Corker Bill Aimed at Undermining Trump’s Broadcasting Chief Dies

Michael Pack expected to win Senate confirmation early this year

BY: Susan Crabtree

January 3, 2019 3:30 pm

"A group of conservative senators successfully stopped a last-ditch effort to weaken the power of President Trump's choice to lead the nation's taxpayer-funded global broadcasting operation.

The move paves the way for Senate confirmation of Michael Pack, Trump's choice to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

The USAGM, previously called the Broadcasting Board of Governors, oversees the Voice of America and other U.S. taxpayer-funded broadcasting operations countering the propaganda arms of American adversaries such as Russia, Iran, and China.

A bill sponsored by Sens. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) and former Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), which critics argued would seriously undermine the incoming head of the USAGM, died on the vine when the previous Congress ended and the 116th Congress convened Thursday afternoon.

A group of conservative senators opposed the late 2018 effort to try to diminish Pack's power even before he started the job. The USAGM, previously the Broadcasting Board of Governors, oversees the Voice of America and related taxpayer-funded media outlets.

At least one conservative senator placed an anonymous hold on the bill preventing it from being attached to any must-pass measures Congress approved in the final weeks of December, several sources told the Washington Free Beacon."

…

"He has argued that the problems plaguing the USAGM have allowed the Russians and other U.S. foes to gain the upper hand in the information-warfare sphere and has pushed for strengthening management’s powers, not weakening them.

"We're faced with a misinformation onslaught, and we've got to get this right," he said when releasing his oversight report in late December.

Pack is a documentary filmmaker who previously served as a Corporation for Public Broadcasting executive. More recently, he ran the conservative Claremont Institute and its Review of Books.

Bennett and her supporters on the left cite Pack's ties to White House adviser Steve Bannon as cause for concern. The pair worked together on two documentaries, although colleagues have said Pack has had a much broader role in the conservative movement and would in no way be beholden to Bannon, especially after his falling out with Trump.

The USAGM, which had a $680 million budget for fiscal year 2018, was created more than seven decades ago to counter propaganda from repressive regimes with coverage that promotes freedom and democracy worldwide.

Strategies to pursue that lofty goal without squandering taxpayer dollars have shifted with the agency's changing leadership and has become a matter of extensive partisan debate over the last several years."

https://freebeacon.com/politics/corker-bill-aimed-at-undermining-trumps-broadcasting-chief-dies/

Article too long to post. Worth a read.

>>4599159

WATCH: Trump says he’ll ‘have to start watching PBS much more’

Jan 3, 2019 5:05 PM EST

President Donald Trump made two references in recent days to PBS and its coverage of U.S.-North Korea relations — first, in a tweet, and again during Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting.

The president’s comments were prompted by the PBS NewsHour’s segment on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s promise to denuclearize. The segment was the top story in the NewsHour’s broadcast on Tuesday night.

Trump mentioned the program in a tweet late Tuesday, adding that he looked forward to “meeting with Chairman Kim who realizes so well that North Korea possesses great economic potential!”

He again mentioned the segment during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, telling reporters that the program covered the issue “very, very nicely.”

“I was surprised, based on everything I’ve heard about them. I’ll have to start watching PBS much more,” Trump said to some chuckles in the room. “They covered it very accurately. And I actually put a quote out last night about what they said, I thought that was very accurate.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-says-hell-have-to-start-watching-pbs-much-more

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/msar-fy2019.pdf

>>4599159

Super Typhoon Devastates USAGM Transmission Sites

Yutu scored a direct hit on two islands in the Northern Mariana Islands in October

JAMES CARELESSDEC 20, 2018

Two shortwave radio transmission/antenna farms used by the U.S. Agency for Global Media in Saipan and Tinian were ripped apart by 180 mph winds in October. That’s when Category 5 Super Typhoon Yutu ravaged the Northern Mariana island group in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.

Deemed to be tied with Super Typhoon Mangkhut as “the strongest storm on Earth this year” by NASA’s Earth Observatory, Yutu levelled buildings and electrical infrastructure in this U.S. commonwealth. Power was still unavailable in many areas as of early December, and repairs are expected to take many months.

“Yutu’s eye passed between the two islands of Saipan and Tinian, so the super typhoon scored a direct hit on our two transmission sites,” said Terry Balazs, USAGM director of the Office of Technology, Services and Innovation. “The damage was very extensive at both sites, and, of course, on both of the islands.”

USAGM — until recently named the Broadcasting Board of Governors — uses the Saipan and Tinian sites to broadcast Radio Free Asia and Voice of America multi-language radio programming into China and other Asian nations. Although RFA/VOA shortwave transmissions have been moved to other Pacific Ocean sites for the time being, none offer the range and reach of the Saipan/Tinian sites. Collectively, the two locations are known as the Robert E. Kamosa Transmitting Station or REKTS.

“Both stations were completely wiped out,” wrote William Martin, manager of the USAGM Philippines Transmitting Station, in a text message to long-time “World of Radio” broadcast host and DX Listening Digest editor Glenn Hauser that was shared with Radio World. “Antennas mangled, roofs partially torn off, fence lines flattened. Both sites will be off air a minimum six months, possibly up to a year.”

JAW-DROPPING-DAMAGE

The extensive and extreme damage suffered at the two REKTS sites are breathtakingly portrayed in USAGM photos. So powerful were the winds that the concrete weight rings that hold down an antenna guy wire anchor were literally shaken to pieces.

Feed and power lines were knocked down everywhere; STL links toppled and curtain-array shortwave antennas (consisting of transmission wire webs strung between support towers) were tangled and torn like unravelling knitted sweaters.

“Every operating curtain-array antenna has been damaged, in a way that they cannot be used,” said Balazs. “The towers are still there, but the curtains and elements have been severely damaged and, in many cases, torn off. So there’s no way in the short term that we’re going to be able to restore broadcasting. We need to send an expert there to assess which antennas can be repaired, and which ones have to be replaced.”

Meanwhile, satellite dishes that downlinked RFA and VOA were either fragmented like china plates dropped on a stone floor or simply “blown away,” he said. “They’re just gone.”

In contrast, the main buildings at both sites “are pretty much intact,” Balazs told Radio World. “The shortwave transmitters inside the building are intact, but some of them have water damage. We have dried them up, but you never know if they’re going to be completely functional until you fire them up again.”

REKTS does have local power, thanks to its own generators, but the main electrical grid that normally feeds the two sites is still offline at this writing.

REKTS staff have been doing whatever repairs are necessary to the two sites’ buildings, plus removing fences knocked down by Yutu’s 180 mph winds and debris blown onto their properties. “Debris from anywhere in the islands seem to have ended up on our sites,” said Balazs.

But repairing the massive curtain arrays in a timely manner is beyond their capacity; they just don’t have enough people or equipment to do the job without substantial outside help.

…

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/super-typhoon-devastates-usagm-transmission-sites

Article too long.