{"id":6573,"date":"2006-02-09T10:43:05","date_gmt":"2006-02-09T15:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6573"},"modified":"2006-02-09T10:43:05","modified_gmt":"2006-02-09T15:43:05","slug":"undermining-the-voice-that-helps-win-over-hearts-and-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/undermining-the-voice-that-helps-win-over-hearts-and-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Undermining the ‘voice’ that helps win over hearts and minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under Bush’s “leadership,” the Voice of America broadcasts haven’t had it easy. The White House tapped Ken Tomlinson, a hopelessly incompetent hack<\/a>, to oversee the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent government commission that oversees the Voice of America (VOA), where he proceeded<\/a> to “purge the bureaucracy of political enemies, zealously root out perceived ‘liberal bias,’ and generally politicize institutions that have resisted ideological intrusions for decades.”<\/p>\n

Voice of America broadcasts are, of course, our chance to make America’s case to the world. Over the last few years, it’s instead been turned into an outlet to make Bush, his agenda, and his party look good.<\/p>\n

And in case matters couldn’t get worse for the VOA, now the administration wants to gut its funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This just in: According to a little-noticed line in its 2007 budget, the Bush administration has proposed pulling the plug on just about all of the Voice of America’s English-language broadcasting and telecasting. Unless smarter heads in Congress intervene, this means the United States will be taking a giant step in the wrong direction — at the worst possible time.<\/p>\n

A world of listeners will be losing a group of English-language programs that provide them with a chance to hear for themselves perhaps the best example of what American-style democracy is all about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Martin Schram explained, “At a time when al Jazeera and China Radio International are adding English programming, the United States is going the other way.”<\/p>\n

The Bush administration has a knack for timing. It’s not like we’re in a time in which the United States’ diplomatic standing in the world is suffering, is it? Oh wait<\/a>….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under Bush’s “leadership,” the Voice of America broadcasts haven’t had it easy. The White House tapped Ken Tomlinson, a hopelessly incompetent hack, to oversee the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent government commission that oversees the Voice of America (VOA), where he proceeded to “purge the bureaucracy of political enemies, zealously root out perceived ‘liberal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}