With Friday’s notice, 85 percent of the US workforce was reduced.
Leaf notices have been sent to the Voice of America (VOA) and 639 employees of the Voice of the United States (VOA) and the US agency and the United States agency from the World War to the world since World War II.
The notices sent on Friday included employees of the Persian language service of the VOa who were invited on administrative leave last week to broadcast a report to Iran after the Israeli attack.
According to a shooting employee, three journalists working for the Persian service on Friday, who had left their office for cigarette breaks, confiscated their badge and was not allowed to return.
In total, about 1,400 people in VOA and US agency for global media, or 85 percent of its employees, Lost their jobs since MarchTrump’s senior adviser Kai Lake said. She said, “This is a” part of a long -term effort “to destroy the inflated, account neurotic bureaucracy.
“For decades, American taxpayers have been forced to ban the work, biased and waste -filled agencies,” Lake said in a report. “That will end now.”
The VOA started with the residents of Nazi Germany broadcasting stories about American democracy, and increased to distribute news worldwide in dozens of languages, often in countries with no tradition of free press.
But President Donald Trump has fought against the media on several fronts, complaining that many of the production he has produced are biased against conservatives. They include a proposal to close the federal funding PBS And NPRWhich is currently in front of Congress.
‘Death of independent journalism’
Most VOA employees are on administrative leave from March 15, their broadcast and social media posts are often calm. On Friday, there were three VOA employees who were fighting to destroy the VOA court in the court that the ban was taking notice.
“This Years describes the death of an independent journalism of 83 years that maintains us the ideals of democracy and freedom worldwide,” the complainant Jessica Jeriet, Kate Nipper and Pati Vidakuvara said in a statement.
The Persian language staff, who spoke on the condition of unknown due to the ongoing legal case, was in the office on Friday when colleagues were forbidden to re -enter. The person was afraid to leave for the same reason – even though the authorities have stopped their work – even until a ban was reported.
In the process of retiring at Mississippi University, VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman has called the leaf that the American government has fulfilled the peace of the most effective soft-energy weapon.
It is not clear, if any, what will be the VOA programming place worldwide. The Trump-Supporting Forest American News Network has allowed the use of its signal.
Although the prosecutions in the lawsuit urged the Congress to support the VOA, Harman said that even if the democratic president and the Congress take office, he will survive. One thing is, every day, the audience and readers have another day to get into the second habit of getting news.
Herman said, “I believe this destruction is permanent,” because in the next financial year, we do not see any indication that Congress will rush to finance VOA. “”
When another administration shows this outlet more sympathy, “I am afraid that the VOA will be forgotten,” he said.
