No, Mr. Trump, VOA is not Chinese propaganda. Now don’t turn it into U.S. propaganda.

The White House has just confirmed, no doubt unintentionally, that the US government’s premier international broadcaster, Voice of America, is independent from the Trump administration. A shrill commentary posted on the White House website April 10 assailed VOA for “promoting propaganda” of the Chinese government about the novel coronavirus epidemic. The evidence? A tweeted video showing residents of Wuhan watching a light show following the lifting of that city’s lockdown, and another tweet showing that the covid-19 death toll in the United States “exceeds the official China tally.

We’d write this off as just another day at a White House communications shop whose theatrical and fact-free messaging strategy seems modeled after Baghdad Bob — only the attack seems to form part of a more troubling political project. For several years, the Trump administration has been trying to install a new chief executive at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees VOA as well as Radio Free Europe and other US international broadcasters. In March, the administration resubmitted its nomination of Michael Pack, a filmmaker and former president of the conservative Claremont Institute, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Pack is planning a “major housecleaning” in US broadcasting, including the removal of director Amanda Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who oversees VOA’s professional — and, yes, independent — newsgathering. If this coup succeeds, VOA will no longer differ substantially from other state-run broadcasters — and it very likely will earn that “propaganda” label.