'Trump in the style of Kim Jong-Il': Voice of America staff sues Kari Lake
USA TODAY
Under Kari Lake, the storied VOA news agency has turned into a Trump administration mouthpiece, current and former employees allege in the lawsuit.
Voice of America staffers accused Kari Lake and the U.S. Agency for Global Media of "censorship" and "propaganda" in a new lawsuit filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C.
The employees said Lake and Michael Rigas, the acting CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media, used VOA to control journalists' reporting, "suppressing" material the Trump administration opposed and passing off "partisan messages" as "news." Global Media agency is an independent agency of the United States government that overseas Voice of America.
That has led to censoring interviews, video footage and stories about the Iran war and "hijacking" VOA's Mandarin Service, which provides radio and broadcast programming in China, "to republish verbatim White House talking points and label them, falsely, as 'news,'" the complaint says. Under Rigas' leadership, journalists rarely leave the newsroom to report and instead publish stories "that often appear to be re-written press releases" from the federal government, according to the complaint.
"They are ... turning VOA into a partisan mouthpiece of the Administration," the lawsuit alleges, " ... disseminating images of President Trump in the style of Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il" of North Korea.
Voice of America is a United States' funded international news broadcast service, providing news in 50 languages to more than 354 million people, its website states. The broadcaster produces digital, television and radio content.
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