The war with Iran is driving fuel shortages and inflation around the world, deepening anti-American sentiment at a time when international confidence in the United States is already in decline. A June Pew survey found unfavorable views of the rising across 36 countries.
This is precisely the moment Washington needs credible international broadcasting to explain its policies through fact-based journalism. Yet, after failing to silence the Voice of America, the taxpayer-funded independent international broadcaster, the Trump administration is transforming it into a government mouthpiece.
In doing so, the administration is not only breaking the law; it is handing Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing a strategic victory as they ramp up their own global influence operations. A shuttered VOA cedes the information space to America’s adversaries. A propagandistic VOA advances their disinformation campaigns and forfeits the trust of the 360 millionpeople who used to tune in to its broadcasts each week.
Current editorial priorities bear many of the characteristics of wartime propaganda, including at VOA Farsi, one of only six of VOA’s 49 language services brought back in a much-reduced capacity following legal action against the administration.
Stories center on administration statements, often without opposing context. Recent articles highlight administration claims that oil prices are lower than before the war and that maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been restored. Meanwhile, VOA suppressed coverageof civilian death tolls from airstrikes and barely mentioned the February bombing of the elementary school in Minab.
This reporting bears little resemblance to VOA’s journalism that until March 2025 was guided by the VOA Charter. This 1976 law enshrines editorial independence by mandating three things: VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news; VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society; and VOA will present policies clearly and effectively, with responsible discussions and opinion on those policies.
That means covering military objectives and declarations of success alongside critics’ scrutiny of those claims, the war’s humanitarian consequences, and its cost to American taxpayers. Statements from the administration alongside lawmakers, analysts, activists, Trump supporters, and the majority of Americans who oppose the war. It also means including Tehran’s position, the voices of Iranian civilians and diaspora groups, international reactions, and the complex history of -Iran ties.
Little of that is evident in VOA’s reporting today.
Those steering the agency away from objective journalism may be tempted by what they see as an immediate payoff: making military operations appear more successful, and amplifying the president’s message.
In reality, this approach undermines interests from the outset. Narratives that contradict audiences’ lived reality are unlikely to persuade them. Iranians feel the war’s impact in their daily lives. People across Africa and Asia feel it in their wallets.
Even if some are persuaded, any short-term messaging advantage would be outweighed by the broader loss of credibility. Once audiences see that VOA serves the administration rather than the truth, they are less likely to trust its reporting on anything else, whether it’s the war in Ukraine or Gaza, the earthquake response in Venezuela, even something as indisputable as World Cup scores.
This trust can only be sustained if VOA continues to produce journalism, not propaganda. Unlike Russian and Chinese state media which can broadcast their governments’ consistent political narratives, a broadcaster that echoes its administration may need to change its message every four years, sacrificing credibility every time.
The VOA Charter states: “The long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the world…” This emphasis on long-range interests transcends administrations, and it has worked: more than 80 percent of VOA’s global audience found its reporting trustworthy.
‘We shall tell you the truth‘
VOA made a promise to audiences in its first broadcast in 1942: “The news may be good for us. The news may be bad. But we shall tell you the truth.” This has repeatedly proven to be the right course of action, even when the news is devastating.
In March 2012, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales killed 16 Afghan civilians in a shooting spree in Kandahar. The killing, reported by VOA,made the area “a very difficult place to operate in,” said Jason Church, a retired Army captain and Purple Heart recipient deployed in Afghanistan at the time. Yet, he views VOA’s coverage in Pashto, Dari, Urdu, Farsi and other languages of the region as essential, because without it the only message the people would hear is from “an angry [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and the Taliban.”
Reporting bad news is not “anti-American,” as Project 2025 claimed in its chapter on USAGM. On the contrary, journalism that reflects a nation unafraid of scrutiny embodies the very best of American ideals. For more than eight decades, VOA reports carried an implicit message: A strong nation is one willing to tell the truth about itself. That message, more than any government talking point, has made VOA one of America’s most effective instruments of soft power that is too valuable to squander.
This commitment to truth – applying the same journalistic standards to every administration and every government including its own – is what distinguished VOA from state-controlled broadcasters such as China Media Group, Russia Today, and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
RAND researchers describe RT’s approach as a “firehose of falsehood”: high-volume, repetitive messaging unconstrained by objective reality or consistency. Rather than persuading audiences through credibility, this model seeks to overwhelm the information environment, and erode trust by making the truth seem unknowable.
The RAND study also suggests that if audiences have already been primed with accurate information, disinformation becomes less persuasive. As outlined in the now-abandoned USAGM’s 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, that is precisely VOA’s goal: to be “extremely capable first responders in the current war on truth.”
Why abandon that goal? Turning VOA into a propaganda outlet will not help the administration control the narrative; it will only serve adversaries’ purpose of making all information seem unreliable. With a silenced VOA, the unilaterally disarms in the global information war. With a propagandistic VOA, it arms its adversaries.
This July marks the 50th anniversary of the VOA Charter. It is time to return to it.
Patsy Widakuswara is a former VOA White House bureau chief who has been a lead plaintiff against the administration’s attempt to dismantle the agency. The views expressed here are her own and do not reflect the views of her employer. This article is republished with permission from Stephen Herman’s Substack Newsguy.
