Potemkin Airwaves

The Hollow Resurrection of U.S. International Broadcasting

The boasting this week by the self-proclaimed acting chief executive officer of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Kari Lake, that audiences in Iran and Venezuela are being effectively served amid the current geo-political crises deserves scrutiny.

Lake and DOGE, ten months ago, effectively destroyed U.S. international broadcasting. Everyone at the Voice of America was sent home (where nearly all remain), all contracts were cancelled for wire services and satellite transponders, USAGM transmitter sites were mothballed and Congressionally-approved funds for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia throttled.

What has been hastily brought back, as a claimed “statutory minimum” by Lake, resembles a Potemkin village. She has ignored a federal judge’s order to restore VOA.

There’s a few daily minutes of VOA Korean program on shortwave from the Philippines. VOA and RFA used to broadcast in Korean from dusk to dawn using mediumwave transmitters in South Korea that cover most of the peninsula. A snippet of Dari and Pashto also is beamed to Afghanistan via shortwave from the Middle East. Previously VOA’s broadcast 24/7 via satellite TV into Afghanistan and garnered a significant audience.

A few stories are posted online in Mandarin Chinese, but the hours of satellite TV programming have not resumed.

Lake contends that the audiences in Venezuela are being reached by the Radio Marti transmissions, a service which targets Cuba. La Voz de América (VOA in Spanish), which had a significant audience in Latin America before Lake shut it down, has not been restored. Its website is frozen in time at March 14, 2025.

Radio Farda (RFE/RL’s service for Iran) is back on shortwave on leased transmitters and on medium wave from Kuwait, although the signals are being heavily jammed, presumably by the Iranian security apparatus. Lake, meantime, is feuding with RFE’s president, Steve Capus, because she’s demanding the grantee (which is not a government agency) align its messaging with Trump’s foreign policy.

USAGM’s cumulative efforts in Farsi, including VOA’s Persian News Network, appear to be under the direction of someone who has been compared to a Trump PR machine. Ali Javanmardi even went on air and made explicit that what is broadcast under his and Kari Lake’s supervision will follow the current U.S. administration’s policy on Iran.

Some recent VOA content in Mandarin was MAGA propaganda praising Trump, not balanced journalism. VOA standards & practices editor was among those placed on paid administrative leave early last year and has since accepted a similar post at a domestic news network.

Lake, who twice failed to win statewide office as a Republican in Arizona, reportedly has her eye on a political future in Iowa. Meanwhile, she has repeatedly expressed her contempt for the U.S. International Broadcasting Act of 1994 intended to prevent U.S. government officials from interfering in the editorial decisions of either VOA or RFE/RL.

Lawmakers in both parties want to restore $643 million for USAGM, recognizing its longtime value as a key instrument of American public diplomacy. Lake’s reaction?: “Congress is proposing half a billion dollars more in funding than we requested.” That’s not a statement of gratitude, rather a repudiation of Capitol Hill’s largesse.

Lake’s actions and words demonstrate she wants U.S. international broadcasting muzzled and when it does whimper under her short leash that it be a White House and State Department mouthpiece.