WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday ordered mass layoffs at Voice of America and other government-funded media, moving ahead with gutting the outlets despite legal disputes and criticism that US adversaries will benefit.
Kari Lake, a fervent Trump supporter named to a senior role at the US Agency for Global Media, said the notices were a “long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”
Lake said in a statement that she would work with the State Department and Congress to “make sure the telling of America’s story is modernized, effective and aligned with America’s foreign policy.”
Trump issued an order in March that froze Voice of America (VOA) for the first time since it was founded in 1942.
Termination notices were sent to 639 employees on Friday, after previous offers of voluntary departures and dismissals of contractors.
Some 1,400 positions have been eliminated, with only 250 remaining, Lake said.
Voice of America layoffs included journalists from its Persian service who had briefly been brought back to work after Israel attacked Iran a week ago.
Employees have filed a lawsuit challenging Lake’s actions, which come even though Congress had already appropriated funding.
The mass firing decision “spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds the US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,“ the three plaintiffs wrote in a statement.
“Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice,“ said the three complainants, Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the “decimation of US broadcasting leaves authoritarian propaganda unchecked by US backed independent media and is a perversion of the law and congressional intent.”
“It is a dark day for the truth,“ she wrote on X.
Trump frequently attacks media outlets and has scoffed at the so-called editorial firewall at VOA which prevents the government from intervening in its coverage, something he at times has considered too critical of his administration.
One outlet preserved by the mass cuts has been Radio Marti, which broadcasts into Cuba and enjoys support from anti-communist Cuban-American Republican lawmakers.
Other outlets funded by the US government have included Radio Free Asia, which was set up to provide news to Asian countries without a free press and is now operating in a limited capacity.
Radio Free Europe, formed with a similar mission for Soviet bloc nations during the Cold War, has survived thanks to support from the Czech government.
