The muzzling of US-funded global media

Silencing America's voice to the world speaks volumes about what America is becoming.

When the Voice of America staff arrived at work on Saturday morning, they found they had been locked out and could not access their email accounts. Radio stations in remote corners of the world that had depended on VOA for decades suddenly went silent or turned to playing music. The message was clear: America's voice to the world had been silenced.

Let's examine why this matters far beyond the halls of a government agency you may never have thought much about.

On Friday night, Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the parent organization of Voice of America, as well as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and other U.S.-funded media networks.

By Saturday morning, the agency's newly installed advisor, Kari Lake, had placed nearly the entire Voice of America staff on "administrative leave." Other agencies received notices that their grant agreements with the U.S. government were being canceled.

"I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced," VOA Director Michael Abramowitz wrote in a social media post.

Nobody—including me, and I'll mention up front that I've done projects with both Voice of America and Radio Free Europe over the years—would argue these agencies couldn't be improved. But this wasn't merely a budget-cutting exercise. It was a self-inflicted wound: a deliberate dismantling of institutions that have been projecting American values of press freedom and democracy since World War II. Nothing says "America First" quite like pink-slipping 1,300 journalists who literally export American values for a living.

What America is losing

The networks being gutted aren't "spreading radical propaganda" as President Trump has claimed—they're strategic assets that have advanced American interests and values for generations. Voice of America was launched in 1942 specifically to counter Nazi propaganda. Radio Free Europe helped pierce the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Radio Free Asia has exposed China's persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. These networks reach 420 million people in 63 languages across more than 100 countries.

Consider what happens when they go dark:

In authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, and North Korea, millions lose access to reliable information about the outside world—including accurate reporting about the United States. As Stephen Capus, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, put it: "The Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years."

Global press freedom is at its lowest point in decades, according to Freedom House. Disinformation campaigns flourish across social media. As the European Commission warned this weekend, "In an age of unmoderated content and fake news, journalism and freedom of press are critical for democracy."

The vacuum won't remain empty. Russia spends billions on RT (formerly Russia Today), China pumps resources into CGTN, and Iran funds Press TV—all state propaganda outlets designed to extend their influence and undermine democratic values. Without American-backed alternatives, these voices will dominate airwaves and digital spaces in many regions.

From bipartisan support to political target

What makes this assault particularly striking is how it reverses decades of bipartisan support for these institutions. Five years ago, Republican senators like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio joined Democratic colleagues to defend these networks from President Trump's first attempt to transform them into propaganda outlets. His appointed CEO, Michael Pack, also cleaned house at the agency days after being confirmed by the Senate.

In a July 2020 letter expressing "deep concern," these senators recognized these networks as producing "award-winning journalism that serves as a counterweight to foreign propaganda, and promote democratic values around the world." The bipartisan group emphasized that the United States "cannot afford to invest in an enterprise that denigrates its own journalists and staff to the satisfaction of dictators and despots."

Yet now, when asked about the gutting of these same institutions, Graham said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation, "I don't know what value these ideas have in the 21st century." Though he acknowledged that "Radio Free Europe, I know it made a difference in the Cold War," his position had shifted from defending these networks to questioning whether they're "still worth the price."

His reversal reflects a broader transformation within the Republican Party, where support for promoting democracy abroad has given way to a more isolationist, transactional approach to foreign policy and information warfare.

It's also part of an administration offensive against the press: from barring the Associated Press from covering certain events for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America" to taking control of the press pool away from the White House Correspondents' Association to an FCC investigation into NPR and PBS with an eye toward eliminating their federal funding.

What connects all these actions is a systematic attempt to control information and marginalize critical voices—precisely the behavior these international broadcasters have spent decades exposing in authoritarian regimes around the world.

A gift to America's adversaries

What's particularly striking about this move is how transparently it serves the interests of dictatorships that have long sought to silence these networks.

Russia has designated both VOA and Radio Free Europe as "undesirable foreign organizations." North Korea has reportedly executed citizens caught listening to Radio Free Asia. Chinese state media celebrated the moves against Radio Free Asia, which one state-controlled journalist labeled "one of the US's most insidious anti-China propaganda outlets."

When your policy decisions earn rave reviews from dictatorships, perhaps it's time for some soul-searching.

Even Republican lawmakers with hawkish foreign policy views have recognized the strategic blunder. Rep. Michael McCaul, former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told NPR that these networks "provide day-to-day updates on far-off regions, uphold a free press even in authoritarian countries, and ensure Americans—and people everywhere—are not subject to our adversaries' propaganda."

Rep. Young Kim, chair of the House Select Committee on East Asia and Pacific, was even more direct to POLITICO: "Gutting Radio Free Asia and other U.S. Agency for Global Media platforms counters the principles of freedom our nation was founded on and cedes leverage to the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea, and other regimes."

What now?

The legal basis for shuttering these congressionally chartered organizations remains questionable. In 2020, Congress passed a law specifically designed to protect the editorial independence of these networks from political interference.

Several employees have suggested they may mount legal challenges and bipartisan congressional pushback appears likely.

But even if these networks eventually survive in some diminished form, America's global credibility has been damaged. As Reporters Without Borders noted in condemning the move, this represents "a departure from the historic role of the United States as a defender of free information."

For decades, America's government-funded international broadcasters have been living embodiments of the First Amendment, demonstrating to the world what a free press looks like in action.

Now, with a stroke of a pen, that beacon has been dimmed—and America's adversaries are celebrating. Turns out that silencing America's voice to the world speaks volumes about what America is becoming.