Trump administration starts mass layoffs at media outlet Voice of America
On Sunday, VOA employees who were engaged on a contractual basis received an email letting them know their contracts would expire on March 31.
The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) advised contractors to “cease all work immediately” and were “not permitted to access any agency buildings or systems” in the email that Al Jazeera saw.
In a post on X, Misha Komadovsky, the White House correspondent for VOA’s Russian-language service, wrote that “contractors, including myself, at Voice of America have just received an email notifying us that our contracts will be terminated effective March 31, 2025.”
Following Trump’s executive order on Friday, which effectively eliminates USAGM, which also hosts Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, along with six other federal agencies, was made.
The White House stated in a statement that the move would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda” and that conservative media and lawmakers had made a number of VOA criticisms.
Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, two advocacy groups that have criticized Trump’s directive, said it was “dystopian.”
The Associated Press news agency was barred from events by the Trump administration last month for its use of “Gulf of America” as the Gulf of Mexico’s name, and it also announced that it would choose which journalists and media outlets can participate in media pools.
Trump and his allies have long accused VOA and other US-funded outlets of having liberal bias, including cost-cutting tsar Elon Musk, who claimed the broadcasters were made up of “radical left crazy people talking to themselves” last month.
The White House accused VOA of “speaking for America’s adversaries – not its citizens” during Trump’s first term.
A federal judge ruled in 2020 that Michael Pack, the newly appointed CEO of USAGM, acted unlawfully by questioning its journalists over their alleged bias.
Former VOA bureaucrat in South Korea and Indonesia, Brian Padden, who retired in 2020, called it “galling” to hear that the Trump administration is accusing VOA of spreading anti-US propaganda.
I’ve been shot at, roughed up, and even nearly decapitated by an exploding helicopter while reporting in Eastern Ukraine, Padden wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
“Pro-Russian activists or militants in Ukraine harassed me in 2014, accusing me and my VOA TV crew of being pro-American propaganda agents.” Russian militants and Musk are at fault both. VoA does not promote propaganda. The news is reported by VoA, which includes both president’s supporters and opponents’ points of view.
Since Friday’s executive order, VOA’s broadcasts have been muted or replaced by music in a number of regions, including Middle Eastern and parts of Asia.
Source: Aljazeera
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