Voice of America's failure in Iran and China

Ted Lipien, Washington Examiner

Image from article, with caption: Both Voice of America and Radio Farda have come under intense criticism from anti-regime Iranians for continuing to propagate the Obama administration line on Iran.

On this year’s Martin Luther King Day, I had the pleasure of watching, quite coincidentally, two phenomenal historical films with human rights themes.

The first was a documentary on repression and censorship in communist-ruled China. The second was a newly released Hollywood feature film, “Milada,” based on true historical events surrounding the imprisonment, trial and execution by the communists of Czech human rights champion Milada Horakova.

Anyone could learn a lot from these two films what a real struggle for human rights is about. And the people who really should watch them are the Obama administration holdover officials still in charge of the failing, tax-funded Voice of America and the dysfunctional Broadcasting Board of Governors agency. These two federal entities are responsible for the dramatic failure of U.S. media outreach during the recent Iran protests.

The China human rights documentary, “History’s Mysteries: Those Who Listen in the Dark,” was uploaded to YouTube in 2015 with English subtitles by the VOA Mandarin Service. As it happens, the VOA Mandarin Service is now in conflict with the VOA and BBG management. One of the producers of the VOA film is being threatened with firing by VOA’s and BBG’s senior officials. Two other VOA Mandarin Service journalists, one of them a former political prisoner in China who appears in the VOA documentary, are also facing firing by holdover managers who were appointed during the Obama administration.

The current dispute is not about the 2015 historical video, although the Obama-era management had put a stop to producing new ones of the same type. These brave Chinese-American refugee journalists, who are now on administrative leave with pay, are being threatened with punishment for questioning orders from managers, including VOA's director and deputy director.

In April 2017, the senior management wanted to shorten a live interview with Chinese businessman whistleblower Guo Wengui. The journalists opposed the management’s decision, rightly fearing loss of credibility and accusations of caving in to pressure from Beijing. The negative response from thousands of Chinese social media users that followed the management’s decision has been incredibly damaging for VOA's credibility. Some of the most prominent China scholars in the U.S. have written a letter to the BBG in defense of VOA Mandarin Service broadcasters.

The Obama-era management swears up and down that pressure from the Chinese government, which included calls from the Foreign Ministry and the Chinese Embassy in Washington, had nothing to do with their decision on shortening the Guo Wengui interview. They accuse the VOA Mandarin staffers singled out for punishment of being bad journalists for not reaching out sufficiently to communist officials for responses to any accusations from the whistleblower.

It’s a ridiculous claim on the part of the management because Chinese communists are not in the habit of responding directly to such accusations. And in any case, VOA Mandarin Service did obtain and presented at some length general responses from the regime to Guo Wengui’s allegations. China scholars in the U.S. have described these VOA journalists as “among the best in the Chinese journalistic community worldwide.”

This also illustrates a much larger failure of the current management as shown in VOA’s coverage of the Iranian protests. Both VOA and Radio Farda (the latter also managed by the BBG as part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) have come under intense criticism from anti-regime Iranians for continuing to propagate the Obama administration line on Iran. One Iranian journalist and former political prisoner in Iran tweeted:

“Dear Americans, the U.S. taxpayer-founded [sic] @VOANews & @RFERL never took the right stance on #IranProtests as well as they have done in favor of Mullahs. It's shameful. #ReformBBG.”

VOA’s English-language coverage was particularly atrocious. In reports under such headlines as, “Iran's Revolutionary Guard: People, Security Forces 'Have Broken the Chain' of Unrest” and “Rouhani Rejects Trump's Support for Iranian Protesters,” VOA has presented at length the regime’s propaganda, including outright lies, with hardly any balance or response from the protesters. VOA was late in starting its reporting on the protests and improved its coverage only slightly in a delayed reaction to outside criticism. It happened too late and did not amount to much.

My guess is that even former President Obama would be ashamed of VOA’s recent Iran and China coverage, even if he is still defending his nuclear deal. So would be former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who in 2013 had called the Broadcasting Board of Governors “practically defunct.” Retiring House Foreign Affairs Committee Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., had called the BBG "dysfunctional" and "rudderless." The agency is a national security disaster requiring a bipartisan fix. President Trump should immediately nominate a new BBG CEO who, unlike the current Obama-era appointees at the agency, would be vetted and confirmed by the U.S. Senate and stay clear of domestic partisan politics.

In the meantime, these holdover officials would benefit from watching the two human rights films. They might discover that Czechoslovak anti-communist hero Milada Horakova died for the very same principles being defended by the VOA Mandarin Service journalists they want to see fired. During the Cold War, I had worked alongside some of the best Czech and Slovak VOA broadcasters. We would have never tolerated the kind of coverage that VOA gave in recent weeks to the Iranian protests.

I sincerely hope that the BBG holdover officials won’t succeed in carrying out their threat to fire VOA journalists. If they do, it would be yet another disaster under their watch. The White House and the Congress must act quickly in a bipartisan fashion to restore order and effectiveness to U.S. international broadcasting and digital media outreach.

Ted Lipien is a former VOA acting associate director.