Matthew Goodman

TRANSCRIPT:

In my experience, the Voice of America is just a critical tool of American views and influence in the world. It gives a fact-based understanding of what happens in the United States and with U.S. policy to an audience around the world that doesn’t necessarily always have access to those kinds of facts and truth.

I imagine that U.S. adversaries — China, Russia and others — are very pleased to see that there have been attacks on this important tool of U.S. soft power. It makes their jobs easier. So I think it’s clear that we’re giving China and Russia and others an advantage here by not supporting this not very expensive tool of American policy and soft power in the world.

VOA is a good use of American taxpayer money. It’s not that much money. And it has a great influence. So I think the return on investment of spending money on getting the U.S. view out there through VOA is very high, and so I think it’s worth the budgetary expense.

I think many Americans would understand that we need to have an outlet like Voice of America that can put forward the truth and the facts about the United States to a global audience to help expand our opportunities in the world and to protect us against risks.

I’ve worked in and out of government in the policy world for decades and I’ve interacted with VOA reporters and been interviewed by them many times, and I’ve always found them completely professional and fact-based and in pursuit of the truth. So I think some of the criticisms that have been laid against VOA professionals are completely unfounded, unfair, and really damaging to U.S. interests in addition to the individuals involved.

I think it’s important that VOA not be just a mouthpiece of the current administration. It needs to be kind of longer term focused on U.S. facts and truth and U.S. interests and pushing those out and not being seen as a tool of any particular administration. I think it’s capable of that. It’s shown that it’s able to do that in the past, and I hope that continues in the future.

Published January 8, 2026

Goodman served in the Obama administration from 2009-2012 as senior advisor to the undersecretary for economic affairs at the Department of State and then National Security Council director for international economics. He later served as the director of the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.