On Friday, United States president Donald Trump signed an executive order to gut the United States Agency for Global Media, the parent organization of U.S. news agency Voice of America.
More than 1,000 VOA employees were put on indefinite paid leave on Saturday, according to NPR. VOA and its affiliates had reached 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week. Although VOA is funded by U.S. Congress, its journalists have had their editorial independence guaranteed by law since 1994.
“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,” VOA director Michael Abramowitz wrote on LinkedIn after being placed on leave. “Even if the agency survives in some form, the actions being taken today by the Administration will severely damage Voice of America’s ability to foster a world that is safe and free and in doing so is failing to protect U.S. interests.”
The order also cuts off grant funding to four international USAGM broadcasters: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Martí Noticias and Radio Martí), Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
No new stories have been published to VOA’s website since Saturday, when some of its journalists tried to enter the Washington, D.C. office to find that they had been locked out, NPR reported. Its 17 local-language WhatsApp Channels sent their last updates on Saturday as well.
Trump has targeted Voice of America since his first term. He appointed Michael Pack, a conservative filmmaker, as USAGM’s CEO. Pack, we wrote in 2020, “fired a huge swath of top management, halted global internet freedom projects, disbanded boards, refused to renew its employees’ work visas, installed Trump loyalists, and issued Juche-style Dear Leader press releases.” Later in 2020, a federal judge found Pack guilty of violating journalists’ First Amendment rights.News: Journalists at Voice of America were just informed that they’ve been put on administrative leave. Two people there told me this went to all fulltime employees.
“From what we can tell, VOA is effectively shut down from this moment.”
— David Enrich (@davidenrich.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Since Trump’s second term began in January, USAGM’s HR office has begun investigating individual VOA journalists over comments that “were perceived as critical of him,” The New York Times reported in February.
“The Trump administration’s dismantling of VOA, RFE/RL, RFA and other outlets under USAGM are part of its efforts to dismantle the government more broadly — but it’s also part of the administration’s broader assault on press freedom and the media,” VOA press freedom reporter Liam Scott wrote on Twitter. “I’ve covered press freedom for a long time, and l’ve never seen something like what’s happened in the U.S. over the past couple months.”
Other governments have dismantled or radically changed their news agencies over the last 15 years. In 2013, Vladimir Putin shut down Russian news agency RIA Novosti and replaced it with Russia Today. In 2015, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán folded state news agency MTI into a larger media conglomerate controlled by his supporters. In 2023, former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador shut down Notimex, saying it was no longer necessary and could be replaced by his daily press briefings. Argentina’s president Javier Milei similarly shuttered Télam in 2024, calling it a “propaganda agency” for former president Cristina Kirchner.
Press freedom and journalism organizations around the world expressed grave concern about the gutting.
From the Committee to Protect Journalists:
“This suffocation of independent media is already putting the lives of journalists — who have often withstood enormous challenges to bring news to millions living in censored countries — in grave danger,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “It is really dystopian that the U.S. administration is now posing an existential threat to these historical organizations. We express our solidarity with the journalists put on administrative leave and urge congressional leaders to restore USAGM before irreparable harm is done.”
From Reporters Without Borders director general Thibaut Bruttin:
“By shutting down USAGM and its media outlets, the Trump administration is sending a chilling signal: authoritarian regimes such as Beijing and Moscow now have free rein to spread their propaganda unchecked. This decision is all the more alarming as it betrays the nine journalists currently imprisoned for their work with the agency and leaves thousands more jobless and in danger — because of their past collaboration with USAGM media — worldwide. We urge the US authorities and the international diplomatic community to ensure journalists’ safety. Those detained must be released and granted full freedom without delay.”
From the Inter American Press Association:
José Roberto Dutriz, president of IAPA, stated that “the decision not only affects the journalists of these media but also millions of citizens who depend on these services to access important information that their governments want to hide.”Carlos Jornet, second vice president of IAPA and president of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, added: “It is alarming to see how a consolidated democracy like that of the United States decides to restrict an agency that provides independent and pluralistic information in countries with autocratic regimes. We urge the authorities to review these decisions that undermine transparency and the right to information.”
Today I, like virtually every other full-time employee at VOA, was placed on administrative leave indefinitely. I'm not allowed to report the news to our hundreds of millions of viewers at this time. Let's hope this is temporary. A silencing of VOA will be celebrated by…
— Carla Babb (@CarlaBabbVOA) March 15, 2025
Had strong sense at least the timing of Trump's illegal shuttering of Voice of America was triggered by his annoyance at a question from a VOA journo. Source flags to me that the EO was so hastily put together they literally forgot to complete the last sentence. www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/…
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 11:07 PM
If you get rid of Voice of America and these other institutions, as much as it might feel good to punish reporters and leaders who covered global events on the taxpayer’s dime with a left-wing slant, we’re stuck with a world where Russia, China, and Iran are flooding the globe…
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) March 17, 2025
US is supposedly in “great power competition” with China and Russia. But Trump dismantles @VOANews @RadioFreeAsia @RFERL — which report on those countries and are denounced by autocrats. We who cover China have relied especially on the work of Uyghur and Tibetan reporters at RFA. pic.twitter.com/fPY048pBQx
— Edward Wong (@ewong) March 16, 2025
Is there any recourse for staffers at Voice of America and other gutted U.S. broadcasters? The American Foreign Service Mission says "unilaterally stripping a congressionally established agency of its core functions amounts to an affront to the constitutional balance of powers…"
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 17, 2025
