President Trump announced Wednesday that he will nominate L. Brent Bozell III, the founder of the Media Research Center, to serve as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Brent Bozell, a conservative intellectual and writer, is a nephew of William F. Buckley Jr. and Senator James L. Buckley, both deceased.
L. Brent Bozell III. 2011 photo by Gage Skidmore.
USAGM Watch Commentary
Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center organization has been reporting on media freedom violations and journalistic bias. The recent USAGM leadership has targeted civic journalists of USAGM Watch, a volunteer organization. USAGM and Voice of America (VOA) officials recently facilitated attempts to discredit independent investigative reporters who uncovered corruption and other scandals within the government agency. The USAGM management provided legal and logistic help at taxpayers’ expense to enable USAGM and VOA officials, some VOA English service editors, and VOA English newsroom reporters to label their critics “right-wing” and to accuse Cold War-era broadcasters in VOA’s foreign language services and at Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) who helped to bring democracy to East Central Europe of having engaged in aggressive anti-communist propaganda. The USAGM management reviewed and approved a book by three British academics who published these accusations made by anonymous government employees of their agency.
USAGM Watch has been reporting for several years on USAGM entities, including the Voice of America, platforming terrorists who call for violence against Jews and Americans, on employing by VOA former Putin media propagandists and an alleged Russian spy, and on VOA editors and reporters refusing to call Hamas “terrorists.”
Earlier, President-elect Trump announced his choice of Kari Lake, an American political figure and former television news anchor, as the next Director of the Voice of America.
USAGM Watch (usagmwatch.com), which continues the government watchdog work of BBG Watch, focuses on the $950 million United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to inform the public about its operations and provide public oversight. The taxpayer-funded U.S. international media outreach agency oversees five networks: two federal organizations — the Voice of America (VOA) and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), which manages Radio and TV Martí — and three non-profit organizations — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) — which receive grants from USAGM. The Open Technology Fund (OTF) also receives public funding through USAGM. Until 2018, the agency operated under the name of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).
