Federal watchdog says “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” at US broadcasting agency – By Alex Ward (VOX) / Dec 3 2020
A Trump and Bannon ally leads the US Agency for Global Media. The Office of Special Counsel isn’t happy with what’s going on there.
In June, a Steve Bannon ally and conservative filmmaker appointed by President Donald Trump took over running the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), a vast international network of news agencies funded and operated by the US government.
Within hours of introducing himself to employees, the new CEO, Michael Pack, purged four top officials. He then went on to ban visas for certain foreign reporters and began investigating journalists at the agency for suspected anti-Trump bias. In October, he announced he was eliminating the agency’s regulatory “firewall” — longstanding internal policies aimed at protecting the editorial independence of journalists at the agency from political interference from the government.
Critics accused Pack of abusing his power to turn America’s state-run news organizations, whose mission is to disseminate factual, unbiased news to people who live in countries where freedom of the press is either strongly curtailed or nonexistent, into Trump-friendly propaganda outlets.
While Pack and his team haven’t achieved a pro-Trump project, a federal watchdog has found accusations of gross mismanagement to be credible.
CONTINUE >https://www.vox.com/2020/12/3/22150002/special-counsel-whistleblower-global-media
