Pro-Trump OAN to Power Voice of America, Kari Lake Says
Plus: News from Russia, Turkey and Nicaragua
Hello, and welcome to The Press Freedom Report.
I’m Liam Scott, and today I have news on USAGM’s apparent OAN deal, Russia, Turkey and Nicaragua. Plus the top press freedom headlines from the U.S. and around the world.
One brief note
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Pro-Trump OAN to Power Voice of America, Kari Lake Says
Kari Lake appears to be one step closer to turning Voice of America into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration.
The U.S. Agency of Global Media plans to partner with the right-wing broadcaster One America News, agency advisor Lake announced in a Tuesday night social media post, providing insights into how the long independent news outlet could be remade under the Trump administration
Lake — the former local broadcaster turned unsuccessful Arizona politician turned USAGM senior advisor — said in the post that the pro-Trump broadcaster OAN will provide newsfeed services to Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and Radio Martí.
The announcement prompted outcry from some staffers at VOA, which has for decades provided independent, fact-based news to populations around the world, mainly in places where the governments repress independent media.
The exact nature of the deal is unclear; neither USAGM nor OAN immediately replied to my emails requesting comment. But Lake said OAN will provide their newsfeed and video service “free-of-charge.”
The far-right OAN has a history of spreading false claims and conspiracy theories about things like the 2020 election and COVID-19.
The announcement comes amid the Trump administration’s months-long efforts to gut USAGM and the Congressionally funded but editorially independent news outlets it oversees, including VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. VOA has not broadcast or updated its website since March, when the outlet’s some 1,300 staffers, including myself, were placed on administrative leave.
USAGM asked a small number of VOA journalists back on Tuesday. But contractors are also beginning to receive termination notices, according to NPR.
In response to the OAN announcement, two plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit contesting the Trump administration’s actions against VOA — White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara and my editor Jessica Jerreat — said they will continue fighting in court.
“Congress mandated VOA to report reliable and authoritative news, not to outsource its journalism to outlets aligned with the president’s agenda,” they said in a statement. “VOA already has talented and professional journalists ready to tell America’s story in line with the VOA Charter, but we are blocked from our own newsroom.”
Meanwhile, former USAGM chief financial officer Grant Turner told David Folkenflik at NPR that the move “makes a mockery of the agency’s history of independent non-partisan journalism.”
Earlier this year, before VOA was silenced, USAGM terminated VOA’s contracts with The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. “With a nearly billion-dollar budget, we should be producing news ourselves,” Lake said at the time.
This is a story that I’ll continue to follow and report on in this newsletter.
Russian Journalist Flees House Arrest for France
1,700 miles.
That’s how far Russian journalist Ekaterina Barabash secretly traveled after she escaped house arrest in Moscow before ultimately resurfacing in Paris earlier this week.
Barabash, a film critic, was arrested in February and charged with spreading what the Kremlin deems to be false information about the Russian army in relation to Facebook posts that were critical of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. A Moscow court then ordered Barabash, 63, placed under house arrest for two months.
Knowing that prison was the likely outcome — spreading “false information” carries a 10-year sentence in Russia — Barabash decided to escape. On April 21, she tore off her electronic monitoring tag and fled.
Weeks later, she turned up in Paris at a May 5 press conference with the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, which coordinated her escape.
“I fled — I had no other choice. Journalism no longer exists in Russia,” Barabash said during the press conference.
The precise details of her risky escape are being kept secret for security reasons.
“Her escape was one of the most perilous operations RSF has been involved in since Russia's draconian laws of March 2022,” RSF’s director Thibaut Bruttin said during the press conference.
The war in Ukraine and subsequent crackdown on media in Russia has forced hundreds of Russian journalists to flee the country for exile.
“A Russian prison is worse than death,” Barabash told France 24 in an interview.
Russian journalists sacrifice so much in order to continue doing their work from exile, which, as my previous reporting has shown, is often a deeply isolating and fractured experience.
Erdoğan Accuses Journalists of ‘Abusing’ Press Freedom
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday accused journalists of abusing press freedom.
Speaking at an event in the capital Ankara, Erdoğan — who has led a years-long crackdown on media freedom in Turkey — took particular aim at street interviews.
“We live in a country where anyone who has a microphone and a camera considers themselves a journalist and reporter. These individuals are causing terror under the name of street interviews,” Erdoğan said.
“Our objection is to the abuse of freedom of the press,” he continued. “It is not possible in any democratic country in the world to carry out such irresponsible executions of dignity, fake news, slander and disinformation in Turkey on the grounds of press freedom.”
The news was first reported by Hürriyet Daily News, a Turkish newspaper that is owned by the Demirören Group. The company is owned by the Demirören family, which has close ties to Erdoğan.
