After vigorously defending the policy for two months, VOA now admits it was a mistake.
Voice of America rescinded a rule this morning that prohibited its journalists from referring to members of Hamas as terrorists, National Review has exclusively learned.
In recent weeks, reports in NR had brought the policy’s existence to light, and several GOP lawmakers, including Representative Darrell Issa and Senator Bill Hagerty, pressured the VOA to change course.
“The VOA’s directive not to label Hamas correctly as ‘terrorists’ was always a mistake,” Issa told NR today. “It was a refusal to call evil by its name and a misunderstanding of the central charter that Congress wrote when the VOA was formed.”
The initial guidance was issued in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks, with senior editors from the U.S. government outlet instructing editorial staff to “avoid calling Hamas and its members terrorists, except in quotes.” VOA leadership explained that referring directly to groups as terrorists would serve to “demonize” people with whom the speaker disagrees.
For two months, Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) — the federal body that oversees it — vigorously defended the policy, with editors in at least one case changing an Israeli journalist’s report on the terrorist attacks to remove the word “terrorists” when referring to Hamas.
VOA’s leadership now admits that this was a mistake, with its acting director John Lippman explaining the change in a memo to staff this morning.
“Correcting guidance that was issued October 10, 2023, and reissued on October 20, 2023, there is NO prohibition in our Best Practices Guide against our labeling the people and organizations that commit acts of terror as ‘terrorists’ or against using the word ‘terrorism’ in our stories without attribution,” he wrote.
“Terrorists use violence against civilians to advance their political or ideological agenda,” Lippman added. “By definition, therefore, the taking of civilians as hostages and the targeted killing of civilians, as occurred in Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel, are ‘acts of terrorism’ and the people who commit those acts are, by definition, ‘terrorists.’”
That’s a noteworthy change, because even after Hagerty wrote to USAGM CEO Amanda Bennett demanding that the agency reverse the VOA policy, she defended the outlet’s approach, pointing out that numerous VOA stories use the word “terrorist.” In the November 27 letter, she also wrote that USAGM was in the process of reviewing all of its publishing entities’ policies.
In comments to NR last week, Hagerty explained that her letter contained “irrelevant, out-of-context statistics” and “neither denies nor promises any accountability for the unacceptable fact that VOA’s taxpayer-funded leadership directed VOA staff not to refer to Hamas and its members as ‘terrorists’ in VOA reporting, or that VOA’s White House bureau chief essentially urged VOA employees to adopt Hamas’s propaganda that its barbarous terrorism was ‘retaliation for Israel’s decades-long occupation.’”
Hagerty’s comment about “irrelevant” statistics referred to the fact that Bennett’s staff had tabulated mentions of terrorism in general, not whether articles specifically referred to Hamas members as terrorists outside of quotes. The latter would have been prohibited by the guidance that was reversed today.
Hagerty, leading a group of several GOP senators, initially wrote to Bennett on November 7, and in addition to the “terrorist” labeling issue, the senators demanded that VOA terminate the employment of Carol Guensburg, associate editor for news standards, and White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara. Guensburg had issued the terrorist naming policy, and Widakuswara responded to it in an email chain with a note urging her colleagues to say in their stories that “the militant group’s attack was done in retaliation for Israel’s decades-long occupation.”
Lippman has responded to criticism of those staffers from congressional Republicans in different ways to different audiences.
“Like you, I read some troubling ‘reply all’ chatter in the internal discussion of the email, who unthinkingly responded ‘all’ on the email thread that contained our Standards guidance when it was resent to staff on October 20,” he wrote in a letter responding to Issa on November 9. Lippman went on to call that a normal exchange of ideas that occurs in the news room and assured the lawmaker “that it had zero impact on our policy or interpretation by our staff.”
But he took a more strident tone when discussing the congressional oversight efforts in a town hall on November 15, calling Hagerty’s demand that he fire the staffers “silly,” according to someone familiar with his comments. He called them both “valued employees” and said that they would not be disciplined in any way.
Hagerty told NR last week, before the guidance was reversed: “What’s silly is taxpayer-funded Voice of America’s notion that it can maintain the support of the American people who have built it as an instrument for advancing American values while refusing to call terrorists what they are.”
Issa told NR that he met with Lippman last week and that “the official reversal of this error is obviously welcome.” He pledged to keep up the pressure, though: “It does not set aside what we know are challenges at the VOA or the need for a productive reform conversation. Continued congressional oversight is necessary and moving forward at this time.”