(AFP) – Hundreds of Voice of America contractors are expected to lose their jobs over the coming days, campaigners said, as the Trump administration moves to dismantle the US government-backed news service’s parent agency. Most of VOA’s roughly 1,300 staffers have been placed on administrative leave and its broadcasts suspended after a March 14 executive order gutted the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees US-funded international media.
The Trump administration decided to terminate “hundreds of contractors over the following days,” advocacy group Save VOA wrote on social media on Thursday night. Some of the terminations affect J-1 visa holders who will have to leave the country within 30 days, it added in a statement. “Several of these journalists come from countries where they could be arrested or worse because of their reporting for VOA,” Save VOA wrote, adding that it was working with lawyers to try and reinstate the contractors.
US President Donald Trump’s appointee to oversee USAGM, Kari Lake, told the Washington Post that 584 employees across the federal agency had been terminated, the majority from VOA. “In accordance with President Trump’s executive order dated March 14, we are in the process of rightsizing the agency and reducing the federal bureaucracy to meet administration priorities,” Lake told the Post.
VOA director Michael Abramowitz said in a Facebook post that he was “heartbroken to learn about today’s mass terminations of personal service contractors.” “Some of VOA’s most talented journalists have been [personal service contractors] — many of whom have escaped tyranny in their home countries to tell America’s story of freedom and democracy,” he wrote.
VOA supervisory editor Fatima Tlis posted on social media on Thursday that her “entire team got terminated today, all of us granted political asylum by US administrations.” “How does throwing on the streets the journalists you brought in on a promise of liberty and security help the American people?” she wrote.
Almost all of the networks affected by the March executive order — including VOA — have sued, accusing Trump of executive overreach. Created during the Second World War as an instrument of American soft power, USAGM is an independent agency tasked with promoting democracy and countering propaganda overseas through entities that include VOA, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.
Before suspending service, Washington-based VOA broadcast in 49 languages to a weekly audience estimated at 354 million people. The White House has criticised the news service for its alleged leftist bias, dubbing it “Voice of Radical America” in official documents.
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