Voice of America (VOA), founded during World War II, emerged as a U.S. government agency tasked with broadcasting America’s message—or countering enemy propaganda—to the Axis powers and their occupied territories. Its Chinese-language service, launched in 1941 before the Pearl Harbor attack, was among its earliest initiatives. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally established VOA as a federal entity. During the Cold War, operating under the United States Information Agency (USIA), VOA expanded to dozens of languages, targeting audiences behind the Iron Curtain and in nations lacking a free press. Its mission: to amplify the voice of the American people.
I’ve tracked VOA’s evolution for decades. In the 1970s, as a devoted listener to its Chinese broadcasts, I defied Mao’s regime, where tuning into “enemy radio” was a crime punishable by lengthy imprisonment. During my own incarceration, interrogators demanded, “Did you listen to enemy radio?” I answered candidly, “Yes, Voice of America.” Decades later, when I became director of VOA’s Chinese branch, the irony felt surreal. Over the years, I’ve also observed seismic shifts in the media landscape that reshaped VOA’s role.
The internet fundamentally transformed how people access information, eroding authoritarian regimes’ ability to isolate their citizens from outside voices. The rise of social media ushered in an era of information overload. Once a dominant force in dissenting airwaves alongside broadcasters like Radio Free Europe and the BBC, VOA has struggled to remain relevant. Yet, its diminishing influence isn’t solely due to external changes—VOA itself has faltered internally.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton dismantled the USIA, which had overseen VOA’s public diplomacy efforts. VOA leadership celebrated this as a liberation for its journalists, freeing them from government oversight. But this “independence” marked the beginning of a downward spiral. Detached from U.S. foreign policy, VOA became vulnerable to foreign influence, with authoritarian governments—none more adept than China—exploiting access to their domestic markets as leverage.
When I joined VOA in 2011, I uncovered troubling realities. Within my first week, editors revealed that our costliest program, “Cultural Odyssey, a weekly 5-minute TV show with negligible viewership—sometimes drawing just dozens of online views—cost hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Its true purpose? Producing raw footage for Chinese state television. Each week, dozens of copies were shipped to China, often via its embassy, by a contractor billing the U.S. government $100,000 yearly. At China’s behest, the content avoided anything “sensitive”—anything the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might oppose. Acceptance by Beijing was deemed a triumph. Another lauded program featured a young blonde lady teaching Chinese audiences about dating and dining, costing $200,000 annually for mere minutes of airtime.
I axed these programs despite intense pushback from senior management. The Chinese Embassy complained directly to my superiors, who retaliated by ordering the cancellation of “History’s Mysteries,” a popular documentary series I’d launched exposing the CCP’s brutal history.
VOA’s decline accelerated during Donald Trump’s presidency. After his 2016 election, the newsroom fell into despair. Then-director Amanda Bennett roamed the office, trying to lift spirits. When she approached me, I surprised her by saying, “I’m not worried—I’m happy!” In hindsight, I may have unintentionally made myself her enemy.
The VOA newsroom, known as the “English Department,” controlled its 48 language services, producing scripts for translation. Its staff—mostly Washington bureaucrats rather than real journalists—spent their days reading wire services and media outlets. Many were former mainstream media workers who had landed at VOA as a fallback. Their political leanings, overwhelmingly pro-Democrat, mirrored those of the mainstream media and Washington’s bureaucratic elite, fueling an anti-Trump bias across 48 languages—all funded by taxpayers.
This bias extended beyond Trump himself to his policies. Take illegal immigration—a divisive issue where media narratives often clashed with public sentiment favoring stricter controls. From 2023 to 2024, amid a migration crisis, VOA’s leadership directed the Chinese branch to dispatch reporters to Central America and U.S. border zones, detailing migration routes, asylum processes, and government aid. VOA gained notoriety as an illegal immigration handbook, with English Department content funneled through its language services—all at a taxpayer cost of $250 million annually.
VOA’s drift from its mission—to counter propaganda and champion American values—demands scrutiny. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) should take note. Once a beacon of truth in oppressive regimes, VOA now risks irrelevance, compromised by foreign influence and internal politicization.
It may not even be salvageable. The American people must find new voices to represent them in the world.
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Sasha Gong is former director of the Chinese branch of the Voice of America.
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