Voice of America: Speechless

One common trait of totalitarian regimes and banana republics: Control of the media.

 

Trump political appointee Michael Pack, who has directed Voice of America since June, has been busy dismantling all semblance of journalistic integrity at the agency. Now he has rescinded rules designed to protect VOA journalists from political interference.

 

“‘I am stunned,’ former Voice of America director Amanda Bennett told NPR early Tuesday morning. ‘It removes the one thing that makes Voice of America distinct from broadcasters of repressive regimes.’”

 

Pack also fired VOA general counsel David Kligerman in August. Protection from political interference “‘is what differentiates the Voice of America and the other USAGM-funded networks from the state-sponsored propaganda of Russia, China, Iran and others,’ Kligerman said.”

 

—See David Folkenflik, media reporter, “U.S. Agency Targets Its Own Journalists' Independence,” National Public Radio, Oct. 27, 2020. Image: 1951 VOA poster.

 

 

• Editorial Comment: So much for that.

 

 

See also, Paul Fahri, “Trump appointee sweeps aside rule that ensured ‘firewall’ at Voice of America,” Washington Post, Oct. 27, 2020.  

Former VOA officials “saw irony in the notion that the agencies — whose broadcasts are designed to counter foreign government’s official censorship and propaganda — would themselves be subjected to oversight and potential censorship by a political appointee of the U.S. government.”

 

 

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Bird dog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November’s Senior News is delicious. Check out “Especially Now, Food Is Family.”

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.)  

 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

What Is The Epoch Times, Anyway?

 

“The Epoch Times and its affiliates are a force in right-wing media, with tens of millions of social media followers spread across dozens of pages and an online audience that rivals those of The Daily Caller and Breitbart News, and with a similar willingness to feed the online fever swamps of the far right. It also has growing influence in Mr. Trump’s inner circle.” 

 

“Embracing Mr. Trump and Facebook has made The Epoch Times a partisan powerhouse. But it has also created a global-scale misinformation machine that has repeatedly pushed fringe narratives into the mainstream.”

 

—Kevin Roose, technology columnist, “How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine,” NYTimes, Oct. 24, 2020. 

 

• See also, Joshua Benton, “What is The Epoch Times? A vehicle for pro-Trump conspiracy theories, and the culmination of all that Facebook has encouraged,” NiemanLab, Oct. 26, 2020.

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Misinformation is big business.

 

 

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Now here’s a real newspaper. Hot off the presses! November’s Senior News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.)  

 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

Utah’s Independent Voice Since 1871

“In a historic change, The Salt Lake Tribune will stop printing and delivering a daily edition at year’s end and switch to a weekly printed newspaper delivered by mail.

“The nonprofit Tribune’s board of directors announced the decision Monday, shortly after The Tribune and the Deseret News released their decision to end a generations-long print partnership.

“The move ends a 68-year-old business contract, but it means something more basic to print readers — a vanishing cultural mainstay. Millions since 1871 have enjoyed crisp copies of The Tribune left in their front yards or stacked into sidewalk racks across Utah and the Intermountain West each morning.” . . .

“‘My morning coffee will never be the same,’ [one reader] wrote, echoing many others. ‘This is terrible news for me and for our community.’

“‘I’m only a digital subscriber,’ another reader, located in Sugar House, wrote on Twitter, ‘but my 80 [year-old] dad is going to be out of luck.’”

—Tony Semerad, reporter, “Salt Lake Tribune will move to a weekly print edition in 2021,” Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 27, 2020.

 

• Editorial Comment: The 149-year-old Trib, long the counterweight to the Mormon Church-owned Deseret News, will continue as a robust digital news product, Trib leaders say, and there are no plans to lay off any of the 65 news-side staff. Once one of the largest 15 or so dailies in the country with a circulation of 200,000, the Trib's daily paid circulation has dipped to 36,000 in a metro area with a population of 2.2 million.

 

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The Wellsvilles, Cache Valley, Utah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Scares Us? Check out the October issue of Senior News, Things That Go Bump in the Night. On newsstands everywhere. (Or should be.) 

 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.)  

 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

Bringing the Heat

 

“The vast majority of the world’s people, including those in the United States, not only acknowledge the scientific certainty of climate change, but also want action taken to address it.

“We have succeeded because the science is clear, despite there being a massive well-orchestrated effort of propaganda, lies, and denial by the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations, including ExxonMobil and Koch Industries and fossil-fuel-backed institutes and think tanks. 

“It is frightening that a Supreme Court nominee — a position that is in essence one of the highest fact-checkers in the land — has bought into the same propaganda we have worked so hard to dispel.”

