Silencing the Voice of America

Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained, I'm Sean Rameswaram.

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Sean Rameswaram: Remember World War II? Bad guys, Nazis, good guys, not the Nazis. It was during those simpler times that the United States launched Voice of America. This is a voice speaking from America. Its mission was to fight Axis propaganda with American propaganda. But then that war ended and a new, colder one began. And Voice of America became an anti-authoritarian tool for the United States, and it grew far beyond the radio. Around the clock, the Voice of America broadcasts America's message of democracy to the world. You can find Voice of America on the TV, in dozens of languages. And then, over the weekend, after more than 80 years of broadcasting, Voice of America went dark. On Today Explained, it wasn't the Nazis or the communists who finally silenced Voice of America. It was the president of the United States.

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Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained, signing on. On Friday, President Trump signed another executive order to dismantle a bunch of federal agencies, including the one in charge of Voice of America, where Steve Herman works, worked, TBD. I'm apparently still the chief national correspondent of The Voice of America and a former VOA White House bureau chief and author of the nonfiction book Behind the White House Curtain, which goes into some of the stuff that we're going to talk about today dealing with the challenges VOA faced in the first Trump administration.

Steve Herman: More than a thousand staff at Voice of America have been placed on administrative leave. But Steve's special. They're investigating Steve. Steve's posts on social media, to be specific. That's the perception that there was a high-ranking U.S. government official who took umbrage with a particular post that I had quoted from a news release from an NGO. which was upset with what was happening to the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID. And that official reacted saying that because I'm with VOA, I should basically just be a mouthpiece of the U.S. government. And that what I had posted on social media, this innocuous quote from an NGO president was, I don't remember the exact language, but basically saying that I was probably a traitor, which if you look up the punishment for treason, it's relatively dire in the United States.

Sean Rameswaram: You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart, with spies and treason? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now. Steve, I was born in the 80s, and I guess I grew up knowing what Voice of America was. But for all of our audience members who are maybe bored after 9-11, who have no idea what this outfit is, would you mind just telling them what it is that Voice of America does?

Steve Herman: Yes, we broadcast radio, television, streaming online, social media apps, all that sort of stuff in about 50 languages. Our original language was German, then Japanese. We do not broadcast in German or Japanese anymore. The languages change over time based on what is the geopolitical situation of the world. And we are not only telling America's story to the world, but we're telling people what's happening in their regions of the world in their own languages. We are very integrated in the Washington, D.C., inside the Beltway Press. And that's been the case for many decades.

Sean Rameswaram: Of course, there are people that scoff and say, oh, you know, VOA, because it's funded by the U.S. government, must just be propaganda. Well, I urge people to watch the newscast. There's still stuff up on the web at voanews.com. I don't know how much longer it may be up there, but draw your own conclusion about what VOA is and is not.

Steve Herman: In defense of the people who think that this is just a propaganda arm of the United States government, was that the original intent when this was established in 1942? Well, yes and no, I would say. We went on the air in the early days of World War II. And, of course, you could actually be in the United States, turn on your radio, and you could hear the broadcast from Berlin about how the Germans were winning every victory and they were the greatest people on the planet. and they were going to liberate the world. VOA came on the air saying, whether the news is good or bad, we're going to essentially tell you what it is like it is, which was a radical concept at the time because most state-funded broadcasters around the world, possibly with the exception of BBC, were propaganda outlets. That's what they were designed to do. And so VOA was very unique and unusual in that regard.

Sean Rameswaram: It's like, we're going to build credibility by getting people to believe that what we're putting out on the airwaves has some credibility, that it's true. Now, VOA was under the Office of War Information, which was under wartime censorship conditions. So the VOA reporters weren't just free to put on the air anything that they wanted. And then after World War II, there was a what I call a struggle for the soul of Voice of America which has continued I think since then about whether there was any need for it whether it should continue

Steve Herman: And with the Iron Curtain descending across Eastern Europe there were lawmakers on Capitol Hill who said, hey, you know, we may have some qualms about the government being in the broadcasting business, but as long as it's not targeting the United States, as long as it's not a commercial operation, we'll fund this. And there are historians out there who would say Voice of America, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe contributed to the bringing down of the Berlin Wall, not only for the news and the information, giving hope to people, but also for putting on programs such as jazz music, which apparently was considered quite subversive if you were listening in communist countries at the time.

Sean Rameswaram: And it still is. In fact, the people who are celebrating the demise this week of VOA are those in the halls of power, in the autocratic regimes, in Moscow, in Beijing, in NAPIDA, in Tehran. Because if you're an Iranian in Tehran and you turn on your radio this morning to listen to Voice of America on the station, you've always heard it. What are you hearing right now? You're not hearing any programming. And most, I think, people in Iran watch VOA. It comes to them via satellite television. A lot of people in Tehran have satellite dishes up to watch it. So there's just a video loop running. There's no programming. It's just a promo. Of what? Explaining what the voice of America is, which is kind of ironic because we're voiceless at the moment.

