Donald Trump has signed an order to strip back the federally funded news organisation Voice of America, accusing it of being “anti-Trump” and “radical”.
A White House statement said the order would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”, and included quotes from politicians and right-wing media railing against the “leftist”, “partisan” VOA.
VOA, still primarily a radio service, was set up during World War Two to counter Nazi propaganda. It is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Mike Abramowitz, the VOA’s director, said he and virtually his entire staff of 1,300 people had been put on paid leave.
Abramowitz said that the order left VOA unable to carry out its “vital mission… especially critical today, when America’s adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States”.
The president’s order targets VOA’s parent company US Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, which also funds non-profit entities such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, which were originally set up to counter communism.
It tells managers to “reduce performance… to the minimum presence and function required by law”.
CBS, the news partner of the BBC in the US, said that VOA employees were notified in an email by Crystal Thomas, the USAGM human resources director.
A source told CBS that all freelance workers and international contractors were told there was now no money to pay them.
Emails obtained by CBS notified the bosses of Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that their federal grants had been terminated.
VOA and other stations under USAGM serve more than 400,000,000 listeners and are broadly equivalent to the BBC World Service, which is part-funded by the British government.
Elon Musk, the billionaire and top adviser to Trump who has been overseeing sweeping cuts to the US government, has used his social media platform X to call for VOA to be shut down.
The US president also cut funding to several other federal agencies – including those responsible for preventing homelessness, and funding museums and libraries.
Trump was highly critical of VOA in his first term. He has recently appointed staunch loyalist Kari Lake to be a special adviser for the US Agency for Global Media.
The president regularly states that mainstream media outlets are biased against him. He called CNN and MSNBC “corrupt” and “illegal”, without providing evidence, during a speech at the justice department.
The White House’s statement linked to several commentators and reports from right-wing media organisations about VOA’s alleged bias.
It quoted an article written for the right-wing Washington Times by Dan Robinson, a former White House correspondent for VOA, who said that the organisation had “essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias”.
It included links to other articles that accused VOA managers of telling staff not to describe Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”, and to suppress negative reports of Iran.
Other links were to everyday reporting of the 2020 US election, which it claimed were favourable to Trump’s rival Joe Biden.
Voice of America launched in 1942 which a mandate to combat Nazi and Japanese propaganda. Its first broadcast – made on a transmitter loaned to the US by the BBC – stated a modest purpose.
Gerald Ford, a former president, signed the VOA’s public charter in 1976 to safeguard its editorial independence.
By 1994, the Broadcast Board of Governors, with oversight over non-military broadcasting, was established.
In 2013, a shift in legislation allowed VOA and affiliates to begin broadcasting in the US.
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