User:Chetsford/surrogate

Surrogate services of the U.S. Agency for Global Media
This is an RfC on the surrogate services of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), not on its external service (Voice of America). The surrogate services are: Office of Cuba Broadcasting/Radio y Television Marti, etc.; Middle East Broadcasting Networks/alhurra/El Saha, etc.; RFE/RL; Radio Free Asia; and any other surrogate outlets under USAGM control the identify of which has not been publicly revealed. As each of these are a DBA brand of a single organization with a single controlling mind (USAGM), this RfC proposes to address them collectively.

Question A: For coverage 2017 and later, are the surrogate services of the U.S. Agency for Global Media:
 * Option 1: Generally reliable
 * Option 2: Additional considerations
 * Option 3: Generally unreliable
 * Option 4: Deprecate

Question B: For coverage before 2017, are the surrogate services of the U.S. Agency for Global Media: Chetsford (talk) 06:02, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Option 1: Generally reliable
 * Option 2: Additional considerations
 * Option 3: Generally unreliable
 * Option 4: Deprecate

Survey

 * A4 / B3 for reasons I describe in the discussion section. I further suggest that pre-2017 online articles be considered post-2017 for application of this RfC unless an archive exists from an independent source (e.g. Wayback Machine). I don't think the integrity of outlet-maintained archives can be presumed. Chetsford (talk) 06:02, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

 * OP's rationale:
 * 1.The organizational architecture of the surrogate services post-2017 makes them functionally non-WP:INDEPENDENT of the United States government. And the subjects of interest to the U.S. Government are panoptic, leaving no possible carveout of independent reporting.
 * The surrogate services were formerly controlled by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a semi-independent, collegiate body appointed by the President of the United States to overlapping terms and statutorily representing a cross-section of interests. This is the normal setup with state-backed media like the BBC and Deutsche Welle. On December 23, 2016, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 was passed which dissolved the board and placed these all under a single official who serves at the pleasure of the president of the day. All surrogate services are 100 percent funded by the U.S. Government and their staff are U.S. Government employees on the GS payscale, recruited from usajobs.gov and in some cases their reporters have to undergo pre-employment SF-86 security screenings (e.g. ).
 * In addition, these outlets operate under an exclusive congressional statute which grants them absolute immunity from all civil liability. As such, they are the only media outlets in the U.S. which face no legal risk for errors in their reporting or pecuniary incentive to avoid mistakes.
 * 2. Each of these outlets has been widely criticized by highly reliable sources -- including their own staff -- for engaging in shoddy journalism, succumbing to political pressures, or concealing the hierarchy of their editorial control. There are too many to mention, so I'll just provide a small sample covering a couple brands over a 50 year period to show this is an endemic issue.
 * Until 1971, RFE/RL reporting and editorial policy was secretly controlled by the CIA . This was not voluntarily revealed by it and only came to light after an investigative expose.
 * James Brown, director of RFE/RL from 1978 to 1985, chronicles extensively the political pressure he frequently came under to adopt an "ultra aggressive" editorial tone in his 2014 book Radio Free Europe: An insider’s view.
 * A 2009 report by the U.S. Government's own GAO found that, from 2004-2007, Radio y Television Marti had a "perpetually poor standard of journalism", editorialized "the presentation of individual views as news", incorporated "offensive and incendiary language" in its reporting, and reported on "unsubstantiated" rumors.
 * A 2008 report by the University of Southern California found that Alhurra "relied on unsubstantiated information too often ... [and] allowed the on-air expression of personal judgments too frequently".
 * In his 2013 book Propaganda, Power and Persuasion: From World War I to Wikileaks, David Welch (Director of the Study of Propaganda at the University of Kent) wrote exhaustively about how Radio Free Asia is "very selective" in the news it reports and about the "inherent bias in RFA's programming" and that it frames its reporting on China with the intent of emphasizing the "disharmony" in the Harmonious Society.
 * In 2018, Mother Jones chronicled the aggressive and questionable tone of Radio y Television Marti's reporting, including its news reports that deounced George Soros is a "multimillionaire Jew" and the "architect of the financial collapse of 2008".
 * In 2019, the USAGM commissioned a new report on Radio y Television Marti. That report - authored by professors at USC and journalists from Telemundo - concluded Radio y Television Marti was "riddled with bad journalism" and "ineffective propaganda".
 * As recently as 2021, USAGM's own staff representing all the brands have stated that management has taken "actions that did not align with USAGM’s firewall principles".