The sounds of silence – Trump guts Voice of America
The American people need to know - "we have no voice"
If the Voice of America had been shut down at any other point in American history, it would be a lead story for weeks on end. But Trump pulling the plug on America’s loudspeaker is just another in a long list of previously unthinkable disasters that have befallen our country since January 20th. It hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.
VOA was founded in 1942 as a way to counter Nazi propaganda around the world. For the last 80 years, it has broadcast straight, unbiased news about world events into authoritarian countries where citizens are denied access to real journalism.
Late last Friday night, Trump gutted seven more federal agencies, including the umbrella organization running Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Marti and other outlets. Staff were told not to come to work. The stations have either gone dark or have replaced news broadcasts with music – because there’s no one left to tell America’s story around the world.
To find out what it all means, I called Jim Fry, one of my classmates and best friends from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He retired from VOA in 2023.
Jim is one of the flat-out best reporters I’ve ever known. He’s a digger. He produces balanced, fair stories. If you look up “journalism ethics” in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of Jim. He had a long career in TV news in Dallas and Washington, DC, doing stories for a network of good stations. He moved to VOA in 2007 and worked there as a reporter, assistant managing editor and in other newsroom jobs until he retired two years ago.
When he heard the news late Friday night, Fry says, “I was sick to my stomach.” Trump has long complained about what he sees as VOA’s liberal bias. But like most of his complaints about the news media, his accusations aren’t true.
Fry says coverage on VOA was “right down the middle.” “We took that sort of thing seriously until the day it was closed two days ago. We took seriously the idea that we cover the news without regard to what a politician or a policy maker would think or say.”
In fact, VOA’s congressional charter is supposed to protect it from whatever political winds blow in with a new administration. In true Trumpian style, though, he didn’t just huff and puff – he blew the whole thing down.
“A huge concern for the world”
American news consumers might not understand why this is so important because they’re not consumers of VOA news. Fry says, “The newsroom in Washington covers American government not because we’re doing stories for either political side to take a look at. We’re not covering it for the American people. We’re covering American politics as a window into American democracy overseas. Our audiences are audiences in many nations where people have very little access to real news coverage. There’s government propaganda. There’s oligarchical control.”
It’s a worldwide disaster – the loss of dependable information in eastern bloc countries, across Africa, and in Asia.
“It’s a huge concern for the world,” Fry says. “If you think this is something that these countries don’t really care much about, there was a fisherman who was listening to Radio Free Asia off the coast of North Korea, and he ended up going to jail for multiple years because he was caught listening to RFA.”
“During the teens, there were people who emerged from North Korea who told us members of the government of North Korea were surreptitiously listening to VOA in Korean so that they could figure out what was going on in the world. They don’t have that anymore. This is something that is hugely dangerous to the world, and hugely dangerous to America.”
Pulling the plug on our “soft power”
Much like the destruction of USAID, Fry says killing the Voice of America hampers our “soft power” around the world. “The whole idea behind diplomacy is to avoid war. Your soft power helps to tell the story of America around the world. It helps to bring people into our democracy camp.”
In my view, it’s all so short-sighted. Trump is dismantling guardrails that have been carefully built up over many years. He’s removing climate protection, destroying our justice system, and pulling back American presence worldwide. The damage he’s doing might not show up on our doorstep tomorrow but he seems incapable of doing anything with a longer view than the next news cycle.
And where is Senator Grassley, who likes to say sunshine is the best disinfectant? Will he just roll over and let Trump kill a congressionally-chartered news outlet? Where is Senator Ernst, who has served in uniform in foreign countries? Does she think it’s a good idea to silence America’ voice in dangerous places?
“What the American people need to know,” Fry says, “is that we no longer have a voice around the world into countries that are hostile to us. The countries are. The people might not be. We have no voice and no way of reaching those people now. And that is dangerous for the United States.”
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Thanks, Dave. This is so important and I think the vital role VOA has played in the world is largely unrecognized by Americans. You have put that in stark relief. Your questions of Where are our senators (?????) is one we all need to ask ourselves and be burning up the phone lines asking them. They are COMPLICIT!
For more than 80 years VOA was a beacon of light and a trusted source of information in every corner of the world. It took less than 80 days for this clown show to distinguish that light. The first casualty of authoritarianism is truth. How do you ever undo the damage? Is “YMCA” playing in a continuous loop on radio frequencies across the globe?