Voice of America

• 1. Introduction

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  Voice of America began its existence on the 1st of February, 1942, with a pledge that would define it for decades. The first broadcast to Germany opened with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and carried a promise: "Today, and every day from now on, we will be with you from America to talk about the war... The news may be good or bad for us - We will always tell you the truth." It was playwright Robert E. Sherwood who coined the name "The Voice of America" to describe that shortwave network. He had been serving as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's speech writer and information advisor. Roosevelt himself approved the first broadcast. What started as a wartime anti-propaganda tool would grow into the largest and oldest international broadcaster the United States has ever operated, reaching a weekly worldwide audience of roughly 326 million people by 2022. It would broadcast in 48 languages, employ nearly a thousand staff, and operate on an annual budget of $267.5 million. It would endure McCarthyism, the Cold War, the internet revolution, and repeated attempts by its own government to bend it toward political ends. The question at the heart of Voice of America's story is whether a government can fund a broadcaster that honestly tells the world the truth about that same government.

• 2. Wartime Origins

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  Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, every American shortwave radio station was privately held. The National Broadcasting Company ran an international network that broadcast in six languages. The Columbia Broadcasting System operated La Cadena de las Americas, a Latin American network of 64 stations across 18 countries. General Electric owned transmitters in Schenectady, New York, and San Francisco. Fewer than 12 transmitters were in operation by the time the 1930s came to a close. Around 1940, shortwave signals to Latin America were seen as vital for countering Nazi propaganda, and the director of Latin American relations at CBS was Edmund A. Chester, who supervised the development of the network's broadcasting infrastructure in that region. The U.S. government's Office of the Coordinator of Information had already been feeding war news to those commercial stations, but the system was inefficient. After the United States entered the war in December 1941, direct programming began within a week. The very first broadcast went from the Foreign Information Service's San Francisco office through General Electric's KGEI transmitter to the Philippines in English. The February 1942 broadcast to Germany followed, transmitted from 270 Madison Avenue in New York City. By the end of the war, VOA had 39 transmitters and was providing service in 40 languages. More than 1,000 programs originated from New York alone. The Arabic service was among those discontinued in 1945, when roughly half of VOA's services were shuttered and the broadcaster was transferred to the U.S. Department of State.

• 3. The Cold War Weapon

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  Foy Kohler, who directed VOA from 1949 to 1952, kept careful count of who was listening. He cited 194,000 regular listeners in Sweden and 2.1 million regular listeners in France as evidence that the service was working. VOA also received 30,000 letters a month from listeners around the world. A study of letters sent in 1952 and 1953 found that letter-writing correlated with successful, actionable persuasion. Kohler argued that VOA contributed to the decline of communism in Italy and France, and that practically all defectors during his tenure said VOA had influenced their decision to defect. The Soviet Union responded by initiating electronic jamming of VOA broadcasts on the 24th of April, 1949. In 1947, VOA had started broadcasting to Soviet citizens under the pretext of countering Soviet propaganda. Edward R. Murrow later described the jamming cost in stark terms: the Russians were spending roughly $125 million a year to block the signal, more than the entire budget of the U.S. program. Chinese-language broadcasts were jammed beginning in 1956 and extending through 1976. From 1955 until 2003, VOA broadcast American jazz on its Jazz Hour. Hosted for most of that period by Willis Conover, the program drew 30 million listeners at its peak. State Department-sponsored tours by Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington were broadcast in association with the jazz programming. From August 1952 through May 1953, a high school senior named Billy Brown from Westchester County, New York, had a Monday night program sharing everyday happenings from Yorktown Heights. Brown's segment ended not from lack of interest but from too much of it: his chatty narratives generated so much fan mail that VOA could not afford the $500 a month in clerical and postage costs to reply.

• 4. The Firewall Principle

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  VOA director Henry Loomis commissioned a formal statement of principles under the Eisenhower administration in 1959. That statement was issued as a directive in 1960 and endorsed in 1962 by USIA director Edward R. Murrow. The VOA charter was signed into law by President Gerald Ford, and it requires the service to be "a reliable and authoritative source of news" that is "accurate, objective, and comprehensive." The charter also requires it to "present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively." The 1994 U.S. International Broadcasting Act prohibits editorial interference by government officials. Together, these laws form what VOA refers to as its "firewall." The internal policy of VOA News, according to former correspondent Alan Heil, requires that any story broadcast must have two independently corroborating sources, or a staff correspondent who personally witnessed the event. In 1942, VOA served its purpose by pursuing objective journalism rather than outright propaganda, showing that the United States had free press and free speech. The tension between that journalistic mission and the unavoidable reality that the U.S. government funds and oversees the service has never fully resolved. Despite the firewall, at least one VOA employee told another journalist: "I always keep the best U.S. interests in mind when explaining official policies and why democracy is the best political system to foreign audiences." That ambiguity would become a fault line decades later.

