That claim was made in the pages of Columbia Journalism Review by Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Cold War was fought not with weapons, but with information and ideas. In the struggle, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, American government-funded news outlets, were on the front lines. They were powerful not because they were propaganda, but because they weren’t.

Now, I "get" that Simon was writing a "Trump bad" piece, and on one particular instance of Trump being bad — his politicizing of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe by his appointee, Matthew Pack.

BUT! Two wrongs don't make a right.

And, the reality is that these agencies WERE Propaganda from early on.

On the print side of the early CIA front world, the book "Finks" of a few years ago illustrates that with Paris Match and other mags. In the big picture world, Scott Anderson's new "The Quiet Americans" discusses this in passing.

Per my current featured post, and the one I had featured below that about CJR caving to Zionism, this is FAR from the first time it's had a pretty big boo-boo. And, how much do people shell out for J-school degrees from there? So, I've added a CJR tag for further stupidities on its part.