A statement from the White House. Excerpt:
This week, VOA called China’s Wuhan lockdown a successful “model” copied by much of the world—and then tweeted out video of the Communist government’s celebratory light show marking the quarantine’s alleged end.
Even worse, while much of the U.S. media takes its lead from China, VOA went one step further: It created graphics with Communist government statistics to compare China’s Coronavirus death toll to America’s. As intelligence experts point out, there is simply no way to verify the accuracy of China’s numbers.
The Coronavirus story is just one example of this pattern. Last year, VOA helped highlight the Twitter feed of Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif while he was issuing threats against the U.S. and sharing Russian anti-U.S. propaganda videos.
“VOA will represent America,” its guiding Charter reads. And for years after its founding during World War II, VOA served that mission by promoting freedom and democracy across the world for audiences who longed for both.
Here's the WaPo article about it:
"White House attacks Voice of America, claiming it promoted Chinese propaganda."
Like several western news organizations, including The Washington Post, VOA has been imploring the Chinese government to allow its journalists to report from within China. The government hasn’t renewed the visas of VOA reporters, forcing its journalists to report from neighboring Taiwan and from Hong Kong.
Although funded by Congress, VOA is screened from political influence by an independent board, called the U.S. Agency for Global Media....
VOA is one of the largest newsgathering operations in the world, with some 1,500 employees. [Amanda Bennett, VOA’s director] is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.... Bennett defended VOA’s independence and categorically denied any favoritism.
“We have never promoted propaganda for anyone,” she said. “We cover stories from all different sides. That’s part of the reason we are so trusted by people around the world.”
And
here's the defense directly from Bennett, complete with many links to VOA articles supporting this assertion:
We are thoroughly covering China's dis-information and misinformation in English and Mandarin and at the same time reporting factually – as we always do in all 47 of our broadcast languages - on other events in China.
Unlike China, VOA has stuck to verifiable facts, including publishing numerous articles in Mandarin, English and other languages that outed China’s initial secrecy keeping information of the initial outbreak from the world. VOA has thoroughly debunked much of the information coming from the Chinese government and government-controlled media.
VOA News depends on factual unbiased reporting. For example, VOA sources the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths both inside individual nations and globally from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Data from the graphic cited in the White House press release was drawn from Johns Hopkins, which is used throughout the world.
Our coverage includes this week’s fact-check of the Chinese government’s false timeline of its COVID-19 response, its misleading count that excluded asymptomatic cases, China’s underestimate of the number of deaths in Wuhan and its use of Twitter to further its narrative internationally -- a platform the Chinese government has banned domestically. VOA has literally carried hundreds of stories on China’s response and narrative....
पोस्ट्स
५६ टिप्पण्या:
Check out who runs VOA and who appointed them.
It’s broadly accepted that good deeds do not cancel out bad deeds. We will punish the life-long do-gooder for lawbreaking just like anybody else. Her defense that the VOA also does lots of legitimate journalism is not much of a defense.
The deep state never sleeps. The globalists are still salivating over those trillions in trade out of China and China still does its fan dance, keeping them mesmerized. The deep state works for the globalists. Why would the globalists want to make less money and pay workers more by bringing manufacturing home? That might equalize incomes a little bit!
I wonder how these manufacturers who had their goods nationalized by China during the crisis feel now that they know that they don’t actually own those factories there except at the pleasure of Xi?
The PRC has paid a lot of people in America.
@Lyle - The PRC, plus the drug cartels. It seem foreign aid is a nice little rice bowl as well.
The emperor has no clothes
From David Burge @iowahawkblog
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.#lefties
"Check out who runs VOA and who appointed them."
John F. Lansing runs the VOA parent organization.
Appointed by Barack Obama, of course and is a made man (not even the President of the United States can get rid of him.) He's got the pinky ring of the Deep State.
"Lansing elevated to chief strategy officer a former U.S. State Department staffer who recently pleaded guilty to having defrauded the U.S. Agency for Global Media out of more than $40,000 in government money in 2018, according to federal prosecutors.
