In a strongly worded decision this week, a federal judge ordered that the Voice of America — its mission to provide news for countries around the world largely shut down for the past year by the Trump administration — come roaring back to life.
Whether or not that actually happens is anybody’s guess.
The government filed notice Thursday to appeal U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s order two days earlier to put hundreds of VOA employees who have been on paid leave the past year back to work. Lamberth had ruled on March 7 that Kari Lake, who was President Donald Trump’s choice to oversee the bureaucratic parent U.S. Agency for Global Media, didn’t have the authority to reduce VOA to a skeleton.
The Voice of America was established as a news source in World War II, beaming reports to many countries that had no tradition of a free press. Before Trump took office again last year, Voice of America was operating in 49 different languages, heard by an estimated 362 million people.
Trump’s team contended that government-run news sources, which also include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, were an example of bloated government and that they wanted news reporting more favorable to the current administration. With a greatly reduced staff, it currently operates in Iran, Afghanistan, China, North Korea and in countries with a large population of Kurds.
Lamberth, in his decision, said Lake had “repeatedly thumbed her nose” at laws mandating VOA’s operation.
Time to turn the page at VOA?
VOA director Michael Abramowitz said legislators in both parties understand the need for a strong operation and have set aside enough funding for the job to be done. “It is time for all parties to come together and work to rebuild and strengthen the agency,” he said.
Don’t expect that to happen soon. “President Trump was elected to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse across the administration, including the Voice of America — and efforts to improve efficiency at USAGM have been a tremendous success,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “This will not be the final say on the matter.”
Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House bureau chief and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to bring it back, said that “restoring the physical infrastructure is going to take a lot of money and some time but it can be done. What is more difficult is recovering from the trauma that our newsroom has gone through.”
It’s an open question whether the administration wants a real news organization or a mouthpiece, said David Ensor, a former Voice of America director between 2010 and 2014. “We don’t know — maybe no one does at the moment — what the future holds,” he said.
The administration’s efforts over the past year to bolster friendly outlets and fight coverage that displeases them offer a clue, even though Congress has required that Voice of America be an objective and unbiased news source. This week it was announced that Christopher Wallace, an executive at the conservative network Newsmax who had previously spent 15 years at Fox News Channel, will be the new deputy director at VOA. Abramowitz didn’t know he was getting a new deputy until it was announced.
Widakuswara wouldn’t comment on what Wallace’s appointment might mean. “I’m not going to pass judgment before seeing his work,” she said.
While Lamberth ordered more than a thousand employees on leave to go back to work, it’s not clear how many of them moved on to other jobs or retired in the past year. The judge also said he did not have the authority to bring back hundreds of independent contractors who were terminated.
One employee who left is Steve Herman, a former White House bureau chief and national correspondent at VOA and now executive director of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi. Despite the court decisions, he questions whether the Trump administration would oversee a return to what the organization used to be.
“I’m a bit of a pessimist,” Herman said. “I think it’s going to be very difficult.”
An administration loath to admit defeat
Besides fighting to shut it down, Trump is loath to admit defeat. Last week, the White House nominated Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, putting it more firmly within the administration’s control. Her nomination requires Senate approval.
“Is Marco Rubio’s State Department going to allow objective journalism in 49 languages?” Herman asked. “I don’t think so. I would want that to happen, but that’s a fairy tale.”
In the budget bill passed in February, Congress set aside $200 million for Voice of America’s operation. While that represents about a 25% cut in the agency’s previous appropriation, it sent a bipartisan message of support, said Kate Neeper, VOA’s director of strategy and performance evaluation. Besides being a plaintiff with Widakuswara in the lawsuit to restore the agency, she has helped some of her colleagues deal with some of their own problems over the past year, including immigration issues.
“There is a lot of enthusiasm for going back to work,” she said. “People are eager to show up on Monday.”
The hunger for information from Voice of America in Iran when he was director was a clear example of what the organization meant, Ensor said. Surveys showed that between a quarter and a third of Iran’s households tuned in to VOA once a week, primarily on satellite television. Occasionally the government would crack down and confiscate satellite dishes, but Iranians could usually quickly find replacements, he said.
“I believe in Voice of America as a news organization and as a voice of America,” Ensor said. “It was important, and it can be again.”
Who are we?
KSPB, Pebble Beach, 91.9 FM is a commercial-free, student-run, radio station, that has been broadcasting from Stevenson School in Pebble Beach for over 40 years.
The station is student run and includes staff positions, from webmaster to program director. Before applying for a live show on air, each student is required to take a class to learn about Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, and how to operate the station independently. The students decide the genre of music for their specific show, but the general programming is alternative rock with specialized shows featuring hip-hop and international music. However, some students prefer to run their own talk shows.
