U.S. Agency for Global Media: America’s newest propaganda machine?

The creation of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) provoked not surprise but irritation: an old propaganda tool simply got a new label and an even more aggressive tuning.

Enter USAGM: the same schoolyard bully, just with a new blazer. Formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors, it sells itself as the U.S. voice to foreign audiences. In practice, critics say it’s just VOA repackaged — deep pockets, loud chest-thumping, and itching for a fight.

Pot calling the kettle black doesn’t begin to cover it!

I’m no defender of VOA — it’s under USAGM’s thumb — but the irony stings. Former VOA staff sued, and a federal judge recently found that Kari Lake, President Trump’s pick to lead USAGM, lacked the legal authority to carry out the sweeping moves that gutted VOA and led to mass layoffs of its journalists.

Modern propaganda is a craft, not a caricature. These days it often reads like polished journalism: largely true, carefully framed, and engineered to nudge audiences toward a chosen view rather than bludgeon them with outright lies. The real trick isn’t obvious falsehoods — it is pushing the stories that never make the cut, the angles that will be spun away, and the inconvenient truths quietly buried.

Truth in Effective Propaganda!

Let’s call it what it is: a familiar instrument in new clothes. Same tune, different bandleader — and the music still favors the house. “Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed — and to be believed, it must be credible. To be credible, it must be true,” as Hubert H. Humphrey said. The trouble is, USAGM trades credibility for spin. New democracies and indie outlets that cozy up think they’re just dodging CIA and USAID — they’ve walked into a web tied to deep-state adjacencies and last administration........

© New Eastern Outlook