William McKenzie

TRANSCRIPT:

You don’t want to become the mouthpiece of any White House or any administration, because at that point, you have slid over into doing, I guess at best, public relations, and at worst, propaganda. And neither of which are really traditional journalism. And I also would say that the principles of America — free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, all those — they don’t belong to any administration, any one administration, Republican or Democratic. They’re our American principles, hopefully eternal principles.

Free press is the means by which we get reliable information to make decisions. And in the case of VOA, you’re providing reliable information around the world and to different communities that may not have access to that. And they need to have access to information, how they make decisions about, you know, what is happening in Iran or what is happening in Serbia, what is happening in, you know, in the Czech, in Germany or someplace else, wherever it may be. That is how you get reliable information, and fact-based information. And there, the consumer of that news can make informed decisions.

I think you all are showing, and not just telling how democracy works. And you do that through independent, factual reporting, which is really the basis of a free press. So, I think it’s extremely important in that sense that you’re showing how democracy works, that you have an independent reporting process that goes out around the world.

Published March 18, 2026

McKenzie is the senior editorial adviser at the George W. Bush Institute, where he works on editorial projects on democracy and freedom. Before joining the Bush Institute, he served 22 years as an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for his contribution to a series of editorials exposing stark disparities between Dallas’ high- and low-income neighborhoods.