Lansing says the agency referred Haroon Ullah's expenditures to auditors and investigators after travel assistants flagged them; according to the Justice Department statement, Ullah admitted submitting fraudulent receipts for hotel room reimbursements and fake medical claims to get government payments of upgrades in airline seat assignments, among other offenses."
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758047287/npr-names-veteran-media-executive-john-lansing-as-its-new-ceo
Has VOA had reporters on-site during Wuhan's lockdown? If not, how do we know what the situation really was there? Do they have reporters on-site now?
I always listened to Radio Moscow, not Voice of America. The latter was only good for platitudes, the former for bureaucracy amusement.
"Has VOA had reporters on-site during Wuhan's lockdown?"
Nope. China kicked them out. They're all reporting from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
@rhhardin: A while ago, you recommended NHK World Radio Japan podcasts, and I listen to them just about every night. Excellent recommendation! Japan just engaged a State of Emergency in about 7 prefectures including Tokyo and Osaka, as there seems to be a comeback of COVID-19 community spread there. Last night they said they were contemplating which businesses would be shut and which would remain open. Perhaps there will be an announcement in tonight's podcast.
I'm wondering if you have any more podcast recommendations? I enjoy listening to unbiased world news.
No borders. No walls. No America at all.
That's what your Democrat traitors stand for. And VOA is along for that ride.
Let's remember who drove the rise of China - US factory owners and US consumers. US factory owners could have refused to move their factories to China and US consumers could have refused to buy Chinese goods.
Japanese news isn't unbiased. It's bias is just different. All news has a bias. It starts with what they choose to report on and what they don't. There are always space constraints.
@Eleanor: Have you ever listened to NHK?
Liberal journalists bankrupted many newspapers and then many of them found refuge in big nonprofits like the Pew Foundation, the NPR stations, Pro Publica and now I guess VOA. And why the hell does VOA need 1,500 employees and why are we taxpayers paying for this liberal crap.
Keep trying Tim but they will never let you back into their club. of course I agreed with those statements that you made about the Deep State and China and the trillions and the fan dance. Hopefully one of the upsides of the coronavirus is the dismantling of that unsustainable structure that works feverishly to provide cheap China baubles to hide the fact that the economic bounty to most Americans has declined since 1972.
ARM: Corporate factory owners had to move offshore otherwise they were guilty of defrauding their shareholders. Like Pogo said I have seen the enemy and he is us.
Remember the first nyc case, came through qatar (al jazeera) from iran.
And here's the defense directly from Bennett, complete with many links to VOA articles supporting this assertion...
There's a distinction between "gloss" on a story and content.
Is this the NYT and WaPo page B12, paragraph 27, below the fold defense of their" balanced" reporting?
Howard said...
Corporate factory owners had to move offshore otherwise they were guilty of defrauding their shareholders. Like Pogo said I have seen the enemy and he is us.
I think this places too much agency on the consumers, who are basically a bunch of sheep. I have friend who worked in a local pharmaceutical firm. It was bought up by corporate raiders. He ended up having to go to India to teach them how to make the drugs before he was bought out. He now owns a very nice McMansion in an even nicer neighborhood. The original owners made a literal fortune. The shit-kickers got unemployment. No consumers were demanding more drugs be made in India, the opposite, and they are largely protected from drug prices. This move was driven solely by the greed of US capital.
oo ooo ooo - Maddow is here, gleefully! to help with all of your lies, dis-information and communist propaganda.
Howard said...
ARM: Corporate factory owners had to move offshore otherwise they were guilty of defrauding their shareholders.
Might these owners include you? Via pension plan, 401k and other investments?
In any event you are wrong.
Generally, the goal of any corporation is to maximize long term shareholder value. Maximizing profits are one way, though not the only way to do this. See Amazon, for example.
Another company, like Patagonia, might attempt to maximize long term shareholder value by manufacturing in the us and charging a higher price to compensate.
Still another might decide to stay in the US, accept higher cost & lower profit but avoid the risk of catastrophic loss as many companies that moved to China are now facing.
