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In less than 40 years, the taxpayer-funded Voice of America went from exposing the crimes and economic failures of communism to in some cases glorifying communists, including Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

VOA is part of the federal government's $800 million (average annual budget) U.S. Agency for Global Media.

I am an Eastern European refugee from communism. Judging from what one can see online in various languages, Ive concluded that recent and current VOA and USAGM officials either do not know or have forgotten what life was like for tens of millions of people living under communism and in state-run socialist economies in the former Soviet bloc.

My observations are shared by many dissident journalists in China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Ethiopia, as well as political refugees and immigrants from these countries living in the United States, who have been criticizing the management of the VOA programs for damaging the cause of human rights. That was absolutely not the case 40 years ago when I was in charge of the VOA Polish Service, broadcasting to Poland under the martial law imposed by pro-Soviet communists on Dec. 13, 1981.

Today, USAGM and VOA press releases are full of laudatory and often misleading claims from government bureaucrats. It is true that not all of todays VOA language services are bad, and many outstanding journalists still work there. But the kind of criticism one hears now from citizens of captive nations about strategically important VOA programs would not have been ignored by any U.S. administration during the Cold War or by the commercial U.S. media.

After the VOA's management was reformed under President Ronald Reagan, to the great discomfort of many former longtime executives and some central English newsroom reporters, VOAs weekly audience in Poland increased fivefold in less than 10 years to more than 50% of the adult population. In the 1980s, VOA was finally able to contribute significantly to the fall of communism in East-Central Europe, almost as much as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In contrast, VOAs recent broadcasting in Afghanistan ended in a disaster. VOAs impact in Russia, China, and Iran is now minuscule. Independent experts question USAGMs inflated and often meaningless audience claims.

The amnesia of recent and current VOA officials about history and their failure to provide leadership are particularly dangerous at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin may be getting ready to invade Ukraine and uses Belarus in a hybrid war against the neighboring nations in the European Union.

Chinese, Cuban, Ethiopian, and Iranian government propagandists have also been given an advantage by VOA and USAGM managements failures. During the Cold War, VOA did not abandon any journalists behind the Iron Curtain. The VOA/USAGM management left behind in Afghanistan about 500 Afghan employees and family members. Senior agency executives could not see what was coming and did not order a prompt evacuation.

There are not enough VOA and USAGM managers with good judgment informed by a solid grasp of history.

A few years ago, a top VOA official seemed to question whether disinformation outlets such as Russias RT should be made to register in the U.S. as foreign agents. When the U.S. government compels RT to register as a foreign agent, then other governments consider requiring U.S. media to register as foreign agents and then, the VOA executive wrote in a 2017 Facebook post, which was later deleted. It happened at about the same time VOA's management carelessly hired several former Russian state media employees.

Foreign propaganda had found its way into VOA programs at various times. The VOA chief news writer and editor in 1943 was American novelist Howard Fast, who was later a Communist Party activist and the recipient of the 1953 Stalin International Peace Prize.

Censorship in favor of Soviet Russia has also been part of VOA history. In the early 1950s, before President Harry Truman carried out reforms, VOA censored a Polish writer and artist, Jozef Czapski, who had been a witness of Stalins genocidal crimes. In the 1970s, VOA even censored Russian dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Such censorship ended under Reagan but has returned in recent years. Under Obama administration appointees, VOA English programs lauded American communist winner of the Lenin Peace Prize Angela Davis as a fighter for human rights, without any attempt to provide balance with information about her pro-Soviet past. Solzhenitsyn had once spoken bitterly about Davis in describing the methods of Soviet propaganda and how figures such as her were used to justify oppression.

The VOA Russian Service used recently as an on-air personality a former Russian TV anchor who, before his employment with VOA, produced anti-U.S. propaganda films with antisemitic overtones. One of his older videos on YouTube promoted conspiracy theories spread in Russia and in the West by Putins state media. The film put the blame on the U.S. government, American capitalists, and Jewish bankers for exploiting the economies of other countries around the world.

In March 2019, top USAGM and VOA officials received an email with information about this provided by opposition journalists from Belarus. A Belorussian refugee media outlet had expressed a profound shock that a person with a Russian propaganda work record could be hired by the U.S. government-funded broadcaster to host VOA programs. But nothing happened for many months, during which this journalist continued to be employed by VOA. The VOA management has since hired a few other journalists who had previously worked for Putins state media and seem particularly proud of their work in Russia.

During the same time, under the watch of recent and current VOA and USAGM executives, employees and contractors produced news reports and graphics that glorified repressive communist leaders. They did not mention the crimes of Marxist dictators and the failures of socialist state economies.

That is a far cry from how the VOA responded to propaganda from the Soviet Union and other communist states in the 1980s.

In mid-December 2021, the VOA English news website ignored the 40th anniversary of the imposition of martial law in Poland by the pro-Soviet regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The event could have provided a useful history lesson, given that Soviet threats at that time against the Polish Solidarity movement were very similar to todays Russian threats against Ukraine.

There was something else VOAs foreign and U.S. audiences could have learned from history. During martial law in Poland, we received thousands of letters from listeners with requests for humanitarian assistance. In one such letter, sent to the VOA in November 1982, a mother of three girls, ages 7, 11, and 12, asked if VOA could help her. She wanted to find an American family willing to send used clothing and shoes for her young children. All three girls signed their names. The letter came to us from central Poland.

The mother wrote that the helplessness of her situation had forced her to suppress her shame and to ask VOA for help. She wanted her girls to have something warm to wear going to school in the approaching winter months. We already have frost, she wrote. Im afraid that my children will not have anything to wear to go to school. They have outgrown what we had bought two years ago. I cant count on any humanitarian aid; I had already tried. You have to have connections. Women wrote the majority of letters sent from Poland to VOA during the Cold War with requests for humanitarian assistance.

Unfortunately, this letter did not reach VOA before Christmas. A U.S. Postal Service stamp on the envelope shows that it was received in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 27, 1982. We used to forward such letters to charitable organizations in the U.S. If any packages from America with aid had arrived at their home in Poland, it would have been long after Christmas.

In her letter to VOA, the Polish woman did not make any direct references to the political situation in her country, but she made it abundantly clear that the communist regime in power was responsible for many years of economic deprivation for her young family. The system that produced such economic misery and killed millions of people should not be promoted by VOA to the rest of the world at the expense of U.S. taxpayers and in violation of the VOA Charter.

Ted Lipien is a journalist, writer, and media freedom advocate. He was Voice of Americas Polish Service chief during Polands struggle for democracy and VOAs acting associate director. He also served briefly in 2020-2021 as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

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Voice of America went from exposing the failures of communism to glorifying its dictators - Washington Examiner