Voice Of America Reduced To A Whisper
• After three months of legal battles and lobbying, the Voice of America (VOA) network is officially being reduced to a fraction of its pre-Trump form.
As CNN reports, widespread layoffs took place Friday at VOA and its parent agency, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which has led America’s efforts to broadcast information around the world for decades. VOA was the biggest segment of the agency, operating broadcast services and websites in many languages, and employing about 1,400 people. Trump’s order in mid-March effectively silenced VOA, as staffers were placed on paid administrative leave and the broadcast platforms were put on hold.
Three VOA journalists who had originally sued to stop the mass terminations, Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper, also received their layoff notices on Friday. In a joint statement, the three journalists said, “This move follows USAGM’s firing of more than 500 contractors last month. It spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world.”
President Trump, who has been critical of VOA for years, sees Friday’s firings as a political victory. When Trump signed an order in March to drastically shrink USAGM and several other federal agencies, the president and his pick to run VOA, failed Arizona gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, depicted U.S.-funded international broadcasting as biased, bloated and obsolete. But advocates for the agency, including some Republican lawmakers, said the networks were a crucial tool for fighting disinformation and telling America’s story to the world. On Friday, in a press release announcing the mass layoffs, Lake signaled that it will continue to exist in some stripped-down fashion. She said the “lean and focused” agency would employ about 250 people in total.
The fate of USAGM’s other networks, which are structured as nonprofit organizations that are funded through federal grants, is unclear. Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other grantees have also been fighting to save their federal funding in the courts.
The trio said their legal fight would continue, and called on Congress “to continue its long tradition of bipartisan support for VOA,” adding, “Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the global information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice.”
