
Kari Lake follows through on Trump order, axes most of Voice of America’s staff
CNN
After three months of legal battles and lobbying, the Voice of America network is officially being reduced to a fraction of its pre-Trump form.
After three months of legal battles and lobbying, the Voice of America network is officially being reduced to a fraction of its pre-Trump form. Widespread layoffs took place Friday at VOA and its parent agency, the US Agency for Global Media, or USAGM for short, which has led America’s efforts to broadcast information around the world for decades. “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,” three VOA journalists who sued to stop the terminations said in a joint statement. For President Donald Trump, who has been critical of VOA for years, Friday’s firings are 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, Kari Lake, depicted US-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. Without the networks, there will be an “empty space” in the global media, and “Russia and Chinese propaganda will fill in,” Russian-American journalist Alsu Kermasheva warned.