With its connection to the Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS) the station fills out its schedule with content from the BBC World Service, American Public Media, and other public radio producers such as WAMC (Albany) and KCRW (Santa Monica). It also obtains content from its affiliation with the Public Radio Exchange (PRX).
KSPB has listeners in five counties in California – Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Santa Clara and San Mateo – with a potential total listenership of more than 1 million. Also, with the recent addition of streaming, KSPB is now available worldwide!
Source: kspb.org
R.E.M. disbanded back in 2011. But the seminal indie-rock group is back with new five-track EP “Radio Free Europe 2025,”containing previously unreleased tracks and a new remix of the song. Proceeds from the vinyl pressing will benefit the U.S. government’s Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which are under attack from the Trump administration.
The EP, coming more than four decades after the 1981 release of “Radio Free Europe” on college radio, coincides with the 75th anniversary of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as well as World Press Freedom Day (which falls on May 3). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was established 75 years ago and currently broadcasts news and information in 27 languages to 23 countries where a free press is either banned by the government or under threat.
Members of R.E.M. said the mission of promoting free expression has always resonated with the band.
“Whether it’s music or a free press — censorship anywhere is a threat to the truth everywhere,” Michael Stipe, lead singer and founding member of R.E.M., said in a statement. “On World Press Freedom Day, I’m sending a shout-out to the brave journalists at Radio Free Europe.” Bassist Mike Mills added, “Radio Free Europe’s journalists have been pissing off dictators for 75 years. You know you’re doing your job when you make the right enemies. Happy World Press Freedom Day to the ‘OG’ Radio Free Europe.”
Despite the song’s name, Mills says in the liner notes to the two-disc edition of R.E.M.’s “And I Feel Fine… The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982–1987” that it has “nothing to do” with the broadcaster: “We just liked the title.”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty president and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement, “To me, R.E.M.’s music has always embodied a celebration of freedom: freedom of expression, lyrics that make us think, and melodies that inspire action. Those are the very aims of our journalists at Radio Free Europe — to inform, inspire, and uphold freedoms often elusive to our audiences. We hold dictators accountable. They go to great lengths to silence us — blocking our websites, jamming our signals, and even imprisoning our colleagues.”
In March, President Trump issued an executive order seeking to dismantle Voice of America, which oversees Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and others. The broadcasters have won court rulings to reverse Trump’s move but the White House has withheld funding, leading to layoffs and uncertainty at the outlets. On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore $12 million in congressionally appropriated funding for Radio Free Europe.
On Friday, the heads of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks sent a letter to Trump officials urging them to restore funding “immediately.” That came as Radio Free Asia laid off most of its staff. “Our journalists are terrified that the withdrawal of support from their employers will lead to harassment, prison, and worse,” they said in the letter, per CNN. “We urge you to restore our funding immediately before further irreparable reputational harm is done to the United States — and before innocent lives are needlessly and recklessly lost.”
R.E.M.’s “Radio Free Europe 2025” is available to stream and download now. A limited-edition, 10-inch orange-vinyl pressing is available for pre-order now exclusively via the official R.E.M. store and independent record stores; it will be released Sept. 12. Proceeds from all vinyl sales will go to RFE/RL, an editorially independent nonpartisan and nonprofit corporation.
Released through Craft Recordings, the “Radio Free Europe 2025” EP was overseen by the band’s original producer Mitch Easter. The record opens with the 2025 remix by Grammy-winning producer Jacknife Lee (U2, Snow Patrol, Taylor Swift, The Killers), who also produced R.E.M.’s final two studio albums, “Accelerate” and “Collapse Into Now.” Lee “gives the track a fresh take while staying true to its indie-rock DNA,” according to Creative Recordings. Rounding out the EP are four of Mitch Easter’s original 1981 recordings: the Hib-Tone single mix of “Radio Free Europe,” its flip-side “Sitting Still,” the “Wh. Tornado” demo, and Easter’s never-before-released 1981 remix “Radio Free Dub.”
In 2009, “Radio Free Europe” was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry for “setting the pattern for later indie-rock releases.”
Formed in 1980 in Athens, Georgia, R.E.M. had a three-decade run of multi-platinum sales before amicably disbanding in 2011. Over the course of their career, R.E.M. released 15 studio albums, won three Grammys, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2007) as well as the Songwriters Hall of Fame (2024).
Here’s the track list for the new EP:
Radio Side
- Radio Free Europe 2025 (Jacknife Lee Remix)*
- Radio Free Dub (Mitch Easter 1981 Remix)*
Liberty Side
- Radio Free Europe (Original Hib-Tone Single)
- Sitting Still (Original Hib-Tone B-Side)
- Wh. Tornado (From Cassette Set) **
* Never before released
** First time on digital and vinyl
