President Donald Trump’s plans to cut government spending and reduce funding to public media have ruffled feathers in Washington and triggered lawsuits from journalists whose jobs at Voice of America and other tax-payer-funded media agencies have been threatened.
The cutbacks affect the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and agencies under its umbrella, including Voice of America (VOA), the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and nonprofit organizations Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
The cuts to VOA are being challenged in court; the administration is seeking to cut 1,200 jobs and scale the outlet back to its statutory minimum.
The VOA states its services are vital to protect U.S. interests and share America’s message of freedom and hope across the globe, while the Trump administration says the outlet has strayed from its original mission.
The White House cited an example, stating VOA management told staff not to call Hamas and its members terrorists, “except when quoting statements.”
The administration also said VOA in May 2019 fired reporters over a live broadcast interview with a Chinese dissident that was cut short amid pressure from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In response to a request for comment regarding the allegations and criticisms leveled at VOA, David Seide, the lead counsel for the VOA journalists who have sued the administration, said that reducing staffing and functions at Voice of America will benefit America’s adversaries.
“Over 80 years, Voice of America has built a reputation of trust for its audience of over 350 million worldwide,” Seide told The Epoch Times in a March 27 email. “Cancelling VOA kills that reputation. It produces an audience vacuum which will be filled by Iran, China, Venezuela, and North Korea.”
Trump appointed Kari Lake as a senior adviser before he was sworn in as president. He subsequently nominated her to run VOA and then as a senior adviser to USAGM. Lake is a former television news anchor who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona in 2024 and for Arizona governor in 2020.
She is now at the center of a legal wrangle over the VOA cuts and dismissed criticism from those who say cutting back Voice of America will harm the United States and aid its adversaries.
Lake said VOA’s coverage has been more critical of America than its adversaries and “in many ways, was actually bolstering our adversaries.”
In her role as senior adviser, Lake told The Epoch Times she has no authority over USAGM’s editorial content and is currently focused on “the rot” within the agency and cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
USAGM hasn’t been completely shut down but has been stripped down to its “statutory minimum,” she said. “We’re in the process of figuring out exactly what that is, looking at the statutes and having a legal team decipher what it all means.”
Beginnings and Lawsuit
Voice of America was launched in 1942 during World War II to counter Axis propaganda. During the war, VOA used shortwave radio to broadcast its message outside the United States and especially targeted nations where press freedom was suppressed.
The VOA Charter, signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976, states that VOA news must be “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” and “represent America, not any single segment of American society” and must present “balanced and comprehensive” content to reflect significant American thought and U.S. policies “clearly and effectively” with “responsible discussions and opinion.”
The media network says it serves the world as “a beacon of hope for underserved audiences who yearn for information about freedom of expression, civil society, and change.”
On March 21, a group of VOA journalists sued Lake as well as Victor Morales, whom she appointed as USAGM’s acting CEO, alleging the spending cuts at the federally funded network are unlawful and unconstitutional.
Reporters Without Borders and several labor unions are also listed as plaintiffs in the case.
On March 25, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth granted a temporary restraining order preventing Lake and Morales from shutting down Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s operations. The judge stated the federal government failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for defunding the agency.
Concerns Over Censorship
A former VOA journalist, who spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said “censorship and self-censorship” was occurring at the agency.The source couldn’t say whether the alleged censorship at VOA was happening on a large scale or systemic level, but said certain segments harshly criticizing the CCP or views expressed by right-wing activists, including Trump supporters, were deliberately deleted or heavily edited, while liberal voices were left intact.
“This is not how journalism works,” the source said.
The source said VOA has historically served the world well by helping defeat Nazi and Soviet Union propaganda, but it has deviated from its mission to fairly represent American policies, values, and culture.
VOA, the source said, has violated its own charter and shifted to echoing left-wing media narratives rather than trying to “win the hearts and minds” of people suffering under the oppression of authoritarian regimes.
In China, VOA sent its reporters to the scene of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and the Chinese people depended on its news reporting for the truth and “gathered courage from VOA’s voice,” the source said.
Many Chinese college students listened to VOA broadcasts to learn English and understand more about American culture and Western civilization, said the source.
Over the decades, the VOA has turned on America by sometimes producing stories with anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Trump bias and has taken a sympathetic tone towards the CCP, the source said.
Now, under the guise of balance, VOA editors are allowing too much CCP propaganda into the content, the source said.
“The meaning of ‘balance’ should be open to reexamination when the U.S. is confronting an atheist, genocidal regime with malicious intention to lie, to kill, and to overturn a rule-based world order from within,” the source said.
Although VOA has covered the CCP’s human rights abuses, including persecution against the Uyghurs and Falun Gong, VOA editors have avoided digging too deeply into issues deemed sensitive to the CCP, the source said.
“VOA wants to play the safe card,” the source said. “They don’t want to be accused of inciting division between Chinese people and the CCP regime.”
