Tonight, the Voice of America is silent. The storied broadcaster was launched in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda. But two weeks ago, President Donald Trump usurped Congress's authority and signed an executive order, effectively shutting down the taxpayer funded broadcaster for what the White House calls radical propaganda.
Friday, a federal judge put any further actions by the administration on hold. Over the decades, VA has projected American values globally, and for hundreds of millions, it was the place to find fact-based news about America and the world in their own languages. It all came crashing down in a single day.
The story will continue in a moment. When I heard that, 1300 of my colleagues had been suspended immediately with pay in a in an email saying that they couldn't do any more work, couldn't go into the building. I knew at that point the Voice of America was going to die very quickly.
Steve Herman is chief national correspondent for Voice of America and perhaps its best known journalist. Americans may not recognize him since VA is prohibited by law from broadcasting in the United States. People say, "Oh, international broadcasting, it's it's archaic.
It's obsolete. Why are the Chinese spending so much money and and broadcasting in dozens of languages over radio and setting up all these TV services? You know, are they wasting their money?
I don't think so. VA is probably the best bang for our buck that we have in terms of public diplomacy. I'm in the middle of an intersection in downtown Namier.
After joining VA in 2002 as a Tokyo based foreign correspondent, Herman spent the next 15 years covering the globe for America's flagship international broadcaster before landing at the White House in 2017. He told us he decided to take the job as a federal employee because of VA's charter, which requires accurate, objective reporting and sets a firewall to protect the editorial independence of its reporters from political meddling. I've met people even in North Korea who have said when they first started listening to it and they heard it's from the United States that it must be propaganda because that's what their broadcasters do.
And then they heard us talking about America warts and all. And they also heard us reporting about their own country and telling them things that they could verify with their own eyes that their own media wasn't telling them. And a light bulb goes off when they realize what it is like with the media in the United States that you can criticize your own government, have opposition politicians on the air.
That doesn't happen everywhere in the world. Our mandate was never to present the administration story. Our mandate was always to present America's story.
Paty Wida Kusara is VA's White House bureau chief. A native of Indonesia, she started working for VA in its Indonesian service in 2003. Growing up under the dictatorship of President Suarto, she understands the value of VA.
What's the size of the audience? All around the world it is 360 million weekly unduplicated listening and watching VA multiplatform television, radio, digital, social media and 86% of its worldwide audience tell pollsters they find VA trustworthy. Two weeks ago, those millions of viewers and listeners were getting daily news in 49 languages.
Turn on VA Today, you get this on a loop. Bill, you and I have both been in a lot of countries, and if you're in a country and all of a sudden television or radio switches from regular programming to music, you know, something's up. So, what do you think that says to your your listeners and viewers?
I think it would make them wonder what the hell is going on in the United States. America. The Voice of America spoke its first words during World War II, beaming German language broadcast into Nazi Germany to counter Hitler's propaganda machine.
During the Cold War, it expanded in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China to challenge communist disinformation with straightforward reporting on American life and politics, our highs and lows. An approach President John F. Kennedy praised at VA's 20th anniversary.
We compete with other means of communication of those who are our adversaries who tell only the good stories. But the things that go bad in America, you must tell that also. With bipartisan support, VA grew to spread American news and values across the globe.
My fellow Americans and fellow citizens of the world, this is Ronald Reagan, president of the United States, speaking to you live from the broadcast studios of the Voice of America in Washington DC. VA told the Chinese people about the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tien Men Square and the deadly COVID outbreak in Wuhan when their own government wouldn't. It beamed reports into Iran about the democracy protests in 2009.
It told the people of North Korea about their government's gulogs and Russians about atrocities in Ukraine. VA has been supported by every president since 1942, Republican and Democrat. All but one.
Have you heard what's coming out of the Voice of America? It's disgusting. where things they say are disgusting toward our country.
That was President Trump in 2020. He complained VA's coverage of the COVID epidemic pared Chinese propaganda. Two weeks ago, the White House released a statement called the Voice of Radical America, listing a dozen specific grievances like VA reports on white privilege, transgender migrants, and Hunter Biden's laptop.
They've got national security risks inside this agency. The rot is so bad. It's like having a rotten fish and trying to find a little portion you can eat.
It's it's unsalvageable right now. In February, President Trump installed Carrie Lake of Arizona, a former TV anchor who lost two statewide political races, as senior adviser at the agency for global media, the entity that oversees VA and its sister services covering Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Cuba. She says they've grown too large.
We are going to be slimming this agency down, way down. It's going on an ompic diet. VA's budget is $267 million a year.
Lake is now moving to implement President Trump's executive order to eliminate the broadcaster to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law. We asked Lake for an interview to discuss her findings and plans for VA. She declined, responding, "I won't do an interview with a disreputable news outlet like 60 Minutes.
You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN. " The president has a well-known animist toward the press, but he seems to hold special disdain for Voice of America.
Under his administrations, Steve Herman has been investigated twice for his copious social media posts, including this link to a critic of the dismantling of USID, which one senior administration official suggested was treasonous. What do you say to people who would say that your Twitter activity, your your social media activity as a foreign service officer technically part of the government that perhaps you shouldn't be criticizing the president? I wasn't criticizing the president.
I wasn't criticizing his policies. I was quoting people who didn't like those policies. But I also put out what the president says verbatim.
I put out links to the president's executive orders. Does that mean that I'm supporting or praising those statements or policies? No.
And I think any reasonable observer understands it. On the 12th of this month, Paty Wida Kusara, working her White House beat, asked the prime minister of Ireland a question President Trump found impertinent. What about the president's plans to expel Palestinians out of Gaza?
Are you discussing that with him and giving him your Nobody's expelling any Palestinians. I don't know. Who are you with?
I'm in Voice of America. Oh, no wonder. Okay.
So, when the president turns around and says, "Who are you with? " What' you think? Honestly, my heart sank a little bit.
Two days later, the president signed that executive order all but eliminating VA. In following days, Carrie Lake suspended hundreds of journalists, banned them from the building, and halted transmissions overseas. For the first time in 83 years, The Voice of America was silenced.
You think your question had anything to do with that? I think it's impossible for me to know the answers to that question. This is happening to all federal agencies.
Honestly, when I was at the Oval Office, it was it was just my reporter's instinct and I wasn't thinking about anything else. It was just just doing your job. Two world leaders in front of me.
What am I not going to do if not ask the questions? Steve Herman questions whether the president's executive action is legal. There are those who want to make the voice of America the voice of the president.
Now, that's not up to the executive branch of government. That's up to the Congress. We're following the laws that Congress passed.
Republican Congresswoman Young Kim of California is a South Korean immigrant, a Trump supporter, and a longtime champion of Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. I encourage President Trump to reconsider his executive order. Kim is one of the only Republican members of Congress to challenge the administration on VA.
When we are in an information war and we stop broadcasting into those repressive governments and into repressive societies, they're going to they're not going to hear the truth. Why are we seeding our soft power that helps us to stay as a free world leader? We're just playing right into Xiinping's hands.
Since President Trump's executive order, media in China and Russia have been celebrating. Oh yeah, I'm not surprised. Does that concern you?
That concerns me because we're losing that information war. So we pull back. Who fills the void?
China, Ayatollas, Kim Jong-un's dictators and we're not there to counter that disinformation. Paty Weda Kuswara is lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to resuscitate VA, but she fears the damage has already been done if they bring back everybody next week. What kind of newsroom would that be?
How can we continue to report without fear or favor? With this hanging over us, would we only have to report on things that pleases the president? It's not something that I signed up for.
