TRANSCRIPT:
I’m one of the plaintiffs on a lawsuit we filed in March of 2026 with other journalists and two leading press freedom organizations, PEN America and Reporters Without Borders. And we filed that lawsuit because we believe that the law that protects VOA’s independent, editorial independence must mean something in practice.
The complaint argues the agency leadership — Kari Lake in particular — interfered with news coverage, suppressed certain stories they didn’t want to be published or aired, and in some cases required journalists to publish White House talking points almost word by word, word to word. And this is not independent journalism. That’s exactly what the legal Firewall that protects VOA was designed to prevent.
What we are hoping to achieve: simply put we want the legal Firewall to be respected and to be restored. We want VOA journalists not just to be back to the newsroom, but we want them to be back to practice independent journalism. It’s about democracy. It’s about democratic values. And it shows the other world that the independent journalism, the freedom of speech is very important and can’t be undermined by such-and-such political party.
Published
Turkova is a journalist who worked for VOA's Russian Service from 2017 to 2025 as a Personal Services Contractor (“PSC”). An award-winning journalist with more than 20 years of experience, Turkova specializes in the language of media, political rhetoric and propaganda. In 2025, the Russian government designated Turkova a “foreign agent,” a label widely used to target and persecute independent journalists and media workers.