Michael Pack: Trump-appointed director of Global Media resigns at Biden’s request

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Pack, a conservative documentary maker turned CEO in June, has been widely criticized for his handling of international news services under the USAGM, including Voice of America.

“The new administration has called for my resignation,” Pack wrote in a letter to staff.

“The USAGM and the CEO position are meant to be non-partisan,” Pack said. “As such, every day I focused only on reorienting the agency towards its mission. My main goal was to help the agency share American history with the world in an objective and unbiased way.

In one of its latest acts, Pack announced on Tuesday new boards of directors for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, three other news outlets under USAGM oversight.

Members are conservative radio host Blanquita Cullum; Jonathan Alexander of the conservative and anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel; pro-Trump filmmaker Amanda Milius; Roger Simon, who, according to his LinkedIn, writes for The Epoch Times, the pro-Trump newspaper linked to Falun Gong; and Christian Whiton, a member of the Center for National Interest who served in the Trump and Bush administrations.

Pack recently told the VOA White House reporter that she was “not permitted” to ask Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a question. Journalist Patsy Widakuswara was then demoted twice, without explanation.

Since Pack’s arrival at USAGM, he “has attempted to whitewash the primacy of journalistic mission: both figurative and literal,” said David Kligerman, the former general counsel for VOA until he was allegedly kicked out by Pack last month. “On the first day, he painted over an epigraph (from his predecessor John Lansing) celebrating the First Amendment and the sacred duty of journalists to hold public officials accountable.”

In December, the federal oversight group Office of Special Counsel said it “discovered a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” during an investigation into the agency, which was sparked by a complaint filed by six senior officials. officials who alleged that Pack had abused his authority.

Kligerman has publicly stated what many other VOA members privately echo – that Pack has since “waged the war on the agency’s journalists and its editorial independence,” including firing all network heads and repealing the agency firewall regulations intended to isolate it from political interference. , refusing “to renew J1 visas for our journalists for purely nativist reasons, forcing them to leave the country; and dismissing journalists on the pretext for having covered stories perceived as harmful to the administration”.

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