Independence has been hallmark of VOA in telling America's story

For more than 40 years, Willis Conover was perhaps the most famous American in the world that most Americans had never heard of.

From the mid-1950s until 1996, Conover's rumbling voice would introduce that most American of art forms - jazz - to a global audience of millions via the Voice of America and its affiliated broadcast entities, such as Radio Free Europe.

However, VOA presents far more than American music to the world and that is why we heard President Donald Trump on Wednesday threaten to shut down the Congress in order to make unfettered recess appointments, including the appointment of documentary filmmaker Michael Pack as the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

USAGM oversees VOA, and regional and country-specific platforms for Cuba, the Middle East, Europe and Asia that broadcast to nearly 300 million listeners and viewers in 100 countries and in 61 languages with a budget of $680 million.

Pack, who served in executive positions on the National Council of the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting during the George W. Bush administration, won Senate confirmation at that time, but his ties to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and some potentially dodgy financial dealings caused Republican Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake to block his nomination. Now both those senators are gone, but the nomination remains stuck over fears that Pack will try to compel VOA and particularly Radio Free Asia to engage in more propagandistic fare.

In the 78 years that VOA has existed, this has been the constant fear and struggle. Its charter states that it will serve as a "consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. VOA news will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive." Further, that "VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions." Finally, that "VOA will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will present responsible discussion and opinion on these policies."

This is not just an aspiration; it is the law. In 1976, Illinois Sen. Charles Percy, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, inserted the charter's language into an appropriations bill and President Ford signed it into law.

That has not stopped everyone from ambassadors to congressmen to State Department officials from trying to pressure VOA's editors to kill or alter certain stories through the years. Former VOA Director and NBC anchor John Chancellor told his successor that he needed to keep his hat by the door and be ready to walk out if someone tried to force him to do something that he did not think was right. VOA might be funded by the government, but as an independent news organization, it is not run by the government.

The current VOA director, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor Amanda Bennett, released a statement Wednesday that said: "For more than 75 years VOA has followed its mission of telling America's story overseas and of bringing objective, fact-based information to places around the world that have no other access to it. As we have long said, we export the First Amendment."

In particular, the president and conservatives have charged that VOA's Mandarin Service has pulled punches in its coverage of China and China's handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. VOA, whose journalists and their families have been regularly threatened by Chinese officials, have rejected that accusation, saying that they have reported extensively on Chinese misinformation.

A news organization's greatest currency is its credibility. Michael Pack might, indeed, defend VOA's independence as he has pledged. Or he might seek to alter the slant of its news feed to attack countries and people the current administration views as adversaries, as is the president's style. Such an outcome would only diminish a valuable tool in the conduct of America's foreign policy as well as America's image around the world.

Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.