The New York Times published on 25 June 2025 an article titled "Trump Urges Congress to 'Kill' Voice of America as Its Leader Defends Gutting" by Minho Kim and Megan Mineiro.
Kari Lake, who President Trump appointed to dismantle the Voice of America, met with the House Foreign Affairs Committee on 25 June. She excoriated the VOA, calling it "a rotten piece of fish" and "a threat to American national security."
Comment: I worked for 37 years in the U.S. Department of State where I often monitored VOA broadcasts and then spent 24 years in academia when I contributed without financial reimbursement my expertise on Africa to VOA programs,
In the millions of VOA programs in more than 40 languages during those years, of course one can find a few where VOA got it wrong and a few that demonstrated an ideological bias. But the overwhelming majority were honest programs that accurately told America's story to foreign audiences. Many of them also countered misinformation and disinformation propagated by our adversaries.
The VOA is not and never was "a rotten piece of fish." Moving its corpse to the State Department is not the answer. The State Department does not have the staff, expertise, or resources, especially as it undergoes drastic personnel cuts of its own, to run the remains of the VOA. More importantly, programing managed by the State Department will have little credibility and no independence. Foreign audiences will perceive no difference between a State Department press release and whatever is produced by the remnant of the VOA.
The only winners in the dismantling of VOA are countries like Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China that spread disinformation about the United States. This will constitute a classic case of shooting ourselves in the foot, but with a Gatling gun.
