Kari Lake was named as the special advisor to the United States Agency for Global Media by Trump and she continues to destroy credible news programs by hiring the conspiracy-driven right wing extremist One America News Network (OANN) to serve news reports for foreign markets on Voice of America.
Youtube, Verizon Fios, DirecTV and others dropped OANN from their media platforms because of their pro-Trump conspiracy theories, election fraud nonsense and dangerous COVID cures. OANN also reached deals to avert lawsuits by Dominion, Smartmatic and two Georgia election workers.
NPR reports that the reaction from the agency was swift:
“Kari Lake providing One America News Network to our global audiences makes a mockery of the agency’s history of independent non-partisan journalism,” former U.S. Agency for Global Media Chief Financial Officer Grant Turner tells NPR.
Since World War II, the Voice of America has provided news coverage and cultural programming to lands across the globe without access to a free press, serving an audience that has grown to more than 360 million people weekly. Its charge – established by Congress – is to incorporate criticism of the government’s official line to convey the news in its complexity but also to model what a pluralistic democracy looks like.
Spreading lies and disinformation in service to Trump is Kari Lake’s main goal here.
Chaos runs supreme within the Trump administration. They will render VOA equal to any other propaganda network instead of the credible news organization it should be.