"over 80 years of bringing the truth and current world news to countries around the world"
The VOA was started and originally funded by the OSS, the direct predecessor to the CIA, under Franklin Roosevelt. It has been nothing but a propaganda tool from the very beginning. This was even confirmed by former Senator (D) Frank Church when he stated:
"It seems to me that, when we made the decision to establish the Voice of America, we made the decision to establish a government propaganda agency, the purpose of which was to transmit our message abroad .... The Voice of America is a government broadcasting company and to pretend otherwise is only to fool ourselves. If the Voice of America is not going to be the expression of the American Government, in its foreign policy and its objectives abroad, why do we maintain it?"
From 1948 until its amendment in 2013, Voice of America was forbidden to broadcast directly to American citizens of their federally-funded tax paying propaganda induced radio and TV shows to the unsuspecting public, pursuant to § 501 of the Smith–Mundt Act. This is very telling in itself.
Thanks to CONgress representatives from both sides of the isle (the Uniparty strikes again), the repeal of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act once again allowed propaganda to become legal in the US and these broadcasting stations could legally air their propaganda on the American listeners, including VOA, which could be accessed beginning in June, 2014. It was introduced in 2012 as HR 5736 in the 112th Congress by Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and co-sponsored by Adam Smith (D-WA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). It was a bi-partisan bill, sponsored by two Republicans and a Democrat.
That bill was later incorporated, with some changes, into HR 4310, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2013.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/5736/text
The NDAA passed the House by a vote of 315 to 107 (
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2012645), with 205 Republican and 110 Democrats voting yea. And it passed the Senate by a vote of 81 to 14 (
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1122/vote_112_2_00229.htm), with 36 Republicans and 45 Democrats voting yea.
And then Obama signed it into law.
Just like the Patriot Act, the NDAA goes against articles in both the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Something else worth mentioning was the establishment of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty which was implemented and covertly funded by the CIA until 1972, with both merging in 1976. These stations were implemented during the same timeframe as VOA.
As stated in this article from 1982:
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3648&context=lcp
"The two stations rumbled along for almost two decades under the notion that their financing was completely private. The virulence of their propaganda vacillated over the years with changing views of world affairs, but their purpose and approach remained the same. Periodic rumors about CIA involvement in the stations' operations were quickly dismissed. Then, in 1971, the floodgates opened to reveal a wealth of evidence that the stations had indeed been covertly financed by the CIA. It became apparent that over the course of twenty years these "private" stations had received about $500,000,000 in U.S. Government funds."
VOA/RFE/RL have been under constant scrutiny since their inceptions and its not the first time they have been on the chopping block. President Bill Clinton proposed to cut VOA funding and zero out funding for RFE/RL in 1993 as it believed post-Cold War information and influence was not needed in Europe.
With all of that said, I do sympathize with Rex losing his job and affecting his retirement.
