Voice of America journalists sued the federal government Monday, alleging it violated the legal statute that protects the broadcaster’s editorial independence, including censoring coverage of the Iran crisis and publishing “propaganda” in support of President Donald Trump as news.
The lawsuit comes after U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled this month that Kari Lake had been illegally running VOA’s parent agency — the U.S. Agency for Global Media — with an unlawful plan to shrink the institution, and he ordered more than 1,000 employees back to work. The complaint, filed in federal district court in D.C., argues that restoring the workforce is not enough to fix a newsroom the plaintiffs say has already been corrupted from within under Lake’s watch.
The plaintiffs include Barry Newhouse, former acting director of VOA’s Central News Division; Ayesha Tanzeem, director of its South and Central Asia Division; Dong Hyuk Lee, chief of the Korean Service; and Ksenia Turkova, a former Russian Service contractor who declined to return to work last fall, citing censorship concerns. PEN America and Reporters Without Borders, two press advocacy groups, are also suing. USAGM, Lake and Michael Rigas, the new acting CEO, are named as defendants.
In a joint statement, the four journalist plaintiffs said they filed the complaint out of a sense of duty. “Without editorial integrity, VOA will be no different than government mouthpieces our audiences already hear in their own countries,” they wrote. “We bring this action because we believe it is our duty — and our legal obligation — to defend VOA’s editorial independence and restore its credibility.”
Representatives for USAGM and the Justice Department did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
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