In the tweet, Herman quoted a nonprofit leader who criticized Trump’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development as making Americans “less safe at home and abroad.” Grenell called Herman’s tweet “treasonous.”
“You don’t get to work against the official U.S. government policies while being paid by US taxpayers,” said Grenell, who is officially the Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions. “You should be immediately fired.”
And there it is. It is now “treasonous” and a fireable offense for a member of the press to express an opinion critical of the Trump administration. This is where we are now. Freedom of speech, expression, and the press are no longer a thing. You can literally lose your job and be put under criminal investigation for criticizing Donald Trump.
Complaining about the federal govt while being employed by it is the classic Republican stance.
a fireable offense for a member of the press
VOA journalists are anything but. They are not free press.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. They’re state-sponsored, but they are at least supposed to be free, on account of the firewall and the VOA charter.
Sooo… Fucking piece it together dude. It’s to the point where VOA is not belligerently pro-America enough for Donnie Dickhead. Our freedom of press is deteriorated to the point that no journalist, no matter how pro-jingoist their legacy, is safe from reprisal. No one running a media network within our borders is capable of presenting truth. That’s a thing of the past.
Reminder, it’s pledge week for many public radio stations / NPR affiliates.
DONATE
Give whatever you can. This is the time to actually give. These poor journalists are having to pay for legal counsel with a shoe string budget.
ITT, people living up to their namesake. “I’m not a - … but …”
The only reason he isn’t getting impeached for this is because he isn’t Biden and the GQP MAGA only projects and doesn’t really care about what they project about.
Fascists will only leave power when they die
As much as I hate Trump, there’s a logic in this. VOA has always been a publicly-funded propaganda mouthpiece. They are NOT an independent media. Independence entails not taking money from people you want to criticize.
If VOA refuses to spew out the latest flavor of propaganda, they’re not doing their job.
The President has plenty of propaganda tools at his disposal without having a “news organization” make shit up.
But what you don’t understand is that VOA is not a news organization. It was created during WW2 by the Office of the Coordinator of Information for the express purpose of spreading pro-American propaganda in Germany and in Japan. And it has kept doing exactly that ever since.
I remember it showering the USSR with pro-American high-power shortwave radio broadcasts in Russian and in English when I was a kid in the 70’s. Everybody knew VOA was America’s response to radio Moscow.
VOA is quite explicitely a propaganda thing. Really! You guys can downvote me all you want, it’s the plain truth. VOA journalists are quite literally paid to spread American propaganda.
His Orangeness has decided to turn the country around 180 degrees and make it a fascist pro-Russia state and I despise him with all my heart. But Trump is right: the VOA has no business not being 100% aligned with him.
That makes the VOA an enemy of freedom, democracy and common decency, just like Trump.
From the VOA website:
An essential guarantee of the journalistic credibility of Voice of America content is the “firewall” enshrined in the 1994 U.S. International Broadcasting Act. The firewall prohibits interference by any U.S. government official in the objective, independent reporting of news, thereby safeguarding the ability of our journalists to develop content that reflects the highest professional standards of journalism, free of political interference.
VOA, RFA, RFE, and a shitton of others are nothing but propaganda machines for the US
So you’re going with “freedom of speech doesn’t apply if you work for the government”?
It would be better if it did, but you shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t, anymore than you should expect the Washington Post to criticize Bezos or Fox News Rupert Murdoch.
VOA is less objective than RT.
/s
Independence entails not taking money from people you want to criticize.
No it doesn’t. Criticizing those that fund you would literally be one of the more independent things a group could do.
Bootlicker.
What part of “As much as I hate Trump” don’t you understand?
I think you are getting down voted, not because you are wrong, but because that truth is particularly unpleasant.
It would be like radio free Europe criticising Regan’s policies during the cold war.
VOA takes money from US taxpayers, not the Trump administration. Criticizing Trump is about as pro-American as that news organization can get.