The corporate needs to have a strategy to maximize value. As long as they do, and as long as they can show it as reasonable, it is pretty hard to charge fraud.
If you don't like the strategy, don't be an owner (shareholder) in that company.
John Henry
ARM - kinda simplistic 7:05.
US Manufacturing started to deteriorate a long time ago. Remember when the unions went too far and forced the steel industry to move over-seas?
But there's ARM - in Hillary fashion - ready to blame the deplorables.
Hillary and Bill made a shit ton of dirty chi-com money over the decades.
When it comes to reporters VOA fishes from the same pool as the other major media. Bennett's #2 is a long time WaPo staffer, and Bennett has ties to the Post herself. Much of VOA's information and orientation comes from the mainstream media, and their reporters aren't inclined to differ much from that consensus. Certainly not if they want higher profile jobs in US media. Plus, it's an international operation with reporters and managers from all over the world that often reflects an international consensus, rather than domestic political opinions or national interests.
Still, you do want people in government who have some expertise. I hope nobody seriously wants a sweeping out of everybody who doesn't agree with them or isn't part of their own movement and replacing them with hacks whose chief qualification is that they have the correct opinions. The problem with expertise, though, is that it's often measured with credentials, and the institutions that provide those credentials do stamp their products with the institution's point of view to the point where bureaucracies become echo chambers for the opinions that prevail at the universities and employers who hand out the credentials.
I have listed to DW and NHK, but prefer not to ... Bad memories of Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose ...
narciso 8:16 AM... Are you thinking what I've been thinking? Proxy?
Reasons for moving to China varied, including:
1. Shoe mfg chased cheap labor. Japan to korea / Taiwan to China to Vietnam / Indonesia
2. China deliberately targeted some industries, creating state funded competition, restricting competition within China, buying companies, stealing tech, etc.
3. China forcing industries to share knowledge for China market share, that created competitors
4. Easier to scale up in China, tax incentives, etc
5. Lack of understanding total costs of doing business in Chiba
6. Peer pressure, lemming type behavior
7. Lower cost for some types of mfg
BleachBit-and-Hammers said...
US Manufacturing started to deteriorate a long time ago.
You seem to be confusing us manufacturing output with us manufacturing jobs
Us mfg output constant dollars:
1970 $249bn
2010 $1,856bn
Ahh, but us population has increased too, you may point out. Yup. So let's look at per capita output
1970 $1,225
2010 $6,011
Not too shabby. Yes manufacturing jobs have declined. Partly due to offshoring of labor intensive industries. But moreso because of a 200+ year trend to more and more automation.
Remember when the unions went too far and forced the steel industry to move over-seas?
Yet the US is still the world's #3 steelmaker behind China and Japan.
Production fell sharply in the 70s, stabilized in the 80s, and looks to have been trending slightly upward ever since.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/steel-production
John Henry
"I have friend who worked in a local pharmaceutical firm ... "
Like Fuck you do. For you to have a friend, you'd have to have a pussy. Without a pussy, you haven't got a friend in the World.
One of my clients is a large producer of a popular otc medication. Literally tons of it every day, 3 shifts a day. @20 tablet presses running @10,000 tablets per minute each.
They are probably producing 2-3 time as much today as 15-20 years ago.
Last year we were wandering around the plant looking for something and we went in a maintence stores warehouse. One corner was filled with 60-80 rolling tool cabinets that were not in use. Each full with a couple grand worth of high quality hand tools.
Each chest represented a mechanic, electrition or other tech that had left the company and not been replaced. Figure for each of thes skilled positions, 10-15 unskilled positions had been lost.
And yet plant output has increased dramatically. They need 5-6 operators to run a line at 250 bottles per minute. 20 years ago, in that room, they had20 or more running thsame product at 100-150bpm.
It's not offshoring that is eliminating mfg jobs, though it does contribute.
It's mainly automation.
John Henry
not exactly, but it is curious, it's interesting how many cases that Qatar has vs iran, officially 23,900, but do you believe that.
Jupiter, Fuck you.
