The appointment of Robert R. Reilly as director of Voice of America in December 2020 was met with widespread condemnation, NPR reported.
“In his writings, Reilly has characterized the religion of Islam as though it is something of a monolith, and he attacks it for failing, in his judgment, to sufficiently denounce terrorists who draw inspiration from radical interpretations of the faith,” NPR said. “And Reilly has repeatedly condemned homosexuality, arguing, for example, that widespread social acceptance of gay marriage requires a collective lie.”
Reilly, the author of Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything, is, as the title implies, a strident critic of homosexuality and gay marriage.
Grant Turner, a former CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, responded in a written statement to NPR by saying:
“I really implore people across the political spectrum to read some of the hate-filled and dehumanizing things Robert Reilly has written about gay people,” said Turner, who is gay. “It’s mean-spirited, sexually explicit, and just plain weird.”
If you’re looking for several words to describe the Donald Trump Administration, you would be hard-pressed to find something better than “mean-spirited, sexually explicit, and just plain weird.”
This should in fact be the Trump campaign’s slogan:
Trump 2024: “Mean-spirited, sexually explicit, and just plain weird.”
The Voice of America, as it defines itself, is “committed to providing comprehensive coverage of the news and telling audiences the truth.”
https://www.insidevoa.com/p/5831.html
USAGM is the parent agency of Voice of America and its networks.
The VOA’s mission is: “Since its creation in 1942, Voice of America has been committed to providing comprehensive coverage of the news and telling audiences the truth.”
Turner added that Reilly threatened to seriously hurt that mission.
“There is tremendous potential damage to VOA’s mission with a person like Robert Reilly in charge,” Turner said. “The last thing this guy should be doing is running a respected news organization.”
Absolutely.
Reilly should be running a discredited news organized like Fox News, whose slogan “fair and balanced” is an oxymoron.
It too is deserving of a slogan more honest to its mission: “Mean-spirited, sexually explicit, and just plain weird.”
But I digress.
Reilly’s appointment was met with praise from conservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation.
“He a man of tremendous knowledge and principle,” Helle Dale wrote on the Heritage website, “and has been well-known in conservative circles for decades.”
But, as Dale indicated, the appointment in December of Reilly in 2020 would have little real impact or no impact at all.
Joe Biden became president the next month and would appoint his own people.
“Biden has made his own promise to clean house at the Agency for Global Media,” Dale wrote. “In fact, Biden promised that anyone associated with the Trump administration would automatically be disqualified from serving in the Agency for Global Media during his administration.”
https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/new-leadership-exactly-what-voice-america-needs
Dale was correct.
On his first day in the White House, the Biden administration fired Reilly, his deputy, and, according to NBC News, “replaced them with experienced journalists with long careers” at VOA and other government-funded networks, according to a statement from the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
