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This book tells the chilling story of what happened at Voice of America (VOA) when Trump appointees and their allies captured the public service network. It explains how different forms of politicization combined to change how VOA reported on important events from the Black Lives Matter movement to the presidential election, and its contested aftermath. It also demonstrates how the capture of VOA fed into broader forms of democratic backsliding within the US itself. The book develops a new analytical framework for understanding how media capture unfolds and recommends ways of safeguarding our media and our democracy from future attacks.
List of contents
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: The Voice of America: A history of Conflict
- Chapter 3: Capturing Public Service Media around the World
- Chapter 4: Indirect Capture
- Chapter 5: Direct Editorial Interventions
- Chapter 6: The Post-Election Endgame
- Chapter 7: Resistance Strategies and Ongoing Harm
- Chapter 8: Conclusion
About the author
Kate Wright is an Associate Professor of Media and Communication, in the Politics and International Relations department at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She researches how different political economies and normative values shape the production of international news. She is the sole author of Who's Reporting Africa Now? Non-governmental Organizations, Journalists and Multimedia (2014) and co-authored Humanitarian Journalists (2022). She is also a former BBC journalist who worked on flagship news programs and investigative documentaries.
Martin Scott is an Associate Professor of Media and Global Development, in the School of Global Development at the University of East Anglia in the UK. He has published research on media freedom, international journalism, foundation-funded news, media influence on aid, and news audiences. He authored Media and Development (2014), lead-authored Humanitarian Journalists (2022), and co-authored From Entertainment to Citizenship
Mel Bunce is Professor of International Journalism and Politics, and Head of the Journalism Department at City, University of London, where she researches international news production, humanitarian journalism and media freedom. She is author of The Broken Estate: Journalism and Democracy in a Post-truth World (2019), co-author of Humanitarian Journalists (2022), and co-editor of Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century (2017).
Summary
The Voice of America (VOA) is the oldest and largest US government-funded international media organization. In 2020, Donald Trump nominated Michael Pack, a right-wing documentarian and close friend of Steve Bannon, to lead the US Agency for Global Media - the independent federal agency overseeing US-funded international media. During Pack's seven-month tenure, more than thirty whistleblowers filed complaints against him, and a judge ruled that he had infringed journalists' constitutional right to freedom of speech.
How did such a major international public service media network become intensely politicized by government allies in such a short time, despite having its editorial independence protected by law?
Capturing News, Capturing Democracy puts these events in historical and international context—and develops a new analytical framework for understanding government capture and its connection to broader processes of democratic backsliding. Drawing from in-depth interviews with network managers and journalists, and analysis of private correspondence and internal documents, Kate Wright, Martin Scott, and Mel Bunce analyze how political appointees, White House officials, and right-wing media influenced VOA— changing its reporting of the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 presidential election. The authors stress that leaving the VOA unprotected leaves it and other public media open to targeting by authoritarian leadership and poses serious risks to US democracy. Further, they offer practical recommendations for how to protect the network and other international public service media better in the future.
Additional text
Provides a chilling case study of partisan stewardship and its impact... the authors have broken new ground in explaining how, even in a short time, a venerable agency with a tradition of honest reporting can be turned almost upside down. Highly recommended.
