Voice of America
Voice of America is an international broadcaster funded by the United States federal government and established in 1942. It is the largest and oldest of the USA's existing international broadcasters, producing digital, TV, and radio content in 48 languages for affiliate stations around the world. Its targeted and primary audience is non-Americans outside the American borders, especially those living in countries without press freedom or independent journalism.
VOA was established in 1942, during World War II. Building on American use of shortwave radio during the war, it initially served as an anti-propaganda tool against Axis misinformation but expanded to include other forms of content like American music programs for cultural diplomacy. During the Cold War, its operations expanded in an effort to fight communism and played a role in the decline of communism in several countries. Throughout its operations, it has aimed to broadcast uncensored information to residents under restrictive regimes, even airing behind the Iron Curtain. In response, some countries began investing in technology to jam VOA broadcasts. In 2017, Russia designated VOA a foreign agent, requiring it to establish a Russian legal entity. It was blocked in Russia along with some other western international broadcasters in 2022. Its programming can be accessed by Russian listeners using VPNs and other software. Its journalists often take substantial risks reporting inside repressive regimes.
It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independent agency of the U.S. government funded with Congressional approval, which also oversees Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Funds are appropriated annually under the budget for embassies and consulates. As of 2022, VOA had a weekly worldwide audience of approximately 326 million and employed 961 staff with an annual budget of $267.5 million.
The VOA served its propaganda function by pursuing objective journalism, demonstrating that the US has free press and free speech and providing a contrast for people living in countries where the state exerts tight control over the media. Policies have been implemented to try to preserve its accuracy and independence, including the 1976 VOA charter, which mandates its reporting be "accurate, objective, and comprehensive", and the 1994 U.S. International Broadcasting Act, which prohibits editorial interference by government officials. The agency refers to these laws as its "firewall".
Under the first Trump administration, leadership at the agency was replaced with Trump allies and there were several allegations, both internal and external, of interference in hiring and coverage to be loyal to Trump. In his second administration, Trump signed an executive order cutting funding to the USAGM. On March 14, 2025, almost all of VOA's 1,300 journalists, producers and assistants were placed on administrative leave. The next day, many VOA foreign language broadcasts replaced news and other regularly scheduled programming with music and the VOA website ceased being updated. On May 6, 2025, Kari Lake announced that One America News, a far-right, pro-Trump network known for promoting conspiracy theories, will provide news coverage for VOA.
On June 20, 2025, layoff notices were sent to 639 VOA employees, completing an 85% reduction in staff at the U.S. Agency for Global Media since the beginning of Trump's second term, and effectively shutting down the service. Of the entire USAGM, 250 employees remain in staff, close to the statutory minimum, with approximately 200 of those at VOA.
History
American private shortwave broadcasting before World War II
Before World War II, all American shortwave radio stations were in private hands. Privately controlled shortwave networks included the National Broadcasting Company's International Network, which broadcast in six languages, the Columbia Broadcasting System's Latin American international network, which consisted of 64 stations located in 18 countries, the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation in Cincinnati, Ohio, and General Electric which owned and operated WGEO and WGEA, both based in Schenectady, New York, and KGEI in San Francisco, all of which had shortwave transmitters. Experimental programming began in the 1930s, but there were fewer than 12 transmitters in operation.In 1939, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission set the following policy, which was intended to enforce the US State Department's Good Neighbor Policy, but which some broadcasters felt was an attempt to direct censorship:
A licensee of an international broadcast station shall render only an international broadcast service which will reflect the culture of this country and which will promote international goodwill, understanding and cooperation. Any program solely intended for, and directed to an audience in the continental United States does not meet the requirements for this service.
Around 1940, shortwave signals to Latin America were regarded as vital to counter Nazi propaganda. Initially, the US Office of the Coordinator of Information sent releases to each station, but this was seen as an inefficient means of transmitting news. The director of Latin American relations at the Columbia Broadcasting System was Edmund A. Chester, and he supervised the development of CBS's extensive La Cadena de las Américas radio network to improve broadcasting to South America during the 1940s.
