Far-Right Network to Supply Voice of America Content

Kari Lake OAN Voice Amer­i­ca part­ner­ship rep­re­sents a dra­mat­ic shift in U.S. gov­ern­ment broad­cast­ing as pro-Trump con­tent replaces tra­di­tion­al jour­nal­ism. On May 7, 2025, NPR report­ed that senior pres­i­den­tial advis­er Kari Lake announced a deal for the far-right One Amer­i­ca News Net­work to pro­vide news reports for Voice of Amer­i­ca’s for­eign audi­ences, replac­ing estab­lished news ser­vices while most VOA staff remain on indef­i­nite leave fol­low­ing Lake’s March shut­down of the agency. The arti­cle begins:

Senior pres­i­den­tial advis­er Kari Lake appears to have resolved any doubts about what she wants to do with the Voice of Amer­i­ca. Lake seeks for it to look and sound a lot like the far-right One Amer­i­ca News Net­work: on Tues­day night she announced that she had struck a deal to serve up the pro-Trump out­let’s news reports for Voice of Amer­i­ca’s for­eign audi­ences, at no tax­pay­er cost. “I can ensure our out­lets have reli­able and cred­i­ble options as they work to craft their report­ing and news pro­grams,” Lake wrote on social media posts on Elon Musk’s X and on Truth Social. “And every day I look for ways to save Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers mon­ey.  Bring­ing in OAN as a video/news source does both.” OAN Pres­i­dent Charles Her­ring did not imme­di­ate­ly reply to NPR’s mes­sage seek­ing con­fir­ma­tion, but he did retweet Lake’s post.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/07/nx-s1-5389453/kari-lake-says-oans-far-right-coverage-will-fuel-voice-of-america

Key Points

• Lake can­celed Voice of Amer­i­ca’s con­tracts with major news ser­vices includ­ing The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse, replac­ing them with OAN’s pro-Trump programming.
• OAN has faced legal set­tle­ments over defama­tion law­suits from Smart­mat­ic, Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems, and Geor­gia elec­tion work­ers for pro­mot­ing false 2020 elec­tion fraud claims.
• For­mer U.S. Agency for Glob­al Media CFO Grant Turn­er called the OAN part­ner­ship “a mock­ery of the agen­cy’s his­to­ry of inde­pen­dent non-par­ti­san jour­nal­ism” that vio­lates statu­to­ry mandates.
• Voice of Amer­i­ca jour­nal­ists cur­rent­ly on forced leave are suing Lake and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, argu­ing the actions vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al free press pro­tec­tions and broke fed­er­al law.

MAGA’s Impact on Voice of America: Ideology, Media, and Power Shifts

The MAGA movement’s ascent has fun­da­men­tal­ly reshaped the oper­a­tional land­scape for the Voice of Amer­i­ca, with the Trump administration’s dis­man­tling of its over­sight agency and gut­ting its jour­nal­is­tic inde­pen­dence. Polit­i­cal appointees such as Kari Lake have sought to replace tra­di­tion­al VOA con­tent with pro­gram­ming from One Amer­i­ca News, a far-right out­let aligned with MAGA narratives—a move that has alarmed staff and crit­ics for its overt politi­ciza­tion of what was once a glob­al­ly respect­ed, min­i­mal­ly biased news source.

This shift not only erodes the fire­wall pro­tect­ing VOA from gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence but also cre­ates a vac­u­um in glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions that rival pow­ers like Chi­na, Rus­sia, and Turkey have rapid­ly exploit­ed, expand­ing their own state media oper­a­tions and influ­ence cam­paigns across Africa, Asia, and beyond. Mean­while, the appoint­ment of fig­ures with doc­u­ment­ed ties to Russ­ian state media fur­ther blurs the lines between Amer­i­can infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions and for­eign dis­in­for­ma­tion, rais­ing con­cerns about the ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­gence of MAGA-aligned ini­tia­tives and Krem­lin-backed influ­ence strate­gies. The Euro­pean Union and Britain have respond­ed by bol­ster­ing their own soft-pow­er ini­tia­tives, rec­og­niz­ing the strate­gic risks of America’s retreat from inde­pen­dent glob­al journalism.

Exter­nal References:

1. MAGA out­let OAN to pro­vide con­tent for hol­lowed-out Voice … — CNN

2. Here’s the Deranged MAGA Pro­pa­gan­da Com­ing to Voice … — New Republic

3. Voice of Amer­i­ca — Bias and Cred­i­bil­i­ty — Media Bias/Fact Check

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.