On today’s BradCast we’ve got a perfect example of the type of news media this White House would like to see everywhere, no matter the harm it does to truth, facts and free speech rights and undermines American power around the world. [Audio to complete show follows this summary.]
As Donald Trump‘s deadly, ill-conceived, four and a half month “little excursion” continues to rage in Iran and imperil the global economy, the view of the U.S. in the eyes of the world continues to sink.
Voice of America, a once-beloved world treasure, broadcasting across the globe in 49 languages for most of the past 83 years, might have been a bulwark against that sentiment. For decades, at least until the second Trump Administration, it served as a living example of First Amendment free speech rights, balanced news reporting and analysis, and a projection of American strength through “soft power” across hundreds of nations.
But now, in violation of its Congressionally-mandated Charter to present unbiased, authoritative news representing all sides, several of its former top correspondents charge that VOA’s current leadership is unlawfully violating its mission at a time during which such a voice is needed most.
This week, Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s former White House Bureau Chief and ongoing lead plaintiff against the Trump Administration’s attempt to dismantle the once highly trusted worldwide news agency, called out the news service under its current leadership as being used to broadcast a propagandistic message. “In doing so, the administration is not only breaking the law; it is handing Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing a strategic victory as they ramp up their own global influence operations,” she writes in an opinion column this week. “A shuttered VOA cedes the information space to America’s adversaries. A propagandistic VOA advances their disinformation campaigns and forfeits the trust of the 360 million people who used to tune in to its broadcasts each week.
“This reporting,” she argues, “bears little resemblance to VOA’s journalism that until March 2025 was guided by the VOA Charter.”
We’re joined today by our friend STEVE HERMAN who served for decades as a VOA foreign correspondent and bureau chief in Asia, before returning stateside to become the outlet’s White House Bureau Chief during the first Trump Administration. He later became VOA’s Chief National Correspondent as Widakuswara filled his role at the White House. He is now an author and Executive Director of the Jordan Center for Journalist Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and New Media.
Yes, court rulings in Widakuswara’s case and others have kept the doors open and lights on, if barely, at VOA since Trump attempted to engineer its Project 2025-architected demise in March of 2025. But, Herman explains, “Voice of America is essentially a Potemkin Village of what it used to be.”
VOA’s Farsi service broadcasts were “very widely viewed and listened to in Iran. It was a 24/7 service,” according to Herman. But it is now a shell of its former self, broadcasting perhaps 15 minutes a day via shortwave radio. Moreover, as Widakuswara explained in her op-ed, the stories broadcast “center on administration statements, often without opposing context. Recent articles highlight administration claims that oil prices are lower than before the war and that maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been restored. Meanwhile, VOA suppressed coverage of civilian death tolls from U.S. airstrikes.”
“What is being put out on the airwaves is counter to VOA’s charter,” echoes Herman. “It violates the firewall. These are laws. So we basically have people who are giving orders at Voice of America who are breaking the law.” And worse, “the alternative is state propaganda from Iran,” he laments.
“The Voice of America’s Farsi service, for decades, was very, very trusted in Iran, and by the expatriate community. That diaspora, along with people inside of Iran is quite split. It’s not monolithic at all. VOA was known for giving time, much to the chagrin of some people, to different factions. Whether you like the ‘shah’, the Crown Prince Pahlavi and whether he should come back or not, or think that’s a good idea or not, he is a voice. He is a player in all of this. And there have been orders by Voice of America management not to mention him.” That, he confirms, would have been unheard at the news agency prior to its 2025 takeover and attempted deconstruction by Trump II.
Herman lays out why all of this matters today, how it harms the U.S. across the globe, and whether he believes VOA can ever return to its former glory following Trump’s demolition under the roadmap painted for him by the radical Project 2025, which characterized VOA’s decades of world service as “anti-American.”
“I saw what they’ve done to Voice of America as being the canary in the coal mine,” Herman cautions. “VOA was the easiest objective media institution to destroy because it was part of the U.S. Government. I believe that this is also a template and a warning to the media at large.”
THEN…
- Some of the embarrassing Senate Judiciary Committee testimony today from Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee to oversee the nation’s intelligence services as Director of the Office of National Intelligence. Clayton repeatedly refused to say who won the 2020 election.
- Billionaire Elon Musk is referred by Wisconsin‘s bipartisan state election commission on criminal charges for handing out $1 million checks to voters in violation of state law against election bribery.
- And Donald Trump endorses former crack addict, pillow salesman and election-denying conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell for the Republican nomination for Governor of Minnesota. The state party has endorsed someone else. Democrats are hoping Trump’s endorsement for the GOP nod wins the day next month. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is believed to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination ahead of the state’s August 11th primary…
