Failing to renew VOA foreign staffers’ visas would devastate one of its core functions

Michael Pack, the alt-right filmmaker installed by President Donald Trump to run US foreign broadcasting operations, remains on course to dismantle the independent journalism that has been their calling card. Apparently, Voice of America sources say Pack is refusing to renew the visas of foreign-born journalists who are vital to its mission of producing news reports in 47 languages. Pack has also frozen all VOA contracts, under which some 40 percent of its staff are employed. A failure to renew the visas and contracts would devastate VOA’s ability to deliver news to foreign audiences, including in authoritarian states where many people depend on US broadcasting for uncensored information.  It could also put the current VOA foreign employees in danger, if they are forced to return to countries whose regimes disapprove of VOA reports. 

Pack’s leadership purge already raised concerns in Congress. In July, a bipartisan group of seven senators dispatched a letter to him objecting to his “termination of qualified, expert staff and network heads for no specific reason.” The senators rightly observed that the US “cannot afford to invest in an enterprise that denigrates its own journalists and staff to the satisfaction of dictators and despots.” But Pack isn’t listening: He has resisted testifying at a congressional hearing, and hasn’t answered Hill inquiries about the J-1 visas. Senators responded by freezing a previously authorized VOA funds transfer. They need to be prepared to do more. Pack appears intent on gutting US foreign broadcasting while remaining unaccountable to anyone but President Trump.