Measuring the loss of VOA around the world

VOA’s programming to the East and Southeast Asia region includes some of its longest running. Seven of the region’s language services launched before or within the first few years of VOA’s official establishment in 1942 — Cantonese, Mandarin, Burmese, Indonesian, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese.

During its long run in the region, VOA has provoked the ire of authoritarian regimes by covering events that governments across Asia did not want their people to know about. After VOA was largely silenced in March, state run media as well as current and former government officials in countries from China, Myanmar and Cambodia praised President Donald Trump for ending most of VOA’s programming.

In recent years, VOA has made its broadcasts to China a high priority, with more than 169 hours of content each week in Mandarin on satellite TV, radio and digital platforms.

However, since the March shutdown of most VOA operations, the Mandarin Service has stopped producing all radio and television programs, issuing only minimal web and social media content.

“Generations of Chinese citizens risked their lives to listen to VOA just to access truthful information,” said prominent Chinese journalist Gao Yu in a court filing on behalf of VOA employees suing the Trump administration over the shutdown of VOA. She said that China is currently spending vast sums of money on its national media firewall, international propaganda and to infiltrate Western mainstream media. Gao argued that shutting down VOA, a media agency “the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] regime fears, is akin to cutting off one of America’s own arms or slitting its own throat.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar Derek Mitchell told the SaveVOA campaign, “The Chinese are filling the space that we’re leaving. So we’re allowing China to be [on] an information offensive during the information age.”

Russia is also poised to fill the space. The Sydney-based Lowy Institute found that Voice of America was the most sought-after radio broadcaster in Asia in 2024, in many countries by a considerable margin. But the next most popular radio broadcaster was Russia’s Sputnik.

VOA, with its fact-based reporting, is widely credited with playing a significant role in helping to end the Cold War. “Among the forces that tore holes in the Iron Curtain was the steady bombardment by the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, and the BBC,” said Strobe Talbott, former U.S. deputy secretary of state during the Clinton administration.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, VOA again played a large role in bringing truthful information to people across Eastern Europe. A third of Ukraine received its news from either Voice of America or one of its sister networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, in 2024, according to survey data. The Russian audience of those networks stood at 10.1 million that year. And around a third of the populations of Kosovo (32%), Albania (31%) and Armenia (29%), and about a sixth of the populations of Bosnia-Herzegovina (15%) and Montenegro (14%) got their news from Voice of America.

VOA journalists are responsible for explaining U.S. news and changes in government policies to a global audience.

Immediately following VOA’s closure in March, Russian state officials cheered. “Today is a celebration for my colleagues at RT [formally Russia Today], Sputnik, and other outlets, because [U.S. President Donald] Trump unexpectedly announced that he’s closing down Radio Liberty and Voice of America, and now they’re closed. This is an awesome decision,” said Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief. “We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told the SaveVOA campaign that “Voice of America is the best way to counter the bad information that is coming out of Russia.”

VOA and its sister network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reached huge audiences in Afghanistan, with two-thirds of the population using one or both outlets for news. VOA launched programming to the country in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion in 1979, increased it after 9/11 to include around-the-clock radio reports, and expanded it further in 2022, when the Taliban sought to ban VOA radio and television. VOA responded by launching a 24/7 direct-to-home satellite-delivered television channel for the country.

VOA’s history of honest reporting in Afghanistan, including in the aftermath of the U.S. military withdrawal from the country, had made VOA the most trusted news source in Afghanistan, according to VOA Director Michael Abramowitz in testimony he gave to Congress last year. However, since the March shutdown of most VOA operations, broadcasts to Afghanistan have dwindled to 15 minutes of weekday radio news in Dari and 15 minutes in Pashto.

Another country in the region where VOA has garnered an audience share in the millions through its reporting is Iran: 12.2 million people were tuning in weekly to VOA or RFE/RL programs. VOA’s Persian Service, which debuted in 1942, was paused several times from the 1940s to the 1970s, and was renewed in 1979, two months after the Iranian Revolution overthrew the shah.

The Iranian government has frequently sought to jam satellite television services that carry VOA signals, fearful of its population receiving such news coverage, especially during times of national protests. Afsoon Najafi, whose sister Hadis Najafi was killed during the protest movement that swept Iran in late 2022, thanked VOA for its coverage of the demonstrations, which were sparked by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly.

