The administration of United States President Donald Trump has begun mass layoffs at Voice of America (VOA) after signing an executive order placing nearly all employees at the government-funded media network on leave.
On Sunday, VOA employees working on a contractual basis received emails informing them that their contracts would be terminated effective March 31.
The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA, instructed affected contractors to “cease all work immediately” and barred them from accessing agency buildings or systems.
“Contractors, including myself, at Voice of America have just received an email notifying us that our contracts will be terminated effective March 31, 2025,” VOA White House correspondent for the Russian-language service, Misha Komadovsky, wrote on X.
The layoffs come after Trump signed an executive order on Friday to effectively eliminate USAGM, which also oversees Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and six other federal agencies. The White House defended the move, arguing that it would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”
The decision has drawn sharp criticism from media freedom advocacy groups. Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the move, with the latter calling it “dystopian.”
The Trump administration has long accused VOA and other US-funded media outlets of liberal bias. Cost-cutting advocate Elon Musk recently described them as “radical left crazy people talking to themselves,” while the White House has previously claimed that VOA “speaks for America’s adversaries – not its citizens.”
VOA journalists have pushed back against these claims. Former VOA bureau chief Brian Padden, who retired in 2020, criticized the administration’s allegations, recalling his experiences reporting in conflict zones.
“In the course of my reporting, I have been shot at, roughed up, and even nearly decapitated by an exploding helicopter in Eastern Ukraine,” Padden wrote on Facebook. “In 2014, I was harassed by pro-Russian militants in Ukraine who accused me and my VOA TV crew of being agents of pro-American propaganda. Both Musk and the Russian militants are wrong. VOA does not do propaganda. VOA reports the news.”
Following Trump’s executive order, VOA broadcasts in multiple regions, including parts of Asia and the Middle East, have gone silent or been replaced by music.
Established during World War II to combat propaganda from Nazi Germany, VOA operated in more than 40 languages and claimed a weekly audience of more than 354 million people worldwide.
Chioma Kalu
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