President Trump selected a conservative activist and media critic to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media, making a move likely to fuel concerns that his administration will try to politicize a group of federally funded outlets whose mission is to counter authoritarian propaganda with independent news.
His choice for chief executive of the agency, L. Brent Bozell III, is the founder and president of the Media Research Center, a watchdog group that churns out a steady stream of videos and articles highlighting alleged liberal bias — especially anti-Trump bias — on the part of network television hosts and mainstream media outlets.
The media agency oversees a number of government outlets, including Voice of America, about which Mr. Trump has been particularly critical. Mr. Bozell, if confirmed by the Senate, will manage an agency with a $900 million annual budget, 4,000 employees and more than 50 bureaus overseas. The agency’s networks reach 420 million people every week, broadcasting in 63 languages in over 100 countries.
During his first term, Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked coverage from U.S.A.G.M.’s outlets, calling it “disgusting toward our country” and the “voice of the Soviet Union.” His White House interfered with the editorial decisions of the agency’s broadcasters, and numerous employees at the agency accused his appointees of trying to turn it into a mouthpiece for his administration.
Mr. Trump’s decision to tap Kari Lake, a Trump loyalist and right-wing firebrand, as Voice of America’s director has already raised fears of politicization among journalists there.
Mr. Bozell, once an anti-Trump Republican, had written in a National Review essay in 2016 that “Trump might be the greatest charlatan of them all,” but by 2019 he had counted himself as a convert. His watchdog group has echoed Mr. Trump’s arguments that the media unfairly smears him and his allies (the group published an article on Election Day alleging that broadcast coverage of the race was “the most wildly imbalanced in history.”) Mr. Bozell also co-wrote a book called “Unmasked: Big Media’s War Against Trump.”
Mr. Bozell’s son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, was one of the nearly 1,600 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol who Mr. Trump pardoned on Monday. Mr. Bozell’s father, L. Brent Bozell Jr., was a fierce anti-Communist intellectual and one of the early architects of the modern anti-abortion movement.
“He and his family have fought for the American principles of liberty, freedom, equality and justice for generations,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Bozell in a social media post announcing his selection. “And he will ensure that message is heard by freedom-loving people around the world. Brent will bring some much needed change to the U.S. Agency for Global Media.”
The outlets Mr. Bozell would oversee also include the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Congress also put the agency in charge of a fund that promotes access to free online spaces across the world, especially in authoritarian countries that control access to the internet such as China, Russia and Iran.
The legislation that created the media agency requires its executives to protect its news outlets and their journalists from political influence, but Mr. Trump’s first term was riddled with efforts to put pressure on the agency’s journalists who produced reports critical of his administration and its policies.
In 2020, Mr. Trump appointed Michael Pack, an ally of his former aide Stephen K. Bannon, to run the media agency. He rescinded a provision that prohibited U.S. officials from meddling in the editorial decisions of its news outlets. The provision, called a “firewall,” made his agency difficult to manage and “threatened constitutional values,” Mr. Pack said.
A federal investigation later found that Mr. Pack had grossly mismanaged the agency, repeatedly abusing his power by sidelining executives he felt did not sufficiently support Mr. Trump. A federal judge ruled that Mr. Pack had violated the First Amendment rights of the outlet’s journalists.
The previous chief of U.S.A.G.M. was Amanda Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper reporter and editor who became the director of Voice of America in 2016, shortly before Mr. Trump took office.
She served at V.O.A. through most of his term but resigned in 2020, soon after the Senate confirmed Mr. Pack as her new boss. In her resignation letter to employees, she hinted that the leadership change had driven her decision to leave.
“As the Senate-confirmed C.E.O., he has the right to replace us with his own V.O.A. leadership,” she wrote.
Later that year, amid the mounting evidence that Mr. Pack and the first Trump White House had aimed to weaken editorial independence of the agency’s journalists, Congress passed a law limiting the power of the agency’s chief executive.
Such strengthened firewalls for journalistic integrity did not stop Mr. Trump from naming Ms. Lake as the next director of Voice of America last month. Ms. Lake, a local TV news anchor turned election denier who lost races for Senate and governor in Arizona, has referred to journalists as “monsters” and pledged to be reporters’ “worst nightmare” if elected.
Ms. Bennett stepped down from her position as leader of the U.S. Agency for Global Media this month.