• 5. Pressure and Interference

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  On the 3rd of June, 2020, the U.S. Senate confirmed Michael Pack, a conservative documentarian and close ally of Steve Bannon, as head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Within days of that confirmation, VOA director Amanda Bennett and deputy director Sandy Sugawara resigned. On the 17th of June, the heads of VOA's Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Open Technology Fund were all fired, their boards dissolved. External communications from VOA employees required approval from senior agency personnel. NPR reported VOA would not renew the work visas of dozens of non-resident reporters. On the 20th of November, a preliminary injunction barred Pack from making personnel decisions involving journalists at the networks, from directly communicating with editors and journalists, and from investigating any editors or news stories. The injunction characterized an investigation Pack had ordered into VOA White House bureau chief Steven L. Herman's social media postings as an "unconstitutional prior restraint" of free speech. In November 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell found Pack had violated the First Amendment rights of VOA journalists. On the 19th of January, 2021, Pack named five conservative directors across USAGM boards, including conservative radio talk show host Blanquita Cullum and Breitbart writer Jeffrey Scott Shapiro as head of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. Pack resigned the following day at the request of the Biden administration. Incoming Biden appointee Kelu Chao, a VOA veteran, dismissed the acting director and his associates and worked to restore regular operations.

• 6. Shutdown and Legal Battle

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  On the night of the 14th of March, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order labeling the agency "the Voice of Radical America" and reducing its functions to the statutory minimum. The next day, more than 1,300 Voice of America journalists, producers, and assistants were placed on administrative leave. Foreign language broadcasts replaced news programming with music. VOA's website ceased being updated. For the first time since the service was founded in 1942, VOA went dark. In some parts of the world, former VOA White House correspondent Steve Herman later recalled, viewers wondered whether a coup had taken place in the United States. Russian and Chinese state media pundits praised the decision. Reporters Without Borders said it sent a "chilling signal" to China and Russia that they "now have free rein to spread their propaganda unchecked." China Radio International added more than 80 new frequencies, including some that VOA had previously used. On the 22nd of April, 2025, a federal court ordered the Trump administration to restore VOA and return its employees to work. On the 6th of May, Trump ally Kari Lake announced that One America News, a far-right network known for promoting conspiracy theories, would provide news coverage for VOA. On the 20th of June, 2025, layoff notices went to 639 VOA employees, completing an 85% reduction in staff at USAGM since the beginning of Trump's second term. Of the entire USAGM, only 250 employees remained, approximately 200 of them at VOA. By late August 2025, the staff had been pared to 108, with VOA broadcasting in only four languages - Persian, Mandarin, Dari, and Pashto - down from 49 languages reaching 360 million people daily. On the 7th of March, 2026, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Trump's appointment of Kari Lake to lead VOA's parent agency was illegal under the federal Vacancies Act, nullifying the mass layoffs and other actions she had taken. On the 17th of March, 2026, Lamberth ordered more than 1,000 VOA employees to return to work by the 23rd of March.

• 7. Journalists at Risk

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  VOA journalists have long worked inside some of the world's most dangerous reporting environments. In Azerbaijan, journalist and human rights activist Ulviyya Ali worked with VOA's Azerbaijani Service from 2019 to 2025, authoring and broadcasting more than 1,000 news pieces. Her work covered political trials, human rights violations, protests, and civil disobedience against the regime of Ilham Aliyev. During that period she faced detention, police obstruction, and ill-treatment. VOA's journalist accreditations in Azerbaijan were revoked in February 2025. Ali was arrested in May 2025. In Iran, the risks are equally severe: the 2025 layoffs forced many VOA journalists on J-1 visas to leave the United States within 30 days of losing their jobs. In July 2025, Kari Lake told the right-wing Real America's Voice channel that former VOA employees who overstayed their visas would be found by immigration enforcement. One lawsuit filed in March 2025 noted that some VOA employees were foreign nationals on J-1 visas who faced safety risks if forced to return to their home countries after losing their positions. VOA's former director David Jackson described the reach of the service in repressive states this way: "The North Korean government doesn't jam us, but they try to keep people from listening through intimidation or worse. But people figure out ways to listen despite the odds. They're very resourceful." The court orders of early 2026 remain a contested terrain, with the district court noting the "concerning disrespect" the defendants had shown toward its rulings, language that stops just short of civil contempt.