It is called the Voice of America, a storied news outlet that has promised “the truth” since it first broadcast stories about democracy into Nazi Germany during World War II.
Now, it is the voice of a country in which a majority of voters chose Donald Trump, a man famous for insisting the truth is what he says it is, to once again be president.
What VOA will tell the world about the United States and democracy during a second Trump administration depends heavily on the convicted felon elected to run the country. Trump has jolted foreign leaders with statements about somehow adding Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal to the United States.
He wants to project America, and himself, as dominant. And fighting independent reporting that conflicts with this ego or goal or holds him accountable for any criminal action, what he considers “fake news,” is one of Trump’s signatures.
During the first Trump administration, his targets included Voice of America in an ugly chapter that included firings, a lawsuit, whistleblowers, and a federal investigation. Media experts and current and former VOA journalists see this history potentially repeating itself in a landscape of creeping autocracy, rampant misinformation, and Russian propaganda.
“I expect that VOA will be put under intense pressure to promote the USA. This seems likely to involve … only selecting news that paints the country in a positive light,” Kate Wright, associate professor of media and politics at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in an email. Trump, she predicted, will try to correct the supposedly “liberal bias” at VOA. “The risk is that this will push journalists to create false balance — treating perspectives or statements as equally valid when they are not.”
This time, Trump knows where the levers of power lie. He is poised to test Voice of America’s statutory “firewall” that protects its editorial operations from interference by any government official.
Trump and Kari Lake, his choice to lead the newsgathering organization, have been clear about their intent to “reform the media” in a series of statements that have rattled many of VOA’s 2,000 employees and delighted Trump’s fans.
Lake claimed in an interview that her job would not be to turn VOA into “Trump TV.”
“But it’s also not our job to go in there and unduly criticize President Trump,” she told The Epoch Times. “I just want to see fair coverage. I think that’s what he wants.”
THE IDENTITY OF A RENOWNED NEWS OUTLET IS AT STAKE
Trump’s nomination of Lake resurrected a question that has shadowed Voice of America from its founding: Can a $260 million, government-funded news outlet ever really operate independently?
The law sets it up that way. President Gerald Ford signed VOA’s charter in 1976. Congress tightened its editorial protections in 1994 and did so again in 2020, after a federal judge ruled that a Trump appointee had infringed on the editorial independence and First Amendment rights of VOA journalists.
That was the clear intent from the first words anyone ever heard from the outlet, when the voice of William Harlan Hale beamed a message into Nazi Germany in 1942.
“The news may be good. The news may be bad,” Hale announced, in German. “We shall tell you the truth.”
That approach carried the outlet through World War II. It survived Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who convened hearings in 1953 on allegations that VOA journalists were communist sympathizers.
“Unlike Soviet broadcasts, the Voice of America is not only committed to telling its country’s story, but also remains faithful to those standards of journalism that will not compromise the truth,” President Ronald Reagan said at VOA’s 40th anniversary celebration in 1982.
Within a decade, Voice of America was broadcasting inside Russia 24-7 and had enough people to produce a fresh 10-minute newscast each hour. Some featured Russian writers who had been expelled but were willing to talk to their countrymen.
“If you were interested in hearing something different from propaganda, you would seek out these voices,” said Mark Pomar, the head of the Russian Service for VOA in the 1980s and the author of “Cold War Radio.”
Trump and Lake, a former Arizona broadcast journalist and a denier of multiple elections, have described a different approach.
“Under my leadership,” Lake posted in December, “the VOA will excel in its mission: chronicling America’s achievements worldwide.”
VOA’S ACTUAL MISSION IS REPRESENTING AMERICA, NOT PROPAGANDA
Lake’s mission statement is a far cry from what VOA’s charter says. But Trump has made his name upending tradition, undermining institutions and seeking to unravel the so-called “deep state.” He views the Voice of America as “disgraceful.” And he’s tried to control the flow of information through VOA’s global audience of 350 million before.
“It’s not fake news for you to broadcast that this is the greatest nation the world has ever known,” Trump’s then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during an interview at VOA in 2021.
Under the charter signed into law by Ford, the Voice of America “will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. It will be accurate, objective and comprehensive.”
It goes on: “VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.”
And finally, the broadcaster will present the policies of the US “clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies.” So by law, Voice of America must broadcast editorials. They are clearly marked as such and labeled as “U.S. policy,” but typically are pretty bland, diplomatic videos.
There, Wright and others say, lie some potential opportunities for Trump. Leading VOA from the news side of the “firewall,” Lake could have wide latitude to appear on-air herself, for example, or to steer coverage to topics the administration favors.
