People on the left often favor government support for public news outlets such as NPR and PBS. They argue that the reporters are independent of the government and do a good job. That may be true, but as long as the government is involved there’s always the danger that the public media outlets get turned into a propaganda tool for the administration.
And now that seems to be happening for another part of the US government’s vast media empire:
Earlier this month, a Steve Bannon ally and conservative filmmaker appointed by President Donald Trump took over running the vast global network of news agencies funded and operated by the US government.
Within hours of introducing himself to employees, he’d purged four top officials — and critics are calling it a blatant effort to turn America’s state-run news organizations into Trump-friendly propaganda outlets.
But Steve Bannon, who was deeply involved with getting Trump to nominate his ally Michael Pack, sees the ousters as a reckoning for an agency that he believes has been too soft on covering China.
“We are going hard on the charge,” Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and executive chairman of Breitbart, told me. “Pack’s over there to clean house.”
Michael Pack was confirmed this month as the new CEO of the US Agency for Global Media, a government department that oversees five media organizations — Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Open Technology Fund — and is collectively one of the largest media networks in the world.
The Trump administration is unhappy about coverage of China:
“Journalists should report the facts, but VOA has instead amplified Beijing’s propaganda,” read an April White House article titled “Amid a Pandemic, Voice of America Spends Your Money to Promote Foreign Propaganda.”
“This week, VOA called China’s Wuhan lockdown a successful ‘model’ copied by much of the world — and then tweeted out video of the Communist government’s celebratory light show marking the quarantine’s alleged end,” it continued.
This is a bit odd; given that Trump praised the Chinese leadership no fewer than 15 times for their success in handling the Covid-19 crisis. Is Trump a part of the Chinese propaganda?
Under Pack, Bannon said taxpayer-funded news outlets will now forcefully highlight many of the regime’s human rights abuses, namely its detention of over a million Uighur Muslims in concentration camps.
I wonder if Steve Bannon wants these news outlets to report that Trump at least tacitly encouraged Xi Jinping to continue putting the Uighurs into concentration camps:
Mr Bolton said Mr Trump also told Mr Xi to go ahead with its internment of Uighurs — Chinese ethnic Muslims who have been rounded up and placed in facilities that human rights groups compare to concentration camps.
At the same time, there is evidence that the VOA put out stories ridiculing Trump during the 2016 campaign. So the VOA is not blameless.
For libertarians, there are no winners in a war between the right and the left over regulating the media, the internet, or any other form of information dissemination. The only solution is to keep the government out of the media to the greatest extent possible. If government media outlets did not exist, they’d be a less tempting target for those who wish to use them as a propaganda tool.
READER COMMENTS
Phil H
Jun 19 2020 at 2:21am
It’s hard to see the Trump administration as a threat precisely because it’s so chaotic and inconsistent.
Nonetheless, the point about government media is a good one. I wonder if there is a possible counter argument along the lines of institutional diversity.
It would go something like: it’s good to have different parts of the media that are driven by different imperatives, because that allows for more different kinds of voices to be heard. So long as there is a reasonably open and varied market, having a “government option” wouldn’t be a bad thing, and could even help promote greater access.
I don’t know if this would hold up; you’re right that it’s probably my leftie affection for the BBC That is driving the argument more than anything.
Scott Sumner
Jun 19 2020 at 12:07pm
I agree about Trump being a bit chaotic, and thus less of a threat.
I am not an expert on the BBC, but I do like NPR. However, I also believe NPR could survive without government support. First, they already have some ads from corporate sponsors. Second, wealthy individuals contribute money to NPR (as do ordinary listeners).
I bet that if NPR were “privatized” it would have a sizable stock market valuation. Or someone like Gates or Bezos could create a foundation and make it a non-profit. Its too popular among affluent listeners to go out of business, even without government support.
The BBC may be different. It’s probably costlier to run than NPR, and the UK has fewer billionaires to donate money.
liam
Jun 20 2020 at 10:23am
CNN, MSNBC and FOX are all spin. From liberal outlets to conservative outlets, the data shows that all are corrupt. But it’s not entirely their fault. Stakeholders demand results, and nothing earns more money than identity politics.
I don’t have the answer to this problem. But if one is to propose a solution, let’s not pretend that privately owned media is not propaganda. It is!
Justin
Jun 23 2020 at 12:34pm
As I’ve seen it put elsewhere, the big libertarian error was to focus too exclusively on the coercive power of the state and to ignore the coercive power of the mob (and I would add private organizations).
Idriss Z
Jun 23 2020 at 4:12pm
Hey Scott, I think that there’s a lot of utility in your idea, but a lot of it lost in the breadth of “the media.” I would recommend watching Mr. Rogers testimony to Congress regarding funding for children’s programming and the arts again (I do regularly) perhaps to inspire a more narrow approach to what sort of media should be out of governmental control. Personally, I think anything involving foreign affairs should have a bare-bones, fact intensive, but dry and light touch, there’s no reason to offend anyone’s sensibilities when that aspect of NPR/ PBS is for informing not persuading. What do you think? I personally do not want to see those organizations be completely private, not because of the news, but because of everything else.
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