USAGM Watch Media Review

After Mass Firings, GOP Senators Threaten to Cut Funding if Trump Appointee Politicizes USAGM’s News Broadcasts

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Wednesday condemned President Donald Trump’s hand-picked director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) Michael Pack, who took over the agency last month and proceeded to fire nearly all of the organization’s top leaders in what became known as the “Wedne…

A comment from former Voice of America senior White House correspondent Dan Robinson:

There is a lot of attention to the letter sent to Pack by senators, including Marcio Rubio. Which provides an opportunity to recall that Rubio, in a hearing with then Secretary of State Tillerson, had called for a State Department OIG investigation of the VOA Mandarin Service controversy, in which ex-VOA director Bennett had fired members of the Mandarin Service — yet despite this very public call for the IG to investigate the Mandarin Service issue, one of many scandals that played out under the former USAGM CEO Lansing, and under Bennett, Rubio apparently did not continue to press for that State OIG probe…