WASHINGTON, June 20 (Reuters) - The parent company of Voice of America stated on Friday it had actually issued termination notifications to over 639 more staff, completing an 85% decline in workers considering that March and efficiently spelling completion of a broadcasting network established to counter Nazi propaganda.
Kari Lake, senior consultant to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, said the staff reduction suggested 1,400 positions had been removed as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's agenda to cut staffing at the firm to a statutory minimum.
"Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent out to 639 staff members at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a long-overdue effort to take apart a puffed up, unaccountable administration," Lake said in a statement.
She stated the company had been "riddled with dysfunction, bias, and waste."
Lake said the move suggested USAGM now ran near its statutory minimum of 81 employees. She said 250 employees would remain throughout USAGM, Voice of America, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which transmits news into communist-run Cuba. She stated none of OCB's 33 workers had been ended.
The relocation likely marks an end to VOA, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, run in almost 50 languages and reached 360 million people a week, lots of living under authoritarian programs.
In May, almost 600 VOA professionals were dismissed.
Some Republicans have actually implicated VOA and other publicly moneyed media outlets of being prejudiced against conservatives, and called for them to be shuttered as part of wider efforts to diminish the federal government.
Another USAGM station, Radio Free Asia, which has actually already been decreased to skeleton staffing, said in a personnel e-mail on Friday that it was executing extra furloughs in its personnels, ordinance, reporter security, and research, training & assessment groups.
Various court cases remain in train versus the USAGM cuts. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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