US Embassies Are Concerned About VOA’s Demolition, Leaked Cables Say
Trump wants VOA gone. But U.S. diplomats aren’t convinced.
Hello, and welcome to The Press Freedom Report.
I’m Liam Scott, and today I have a story on never-before-reported State Department cables expressing concern about the gutting of Voice of America, as well as top press freedom headlines from around the world.
First in The Press Freedom Report
US Embassies Are Concerned About VOA’s Demolition, Leaked Cables Say
Trump wants VOA gone. But U.S. diplomats aren’t convinced.
Several U.S. embassies around the world have sent cables in recent weeks to State Department leadership expressing concern about the harm that may be caused in their respective regions by the silencing of Voice of America and its sister outlets.
The cables — which have not yet been reported on by any news outlet — come amid the Trump administration’s weeks-long effort to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, which oversees Congressionally funded but editorially independent news outlets like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. (A judge on Tuesday ordered USAGM to restore VOA, where I covered press freedom from 2021 until being placed on leave last month.)
Thomas Yazdgerdi — a member of the Senior Foreign Service at the Department of State and the president of the American Foreign Service Association — revealed the cables in a declaration that he filed last week as part of a lawsuit brought by multiple VOA journalists over the gutting of VOA. The cables cited in the declaration were sent by U.S. embassies and missions in Botswana, Cuba, Kosovo, Kuwait, Nigeria, Pakistan, Serbia and the United Kingdom.
The cables affirm concerns raised in recent weeks by press freedom groups and U.S. lawmakers about the negative consequences that may accompany the demolition of VOA and its sister outlets, including the potential proliferation of Russian and Chinese propaganda. The documents also reveal significant — and until now, unreported — discord within the U.S. government about the future of these outlets.
“If the current trend continues, U.S. soft power in the region could face serious erosion, and the message of U.S. commitment to media freedom and our capacity to maintain stability would be undermined,” the U.S. embassy in Kuwait said in a cable.
President Donald Trump initiated the destruction of USAGM and the outlets it oversees with a March 14 executive order that led to VOA’s staff of some 1,300 people (including myself) being placed on administrative leave. Other outlets were notified that their funding had been terminated.
Multiple lawsuits are currently contesting the moves. A judge on Tuesday ruled that VOA staffers can go back to work. That decision is likely to be appealed. The Trump administration has accused VOA of liberal bias — which some circles in the United States agree with — and says cost-saving is necessary.
Trump officials have also tried to argue that the media outlets under USAGM were no longer acting in the best interest of the United States, according to Clayton Weimers, the U.S. director of Reporters Without Borders.
“But here you have a number of career Foreign Service Officers who seem to be saying quite the opposite,” Weimers told me, referencing the cables. (Reporters Without Borders has joined a lawsuit filed by VOA journalists, including my editor, in response to the attempted demolition of the news outlet.)
In 2024, VOA and its sister outlets reached a combined weekly measured audience of 427 million people across dozens of languages, according to USAGM. For decades, the outlets have delivered independent, balanced news to populations whose governments repress independent media.
The demolition of these outlets “plays into the hands of some of the world’s worst predators of press freedom,” Weimers said, citing Russia and China as examples. “It’s clearly robbing these audiences of a source of reliable, uncensored information in the kinds of places where you can’t take that for granted.”
Soon after the administration started gutting USAGM last month, press freedom groups expressed concern that Russian and Chinese disinformation would end up filling the void left by these outlets as populations search for other sources of information. Based on these cables, U.S. diplomats appear to be concerned about that prospect, too.
“USAGM’s closure will clear the path for adversarial nations, particularly China, to seize the opportunity to enhance their state-run media presence,” said a cable sent by the U.S. embassy in Kuwait.
The embassy in Kuwait expressed particular concern about the consequences of no longer broadcasting to audiences in Iran, where Tehran has all but entirely stamped out independent media.
“USAGM’s broadcasts into Iran counter the regime’s propaganda, offering an uncensored perspective on U.S. foreign policy and Iran's destabilizing role in the region,” the cable said. “The programming has been vital in providing uncensored, independent news to Iranian audiences, directly challenging Tehran’s tightly controlled state narratives.”
Other U.S. embassies in Botswana, Kosovo, Nigeria, Serbia and the United Kingdom expressed similar concerns about Chinese, Iranian and Russian disinformation filling the void.
The U.S. embassy in Botswana said in a cable that Chinese state-run Xinhua and Russian state-run Sputnik would likely fill the gap left behind by VOA. “With U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) likely scaling back operations significantly, Post has lost its most potent interagency partner in the fight against Chinese media influence in Botswana,” the cable said.
U.S. government-funded media is “remarkable” because it’s independent, says Kathy Kiely, chair in free press studies at the University of Missouri. “It is an embodiment of American values, which are that in our country, you can speak truth to power,” Kiely told me.
That’s what differentiates these news agencies from outlets like Sputnik or Xinhua, Kiely added. “Why President Trump would not want to compete with Russia and China is mysterious to me,” she said.
Besides worries about Chinese and Russian state-media, the U.S. mission in Nigeria also expressed concern about not having VOA’s Hausa Service to function as an independent alternative to “extremist propaganda” from groups like the U.S.-designated terrorist group Boko Haram. The U.S. embassy in Islamabad expressed similar concerns about extremist narratives filling the gap left by the silencing of VOA’s Pashto Service.
To Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House bureau chief and the lead plaintiff in one of the VOA lawsuits, these cables “merely confirm what we already know,” she told me. “That each day VOA is silenced is a day that the U.S. concedes the global information space to our adversaries.”
None of the cables contain classified information, Yazdgerdi said in his declaration. Rather, they have been classified as “Sensitive But Unclassified,” which refers to information that is not classified for national security reasons but that warrants protection from “unauthorized disclosure,” according to the Foreign Affairs Manual.
“I reasonably believe the information disclosed herein evidences violations of law, rule, or regulation, gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety,” Yazdgerdi said in his declaration. “The disclosures are therefore protected under the federal whistleblower laws.”
Yazdgerdi did not reply to my email requesting an interview. The White House also did not reply to my email requesting comment.
In a response to my request for comment, a State Department spokesperson told me that the United States remains “clear-eyed” on the threats posed by China, Iran and Russia.
“The United States is committed to countering those threats but doing so in a modern and cost-effective way,” the spokesperson said in a statement that came after publication. “The U.S. government and the Department need to adapt to a modern information environment.”
The cables also reflect a degree of discord within the U.S. government regarding the fate of these broadcasters, according to Weimers.
“The conflict that’s reflected in these cables,” Weimers said, “is that there are still quite a few people working in the United States government who believe that democracy is worth protecting.”
Press Freedom News Wrap
United States
Judge blocks Trump administration from dismantling VOA (NPR)
‘60 Minutes’ executive producer Bill Owens resigns, saying he lost independence (NYT)
For Trump, the message is all. No surprise he’s targeting NPR and PBS (The Guardian)
Jury finds NY Times not liable in Sarah Palin defamation case (Reuters)
A battle is playing out in Washington state over media access to the state legislature (Spokane Public Radio and Oregon Public Broadcasting)
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press published a new guide to help journalists understand legal issues they may face while covering immigration enforcement and deportation (RCFP)
The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a safety advisory for journalists traveling to the United States. Among other tips, the press freedom group recommends journalists traveling to the U.S. use burner phones. (CPJ)
Donald Trump’s war with The Associated Press rages on (Poynter)
‘We know our audiences need us’: The Voice of America story (My VOA editor spoke with the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee University)
Is the Press Next? (The American Prospect)
South America
Argentina: Milei ramps up attacks on “hitmen,” “lying trash” journalists in online rant (Buenos Aires Times)
Europe
Russia: Ekaterina Barabash, a Russian journalist who faced up to 10 years in prison for criticizing the military, has escaped house arrest and is now wanted by police, Russian state media reported Monday. (AFP)
Russia: On April 15, in a closed-door trial, a Russian court sentenced four journalists, Antonina Kravtsova, Konstantin Gabov, Sergei Karelin and Artem Kriger, to five and a half years in a penal colony after convicting them of “extremism” linked to their alleged work with an organisation founded by the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny. (Al Jazeera)
Greece: A court in Athens dismissed the lawsuits against journalists from two Greek news outlets over their investigative reporting on the connections of the nephew of the country’s prime minister to a spyware scandal. (IPI)
Africa
Democratic Republic of the Congo: DRC journalist Émérite Amisi Musada says he was abducted and severely tortured earlier this month over his war coverage (CPJ)
Ethiopia: Ethiopian police raided the privately owned Addis Standard and an employee’s home, confiscated electronic devices and briefly detained three managers (CPJ)
I reported on Ethiopia’s efforts to shutter the Addis Standard back in 2021 for VOA
Sudan: Five media workers have been killed in less than two months by the Rapid Support Force paramilitary group in Sudan (IFJ)
Middle East
Afghanistan: Press freedom groups are calling on the Taliban to release independent journalist Sayed Rashed Kashefi, who has been detained since April 14 (CPJ)
Yemen: Local authorities arrested Yemeni journalist Awad Kashmeem last week (CPJ)
Here’s some of my recent work in other outlets
In Foreign Policy, I wrote about how the attempted dismantling of the U.S. Agency for Global Media presents concerns for journalists on visas in the U.S., and VOA, RFE/RL and RFA journalists who are imprisoned around the world over their work.
“By completely upending USAGM, it signals that freedom of the press, and with it, democracy more broadly, is no longer quite as important of a focus for the United States,” said Katherine Jacobsen, the United States, Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator at CPJ.
For The Contrarian, I reported on how Trump administration officials are harassing individual journalists online.
In Poynter, I wrote about the Fairness Doctrine — a U.S. policy that had mandated broadcast networks to fairly present differing viewpoints on controversial issues, until it was repealed in 1987, which laid the groundwork for a landscape in which partisan media thrived.
On the horizon
The Committee to Protect Journalists on April 30 will release a special report examining the state of press freedom and journalist safety in the United States following the first 100 days of the Trump administration
World Press Freedom Day is May 3
The National Press Club in Washington has a selection of events on May 1 and 2
Reporters Without Borders will also be releasing their annual World Press Freedom Index
Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll consider signing up for a paid subscription.
Best,
Liam Scott