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Conservative critics complain that BBG’s $684 million budget is being used to undermine Trump’s agenda at home and abroad 

President Donald Trump's more-than-one-year delay in naming new leadership at the Broadcasting Board of Governors and its flagship broadcasting service, the Voice of America, is fueling fierce internal battles over the direction of its coverage and criticism from conservatives that the $684 million BBG budget is being used to undermine Trump's policies at home and abroad.

Aware of the turmoil within the BBG-controlled agencies, the White House last year planned to tap Michael Pack, a senior fellow and past president of the Claremont Institute and its Claremont Review of Books, to run the BBG, according to two government officials and outside sources.

However, Pack, a documentary filmmaker who previously served as a Corporation for Public Broadcasting executive, has been unable to take the post because he is working on a film about the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The Thomas film would pose conflict-of-interest issues with leading the BBG, the sources said.

The Thomas film is still far from complete, delaying Pack's potential nomination. The Senate would then likely take several months more to confirm him to the post, meaning that new Trump appointed leadership at the BBG could be a year or more away.

Pack also has ties to former White House advisor Steve Bannon and was thought to have his blessing for the role. Pack and Bannon worked on two documentaries together, and Pack wrote an op-ed for the Federalist last year praising Bannon as a pioneer in documentary filmmaking.

With Trump's excommunication of Bannon early this year, it is unclear if Pack is still the top contender for the post or if the White House has moved on to other candidates or decided not to make filing the post a top priority.

The White House did not respond to an inquiry about Pack or the broader BBG turmoil.

A spokesman for the Claremont Institute, where Pack remains a senior fellow, said only: "Out of respect for the selection and nomination process, which is still ongoing, Mr. Pack would like to refrain from comment at this time."

Those who support the current VOA practice of trying to emulate mainstream commercial cable outlets are worried that the Trump administration could get too involved in the BBG and its outlets could become a mouthpiece for his administration reducing their reputation for independence and fairness throughout the world.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow early last year warned that a retooled VOA with a Trump appointee could become a "state-run media operation" and a megaphone for Trump's policies abroad.

With the Obama appointees remaining in place for more than a year, tensions are bubbling over within the BBG as conservative-leaning current and former employees, some of whom joined the organization as a way to fight back against totalitarian regimes, continue to bristle at what they argue is the VOA's negative coverage of the Trump administration's signature policies.

 

http://freebeacon.com/politics...-naming-new-leaders/

 

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