The hand-wringing over Michael Thielen’s appointment as deputy director of Voice of America (VOA) is a masterclass in missing the point. If you’ve spent five minutes reading the legacy coverage of this move, you’ve seen the same tired script: "Propaganda machine in the making," "Editorial independence under fire," or "The Trumpian takeover of global broadcasting."
It’s lazy. It’s predictable. And it’s entirely wrong.
The outrage assumes that VOA—and its parent, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)—is currently a vital, functioning pillar of democratic soft power that is only now being "corrupted" by a partisan operative from Newsmax. I’ve watched agencies like this operate from the inside for years. I’ve seen the millions of taxpayer dollars poured into "strategic communications" that achieve the reach of a localized garage band.
The reality? Thielen isn't the iceberg. He’s just another deckhand on a ship that has been underwater since the invention of the smartphone.
The Myth of the Sacred Firewall
The primary "argument" against bringing in an executive from a partisan outlet like Newsmax is that it breaches the VOA "firewall"—the legal protection meant to keep political interference away from the newsroom.
This firewall is a fairy tale we tell ourselves to feel better about state-funded media.
Every administration since World War II has viewed VOA as a tool for national interest. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) already effectively dismantled the bipartisan board that used to oversee the agency, handing more power to a single, presidentially appointed CEO. The "purity" of VOA was compromised years ago by legislative design, not by a single hiring decision in 2026.
To suggest that a Newsmax veteran will suddenly turn VOA into a 24-hour campaign ad ignores the fact that VOA's mission has always been to reflect American policy. If you think the agency was a neutral arbiter of truth under previous administrations, you weren’t paying attention to how the State Department influences "thematic priorities."
Newsmax is the Symptom, Not the Disease
Why Thielen? Because the legacy media model is dead, and the government knows it.
Newsmax, for all its critics, understands one thing that VOA has failed to grasp for three decades: Audience retention. In the private sector, if you don't get clicks, you don't get checks. In the government sector, you get your budget increased regardless of whether anyone in Tehran or Beijing is actually listening to your podcast. The pivot toward Newsmax leadership isn't just about ideology; it's a desperate, fumbling attempt to inject "commercial energy" into a corpse.
But here is the nuance the critics miss: You cannot fix a bureaucratic monolith by importing a digital firebrand. Thielen will likely find that the civil service protections and the sheer inertia of the VOA newsroom are far more powerful than any executive directive. He isn't going to turn VOA into Newsmax; VOA is going to turn Thielen into a frustrated middle manager who spends his days arguing about travel vouchers.
The Iranian and Chinese Reality Check
Let’s dismantle the "soft power" argument. The consensus says we need VOA to "counter disinformation" in restricted markets.
Imagine a scenario where a young student in Shanghai wants to know the truth about U.S. policy. Do they go to a slow-loading, government-branded website that looks like it was designed in 2008? Or do they go to Telegram, X, or encrypted local networks where real-time information—regardless of its bias—is flowing at the speed of light?
The USAGM’s budget for 2025 was north of $900 million. For nearly a billion dollars, we are buying a megaphone that no one is tuned into. The competition isn't between "biased VOA" and "neutral VOA." The competition is between "state-funded dinosaur" and "decentralized digital reality."
- Fact: VOA’s Persian service has been plagued by internal scandals and accusations of being out of touch with the very activists it’s supposed to support.
- Fact: Most "disinformation" today is countered by independent citizen journalists, not by a broadcast tower in Greenville, North Carolina.
Bringing in a Newsmax guy doesn't change the physics of the internet. A partisan spin on a product nobody wants doesn't create more customers; it just creates a more annoying product.
The Capability Gap
The real danger of Thielen’s appointment isn't "bias"—it’s incompetence.
The skills required to run a domestic cable news outlet that thrives on outrage are the exact opposite of the skills required to navigate international diplomacy and cross-cultural communication. Newsmax succeeds by preaching to the choir. VOA’s job is supposed to be talking to the people who don't even know there is a choir.
When you hire for loyalty over diplomacy, you don't get better propaganda; you get louder failures. I have seen this movie before in the private sector. A struggling tech firm hires a "disruptor" who doesn't understand the underlying code. They break the few things that were actually working, alienate the talent, and leave the company in a pile of ash two years later.
Thielen is a "disruptor" in a system that is designed to resist disruption at a cellular level.
The Wrong Question
People are asking: "How will Thielen change the news?"
The real question is: "Why are we still spending a billion dollars on a broadcast model that was obsolete by the time the Berlin Wall fell?"
If we were serious about "countering disinformation," we wouldn't be arguing over who gets to sit in the deputy director’s chair. We would be liquidating the agency and diverting that billion dollars into satellite internet subsidies, encryption tools for dissidents, and direct grants to independent local journalists on the ground in hostile territories.
Instead, we are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and acting shocked that some of the chairs have "Newsmax" printed on the back.
The outrage over this appointment is a distraction. It allows the establishment to pretend that VOA was a "gold standard" of journalism that is only now being tarnished. It wasn't. It was a bloated, underperforming relic of the Cold War that has spent the last twenty years searching for a reason to exist.
If Thielen wants to try and steer this ghost ship, let him. He’ll find that the wheel isn’t connected to the rudder, and the engines stopped working years ago. Stop mourning a "free press" institution that has always been a government mouthpiece, and start asking why you’re still paying for the broadcast.
Go find a real journalist on the ground in a conflict zone and subscribe to their Substack. That’s more "Voice of America" than anything coming out of a D.C. office building.
