A coup at the BBG... journalism toward a viewpoint favorable of (sic) the Trump Administration,
House Dem: Plot To Oust Broadcast Board CEO ‘Our Worst Nightmare’
By Alice Ollstein | March 21, 2018 11:14 am
The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says whistleblowers have detailed a plot by the Trump administration to oust the CEO of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and replace him with someone favored by the White House. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) warned in a letter to the BBG, obtained by TPM, that that candidate, André Mendes, then plans to dismiss the existing Board of Governors, according to the whistleblowers.
In a statement to TPM, Engel called the alleged plot “our worst nightmare coming true.”
“This action would violate current law and represent what these whistleblowers have described as ‘a coup at the BBG,’ presumably with the aim of pushing the BBG’s journalism toward a viewpoint favorable of (sic) the Trump Administration,” Engel wrote to the BBG. “I view these claims as credible and this scenario as outrageous and unacceptable.”
=
Less than a month after President Trump’s inauguration,
Breitbart News published a list titled “Top 10 Holdover Obama Bureaucrats President Trump Can Fire Or Remove Today.” Lansing was number three. “The problem in recent years is that Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the other broadcasting entities run by BBG have shifted from their traditional mission of promoting classic American values and interests to the rest of the world, and have become mirror images of mainstream media outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS,” Breitbart wrote. “Current CEO John Lansing, a veteran cable industry executive, took over the reins in 2015 and has done nothing to stop that trend.”
Now, Engel says whistleblowers have informed him that a former Breitbart contributor Jeffrey Shapiro has been working on a plan with White House Associate Director of Presidential Personnel Jennifer Locetta to push Lansing out the door and scrap the agency’s move toward independent, non-partisan journalism.
“According to several accounts, Messrs. Mendes and Shapiro have made it clear in recent months their intention to remake the BBG into an agency aimed at promoting the Trump Administration’s agenda, which would constitute an egregious violation of the law requiring a ‘firewall’ between BBG’s management and its independent journalists,” Engel wrote this week. “Such a scheme would represent a shocking abuse of authority and would reveal an effort by this administration to turn the BBG into a propaganda machine.”
-
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/house-dem-plot-to-oust-broadcast-board-ceo-our-worst-nightmare