—70+ Science and Climate Journalists, “More Than 70 Science and Climate Journalists* Challenge Supreme Court Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett,” Rolling Stone, Oct. 25, 2020.

 

• Editorial Comment: Negative verdict. 

 

*SIGNED: Bill McKibben, journalist and author, the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College; Rebecca Solnit, author and journalist; Sonia Shah, science journalist and author; Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize winning author, science journalist, and professor at Columbia Journalism School; Jeff Goodell, climate journalist and author of The Water Will Come; Naomi Klein, journalist and author; Michelle Nijhuis, science journalist and author; Amy Westervelt, climate journalist; Rachel Ramirez, environmental justice reporter; Iris Crawford, climate justice journalist; Anoa Changa, movement and environmental justice journalist; Tiên Nguyễn, multimedia science journalist; Eric Holthaus, meteorologist, climate journalist at The Phoenix; Jenni Monet (Laguna Pueblo), climate affairs journalist and founder of Indigenously; Nina Lakhani, environmental justice reporter; Samir S. Patel, science journalist and editor; Clinton Parks, freelance science writer; Meehan Crist, writer in residence in biological sciences, Columbia University; Elizabeth Rush, science writer, author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore; Anne McClintock, climate journalist, photographer and author, professor of environmental humanities and writing at Princeton University; Ruth Hopkins (Oceti Sakowin, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), tribal attorney, Indigenous journalist; Wade Roush, science and technology journalist and author; Kim Stanley Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of climate science fiction, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards; Jason Mark, editor in chief, Sierra; Kate Aronoff, climate journalist; Richard Louv, journalist and author; Heather Smith, science journalist; Judith Lewis Mernit, California climate editor, Capital & Main; Madeline Ostrander, climate journalist; Julie Dermansky, multimedia environmental and social justice journalist; Kenneth Brower, environmental journalist and author; Alexander Zaitchik, science and political journalist and author; Hillary M. Rosner, science journalist and scholar in residence, University of Colorado; Wudan Yan, science journalist; Debra Atlas, environmental journalist and author; Rucha Chitnis, climate, environmental justice and human rights documentarian; Drew Costley, environmental justice reporter; Jonathan Thompson, environmental author and journalist; Carol Clouse, environmental journalist; Brian Kahn, climate journalist; Geoff Dembicki, climate journalist and author; Peter Fairley, energy and environment journalist; Nicholas Cunningham, energy reporter; Nina Berman, documentary photographer focusing on issues of climate and the environment, professor of journalism at Columbia University; Michele C. Hollow, freelance journalist; Ben Depp, documentary photographer, focusing on issues of climate and the environment; Virginia Hanusik, climate photographer; Philip Yam, science journalist and author; Maura R. O’Connor, science journalist and author; Chad J. Reich, audio and visual journalist covering energy and environment in rural communities; Steve Ross, environmental writer/editor, former Columbia environmental reporting professor; Starre Vartan, science journalist; Michael Snyder, climate photographer; Brandon Keim, science and nature journalist; Tom Athanasiou, climate equity writer and researcher; Hope Marcus, climate writer; Jocelyn C. Zuckerman, freelance journalist; Dana Drugmand, climate journalist; Tom Molanphy, climate journalist; Roxanne Szal, associate digital editor, Ms. Magazine; Dashka Slater, author and climate reporter; Jenn Emerling, documentary photographer, focusing on issues of climate and culture in the American West; Christine Heinrichs, science writer and author; Clayton Aldern, climate and environmental journalist; Karen Savage, climate journalist; Charlotte Dennett, author, investigative journalist, attorney; Carly Berlin, environmental reporter; Ben Ehrenreich, author and journalist; Ibby Caputo, science journalist; Lawrence Weschler, former New Yorker staff writer, environmental author, most recently with David Opdyke, of This Land: An Epic Postcard Mural on the Future of a Country in Ecological Peril; Justin Nobel, science journalist; Antonia Juhasz, climate and energy journalist and author; James Temple, climate and energy journalist; Josie Glausiusz, science journalist; Tina Gerhardt, climate journalist; Amar Bhardwaj, former editor in chief of Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development; Nano Riley, environmental historian, journalist; Erin Biba, science journalist

 

 

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Fallow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Scares Us? Check out the October issue of Senior News, Things That Go Bump in the Night. On newsstands everywhere. (Or should be.) 

 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.)  

 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

Stand Up

 

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.” 

 

―Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965), legendary broadcast newsman, in a speech to his staff before the broadcast of the See It Now program on Joe McCarthy, March 9, 1954.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: No collusion.

 

 

 

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U-Pick-’Em

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Scares Us? Check out the October issue of Senior News, Things That Go Bump in the Night. On newsstands everywhere. (Or should be.) 

 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.)  

 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard