US President Donald Trump has signed an order to shut down the federally funded Voice of America news organization, accusing it of being “anti-Trump” and “radical”.
A White House statement said the order would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”, and included quotes from politicians and right-wing media outlets critical of the broadcaster.
VOA, still primarily a radio service, was founded to combat Nazi propaganda during World War II. It now reaches hundreds of millions of people globally each week, it said.
VOA Director Mike Abramowitz said he and nearly all of his 1,300-person staff have been placed on paid leave.
The order made it impossible for VOA to fulfill its “important mission… especially critical today when America’s adversaries like Iran, China and Russia spend billions of dollars creating false narratives to discredit the United States.”
The National Press Club, a leading advocacy group that advocates for American journalists, said the order “undermines America’s longstanding commitment to a free and independent press.”
It added: “If an entire newsroom can be sidelined overnight, what does that say about the state of press freedom?
“An entire institution is being dismantled piece by piece.” “This is not just a staffing decision — it is a fundamental shift that jeopardizes the future of independent journalism at VOA.”
The president’s order targets VOA’s parent company, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which also funds nonprofits like Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, which were originally established to fight communism.
It tells managers to “reduce performance… to the minimum level required by law to remain and operate.”
The BBC’s U.S. news partner, CBS, said USAGM human resources director Crystal Thomas said she had notified VOA employees in an email.
A source told CBS that all freelancers and international contractors now have no money to pay them.
In an email obtained by CBS, the heads of Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty were told their federal grants had been terminated.
VOA and other stations under USAGM say they serve more than 400 million listeners. They are broadly similar to the BBC World Service, which is partly funded by the British government.
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said he hopes the European Union can help keep Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague running.
He said he would ask European foreign ministers at a meeting on Monday to find ways to at least partially keep the broadcaster operating.
Elon Musk, a billionaire and top Trump adviser who is overseeing major cuts to the US government, has used his social media platform X to call for VOA to be shut down.
The US president has moved to cut funding to several other federal agencies, including those responsible for preventing homelessness and funding museums and libraries.
Trump has been highly critical of VOA during his first term. He recently appointed a hard-line partisan, Kari Lake, as special counsel for USAGM.
The president has regularly said that mainstream media outlets are biased against him. In a speech at the Justice Department, he called CNN and MSNBC “corrupt.”
The Voice of America was launched in 1942 with a mandate to combat Nazi and Japanese propaganda. Its first broadcast — made on a transmitter loaned to the United States by the BBC — expressed a modest purpose.
Former President Gerald Ford signed VOA’s general charter in 1976 to protect its editorial independence.
By 1994, the Broadcasting Regulatory Board was established with oversight of non-military broadcasting.
In 2013, a change in the law allowed VOA and its affiliates to begin broadcasting in the United States.
