BBG Watch Commentary
BBG Watch looked at the Voice of America (VOA) English news homepage and discovered that it was showing Tweets as “NEWS ALERTS FROM VOA” that were six and seven hours old.
Here is a screenshot image of the VOA homepage taken at 1:05 AM, Wednesday, November 19, 2014. Voice of America is funded by U.S. taxpayers to provide news to international audiences, many of which without access to free media. On the evening of U.S. mid-term elections, Voice of America was late in updating its short election news story, had no news items in its radio newscasts on election results, and was not updating its Facebook and Twitter pages for many hours.
According to inside sources, talented editors and reporters at VOA are helpless in trying to clean up the VOA English News website because of senior management’s incompetence and their support for failed mid-level managers and staffers. They are either incapable of solving the website’s many problems or are the direct cause of late and poor reporting.
In addition to missing important news stories, late posting of others and lack of updates, VOA English news website is full of countless other errors, including bad grammar and bad punctuation.
VOA is a federal government workplace overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Its top executives are VOA Director David Ensor and VOA Executive Editor Steve Redisch.
The union representing VOA journalists and other employees, AFGE Local 1812, published a blistering criticism of Voice of America’s executives. Former VOA senior correspondents also blasted VOA’s U.S. elections coverage.