BBG Watch Commentary

The review by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and his committee staff found that insufficient management and devolved operating structures for digital advertising at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA) in the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), previously called the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), allowed for repeated violations of the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits domestic dissemination of content developed by the State Department and U.S.-funded entities.

An examination of six VOA language services found at least 860 Smith-Mundt violations over a two-year period. Violations continued even after the New York Times report exposing them, and the launch of a USAGM task force designed to address the issue.

USAGM CEO, John F. Lansing, had been warned earlier about these violations but ignored these warnings until The New York Times published an expose earlier this year.

Lansing and VOA Director Amanda Bennett had been appointed to their position in 2015 and 2016 respectively and have not been replaced by the Trump administration. President Trump has nominated Michael Pack to be the new USAGM CEO but his nomination has not been yet completed the confirmation process in the Senate.

It appears that the House Foreign Affairs Committee staff HFAC are finally focusing on the USAGM bureaucracy’s semantics regarding their questionable practices and audience claims such as “impressions” and “clicks.” Use of these misleading words is key to understanding the agency’s inflated audience claims. But even with illegal advertising targeting Americans, real audience engagement on many of VOA’s websites — as opposed to meaningless “likes” — are still dismal.

The committee has asked for “All data relating to the grantees and VOA’s social media advertising from January 2016 to present, to include copies of all ads as well as all corresponding data – including number of impressions and clicks, amount spent, and ad targeting information that details geolocation, gender, interests, language,…”

ALSO SEE: USAGM CEO John Lansing ignored early warnings of ads targeting Americans, BBG Watch, December 21, 2018





