By Nathan Layne and James Oliphant
(Reuters) - -More than 1,300 Voice of America employees were placed on leave on Saturday and funding for two U.S. news services that broadcast to authoritarian regimes was terminated, one day after President Donald Trump ordered the gutting of the government-funded media outlet’s parent and six other federal agencies.
Michael Abramowitz, Voice of America’s director, said that nearly his entire staff of 1,300 journalists, producers and assistants had been put on administrative leave, crippling a media broadcaster that operates in nearly 50 languages.
"I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced," Abramowitz said in a post on LinkedIn, saying it has played an important role "in the fight for freedom and democracy around the world."
VOA’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), also terminated its grants to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcasts to countries in Eastern Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, as well as to Radio Free Asia, which broadcasts to China and North Korea.
Trump’s directives look set to devastate an organization of significant reach, including in authoritarian countries where it serves as a rare source of reliable news. Founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA now reaches 360 million people a week. As a group, USAGM employs roughly 3,500 workers with an $886-million budget in 2024, according to its latest report to Congress.
Kari Lake, the former news anchor and Trump loyalist nominated to be director of VOA, issued a statement describing USAGM as "a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer" and said it was "not salvageable." Lake, referring to herself as a USAGM senior adviser, said she would shrink the agency to its minimum possible size under the law.
On its website, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty notes that it has been declared an "undesirable organization" by the Russian government and warns readers in Russia and Russia-occupied Ukraine that they could "face fines or imprisonment" for liking or sharing its content.
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said Radio Free Europe had been a "beacon" for populations under totalitarian rule.
"From Belarus to Iran, from Russia to Afghanistan, RFE and Voice of America are among the few free sources for people living without freedom," he wrote on X.
The move follows Trump signing an executive order on Friday instructing USAGM and six other little-known agencies to reduce their operations to the minimum mandated by statutes, saying it was necessary to shrink bureaucracy.
FREE PRESS ADVOCATES CRITICAL
The president of the National Press Club in Washington, Mike Balsamo, released a statement saying the cuts at VOA undermined America’s commitment to a free and independent press.
"For decades, Voice of America has delivered fact-based, independent journalism to audiences worldwide, often in places where press freedom does not exist," Balsamo said.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders also blasted the move, with its director general, Thibaut Bruttin, saying it "threatens press freedom worldwide and negates 80 years of American history in supporting a free flow of information."
Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) president, Bay Fang, said that the cancellation of its funding was "a reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked."
Some Republicans have accused VOA and other publicly-funded media outlets of being biased against conservatives, and have called for them to be shuttered as part of the efforts by tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to shrink the government.
So far, Musk’s DOGE has cut more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce, frozen foreign aid and cancelled thousands of programs and contracts.
On Saturday, Musk made light of the cuts to USAGM.
"While winding down this global government propaganda agency, it has temporarily been renamed the Department of Propaganda Everywhere (DOPE)," he wrote on X.
In addition to USAGM, Trump’s order also targeted the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, and the Minority Business Development Agency for cuts that would limit them to "the minimum presence and function required by law."
In a statement, the White House said his executive orders "will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda," before listing various criticisms of VOA, including allegations of left-wing bias.
(reporting by Nathan Layne in West Palm Beach, Florida and James Oliphant in Washington. Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague. Editing by Michelle Nichols, Mark Potter, Diane Craft, Rod Nickel and Deepa Babington)