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WASHINGTON (CN) — A coalition of Voice of America journalists sued the U.S. Agency for Global Media and its leadership on Monday, challenging their effort to turn the government-funded news outlet into a mouthpiece for the White House.
Barry Newhouse, Ayesha Tanzeem, Dong Hyuk Lee and Ksenia Turkova — the former acting director of the VOA Central News Division, current director of the South & Central Asia division, current chief of the Korean Service and former contractor of the Russian Service, respectively — filed the 37-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
They argue that former acting CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media Kari Lake has shifted her efforts to focus on the outlet’s news content after her campaign to gut and dismantle the agency was halted by the courts.
On March 17, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the restoration of hundreds of VOA employees placed on administrative leave, finding Lake did not have the legal authority to order their terminations because she lacked Senate confirmation.
The government appealed the Ronald Reagan appointee’s decision to the D.C. Circuit last week.
“Frustrated in that effort by the courts, the administration has now taken a different tack: to use its governmental authority to control VOA’s substantive output — the content of its broadcasts and publications — by suppressing coverage of events that it wishes had not occurred, and separately, by directing that its own partisan messages be passed off to viewers and listeners as ‘news,’” the journalists write in the suit.
“Censorship and propaganda are two sides of the same coin,” they add. “All of this violated the federal statutes that govern VOA, and the Constitution itself; and all of this undermines the credibility of the United States in the eyes of the world.”
The journalists are requesting a federal judge issue an injunction against the government to protect their editorial independence and declare its actions as clear violations of the First Amendment.
The government’s actions, the journalists assert, are particularly damaging amid the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
According to the journalists, Lake and current acting CEO of the global media agency Michael Rigas have suppressed interviews, video footage and stories about anti-government protests within the country and reporting on certain elements in opposition to the Iranian regime have also been banned from VOA’s Persian Service.
The suppression has “render[ed] untrustworthy a once-respected source of independent news about Iran,” the journalists write.
Further, they say, Lake and Rigas have hijacked the VOA’s Mandarin Service and its China coverage, using it to “republish White House talking points and label them, falsely, as ‘news.’”
Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders Inc., said in a statement announcing the organization’s part in the lawsuit that the challenge was necessary to end the Trump administration’s illegal attacks on press freedom.
“The Trump administration has made clear that if it can’t eliminate VOA, it wants to turn it into a political propaganda machine, cheerleading Trump’s agenda,” Weimers said. “That is at odds with VOA’s mission to inform millions around the world who lack regular access to authentic, trustworthy journalism.”
Under the International Broadcasting Act of 1994, which reaffirmed congressional funding for the agency as well as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, the VOA is required to provide “accurate, objective and comprehensive” news coverage. The statute further requires the CEO of the global media agency to “respect the independence and integrity” of the outlet.
The journalists point to the “statutory firewall” between the VOA newsroom and its publishers, the political appointees at the global media agency, which is specifically designed to prevent such political interference with the journalists’ independent reporting and editorial judgment.
By suppressing hard news stories about street demonstrations in Iran, forcing the outlet to publish White House talking points word-for-word and “images of President Trump in the style of Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il,” the journalists warn the outlet’s ability to “faithfully report the news” has been substantially harmed.
As a result of the government’s actions since March 2025, journalists and editors at VOA have been silenced and chilled, and their audience have been deprived of the news, the journalists argue.
Trump targeted the global media agency, which he referred to as the “Voice of Radical America” in a March 14, 2025, executive order titled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” requiring its “non-statutory components and functions” be eliminated to the “maximum extent.”
The president took issue with the outlet’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election — part of his larger campaign to rewrite his political defeat to former President Joe Biden — and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
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