Layoff notices have been sent to 639 employees of Voice of America (VOA) and the United States agency that oversees it, effectively shutting down the outlet that has provided news to countries around the world since World War II.
The notices sent on Friday included employees at VOA’s Persian-language service who were suddenly called off administrative leave last week to broadcast reports to Iran following Israel’s attack.
Three journalists working for the Persian service on Friday, who left their office for a cigarette break, had their badges confiscated and weren’t allowed back in, according to one fired employee.
In total, some 1,400 people at VOA and the US Agency for Global Media, or 85 percent of its workforce, have lost their jobs since March, said Kari Lake, Trump’s senior adviser to the agency. She said it was part of a “long overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy”.
“For decades, American taxpayers have been forced to bankroll an agency that’s been riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste,” Lake said in a news release. “That ends now.”
VOA began by broadcasting stories about US democracy to residents of Nazi Germany, and grew to deliver news around the world in dozens of languages, often in countries without a tradition of free press.
But President Donald Trump has fought against the news media on several fronts, with the complaint that much of what they produce is biased against conservatives. That includes a proposal to shut off federal funding to PBS and NPR, which is currently before Congress.
‘Death’ of independent journalism
Most VOA employees have been on administrative leave since March 15, their broadcasts and social media posts mostly silenced. Three VOA employees who are fighting the administration’s dismantling of VOA in court were among those receiving layoff notices on Friday.
“It spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” plaintiffs Jessica Jerreat, Kate Neeper and Patsy Widakuswara said in a statement.
The Persian-language employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing legal case, was in the office Friday when colleagues were barred from re-entry. The person was afraid to leave for the same reason – even though authorities said their work had been halted – until receiving a layoff notice.
Steve Herman, VOA’s chief national correspondent who was in the process of retiring to take a job at the University of Mississippi, called the layoffs an “historic act of self-sabotage with the US government completing the silencing of its most effective soft-power weapon”.
It’s not clear what, if anything, will replace VOA’s programming worldwide. The Trump-supporting One American News Network has offered to allow its signal to be used.
Although plaintiffs in the lawsuit called on Congress to continue supporting VOA, Herman said that he is not optimistic that it will survive, even if a Democratic president and Congress take over. For one thing, every day it is off the air is another day for viewers and readers to get into another habit for obtaining news.
“I believe that the destruction is permanent,” Herman said, “because we see no indication in the next fiscal year that Congress will rally to fund VOA.”
By the time another administration takes power that is more sympathetic to the outlet, “I fear that VOA will have become forgotten,” he said.
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