{"id":703,"date":"2025-03-17T09:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T09:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/17\/trump-administration-starts-mass-layoffs-at-media-outlet-voice-of-america-al-jazeera-english\/"},"modified":"2025-03-17T09:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T09:13:09","slug":"trump-administration-starts-mass-layoffs-at-media-outlet-voice-of-america-al-jazeera-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/17\/trump-administration-starts-mass-layoffs-at-media-outlet-voice-of-america-al-jazeera-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration starts mass layoffs at media outlet Voice of America – Al Jazeera English"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Contractors sent email notifying them of their termination effective March 31.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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United States President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has begun laying off staff at Voice of America (VOA)<\/a> after signing an executive order placing nearly all employees at the government-funded media network on leave.<\/p>\n

VOA employees working on a contractual basis on Sunday received an email informing them that they were being terminated effective March 31.<\/p>\n

In the email, which was seen by Al Jazeera, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) said contractors must \u201ccease all work immediately\u201d and were \u201cnot permitted to access any agency buildings or systems\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cContractors, including myself, at Voice of America have just received an email notifying us that our contracts will be terminated effective March 31, 2025,\u201d Misha Komadovsky, the White House correspondent for VOA\u2019s Russian-language service, said in a post on X.<\/p>\n

The move came after Trump on Friday signed an executive order to effectively eliminate USAGM, which also hosts Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, along with six other federal agencies.<\/p>\n

In a statement, The White House said the move would \u201censure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda\u201d and listed a series of criticisms of VOA by conservative media and lawmakers.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s directive is the latest in a series of moves to draw condemnation from media freedom advocacy groups, including Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, which branded the latest order \u201cdystopian\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last month, the Trump administration began barring The Associated Press<\/a> news agency from events over its refusal to use \u201cGulf of America\u201d as the name for the Gulf of Mexico, and announced that it would decide which journalists and media organisations can participate in media pools.<\/p>\n

VOA and other US-funded outlets have long faced accusations of liberal bias from Trump and his allies, including cost-cutting tsar Elon Musk, who last month claimed the broadcasters were made up of \u201cradical left crazy people talking to themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s first term, the White House accused VOA of \u201cspeaking for America\u2019s adversaries \u2013 not its citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 2020, a federal judge ruled that Trump-appointed USAGM CEO Michael Pack acted unconstitutionally by investigating its journalists over their alleged bias.<\/p>\n

Brian Padden, a former VOA bureau chief in South Korea and Indonesia who retired in 2020, said it was \u201cgalling\u201d to hear the Trump administration accuse VOA of disseminating anti-US propaganda.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the course of my reporting, I have been shot at, roughed up, and even nearly decapitated by an exploding helicopter in Eastern Ukraine,\u201d Padden said on Facebook on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2014, I was harassed by Pro-Russian activists or militants in Ukraine who accused me and my VOA TV crew of being agents of pro-American propaganda. Both Musk and the Russian militants are wrong. VOA does not do propaganda. VOA reports the news, which includes the perspective of both proponents and critics of the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Friday\u2019s executive order, VOA\u2019s broadcasts have gone quiet or been replaced by music in multiple regions, including parts of Asia and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Established during World War II to combat propaganda from Nazi Germany, VOA operated in more than 40 languages and claimed a weekly audience of more than 354 million people worldwide.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contractors sent email notifying them of their termination effective March 31. United States President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has begun laying off staff at Voice of America (VOA) after signing an executive order placing nearly all employees at the government-funded media network on leave. VOA employees working on a contractual basis on Sunday received an email […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}