President Donald Trump has signed an executive order shuttering the agency that oversees Voice of America ― a government-funded, anti-propaganda, international media outlet that’s been in operation since World War II.
The order Trump signed Friday calls for the closure of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which manages VOA and other diplomatic news efforts. More than 1,300 of VOA’s journalists and other staffers were placed on administrative leave Saturday, according to a Facebook post from VOA Director Michael Abramowitz obtained by The Washington Post.
Kari Lake, the Agency for Global Media’s special adviser who once called for the imprisonment of journalists, cheered its demise on social media, saying: “There’s a reason it’s referred to as ‘pound-for-pound the most corrupt agency in Washington DC.’ Because it is!”
A press release from the agency was even harsher, calling it “a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer — a national security risk for this nation — and irretrievably broken.”
The Associated Press wire service shared Friday that the agency terminated its contracts with them, and Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Since 1942, VOA has shared news globally from the American perspective and sought to fight propaganda through the broadcasting of uncensored information to people around the world living under oppressive regimes. On its website, VOA touts itself as “the largest U.S. international broadcaster, providing news and information in nearly 50 languages to an estimated weekly audience of more than 354 million people,” and emphasizes that its reporting will always be “accurate, objective, and comprehensive.”
Its shuttering, the Society for Professional Journalists said Monday, should frighten all Americans who cherish their freedoms.
“This is the first time in its more than 80 years of operations that VOA has gone dark, and that makes this a dark moment in the history of press freedom,” SPJ President Emily Bloch said in a statement. “By issuing an executive order that closes the USAGM, the Trump administration accomplished in one day what the former Soviet Union and present-day dictators could not in 83 years — the end of fair and accurate reporting into countries that lack press freedom rights.”
The European Commission warned to Politico: “This decision risks benefiting our common adversaries.”
A senior White House official dismissed those concerns in a statement to Fox News, saying, “Voice of America has been out of step with America for years. It serves as the Voice for Radical America and has pushed divisive propaganda for years now.”
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VOA’s status has long been in question under Trump. He spent his first term complaining about its coverage ― something past presidents have also done, VOA said in 2020, but that Trump did with “unprecedented intensity and shrillness.” Him putting Lake, a former journalist turned failed gubernatorial and Senate candidate, in charge this term stoked more alarm. Then, last week, he insulted a VOA reporter during a question-and-answer session.
Chinese nationalist newspapers and influencers are already loudly celebrating the end of VOA and its sister outlets’ broadcasts into China, CNN reported. The Global Times, a communist party newspaper, slammed VOA in an editorial Monday as “Washington’s carefully crafted propaganda machine” that’s responsible for “almost every malicious falsehood about China.”