The “American experiment itself” at stake

Steven Herman, the former White House and chief national correspondent for Voice of America, gave a 45-minute speech at Illini Country Club Wednesday night that that the Trump Administration surely wouldn’t have liked. In a packed room that included U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Herman chastised the government’s incursions on freedom of the press that have included the recent shuttering of the 83-year-old Voice of America.

The talk concluded, and the crowd of around 300 or so disbursed in peace. The First Amendment, on this night anyway, prevailed again. The path to totalitarianism, however, the veteran journalist warned, has always started with the silencing of a free and independent press.

“The tactics differ in detail, but the underlying playbook is the same: combine economic pressure, legal harassment, regulatory intimidation and ownership manipulation to shift media from a watchdog role to a compliant mouthpiece,” Herman said. “Each action, taken individually, can be defended as lawful, but they erode the structural independence on which a free press depends.”

Herman, 65, published his first stories as a professional journalist at 17 before retiring in 2021 after five years as White House bureau chief and chief national correspondent for Voice of America. Today, he is the executive director at the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi. The World Affairs Council of Central Illinois, a civic organization dedicated to educating the public about U.S. foreign policy, brought him to Springfield for a Nov. 12 dinner and program.

The press – at least the kind Trump didn’t like – was labeled as “the enemy of the people” and “fake news” in his first administration from 2016-20. Voice of America, which broadcast to a daily audience of 360 million in 48 countries in their native languages, persevered and continued through Joe Biden’s presidency.

When Trump was reelected last year, however, Voice of America was one of the first targets on the chopping block of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Despite “evidence” that was entirely subjective, VOA was branded by Musk as just another woke apparatus of the liberal media and “unsalvageable rot” by the incoming director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Kari Lake, a former Arizona TV newscaster and twice-failed gubernatorial candidate in the state.

Hundreds of government-funded VOA staffers were out of work. No longer can people under totalitarian rule in places such as Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran hear the work of VOA, which Herman said was “telling American stories to the world.” Started by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942 during World War II, VOA was considered an important weapon of American “soft power.” Its first broadcast that year was to Germans, in their native language, and promised truth – whether good or bad – from the American side.

Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister, was among the first to try to weaponize the power of radio to American and British listeners. “Germany Calling,” hosted by American-born fascist William Joyce and others, broadcast, in English, Nazi propaganda designed to sow doubt and demoralize Brits and Americans. After the war, Joyce became the last person in Britain executed for treason. The Japanese tried the same thing with a collection of women known as “Tokyo Rose,” who broadcast propaganda overseas designed to demoralize Americans in the Pacific theater.

It may seem ridiculous to many Americans that freedom of the press can ever be done away with, Herman said, but try telling that to broadcast networks that have been subject to what he called “shakedowns” by the Trump Administration. Examples include financial settlements paid by ABC and CBS for content the administration contended was unfair and the threat made to ABC that its FCC license would be revoked over comments made by late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. Tell that to the New York Times or the BBC, which currently have defamation lawsuits against them filed by Trump, he said. Tell that to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS), which had its government funding cut.

Herman said he has had some “critiques” of PBS and its subsidiary, National Public Radio. Some, including a former NPR top editor, Uri Berliner – who no one would have confused for a MAGA conservative – resigned over a belief that the network had swung too far to the left.

To a charge that VOA might have also gone too “woke,” as Trump and DOGE alleged, Herman disagrees.

“Was VOA perfect 100% of the time? No. It was 48 language services of 1,500 people. But I worked in the standards and practices unit, and we took very seriously any complaints,” Herman said. “I sometimes felt I did a good job because I got criticism from the left and the right. But people now basically (have) their confirmation bias. They want you to conform to their views.”

Herman said that VOA had a very specific mission and included self-correction mechanisms and internal reviews.

“Ultimately, Congress could hold a hearing if they thought there was some systemic problem with VOA. They didn’t. I’m very proud of what we did and how we did it,” he said.

As part of his goal at his job in Mississippi, Herman is hoping to implement a labeling system on stories that have been properly vetted for their accuracy and trustworthiness as news sources. Green labels would signify accuracy and originality. Red labels would be stamped on stories deemed as improperly vetted or just part of the “hot take industrial complex” that Herman says pervades today’s media world.

“If somebody is all red, like Alex Jones, maybe you shouldn’t be getting your information from them,” said Herman, whose latest book, Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist’s Story of Covering the President – and Why it Matters, will be out in paperback next year.

Not that Herman is calling for the suppression of any kind of speech, he is quick to add.

“If speech can be suppressed, whether that is conservative, liberal or libertarian speech, the American people cannot challenge tyranny or correct injustice,” Herman said. “What’s at stake, ultimately, is not just a legal right. It is the American experiment itself.”