The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda.
US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum.
“Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy,” Lake said in a statement.
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The agency had been “riddled with dysfunction, bias and waste,” she said.
Lake said that she would work with the US State Department and the US Congress to “make sure the telling of America’s story is modernized, effective and aligned with America’s foreign policy.”
Trump issued an order in March that froze VOA for the first time since it was founded in 1942.
About 1,400 positions have been eliminated, with only 250 remaining, Lake said.
Voice of America layoffs included journalists from its Persian service who had briefly been brought back to work after Israel attacked Iran a week ago.
Employees have filed a lawsuit challenging Lake’s actions, which come even though the US Congress had already appropriated funding.
The mass firing decision “spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds the US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” the three plaintiffs wrote in a statement.
Trump frequently attacks media outlets and has scoffed at the so-called editorial firewall at VOA, which prevents the government from intervening in its coverage, something he at times has considered too critical of his administration.
Lake said the move meant USAGM now operated near its statutory minimum of 81 employees.
She said 250 employees would remain across USAGM, Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), which transmits news into communist-run Cuba. None of OCB’s 33 employees had been terminated, Lake said.
The move likely marks an end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, operated in nearly 50 languages and reached 360 million people a week, many living under authoritarian regimes.
Last month, nearly 600 Voice of America contractors were dismissed.
Some Republicans have accused Voice of America and other publicly funded media outlets of being biased against conservatives and called for them to be shuttered as part of wider efforts to shrink the US government.
Other outlets funded by the US government have included Radio Free Asia, which was set up to provide news to Asian countries without a free press and is now operating in a limited capacity.
Radio Free Europe, formed with a similar mission for Soviet bloc nations during the Cold War, has survived thanks to support from the Czech government.
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