“[VOA] has been essential in amplifying my cry for justice,” she wrote in a court briefing to support VOA, adding that VOA has allowed Iranians “to see and hear about issues that were either censored or entirely ignored by state-controlled media under the Islamic Republic’s laws.”

Now, VOA’s once 24/7 news operation to Iran has been reduced to about one hour of video programming each weekday.

Since VOA began broadcasting in French in 1960 to 22 African countries, it has expanded to 17 languages across sub-Saharan Africa, with the latest — Fulani — added in 2024 to reach a nomadic population across West and Central Africa.

VOA’s total programming to sub-Saharan Africa had a measured reach of 93.6 million people in 2024, based on USAGM survey data. The largest audiences on the continent included Somalia, where 62% of the population received news from either VOA or one of its sister outlets, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and Niger, where VOA had an audience of 46%. In terms of sheer numbers, Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation — had the largest audience share in the region at 37.4 million people, or 33% of its population.

Since VOA stopped broadcasting to Africa in March, reporting shows that Russia and China are filling the void. China’s state news agencies, Xinhua and CGTN, had more than 37 bureaus in Africa as of April, and RT, formally Russia Today, signed contracts with more than 30 African TV stations since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to NeimanLab.

A bipartisan group of eight former VOA directors wrote to U.S. senators in March, saying that “gutting VOA [in Africa] would cede an entire continent to America’s adversaries and allow authoritarian regimes to control the narrative.”

Mohamed Abdirizak Mohamud, former Somali minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, said in a court filing in support of a lawsuit against VOA’s shutdown that VOA “provides a critical counterbalance to unreliable narratives” in Somalia, where he said “misinformation exacerbates conflict.”

Nigerian Information Minister Mohammed Idris told The Wall Street Journal in July that the departure of VOA from Nigeria “created a perceptible void, especially in terms of trusted, independent international news content.”

Spanish was one of the first languages broadcast by the U.S. government, beginning in 1941, before VOA was officially established the following year. Total programming to Latin America by VOA was measured to have reached 100 million people last year.

VOA had grown a huge audience share in many Latin American countries. At least half of the population of Nicaragua (59%), Costa Rica (55%) and the Dominican Republic (51%) reported getting weekly news from the networks last year. Countries that had a near majority of the audience share included El Salvador (49%), Peru (49%) and Bolivia (47%).

As in Africa, experts warn that the void left by VOA programming in Latin America will be filled by U.S. adversaries, including Russia and China. Former U.S. diplomat William Hill told the SaveVOA campaign, “If we silence VOA, we leave the field open to these rivals, and we leave the field unchallenged to their efforts. Why would we voluntarily do this to ourselves?”

In Nicaragua, which is rated by Reporters Without Borders as the ninth-worst country in the world in terms of press freedoms, Nicaraguan American democracy campaigner Damaris Rostran says VOA “remains an essential lifeline, reminding us that the world is watching, and that the voice of truth will not be silenced.”

In addition to reaching people in their native languages, VOA also committed to carrying programs in America’s common tongue — English — cultivating an audience of around 80 million people each week.

The English division includes VOA’s main newsroom — the heart of news operations for the organization — with its long tradition of ensuring that “VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news,” the opening sentence of VOA’s charter.

The division includes dozens of U.S.-based reporters who cover all aspects of U.S. government policy as well as telling the stories of America’s varied residents to audiences across the globe.

VOA correspondents often travel with the press pool that covers high-level U.S. military officials in order to explain U.S. defense policy and international security issues to a global audience.

“Russia, China and Iran all invest heavily in English programming, which is filled with disinformation and lies about the United States. VOA English provided a trusted alternative before it was silenced,” said Barry Newhouse, acting director of VOA’s News Center.

VOA’s English programming has proved popular with audiences in Africa, a subset of political leaders and policymakers in non-English speaking countries, and with internet users in China. An online panel conducted by Gallup and a local partner found that 5.5% of Chinese internet users accessed VOA content in English each week.

In addition to the English website, programming for VOA’s English division also included hourly radio newscasts; a press freedom desk committed to covering the challenges journalists face around the world; “Learning English,” a popular, slow-paced broadcast to help millions to learn English while getting the news; and music shows, following the tradition of VOA’s iconic “Jazz Hour” radio show, hosted for four decades by Willis Conover.