Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002

WASHINGTON – Voice of America is beset with problems (enumerated in this series) that blur or distort America’s message to the rest of the world. That failure raises questions about its effectiveness as the U.S. is fighting a war on terror. The worldwide debate on Iraq also makes it all the more imperative that America’s voice be heard around the globe.

"Before America wins the hearts and minds of radical Islamists, it will have to win over its own liberal elites,” declared Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. "The latter is likely to be a far uglier, far more difficult struggle, if the ongoing battle at VOA is any indication.”

NewsMax.com’s attention was drawn to this problem when VOA’s Bush-appointed director Robert Reilly was asked for his resignation. Conservatives circulated a petition protesting his departure, noting that he was trying to straighten out the broadcasting service, whose operations got onto the wrong track during the Clinton era.

However, when NewsMax started investigating, we quickly concluded that the problems at VOA and its governing board, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), transcend any differences between Reilly and newly confirmed BBG Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, who asked him to leave. In fairness, we should memtion that both men have adamant supporters from the Reagan administration and the conservative movement.

Faith Whittlesey, former ambassador to Switzerland and assistant to President Ronald Reagan, says Reilly’s "managerial skills are excellent,” as demonstrated when she and Reilly cooperated in the Reagan effort to bring down the Soviets in the Cold War.

Reilly is "one of the finest public servants I know,” says John Lenczowski, a veteran of the Reagan State Department and National Security Council. Reilly’s role in the overall effort to end the Cold War was "very sophisticated, energetic, and extraordinarily effective,” Lenczowski added. Whittlesey and Lenczowski are now high officials of the respected Institute for World Politics.

Reilly also has the support of Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation), and Robert Schadler (Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation).

Tomlinson also has strong backing in conservative quarters.

"We do hold him in high esteem,” says longtime conservative journalist Allan H. Ryskind, icon of the 58-year-old Human Events, The National Conservative Weekly. Tomlinson once interned with the publication and is still respected there.

Tomlinson himself headed VOA in the Reagan years, where Ryskind believes he did a good job, "and we think he’ll do a good job at the BBG.”

"He is a very strong conservative,” says Bill Schulz, Tomlinson’s former colleague at Reader’s Digest back in the days when that magazine was one of the few mass-circulation publications where a conservative point of view could make it into print.

According to Schulz, Tomlinson’s stint at VOA and at the Board for International Broadcasting in the 1980s "was really critical in the long struggle against the evil empire.”

Tomlinson’s resume also includes an internship with the late Fulton Lewis Jr., a conservative network commentator in the "pre-Rush” days of AM radio.

"I remember Ken Tomlinson as a very good journalist, a hard worker, and as someone who was very responsibly conservative,” said the legendary Lewis’s son, Fulton Lewis III, now living in Florida. The younger Lewis took control of the nightly commentary for 12 years after his father died in 1966.

'Anti-American Arrogance'

According to Congressman Wilson, Reilly’s troubles began after he made a point to his staff that VOA’s appropriation included a provision mandating that VOA not give a microphone to terrorist states.

Such an interview with a terrorist had been aired by the VOA operation that had evolved under the Clinton administration. Furthermore, there had been statements to the effect that there would be more such interviews. Some overseas friends of the U.S. came to regard the VOA as "the voice of the Taliban.”

"That sort of anti-American arrogance from VOA’s board [made up largely of Clinton-era appointees] has continued to this day,” says the South Carolina lawmaker, citing a BBC report that board member Edward F. "Ted” Kaufman had said, "We’ve got to think of ourselves as separate from public diplomacy.”

Again, if America’s own voice to the world will not "tilt” in America’s favor, who will?

But Tomlinson’s conservative supporters insist that his decision to ask for Reilly’s resignation had nothing to do with his efforts to clean up VOA, but rather can be attributed to internal differences between the two.

As Ryskind puts it, "I like Bob Reilly too. Perhaps the differences between them could not be bridged.”

But the issue is not, or should not be, personalities. The issue is the need for VOA reform.

Mouthing Soviet Propaganda

Last year, in an article for the Oct. 8, 2001 issue of Human Events, Tomlinson recalled that when he took over at VOA in the '80s, after voters ousted the disastrous Carter administration, he found that "we [VOA] were broadcasting Tass and Pravda attacks on the U.S. without so much as a word of response. Stupid on both counts!”

In an interview with NewsMax.com, Tomlinson indicated he was still of the same mind-set. Obviously then, he has his work cut out for him in seeing to it that VOA never again leaves foreign audiences with the impression that it might as well be "the voice of the Taliban.” Presumably, that too would be considered "stupid” on a number of counts. Columnist Bill Safire likens it to "Equal time for Hitler.”

NewsMax will continue to monitor the progress at VOA – or lack thereof.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Clinton Scandals

Media Bias

NewsMax Scoops

Editor's note:
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