World War II
Even before the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government's Office of the Coordinator of Information had already begun providing war news and commentary to the commercial American shortwave radio stations for use on a voluntary basis, through its Foreign Information Service headed by playwright Robert E. Sherwood, who served as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's speech writer and information advisor. Direct programming began a week after the United States' entry into World War II in December 1941, with the first broadcast from the San Francisco office of the FIS via General Electric's KGEI transmitting to the Philippines in English. The next step was to broadcast to Germany, which was called Stimmen aus Amerika and was transmitted on February 1, 1942. It was introduced by the “Battle Hymn of the Republic" and included the pledge: "Today, and every day from now on, we will be with you from America to talk about the war... The news may be good or bad for us – We will always tell you the truth." Roosevelt approved this broadcast, which then-Colonel William J. Donovan and Sherwood had recommended to him. It was Sherwood who actually coined the term "The Voice of America" to describe the shortwave network that began its transmissions on February 1, from 270 Madison Avenue in New York City.The Office of War Information, when organized in the middle of 1942, officially took over VOA's operations. VOA reached an agreement with the British Broadcasting Corporation to share medium-wave transmitters in Great Britain, and expanded into Tunis in North Africa and Palermo and Bari, Italy, as the Allies captured these territories. The OWI also set up the American Broadcasting Station in Europe. Asian transmissions started with one transmitter in California in 1941; services were expanded by adding transmitters in Hawaii and, after recapture, the Philippines.
By the end of the war, VOA had 39 transmitters and provided service in 40 languages. Programming was broadcast from production centers in New York and San Francisco, with more than 1,000 programs originating from New York. Programming consisted of music, news, commentary, and relays of U.S. domestic programming, in addition to specialized VOA programming. About half of VOA's services, including the Arabic service, were discontinued in 1945. In late 1945, VOA was transferred to the US Department of State.
Also included among the cultural diplomacy programming on the Columbia Broadcasting System was the musical show Viva America which featured the Pan American Orchestra and the artistry of several noted musicians from both North and South America, including Alfredo Antonini, Juan Arvizu, Eva Garza, Elsa Miranda, Nestor Mesta Chaires, Miguel Sandoval, John Serry Sr., and Terig Tucci. By 1945, broadcasts of the show were carried by 114 stations on CBS's La Cadena de las Américas network in 20 Latin American nations. These broadcasts proved to be highly successful in supporting President Roosevelt's policy of Pan-Americanism throughout South America during World War II.
Cold War
The VOA ramped up its operations during the Cold War. Foy Kohler, the director of VOA from 1949 to 1952, strongly believed that the VOA was serving its purpose, which he identified as aiding in the fight against communism. He argued that the numbers of listeners they were getting such as 194,000 regular listeners in Sweden, and 2.1 million regular listeners in France, was an indication of a positive impact. As further evidence, he noted that the VOA received 30,000 letters a month from listeners all over the world, and hundreds of thousands of requests for broadcasting schedules. There was an analysis done of some of those letters sent in 1952 and 1953 while Kohler was still director. The study found that letter writing could be an indicator of successful, actionable persuasion. It was also found that broadcasts in different countries were having different effects. In one country, regular listeners adopted and practiced American values presented by the broadcast. Age was also a factor: younger and older audiences tended to like different types of programs, no matter the country. Kohler used all of this as evidence to claim that the VOA helped to grow and strengthen the free world. It also influenced the UN in their decision to condemn communist actions in Korea, and was a major factor in the decline of communism in the "free world, including key countries such as Italy and France. In Italy, the VOA contributed to the decline of communism and a process of "Westernization". The VOA also had an impact behind the Iron Curtain. Practically all defectors during Kohler's time said that the VOA helped in their decision to defect. Another indication of impact, according to Kohler, was the Soviet response. Kohler argued that the Soviets responded because the VOA was having an impact. Based on Soviet responses, it can be presumed that the most effective programs were ones that compared the lives of those behind and outside the Iron Curtain, questions on the practice of slave labor, as well as lies and errors in Stalin's version of Marxism.In 1947, VOA started broadcasting to the Soviet citizens in Russia under the pretext of countering "more harmful instances of Soviet propaganda directed against American leaders and policies" on the part of the internal Soviet Russian-language media, according to John B. Whitton's treatise, Cold War Propaganda. The Soviet Union responded by initiating electronic jamming of VOA broadcasts on April 24, 1949.
Charles W. Thayer headed VOA in 1948–49. Over the next few years, the U.S. government debated the best role of Voice of America. The decision was made to use VOA broadcasts as part of U.S. foreign policy to counter the propaganda of the Soviet Union and other countries. The Arabic service resumed on January 1, 1950, with a half-hour program. This program grew to 14.5 hours daily during the Suez Crisis of 1956, and was six hours a day by 1958. Between 1952 and 1960, Voice of America used a converted U.S. Coast Guard cutter, Courier, as its first mobile broadcasting ship.
