Scandals hit US Agency for Global Media which runs VOA, Radio Mart, TV Mart

Newly unearthed scandals are placing a harsh spotlight on the United States Government agency behind Voice of America, Radio Mart, TV Mart, and other broadcast entities purportedly in the business of amplifying American values abroad.

One top executive billed $37,000 in made-up travel expenses. A reporter and a cameraman are accused of faking a mortar attack on the US propaganda channel that beams news to Cuba.

The U.S. government agency tasked with broadcasting American values to the world behaves like it has no values at all.

The United States Agency for Global Media, the governments foreign broadcast service, already struggling to clean house after a series of scandals last year at flagship operations like Voice of America and TV Mart, is now being rocked by two new cases that have raised further questions about its journalistic and financial management, writes Elizabeth Williamson at the New York Times:

In one, Toms Regalado Jr., a reporter for TV Mart, which broadcasts into Cuba, and a cameraman for the network, Rodolfo Hernandez, were suspended amid allegations that they faked a mortar attack on Mr. Regalado during a broadcast from Managua, Nicaragua, last year.

That incident surfaced only days after Haroon Ullah, the former chief strategy officer at the global media agency, which operates Mart and foreign-language networks around the world, pleaded guilty on June 27 in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to stealing government property.

A former deputy to the agencys chief executive, John Lansing, Mr. Ullah admitted to fleecing the government of $37,000 between February and October last year by claiming reimbursements for expensive hotels he did not book, double-billing the government for official travel and forging a doctors note to allow him to fly business class.