Attorney Hired to Probe VOA’s Coverage Has Active Protective Order Against Him

Enlarge this image

Investigating the journalism produced by Voice of America is one of the tasks lawyer Sam Dewey has taken on since joining the broadcaster’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Andrew Harnik/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Andrew Harnik/AP

Enlarge this image

A Maryland judge ordered Sam Dewey in February to stay away from his father and to surrender all his firearms. The elder Dewey told the court his son had threatened to kill both of them.

Maryland Judiciary/Screenshot by NPR

hide caption

toggle caption

Maryland Judiciary/Screenshot by NPR

Politics
At Voice of America, Trump Appointee Sought Political Influence Over Coverage

In early February, Dewey’s father, Joel, wrote a petition to the Maryland court seeking protection. He warned that Sam Dewey twice texted his mother to threaten Joel Dewey’s life, writing that he was «seriously contemplating killing» the elder Dewey. (The two parents are divorced.)

Late that month, a judge in Baltimore County entered a protective order against Dewey. The judge ordered that Dewey could not contact his father, or enter his home or office. And Dewey was also ordered to surrender all firearms until late February 2021. According to the petition filed with the court, Sam Dewey threatened to use a specific military pistol and a silencer in killing his father and also threatened his own life.

According to the final court protective order filed by Maryland District Court Judge Leo Ryan Jr., Sam Dewey consented to the edict «without admitting to the allegations… or judicial finding of abuse.»

In a statement, an attorney representing Sam Dewey said paying attention to the protective order would take a «long-standing intrafamily dispute» out of context.

«There was absolutely no admission or finding of misconduct by Mr. Dewey Jr. but to save the family, including his siblings and his mother, from further scrutiny, he accepted the restrictions in the order,» attorney Stuart Simms wrote.

New leader brings upheaval to U.S. broadcasters

In early June, the Voice of America’s then-director, Amanda Bennett, resigned just after Pack was confirmed following a drawn-out process. Pack then fired the other broadcast chiefs. And then he decided to stop approving new and renewed so-called J1 visas for foreign nationals working for VOA and its sister channels in foreign language services. Instead, USAGM said it would review them on a case-by-case basis.

None are known to have been granted, causing more than 100 to determine whether they will have to return to their home countries, some of which are hostile to citizens who have worked for the U.S. government.

Media
Top Executives At VOA Resign As Trump Ally Prepares To Take Over

Late last month, without citing any examples or evidence, Pack told the Trump-friendly conservative site the Federalist that the VOA is «a great place to put a spy.» The remark helped inspire a letter of protest against Pack’s leadership by a growing group of VOA staffers and retirees. Pack’s line was taken as a direct slap at the professionalism and work of thousands of journalists who work for the agency. It’s considered especially painful because its journalists for years have had to battle the idea that their work by compromised by their relationship to the U.S. government. Hostile foreign regimes have frequently claimed VOA journalists are American spies to discredit them.

Dewey was the tip of the spear for Pack’s efforts to get inside the working of Voice of America’s newsrooms in ways that violate legal protections, according to numerous former colleagues.

As NPR first reported, Dewey had been assigned to review a video segment produced by Voice of America’s Urdu language service about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden — Trump’s primary political foe in November. Four contractors involved had their jobs severed and an editor was placed on leave.

Dewey’s moves to question journalists involved in the story killed the internal and journalistic review initially undertaken by editors at Voice of America, the standard path for scrutinizing a story there. Even before the investigation was under way, the agency’s announcement claimed that the story may have broken laws against electioneering by federal employees. Typically those reviews are conducted by news professionals and subject experts, not headquarters officials.

In his initial emails, Dewey did not identify what role he played at the agency, according to one of the fired contractors, Vardha Khalil. When she pressed him, Dewey said he was an attorney working as a counselor to CEO Michael Pack, Khalil tells NPR.

Politics
Voice of America Journalists: New CEO Endangers Reporters, Harms U.S. Aims

The segment reflected Biden’s appeal to Muslims at a conference arranged by a non-partisan group seeking greater engagement of Muslim voters, and it drew on footage of figures from a video put out by the group. The story was widely criticized for failing to acknowledge some of Biden’s rhetoric was overstated or to reflect the Trump campaign’s outreach to Muslims. The Urdu language service is largely aimed at people in Pakistan, so few U.S. voters are likely to have seen it.

Khalil argues that criticism was unwarranted because the network has done other stories that reflect more positively on Trump, who did not participate in the event. And she says it drew on the tone of an Associated Press piece about it.

Further, Khalil says she was baffled by Dewey’s involvement in the review and asked to have her own lawyer present if he was going to conduct it. Khalil says he agreed but insisted the meeting take place the next morning at the main USAGM/Voice of America building. She demurred, asking for more time to arrange legal representation. The meeting never took place. She was soon fired and has set up a gofundme page to challenge the agency.

«If there is a flaw, even if there was a procedural problem, … whatever the punishment or whatever I deserve is OK, but where does an attorney belong in this whole procedure?» Khalil asks.

Khalil says Dewey repeatedly asked her what she thought of a story. Another employee interviewed by Dewey for his investigation said he repeatedly asked about her personal political beliefs. Both said they deflected the question. The USAGM did not reply to questions about that incident.

Through an agency spokesman, Dewey said he never asked anyone about «political affiliation.»

«To the contrary, I along with career agency officials made clear that our concerns would be the same regardless of which politicians were featured in the video,» Sam Dewey said in the statement. «Routine questions were asked as to whether individuals thought that the video was appropriate, particularly within the context of the 2020 elections and journalistic standards. Questions were also asked regarding training as to how to handle election-related stories.»

In another incident, USAGM’s human resources department is investigating the tone of a segment on Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, who would become First Lady should the Democrat defeat Trump later this fall. Journalists at the broadcaster say that too is a violation of the legal protections granted to VOA’s newsroom to ensure its coverage is insulated against political pressures.

According to others at Voice of America and at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Dewey also sought to insert himself into the broadcaster’s planning for election coverage this season. Sean Powers, the suspended chief strategy officer, called Dewey’s efforts to review and shape VOA’s reporting part of the «step-by-step and whole-scale dismantling of the institutions that protect the independence and the integrity of our journalism.»

A spokesman for the USAGM denied that claim.

«The allegations that Mr. Dewey ‘repeatedly pushed to be involved in planning further coverage of the political season,’ ‘has repeatedly pushed to participate in planning for election reporting and overarching news coverage,’ and ‘sought to help steer future campaign coverage’ are categorically false,» the spokesman wrote in an email. «At no time did Mr. Dewey, or any other USAGM Front Office official, seek to be involved in planning election (or any) coverage, or to otherwise ‘steer’ such coverage.»

The spokesman also said it had commenced an investigation of another case involving VOA’s Latin American service in which a video was posted of a senior Trump adviser warning voters in Spanish of the dangers posed by Biden and his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris. The video was pulled down after questions were raised but there had been previously no review or repercussions. The spokesman said the agency’s leadership only learned of the episode from NPR’s reporting.

In the interview in late August, Pack told the Federalist, «There are a lot of journalists who are heroically motivated by a desire to get the truth.»

Nonetheless, Pack defined his mission at the agency this way: «My job really is to drain the swamp, to root out corruption and to deal with these issues of bias, not to tell journalists what to report.»

Disclosure: This story was reported by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by NPR’s media and technology editor Emily Kopp. Because of NPR CEO John Lansing’s prior role as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, no senior news executive or corporate executive at NPR reviewed this story before it was published.

• VOA
• michael pack
• voice of america