Control of VOA passed from the State Department to the U.S. Information Agency when the latter was established in 1953 to transmit worldwide, including to the countries behind the Iron Curtain and to the People's Republic of China. From 1955 until 2003, VOA broadcast American jazz on the Voice of America Jazz Hour. Hosted for most of that period by Willis Conover, the program had 30 million listeners at its peak. A program aimed at South Africa in 1956 broadcast two hours nightly, and special programs such as The Newport Jazz Festival were also transmitted. This was done in association with tours by U.S. musicians, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington, sponsored by the State Department. From August 1952 through May 1953, Billy Brown, a high school senior in Westchester County, New York, had a Monday night program in which he shared everyday happenings in Yorktown Heights, New York. Brown's program ended due to its popularity: his "chatty narratives" attracted so much fan mail, VOA couldn't afford the $500 a month in clerical and postage costs required to respond to listeners' letters. In 1953, VOA personnel were subjected to McCarthyist policies, where VOA was accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and Gerard David Schine of intentionally planning to build weak transmitting stations to sabotage VOA broadcasts. The charges were dropped after one month of court hearings in February and March 1953.
Sometime around 1954, VOA's headquarters were moved from New York to Washington, D.C. The arrival of cheap, low-cost transistors enabled the significant growth of shortwave radio listeners. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, VOA's broadcasts were deemed controversial, as Hungarian refugees and revolutionaries thought that VOA served as a medium and insinuated the possible arrival of Western aid.
Throughout the Cold War, many of the targeted countries' governments sponsored jamming of VOA broadcasts, which sometimes led critics to question the broadcasts' actual impact. For example, in 1956, the Polish People's Republic stopped jamming VOA transmissions, but the People's Republic of Bulgaria continued to jam the signal through the 1970s. Edward R. Murrow said that: "The Russians spend more money jamming the Voice of America than we have to spend for the entire program of the entire Agency. They spend about $125 million
a year jamming it." Chinese-language VOA broadcasts were jammed beginning in 1956 and extending through 1976. Following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, interviews with participants in anti-Soviet movements verified the effectiveness of VOA broadcasts in transmitting information to socialist societies. The People's Republic of China diligently jams VOA broadcasts. Cuba has also been reported to interfere with VOA satellite transmissions to Iran from its Russian-built transmission site at Bejucal. David Jackson, former director of Voice of America, noted: "The North Korean government doesn't jam us, but they try to keep people from listening through intimidation or worse. But people figure out ways to listen despite the odds. They're very resourceful."
File:Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.jpg|thumb|Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.|left
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, VOA covered some of the era's most important news, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, and Neil Armstrong's 1969 first walk on the Moon, which drew an audience estimated at between 615 and 750 million people. In 1973, due to the détente policies in the Cold War, Soviet jamming of the VOA ceased; it restarted in 1979.
File:A Man on the Moon, AS11-40-5903.jpg|thumb|upright|Buzz Aldrin on the moon, in a photograph taken by Neil Armstrong, who can be seen in the visor reflection along with Earth
In the early 1980s, VOA began a $1.3 billion rebuilding program to improve broadcasting with better technical capabilities. During the implementation of Martial law in Poland between 1981 and 1983, VOA's Polish broadcasts expanded to seven hours daily. Throughout the 1980s, VOA focused on covering events from the "American hinterland", such as 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail. Also in the 1980s, VOA also added a television service, as well as special regional programs to Cuba, Radio Martí and TV Martí. Cuba has consistently attempted to jam such broadcasts and has vociferously protested U.S. broadcasts directed at Cuba. In September 1980, VOA started broadcasting to Afghanistan in Dari and in Pashto in 1982. In 1981, VOA opened a bureau in Beijing, China. The next year, it began regular exchanges with Radio Peking.
In 1985, VOA Europe was established as a special service in English that was relayed via satellite to AM, FM, and cable affiliates throughout Europe. With a contemporary format including live disc jockeys, the network presented top musical hits as well as VOA news and features of local interest 24 hours a day. VOA Europe was closed down without advance public notice in January 1997 as a cost-cutting measure. It was followed by VOA Express, which from July 4, 1999, was revamped into VOA Music Mix. Since November 1, 2014, stations have been offering VOA1.
In 1989, Voice of America expanded its Mandarin and Cantonese programming to reach millions of Chinese and inform the country about the pro-democracy movement within the country, including the demonstration in Tiananmen Square. Starting in 1990, the U.S. consolidated its international broadcasting efforts with the establishment of the Bureau of Broadcasting.