Losers talk like this. Losers with an 'L' on their forehead.
yes productivity gains, with automation supplanting large labor force, how goes it on the isle of misfit toys,
The sock industry is another interesting case study. Up to about 30 years ago Fort Payne Ark was the sock capital of the world. Thousands of people worked in a dozen or 2 sock manufacturing plants.
Mechanics/techs who kept the knitting machines in tune
Operators who kept the the machines loaded with thread
Operators (socktuckers?) who folded and sewed the toes manually. Lots and lots of them.
Operators made slightly more than what they would have made at Walmart but had a much more grueling job. How wouldyou feel about sitting at a sewing machine sewing toes for 30 years?
A lot of people didn't like the idea and those willing to do it wanted more money. At the time, the toe sewing could not be automated so the industry moved to central America, mainly Honduras.
I know people who manufacture in Honduras and it is VERY problematic for 100 different reasons. But labor to sew toes is cheap and abundant.
Eventually, automated toe sewing machinery was developed and the US sock industry is on the rise.
But without all those socktucking jobs.
John Henry
Mr. Dark - coming in 3rd behind China and japan isn't real impressive.
Check out the graph in this article. The argument that the US has not lost in the competition with China is nonsense, yet fools still promulgate this ridiculous argument. US citizens were sold out by US capital.
Narciso,
I don't know. We are on total lockdown. Some of my manufacturing clients are working balls out trying to keep up with demand. Others are not working at all. None are letting outside contractors like me in their so I have several projects on hold.
My daughter is working, my sil not. My dil is working, my son not.
My wife is driving me batty.
We can only drive on m-w-f because we have even number license plates. $250 fine if caught without permission.
Curfew from 1900-0500 nobody can go out.
Lines to get into stores. Long but they seem to move quickly. Grocery stores are well stocked, including tp.
It is a giant royal pain in the ass.
I am getting more and more pissed off at the scam daily.
John Henry
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
Check out the graph in this article. The argument that the US has not lost in the competition with China is nonsense,
Apples and oranges, arm. Who's talking about competition with China? Or us share of global manufacturing?
Not me. And not anyone else here that I can see.
We are talking about US mfg output. Absolute output.
That is up. Significantly. Over most any time period since in the past 100 or more years.
John Henry
yikes, he doesn't read his own links, it's like the times, as Taranto observed,
BleachBit-and-Hammers said...
Mr. Dark - coming in 3rd behind China and japan isn't real impressive.
Didn't say it was. But you seemed to be saying we had lost a lot of steel capacity in recent years. I was pointing out that 1) we have been stable or growing since the early 80s and 2) we still make one hell of a lot of steel in the us.
John Henry
God forbid the WaPo should run a headline reading "VOA Promotes Chinese Propaganda" without making it all about Trump. These people are truly deranged.
So, American propaganda good, other nations' propaganda bad.
It's not bad that Americans are lied to or deceived, as such, just that others are competing with us to lie to and deceive us, (and to the other nations where VOA is broadcast).
"Another company, like Patagonia, might attempt to maximize long term shareholder value by manufacturing in the us and charging a higher price to compensate."
Actually, Patagonia is a private company and is not traded on the stock market.
"Liberal journalists bankrupted many newspapers...."
Now how did "liberal journalists" bankrupt any papers?
Papers are dying because few people buy or read newspapers anymore. Younger people have never grown up reading newspapers. On the NYC subways, one always used to see commuters reading newspapers in the morning, and to a lesser extent later in the day. Now, everyone is on their smart phones.
"US Manufacturing started to deteriorate a long time ago. Remember when the unions went too far and forced the steel industry to move over-seas?
"But there's ARM - in Hillary fashion - ready to blame the deplorables."
Uh...current (and former) union members are the so-called deplorables.
Also, how did unions force the steel industry to move overseas?
Lyle said...
The PRC has paid a lot of people in America.
Nah. They're doing it for free. Go review what Hannah Arendt said about Eichmann and the need to belong.
Robert Cook said...
Actually, Patagonia is a private company and is not traded on the stock market.
So?