Steve Herman: You've told us who's happiest about this. Who do you think is saddest about this? What have you heard from people who listen or watch or stream Voice of America? Oh, they're astounded. I can tell you, I've been a foreign correspondent, Sean, in a number of countries. And when state media, all of a sudden that the programming would stop and maybe music would come on, that was indicative that there was a coup being carried out, right? It was something really dire. And so a lot of people who are in these countries that don't have a free press or autocratic are wondering what is really going on in the United States. There's been no broadcast explaining to them why VOA is suddenly off the air. And the American people are not our audience, but they are stakeholders. Your taxpayers pay for this. And a lot of people will tell you in the realm of public diplomacy, this is probably the biggest bang for our buck in terms of the hard edge of soft power.

Sean Rameswaram: What did they do in the first administration? Because they didn't shut it down. They did not shut it down, but we're seeing actually some of the language that I've seen in recent days coming out of the administration echoed what we had seen during that time, which was accusations that there were, you know, subversives in the voice of America. In other words, that there were somehow there were some foreign spies. And so what they did is they canceled all the people on the J-1 visas and sent some of them back home. And that appears to be happening again. Some of these people will be going back possibly to end up in prison or worse. And this time around, Donald Trump announces that his pick to run Voice of America is Carrie Lake.

Steve Herman: Were you and your colleagues nervous when you heard about that choice? Well, I think anytime you're getting a new politically appointed leader, you're anxious at least. But there was some hope based on public statements that she had made that she didn't want to destroy the voice of America. She wanted to reform it. And we've seen this with past people who've come into the VOA with all sorts of politically motivated intentions. And they come in and see what the place is really about. and they go, aha, this isn't what I thought it was. Of course, everyone at VOA would acknowledge, you know, there's room for improvement, right? There definitely can be reform. And sometimes it's frustrating to us when you're using government money, how slow it can be. But when I write a story, Sean, it goes through a couple of editors. And then if there's anything remotely political in it, it would go through a balance editor, a third editor. And I've even had stories that go through four editors. And again, the stuff that gets out there is going to be shorn, hopefully, of being inaccurate, incomplete or biased in any way.

Sean Rameswaram: You raise an excellent point. It makes it much more of a challenge to make this relevant to the American people because it's an external entity. And these sort of exercises, activities will have geopolitical ramifications. The war in World War II was as much a battle for hearts and minds keeping morale up or trying to destroy morale of the troops, of the people who were having their family members die in combat. That's a really, really important part. Now, we're not engaging in psychological operations or overt propaganda, but we believe that by basically telling the truth, reporting accurately, that that is something really, really powerful. And when we talking about a kind of asymmetrical warfare which is what going on between the West and Russia and China talking about human rights talking about what's happening in Ukraine, talking about the intimidation that China is carrying out against its neighbors. These are really, really powerful messages.

Steve Herman: Steve, thank you so much for your time. I think that's a good place for us to leave it. Thank you, Sean.

Sean Rameswaram: Steve Herman, chief national correspondent at Voice of America, apparently still. When we're back on Today Explained, we're going to talk about how Carrie Lake, of all people, became a defender of this institution. Thank you.

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Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, Sean Rameswaram back now with Sarah Ellison, national enterprise reporter at The Washington Post, where she writes about the media. Sarah, Carrie Lake is best known for losing a gubernatorial election in Arizona and then losing a Senate race in Arizona. Why did Donald Trump tap her, of all people, to lead the Voice of America at the start of a second term?

Sarah Ellison: Well, Carrie Lake, before she lost the race for governor and before she lost her race to become a senator, she was a longtime television news presenter. Look at our forecast. No delays here. Just pure, gorgeous weather. A sunshine alert for you. And she had done that in Arizona for decades. By the time she gets to these two losses, she has become one of the most ardent supporters of Donald Trump and his false election denial claims that he lost the election in 2020 because of massive fraud. Gary, we'll start with you. You've called Joe Biden an illegitimate president. What does that mean? He lost the election and he shouldn't be in the White House. We had a corrupt election. So Carrie Lake is sort of a real loyalist to Donald Trump. And when she, after she loses her race for Senate and after Donald Trump wins the presidency, she tells him, I want to help advance your priorities from inside the administration. And she wants to be the director of Voice of America.

Sarah Ellison: It's a federally funded news organization, and she wants to sort of help shape how that news is delivered to a global audience. So are you saying that it wasn't really Donald Trump who found this job for her, but it was she who found this job and asked for it from Donald Trump? According to our reporting, she really, really wanted Voice of America. And that was something that she pitched to the president.

