives, firing network chiefs, and deep-sixing requests for visa extensions for foreign staffers. Most notably, Pack had two senior political aides with records of strongly pro-Trump ideological statements investigate journalists for perceived anti-Trump bias and push for sympathetic news coverage of the president during the campaign.

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