The laws intended to protect VOA’s editorial independence, Wright said, are hard to enforce.
Together, those are some of the factors that could open the door to what is known as “government capture” of an independent agency, in which a government controls what is broadcast to domestic audiences.
VOA is legally set up to broadcast news to international audiences, but in reality, anyone can access it. That leaves VOA open to transforming into a news-like organization that operates more like the Voice of Trump and speaks to his American constituency.
“These provisions always risked opening the door to any administration which wanted to turn the network into a mouthpiece,” said Wright, the co-author of the 2024 book “Capturing News, Capturing Democracy: Trump and the Voice of America.”
THE NEWLY NAMED VOA CHIEF CALLED MEDIA REFORM HER “PET PROJECT”
Lake was a broadcast journalist in Arizona for decades, winning two Emmys for her team’s coverage of landmine recovery in Cambodia, a Fox News spokeswoman said. Then Lake quit and ran for governor. She has falsely denied two election losses. Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020 and her own for governor in 2022. Last year, she ran for Senate in Arizona and lost.
Throughout, Lake built a national profile as an unflinching Trump ally with a relentless focus on unsubstantiated claims of election fraud and tough talk about securing the Mexico-U.S. border with force. Her showy on-camera clashes with mainstream reporters, “monsters,” she said, got plaudits online and Trump’s attention as well.
At a Trump rally just days before the election last year, Lake, then still a Senate candidate, declared the subject of her “pet project.”
“Reforming the fake news into some real honest press,” she told a cheering crowd. “The days of the fake news are numbered. We’re going to get some real journalists once again.”
Current and former VOA journalists who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation said there was a sense of resignation that under Trump, Lake could clean house. Many are thought to be looking for other jobs.
Trump must first appoint a CEO of the outlet’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That person would be subject to Senate confirmation, before Lake can step into any position.
Lake told Breitbart in an interview in December that she wants to return Voice of America to its “glory days, of when we could bring down communism (and) change hearts and minds across the globe without having to fire a single bullet.”
That phrasing is often used to describe Reagan’s triumph over the Soviet Union and the fall of communism. Here is what he had to say about truth in 1982 to the Voice of America and its role during the Cold War.
“I know there’s a great deal of discussion about the truth, as if there are degrees to truth. Well, no, truth can be told,” he said, adding later: “It remains the ultimate weapon in the arsenal of democracy.”
A MASSIVE GIFT TO AMERICA’S ENEMIES
On March 15, Trump began making deep cuts to Voice of America and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees had been put on leave.
“For the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” Michael Abramowitz, the organization’s director, said in a statement. He added that “virtually” the entire 1300-person staff was placed on leave.
“VOA promotes freedom and democracy around the world by telling America’s story and by providing objective and balanced news and information, especially for those living under tyranny,” Abramowitz said.
The press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said it “condemns this decision as a departure from the U.S.’s historic role as a defender of free information and calls on the U.S. government to restore VOA and urges Congress and the international community to take action against this unprecedented move.”
The Agency for Global Media also sent notices terminating grants to Radio Free Asia and other programming run by the agency. Voice of America transmits United States domestic news into other countries, often translated into local languages. Radio Free Asia, Europe, and Marti beam news into countries with authoritarian regimes in those regions like China, North Korea, and Russia.
“The cancellation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s grant agreement would be a massive gift to America’s enemies,” said the network’s President and CEO, Stephen Capus, in a statement.
Combined, the networks reach an estimated 427 million people. They date back to the Cold War and are part of a network of government-funded organizations trying to extend U.S. influence and combat authoritarianism that included USAID, another agency targeted by Trump.
The reduction is a dramatic blow at a staple of post-Cold War order that has long had bipartisan support. Voice of America’s directors have included Dick Carlson, the father of conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
Thomas Kent, former president and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said that Trump’s intentions for the agencies are still foggy. Without these news sources, it will be that much harder for the country to get its messages to the world, he said.
“Without the international broadcasting, the image of the United States and the Trump administration will be in the hands of others, including the administration’s opponents, (and) countries and people who consider the United States an enemy,” said Kent, an international consultant on media ethics.
The Trump administration has already taken other drastic autocratic steps against media organizations. Trump also banned the AP from press pools that cover him and moved to take charge of what news organizations are members of the pools, and the FCC is investigating news organizations like CBS.
Trump’s order requiring reductions also includes several other, lesser-known government agencies such as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan think tank, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.
