Silencing the Voice of America
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What is Voice of America and its historical significance?
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 could 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. Support for the show comes from yonder.
There's a certain time and place for you to be checking your phone. And the classroom probably isn't one of them. Shouldn't school classrooms have, at the very least, the level of focus a stand-up comedian would demand of students? Their audience, Yonder, says they are committed to fostering phone-free schools. Learn more at overyonder.com. That's O-V-E-R-Y-O-N-D-R dot com. Overyonder.com without the E in Yonder.
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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.
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 US 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.
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?
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. Of course, there are people that scoff and say, oh, you know, VOA, because it's funded by the U.S.
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