Kari Lake brought back a skeleton crew to Voice of America. They're ‘angry most of the time'
While a federal appeals court appears to have given its blessing to the Trump administration's efforts to completely gut Voice of America, the bare-bones staff that Kari Lake brought back earlier this month has been wracked with low morale and confusion.
'I am angry most of the time I'm in there,' one staffer told Poynter this week.
In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA and its sister outlets, to reduce staffing down to the 'statutory minimum.' Lake, the failed Arizona politician who now serves as senior adviser overseeing the agency, subsequently laid off hundreds of contracted employees and placed the rest of VOA's staff on indefinite leave.
Following a series of lawsuits from VOA employees and executives, Lake was ordered by a district court judge last month to restore Voice of America and bring back its workforce. Additionally, the judge ruled that the administration needed to reinstate Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
'Not only is there an absence of 'reasoned analysis' from the defendants; there is an absence of any analysis whatsoever,' Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote.
Earlier this month, however, a three-judge appellate court panel decided to freeze the lower court's injunction, saying it needed more time to consider the merits of the case. On Thursday, the full appellate court said it would not intervene at this time.
'We are devastated and concerned that this ruling might lead to further adverse reactions from the administration,' Patsy Widakuswara, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit and VOA's White House bureau chief for Voice of America, told The Independent about the appeals court decision. 'But our day in court is not over yet, and we are committed to fighting until we can return to our congressionally mandated right to broadcast factual, balanced, and comprehensive new.'
After Lamberth's initial order to return Voice of America to the air and staff it back up, a small group of 30 employees – from a staff of 1300 workers on leave – was brought back by Lake earlier this month. In an article for Poynter, Liam Scott – VOA's press freedom reporter until he was placed on leave in March and informed he would be terminated this month – spoke to several of the staffers who returned this month and described the 'grim and confusing' atmosphere in VOA headquarters.
'People who are in there do not see this as some kind of hopeful return,' one employee told Scott. 'I am angry most of the time I'm in there… They can't credibly say that they haven't shut us down when zero people are working,'
Prior to the president's executive order, VOA broadcast in 49 languages around the world to a weekly measured audience of roughly 360 million people, some of whom live in highly censored authoritarian states. Now, according to those at the pared-down network, Voice of America's content is only translated into Dari, Mandarin Chinese, Pashto and Persian.
'The amount of programming that's being produced is not a credible replacement for what was on air before,' a staffer said.
'We were a 24/7 news operation. Now we're a five-minutes-a-day, five-days-a-week operation,' another source added. 'We all know that this is not what this place is meant to be doing.'
Voice of America's primary English-language newsroom, meanwhile, produces just one television segment and a handful of articles a day, which are then translated into four different languages and published, according to Poynter. Notably, with press freedom experts expressing concern about Kremlin propaganda filling the airspace left vacant by VOA's absence, the network is not publishing in Russian in its current depleted state.
At the same time, the small cohort that is currently working to produce what little VOA content they can is still following the network's charter, noting that they haven't received any editorial requests from the agency since returning. Interestingly, despite Lake's recent announcement that VOA had partnered up with MAGA cable channel One America News to provide a news feed, Voice of America has yet to air any OAN content.
'No one's really in charge,' a staffer told Poynter, noting the lack of clear leadership at VOA right now. Mike Abramowitz, the network's director, remains on administrative leave.
The Independent has reached out to Lake and the USAGM for comment.
While fewer than three dozen employees man the ship, hundreds of other full-time VOA staffers remain on the sidelines and in limbo as they wait to hear from the administration about their fate. All the while, Lake has cut other 'frivolous expenditures' from VOA and its sister broadcasters.
In March, for instance, she canceled the agency's contracts to carry reporting from wire services such as Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. The media agency also reneged on a 15-year lease for new office headquarters – even though it actually saved the government more than $150 million.
Though much of the network's full-time staff remains on administrative leave, such as Widakuswara, hundreds of others have already been told they are gone. Last week, Lake announced that 584 total employees were terminated across the agency, the majority of whom came from VOA.
'We will continue to scale back the bloat at [the agency] and make an archaic dinosaur into something worthy of being funded by hardworking Americans,' she told The Washington Post of the terminations before adding: 'Buckle up. There's more to come.'
Widakuswara, meanwhile, bluntly described how she feels that Lake and the administration are treating the VOA staff at the moment.
'My assessment of the situation is that this is just more emotional terror that they're applying to us,' she told The Independent. 'There's no rhyme or reason why they're bringing people back and then kicking them out. To me, it feels like emotional terror to ensure obedience.'
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