VOA’s Legal Fight for Independence

Journalists at Voice of America have been to court in the hope of getting back to their jobs. Now they are suing to protect against censorship.

For the embattled journalists of Voice of America (VOA), first came the fight to return to the newsroom they’d been unceremoniously booted from by the Trump administration. Now comes another daunting challenge: clawing back their editorial independence.

Late last month, four employees joined with Pen America and Reporters Without Borders to sue the administration over allegations that President Trump and his political appointees at the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA, had censored their coverage, transforming the newsroom into a “partisan mouthpiece of the administration” and breaching a congressionally created editorial firewall. Codified under the 1994 International Broadcasting Act, the firewall is meant to prevent “interference by any US government official in the objective, independent reporting of news.”