USAGM WATCH

During his April 15, 2020 White House press briefing, President Donald Trump said that what is coming out of the U.S. tax-funded, U.S. government-managed Voice of America is “disgusting” and “a disgrace.” He called on Democrats in the U.S. Senate to quickly confirm his nominee Michael Pack to be CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) which oversees the Voice of America.

Current VOA Director Amanda Bennett, who was appointed in 2016 during the Obama administration, rejects criticism of her leadership and management. She disagreed with the White House statement last week accusing the Voice of America of promoting propaganda and disinformation from the Chinese communist government in Beijing. Bennett said that “VOA News depends on factual unbiased reporting. For example, VOA sources the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths both inside individual nations and globally from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Data from the graphic cited in the White House press release was drawn from Johns Hopkins, which is used throughout the world,” Amanda Bennett said. She did not know or failed to point out if she knew that John Hopkins’ data was based on what U.S. intelligence experts and skeptical journalists, including those working for Radio Free Asia (RFA), believe is unreliable and most likely falsified Chinese communist government data.