Erdoğan’s statements came just days after a Turkish court handed Swedish journalist Joakim Medin an 11-month suspended sentence for insulting Erdoğan.
Medin remains behind bars because he is awaiting trial for a second, more serious charge — belonging to a terror organization. Rights groups have called for Medin’s immediate release and said he is being targeted over his work.
Nicaragua Withdraws from UNESCO in Protest of Press Freedom Award
Nicaragua abruptly withdrew from UNESCO on Sunday after the UN body awarded a press freedom prize to a Nicaraguan newspaper.
The prize jury lauded La Prensa newspaper’s work in the face of “severe repression” and reporting from exile that “courageously keeps the flame of press freedom alive” in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua’s government — led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-president Rosario Murillo — has launched a harsh crackdown on media freedom and dissent since 2018.
In response to the award, Nicaragua announced its sudden withdrawal from UNESCO in a letter from Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke that UNESCO director general Audrey Azoulay received on Sunday.
In his letter, Jaentschke said La Prensa “represents the vile betrayal against our Motherland.”
UNESCO member states created the World Press Freedom Prize in 1997. It is named after Colombian journalist Guillermo Cano Isaza, who was assassinated in Bogota in 1986.
Azoulay said she regretted Nicaragua’s decision. “UNESCO is fully within its mandate when it defends freedom of expression and press freedom around the world,” she said in a statement.
Press Freedom News Wrap
United States
NPR, PBS Stations Raise Money, Plan Cost Cuts After Trump Order (Wall Street Journal)
Trump's attempt to defund NPR and PBS is right out of the authoritarian playbook (MSNBC opinion)
Local NPR and PBS stations reel as Indiana funding to end, federal aid targeted (WFYI)
A Student Journalist Covered a Pro-Palestine Protest. Soon, Her Graduation Came Under Threat. (Columbia Journalism Review)
U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai’i) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Tuesday introduced a bipartisan resolution commemorating World Press Freedom Day
‘60 Minutes’ shows it’s not scared off by Trump’s lawsuit and threats (LA Times)
‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks (The Guardian)
‘A cocktail for a misinformed world’: why China and Russia are cheering Trump’s attacks on media (The Guardian)
Why Journalists Must Band Together to Defend the First Amendment (PEN)
Africa
Benin: Wave of attacks on press freedom highlights urgent need to reform Digital Code (Amnesty)
Ethiopia: Mass arrests and beatings: how Ethiopia went from celebrating journalists to jailing them (The Guardian)
Sudan: Sudanese journalist Hassan Fadl Al-Mawla Mousa was shot dead as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces took control of the town of Al-Nuhud on May 2 (CPJ)
Asia
India: ‘They threatened to bulldoze my house’: fear and violence stalk journalists in Modi’s India (The Guardian)
India: Following the deadly April 22 attack in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir that left 26 tourists dead, the Indian government ordered the blocking of the YouTube channel 4PM News Network, which has about 7.3 million subscribers, over national security concerns. Journalists have also faced assaults and criminal investigations. (CPJ)
Nepal: The judicial investigation into the March death of Avenues TV cameraman Suresh Rajak, who died from an arson attack while covering a protest, has yielded no results (RSF)
Vietnam: Seven press freedom and rights groups are urging U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to put pressure on Hanoi to release journalist Pham Doan Trang, and all reporters detained in the country (PEN)
Europe
Italy: A second Italian journalist at the news site Fanpage.it has been the target of a spyware attack this year (Fanpage, CPJ)
Middle East
Iran: Six media directors and founders have been convicted by political-press courts in Iran in recent weeks (CPJ)
Iraq: Iraqi authorities ordered the temporary suspension of the Iraqi political talk show Al-Haq Yuqal (which means The Truth Be Told) and ordered the removal of past episodes from the channel’s platforms, citing “violations of public decency” (Baghdad Today, CPJ)
South America
Argentina falls 21 places in World Press Freedom Index (Buenos Aires Herald)
Global
Chaos and Credibility: A Snapshot of How AI Is Impacting Press Freedom and Investigative Journalism (Global Investigative Journalism Network)
Combating digital threats to safeguard press freedom (Access Now)
On a personal note
For the Columbia Journalism Review, I interviewed RFE/RL journalist Andrei Kuznechyk about life three months after being released from Belarusian prison and what’s at stake if the Trump administration shutters RFE/RL.
On the horizon
Zeteo this week is releasing a documentary about the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
One of the most well-known reporters in the Arab world, Al Jazeera’s Abu Akleh was shot in the head while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in 2022.
Multiple investigations — by news outlets, rights groups and the US — determined the journalist was almost certainly killed by an Israeli sniper. The Israeli military apologized for her death, but no one has been held accountable, which underscores the broader problem of impunity in journalist killings in Israel and around the world.
Thank you for reading. I’ll be back on Sunday.
Best,
Liam Scott