Former CEO Remains Critical of VOA

The Wall Street Journal published an opinion article Monday, titled "Voice of America Is Broken and Can’t Be Reformed," authored by Michael Pack, who served as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) during the first Trump administration. In this piece, Pack argues that Voice of America (VOA), the U.S.-funded international broadcaster, is fundamentally flawed due to political bias, operational confusion, and ineffectiveness, advocating for it to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch.

Pack contends that VOA, established in 1942 to counter Axis propaganda during World War II, has strayed from its original mission. He asserts that it has become a platform rife with liberal bias, often aligning with domestic partisan media rather than serving as a clear voice for U.S. foreign policy interests abroad. Drawing from his tenure leading USAGM from June 2020 to January 2021, Pack cites firsthand observations of what he describes as a "hubris-filled rogue operation." He claims the agency’s bureaucracy and many of its reporters reflect a leftist slant, undermining its credibility and purpose.

Michael Pack

Pack criticizes VOA’s structure and culture as irreparable. He describes it as confused about its role—oscillating between acting as an independent news outlet and a tool of U.S. public diplomacy—resulting in an ineffective hybrid that satisfies neither objective. He notes that despite its $270 million annual budget and reach of over 360 million people weekly in nearly 50 languages, VOA struggles to compete with the billions spent by authoritarian regimes on their own state media, like China’s CGTN or Russia’s RT. This inefficiency, he argues, stems from a lack of clear direction and an entrenched resistance to reform.

His solution is radical: tear down VOA and rebuild it with a streamlined mission focused solely on advancing U.S. interests abroad, free from what he sees as domestic political entanglements. 

Critics, including some VOA journalists and former officials, have countered that Pack’s own leadership introduced bias by pushing a pro-Trump agenda, a charge he implicitly rejects in the article by framing his reforms as efforts to restore mission clarity.