It's still a corporation. As far as I know it's motive is to increase shareholder value. Everything I said applies equally to it as to a publicly traded corporation.
Otoh, since they used to be a not for profit, their shareholders values may be different from many other corporations. They still exist to maximize those values. They could be sued by shareholders for fraud if they don't.
John Henry
I expect an outcome of this virus in the us will be a huge increase in automation, especially in agriculture.
Blogger Ray - SoCal said...
I expect an outcome of this virus in the us will be a huge increase in automation, especially in agriculture.
I sort of disagree, Ray. Not with your idea. I think we are going to see huge increases in automation after the virus.
But we have been seeing huge increases in automation for the past 200 years. I don't know that the rate of increase will be much different after than before.
In agriculture, the closed borders, the closed borders and the lack of cheap, exploitable, labor may drive increases in automation. So it may increase at a faster rate than in the past.
But in has been increasing pretty dramatically in agriculture for the past 200 years too. Reapers, Threshers and combines and the like starting back in the 1820s and 30s, getting a big boost with steam tractors in the 1870s or so and then really taking off with the availability of the affordable Fordson tractor.
In retail we had automation in the 70s or 80s in the form of scanners, now self service checkout and now the new Walmart system of checking out with your phone as you put stuff in the cart. Lots more coming in retail but I don't see it as kung flu driven.
I think it will be interesting to see graphs of automation in industrial, agricultural and commercial sectors before and after kung flu to see if there is any change in rate of growth.
John Henry
"(Patagonia)'s still a corporation. As far as I know it's motive is to increase shareholder value. Everything I said applies equally to it as to a publicly traded corporation.
"Otoh, since they used to be a not for profit, their shareholders values may be different from many other corporations. They still exist to maximize those values. They could be sued by shareholders for fraud if they don't."
According to Patagonia via a June 19, 2017 Tweet on Twitter, as a private company they do not have shareholders. Even if they did, would the same laws apply to them (as regards being required to maximize shareholder value) as apply to public companies?
According to Patagonia via a June 19, 2017 Tweet on Twitter, as a private company they do not have shareholders. Even if they did, would the same laws apply to them (as regards being required to maximize shareholder value) as apply to public companies?
If they are a corporation, by definition, they have shareholders. It is possible, and not uncommon, to have a corp with a single shareholder. I owned one at one time back in the day. The tweet seems to be talking about public shareholders. Wikipedia says they are a "Certified B corporation" which doesn't seem to have much meaning legally. https://bcorporation.net/ From Wikipedia it sounds like they are a standard Corp under California corporation law. Unless you have some different info?
As to maximizing shareholder value, that is not the law, specifically for any company. It is generally implied though, and may even be stated in the corporate charter or bylaws. OTOH, the bylaws may say that maximizing shareholder monetary value is not the primary goal of the corporation. It might be formed to promote a particular point of view, say a magazine or newspaper and the goal might be to maximize dissemination of that view. These are often not for profit but can be for profit.
But that would be stated in the corporate bylaws. Corporations are chartered by states and each state is different but most, if not all, states require a set of corporate bylaws whether the corp has 1 shareholder or a million, whether it is public or private. Or some combination like Ford Motor with Class A and B stock.
And if there are 2 shareholders, one may disagree with the management and/or board of directors (who may or may not be a shareholder), about the direction, call it fraud and take them to court.
John Henry
VoA lost its reason for existence the day the Berlin Wall came down. Why are we still paying for it? Besides bureaucratic inertia, that is.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
No consumers were demanding more drugs be made in India, the opposite, and they are largely protected from drug prices. This move was driven solely by the greed of US capital.
This is a good example of the left's economic illiteracy. The US has spent the last 30 years demanding lower drug prices, in fact using high prices to justify justify governmental control of healthcare in the guise of "regulation". Despite this the left will concurrently claim consumers aren't pushing for lower drug in any circumstance it allows them to shift blame from those whose votes they need to those they hate.
Long ago the left learned truth isn't relevant, you just need to make an argument. Any argument will always be enough to convince those whose bread is buttered via Dem politics.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
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