The order of President Donald Trump to cut the funds to Voice of America (VOA) and several other media in favor of the affiliated democracy have generated generalized criticisms of organizations and journalists of freedom of the press, which warn that it runs the risk of damaging independent journalism severely that covers some of the most repressive countries in the world.
Trump announced an executive order on Friday night to effectively dismantle the US agency for global media, which supervises VOA. After the order, the VOA chief said that all his 1,300 journalists and personnel had been placed on administrative license.
Trump’s executive order also ended with subsidies for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, which transmit news to Eastern Europe, Russia, China and North Korea and Central Asia.
The order threatens to close media organizations that have provided independent news coverage for decades and have promoted journalism to hundreds of millions of people worldwide and provided a line of life to people living in countries under authoritarian regimes, defenders say.
President Donald Trump talks to the media during a guided tour of the John F. Kennedy center for the performing arts before leading a meeting of the Board, on March 17, 2025 in Washington.
Somodevilla/Getty chip
The committee to protect journalists, a prominent organization of press freedom, described the measure as a “reward for dictators and despotes” and urged Congress to act to preserve the media.
VOA and the other media organizations were founded during World War II to promote democracy and provide uncensored information. But even after the end of the Cold War, in many authoritarian and poor countries, they have continued playing a powerful role as independent news suppliers, sometimes as the only open means where everyone else is censored or severely resources, such as Iran, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan and North Korea.
VOA and its affiliates reach 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week, according to the global media agency in the United States. VOA and RFE/RL reports have been routinely considered a threat to authoritarian regimes, which have tried to press them, even imprisoning their journalists.
Ten journalists and collaborators of VOA, RFE and RFA are currently imprisoned or missing in different countries around the world, according to the USAGM website.
In Russia and much of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, RFE/RL, reporters have played a huge role in the political repression deck and, sometimes, breaking large corruption investigations. They use hundreds of local journalists, informing both English and in the local language.
The Persian Department of VOA broadcasts television news programs in Iran and operates a news website. The Persian service of RFE/RL, Radio Farda, also produces news and analysis in audio and video formats and executes a news website.
“Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian journalists have faced an intense suppression, censorship, imprisonment and even execution at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran, leaving Iranian people without access to free media platforms within the country,” said an Iranian journalist based in the United Kingdom to ABC News.
“Turning out exits such as VOA Persian, Radio Liberty and Radio Farda would give a great blow to freedom of the press and free flow of information in Iran, directly serving the interests of the Islamic Republic,” added the journalist, who asked not to be appointed for security reasons.
In a statement published in his LinkedIn Sunday, Michael Abramowitz, director of Voice of America, said: “For the first time in 83 years, the United States voice is being silenced.”
“VOA promotes freedom and democracy worldwide when telling the history of the United States and providing objective and balanced information, especially for those who live under tyranny,” he added.
The signaling for the American radio station Voice of America is seen in Washington, DC, March 16, 2025.
Bonnie Cash/AFP through Getty Images
But Trump and his allies have attacked VOA as corrupt and promoting values outside the United States. Trump, in his first term, accused organizations of speaking for “the adversaries of the United States, not for their citizens.”
The White House in a statement on Saturday said the order “will ensure that taxpayers are no longer in the radical propaganda hook.”
The Trump administration has also framed the VOA dethered as part of the drastic effort to reduce the federal budget led by Elon Musk. Last month, Musk wrote that USGM’s points of sale are “crazy radical people who speak themselves while burning $ 1 billion/year of money from US taxpayers.”
Kari Lake, candidate for the failed Senate for Arizona, whom Trump had taken the opportunity to supervise VOA and had promised to review it, on Saturday he wrote that the agency was “a giant rot and a burden for the US taxpayer”, calling him “insurmountable.”
European leaders expressed on Monday the dismay for the cutting of funds to RFE/RL, and some suggest that they were exploring ways to partially fill the void.
Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic, Jan Lipavsky, said RFE/RL, based in Prague, “is one of the few credible sources in dictatorships such as Iran, Belarus and Afghanistan.”
He said he would raise the problem with his fellow foreign ministers of the European Union on Tuesday on how to help departure to keep at least partially transmitting.
Poles Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, confirmed that the EU is considering options to help RFE/RL, according to the kyiv Independent.
“We are in the rain of ideas, but clearly, these are decent institutions whose mission should continue,” Sikorski told the website.
