GOP, Dems alike worried by media agency’s changes

WASHINGTON — It was, in essence, an oversight hearing of a relatively small government agency, but what it amounted to was an indictment of a bureau taken over by an ally of President Donald J. Trump and made unrecognizable to the members of Congress — from both parties — who fund and monitor it.

Republicans and Democrats joined in expressing anger and dismay at what has happened to the U.S. Agency for Global Media since a Michael Pack was confirmed as its director in early June.

The agency, with an annual budget just under $1 billion and a staff of 4,000 employees and 1,500 stringer reporters, is home to the U.S. government’s international broadcasting operations, including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, which have long been respected as trustworthy sources for information for people in authoritarian countries whose news is censored, restricted and blocked.

Since being confirmed in June to his post in a partisan Senate vote, Pack has fired all of the heads of the agency’s news organizations, ordered the news networks to publish proTrump administration editorials, refused to renew the work visas of dozens of VOA-employed foreign journalists who speak the local languages of the countries to which they broadcast, and flouted congressional spending directives by essentially impounding funding for projects to combat internet censorship in repressive societies.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the committee’s top Republican, said he had “grown very concerned the agency’s mission is being undermined from the top.”

“Most problematic to me has been what I can only categorize as the impoundment of funds for the Open Technology Fund,” the Texas Republican continued, adding that Pack was ignoring “the will of Congress.”

In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an emergency injunction to block Pack’s effort to fire the fund’s bipartisan board of directors and its top officials, concluding that Pack likely lacked the statutory authority to do so. The fund is now suing Pack in federal claims court in an effort to force the release of $18 million of its $20 million original congressional appropriation.