Reuters Published March 16, 2025
WASHINGTON: Several employees at Voice of America were placed on paid leave on Saturday, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order gutting the US government-funded media outlet’s parent and six other federal agencies.
Multiple workers at VOA, an international media broadcaster that operates in more than 40 languages, shared with Reuters an email that placed them on administrative leave with full pay and benefits “until otherwise notified”. The emails, sent by a human resources executive at the US Agency for Global Media, the VOA’s parent agency, instructed them not to enter their work premises or access internal systems.
The move follows Trump signing an executive order instructing USAGM and six other agencies — Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the US Inter-agency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, and the Minority Business Development Agency — to reduce their operations to the bare minimum, saying it was necessary to shrink bureaucracy.
Last month, Musk posted on X that VOA should be shut down.
Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2025
Trump adviser seeks to cut AFP, other news agency contracts
- “We should not be paying outside news companies to tell us what the news is,” Kari Lake said on X
WASHINGTON: A senior adviser to President Donald Trump said Thursday she was moving to cancel long-established contracts between three international news agencies and the federal body that oversees US government-funded news organizations.
In a post on X announcing the move to cut the contracts with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters and The Associated Press, former journalist-turned-politician and staunch Trump loyalist Kari Lake said: “We should not be paying outside news companies to tell us what the news is.”
Lake joined the US Agency for Global Media as a special adviser last month. The agency oversees a handful of media entities dedicated to reporting news and combatting censorship abroad, such as the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia.
“I moved today to cancel expensive and unnecessary newswire contracts for US Agency for Global Media, including tens of millions of dollars in contracts with The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse,” Lake said
“We should be producing news ourselves. And if that’s not possible, the American taxpayer should know why,” she added.
AFP has a number of long-running contracts to provide text, photo and video services to USAGM outlets.
Trump has made the federal-funded agencies overseen by the USAGM a particular target of his media reforms, and close adviser Elon Musk has called for VOA and Radio Free Europe to be shut down entirely for “torching” taxpayer money.
He tapped Lake in December to become the head of VOA, but she has yet to be confirmed.
NO CONFIRMATION NEEDED SINCE TRUMP SHUT DOWN THE VOA
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