Kari Lake Sworn In as Senior Adviser at US Agency for Global Media

Lake has said that U.S. government-sponsored publications are valuable for competing with narratives of other countries’ state-sponsored media.

Kari Lake speaks at the 2024 Road to Majority Conference in Washington on June 21, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Kari Lake was sworn in as a senior adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) on March 3, as she awaits further action on her nomination to serve as the director of Voice of America (VOA).

The USAGM is a government-sponsored agency that oversees VOA and other publications and broadcasters, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

“Looking forward to serving America, streamlining the United States Agency of Global Media and everything it oversees,” Lake said in a post on social media platform X announcing her swearing in.

President Donald Trump originally named Lake, a longtime television journalist, to serve as the director of VOA in December. Her nomination awaits the approval of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board (IBAB). The panel includes the U.S. secretary of state and six other presidential appointees who themselves require confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Michael Abramowitz, who was appointed in April 2024, is the current director of VOA, and IBAB would have to vote to remove him before it could proceed with considering Lake’s appointment.

The advisory role at USAGM will allow Lake to help steer the agency and its component publications while she awaits further action from IBAB.

The USAGM and its portfolio of subsidiary publications have faced allegations that their news coverage has become increasingly biased in a leftward direction.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has called for USAGM outlets such as VOA and RFE/RL to be shut down.

“Nobody listens to them anymore,” Musk said in a Feb. 9 post on X, adding that it’s just “radical” people “talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.”

In his role with DOGE, Musk is identifying ways to cut government spending.

Lake said she understood why there are calls to shut down VOA but said in an interview with The Epoch Times on Feb. 21 that such a move would be premature.

“This is an 83-year outlet that has been doing, in many of those years, good work,” she said. “I mean, some of the work has been incredible and some of the work has been pitiful. We need to do less pitiful work and more incredible work. It’s a soft power.”

Lake’s View of VOA

Lake, who worked as a news anchor for a Fox affiliate in Phoenix until 2021, is closely aligned with Trump. He endorsed her during her 2022 Arizona gubernatorial campaign and again in her 2024 campaign for the U.S. Senate, in both of which she was unsuccessful.

In comments to The Epoch Times in December 2024, Lake said she would seek to lead VOA as an editorially independent news organization.

“I think President Trump chose me because he knows that I will make sure that we’re not putting out a fake news product,” Lake said at the time.

In her more recent comments to The Epoch Times, Lake said there is an argument to be made that U.S. government-funded publications such as VOA are propaganda, but she said all news publications exhibit some level of bias in their editorial focus and the stories they choose to run.

“Voice of America, we’re going to be pushing the story of America. That’s the story we’re pushing,” she said.

Lake also said that U.S. government-sponsored publications are valuable for competing with narratives that other countries promote on the world stage through state-sponsored media.

“I think that our adversaries are doing much the same,” she said. “They’re putting out information. There’s no denying we are in an information war right now. It is a war where a powerful entity like Voice of America can be a huge instrument for betterment.”