NBC News

03/17/2025

Fears for the outlet were raised last year when he said he wanted it to be led by ally Kari Lake, a former news anchor who accused journalists of anti-Trump bias during her two failed runs for statewide office in Arizona. Instead she was made a special adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the independent U.S. government agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, Radio Free Asia and other editorially independent outlets.

“From top-to-bottom this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer — a national security risk for this nation — and irretrievably broken,” Lake said in a statement Saturday.

Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s government cost-cutting initiative, called for VOA to be shut down last month, saying, “Nobody listens to them anymore” and “it’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching” taxpayer money.

That language was reflected in a White House news release on Saturday touting the dismantling of VOA.

“Taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda,” it said.

The dismantling of VOA, whose award-winning journalism reached nearly 360 million people every week in almost 50 languages including Mandarin and Cantonese, comes as China is aggressively expanding the global reach of its own state-funded media.

“The disappearance of this kind of Chinese-language media will definitely leave a hole in the information supply,” Rose Luqiu, associate head of the journalism department at Hong Kong Baptist University, said, adding that VOA has provided “a lot of Chinese news stories.”

“Most people in China consume news in Chinese, not English, and not many media outlets provided Chinese content,” she added.

Press freedom organizations called on Congress to intervene.

The dismantling of VOA “threatens press freedom worldwide and negates 80 years of American history in supporting a free flow of information,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement, adding that the decision endangered the 10 employees of the U.S. Agency for Global Media who are currently detained abroad in connection with their journalistic work.

Stephen Capus, president and chief executive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said in a statement on Saturday that closing his organization “would be a massive gift to America’s enemies.”