Sean Rameswaram: Absolutely. Carrie Lake told her associates that she wanted to shape the voice of America to be more in line with President Trump's vision and more in line with America First messaging. We will focus on accurate and honest reporting. It won't become Trump TV, but it sure as hell will not be TDS TV. You can find all the Trump derangement syndrome that you want over on CNN MSNBC CBS 60 Minutes The Washington Post and The New York Times But I believe it is worth trying to say She said she's fully qualified for this. She's been doing this kind of work for decades. She understands the industry. And she made a really impassioned pitch for it. And it was something that clearly appealed to Trump in terms of the way that he was thinking about She could use her experience as a news anchor, and it was something that he was going to be able to kind of shape from afar through her.

Sarah Ellison: Did she get to do anything before the Trump administration just decided that they were going to kill this agency? Yes. I mean, when she first arrived, there were a couple of people who were in the building with her. First of all, she arrived with a few Doge staffers, and there was another woman who wrote Project 2025's chapter on what should happen to Voice of America. And it was full of allegations that there were spies in the agency, that there were leftists who had taken over, and Carrie Lake was eager to kind of clean all that out. What she did when she first got there was she targeted two journalists. One of them, a reporter named Steve Herman, who you've heard from earlier in the show, was placed on administrative leave for his social media activity, which was alleged to be biased and anti-Trump. And then Carrie Lake canceled all of the wire contracts that Voice of America had. So she took away Agence France-Presse, the AP. She was sort of trying to doge the agency herself. But she was not talking about shutting it down altogether.

Sarah Ellison: And then in February, we start to see that Carrie Lake's dream for perhaps reforming Voice of America might be in trouble because Trump's special envoy Rick Grinnell tweets essentially that we don't need Voice of America anymore in the United States. And then Twitter's owner, Elon Musk, says to shut them down. And I guess like a little out of character for such a Trump loyalist, Carrie Lake comes out and says she thinks Voice of America is worth saving. She disagrees with Trump's special envoy and Trump's special vice president. How did the MAGA vision for VOA sort of get away from her? Carrie Lake is sort of a microcosm of what's happening to a lot of these Trump loyalists who are placed at the top of very high profile agencies. Voice of America is not a high profile agency. You know, Voice of America is sort of this backwater. But what you see happening with her is that she's coming in. She's there because she's loyal. and Donald Trump has rewarded her and she has ideas for what she wants to do with this agency. And whether it's Rick Grinnell or Elon Musk, they're just gutting the entire operation. They are not interested in reform. Or if they are interested in reform, it's more of a kind of break this thing down and rebuild it from absolute scratch, which was not what Carrie Lake was planning to do, according to our reporting.

Sarah Ellison: So does she ultimately get on board with them? So Carrie Lake is trying to kind of cancel contracts and cancel the lease on this building as a way to sort of doge the agency herself. And then she starts to talk about how once she got in the building, she was so aghast to see all of this corruption, And it was really an unsalvageable place based on everything that she had learned. So she sort of quickly pivots from I want to reform this to saying, well, once I got in the building, I found so much rot that there was nothing I could do with it. She becomes an interesting figure in this moment, right? Because unlike, say, you know, Kash Patel at the FBI or Lee Zeldin at the EPA or Linda McMahon, of all people, at the Department of Education, these are characters we know resent the agencies that they've been put in charge of. they are on board with the Doge mission, or at least the MAGA mission, to deeply reform, cut, drain the swamp. But Carrie Lake actually saw some good in Voice of America. Do you think there's a chance? I don't know. She could end up trying to save it? Or do you think she's just going to fall in line and oversee maybe its final chapter here?

Sarah Ellison: Oh, I mean, I don't think there's much that she can really do. What you're seeing when you look at the Voice of America's website and its different sort of broadcasts, there's no one left to report the news. So, you know, Carrie Lake, I wouldn't say that, I wouldn't overstate, you know, she saw this as a possibility for her. But if there's anything that we have seen with Carrie Lake is that she knows how to survive as someone in MAGA world, in Trump world, in some capacity. So she is not going to die on the hill of saving Voice of America. She's going to figure out a way to be relevant for Donald Trump. And if he doesn't want to have Voice of America exist, she is not going to fight that. So Voice of America may be dead, but Carrie Lake may survive.

Sean Rameswaram: I guess that's where we, I guess that's where we landed. Sarah Ellison, WAPO.com.

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Sean Rameswaram: This episode of Today Explained was produced by Gabrielle Burbay and Travis Larchuk with help from Miles Bryan. Miranda Kennedy edited. Amanda Llewellyn and Laura Bullard fact-checked. Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christensdottir mixed. Tomorrow on the show, Tren de Aragua.