Connect with us

Business

Voice of America Journalists Face Investigations for Comments About Trump

Published

on

Voice of America Journalists Face Investigations for Comments About Trump

Voice of America, the federally funded broadcaster to the world, has long prided itself on serving as an accurate and fair source of news and on being independent of whichever president and party are in power in the United States.

Since the election of President Trump, that independence is increasingly being tested.

In recent months, Voice of America’s parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has opened human-resources investigations into Voice of America journalists for reporting on criticism of Mr. Trump or for making comments that were perceived as critical of him, according to several employees. Some journalists raised concerns about the investigations in a meeting this week with the broadcaster’s director.

At least a couple of articles that included criticism of Mr. Trump and his administration were not published or were watered down after publication in recent months, said three Voice of America employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.

And on Friday, the Agency for Global Media informed one of Voice of America’s highest-profile journalists, Steven Herman, that he was being placed on an extended “excused absence” pending a human resources investigation, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Herman confirmed receiving the letter, which said the investigation was into whether his “social media activity has undermined V.O.A.’s audiences’ perceptions of the objectivity and/or credibility of V.O.A. and its news operations.”

Advertisement

Weeks earlier, Mr. Herman came under fire from the Trump administration when he cited a quote on social media from an anticorruption watchdog group criticizing cutbacks at the United States Agency for International Development.

Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s envoy for “special missions,” wrote on X that Mr. Herman’s comments were “treasonous.”

“You don’t get to work against the official U.S. government policies while being paid by US taxpayers,” Mr. Grenell continued. “You should be immediately fired.”

Also on Friday, Voice of America officials informed Patsy Widakuswara, the broadcaster’s longtime White House bureau chief, that she was being involuntarily reassigned to another beat, employees said. Some Voice of America journalists suspected the move was part of an effort to reduce friction with the Trump administration, although an official at the broadcaster, who wasn’t authorized to talk to the media, denied that.

The Agency for Global Media declined to comment.

Advertisement

The upheaval at Voice of America comes amid a series of broadsides against the media by the Trump administration. The White House has started selecting which news outlets are part of the press pool that covers the president, and it has barred The Associated Press from events because it won’t reclassify the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The Federal Communications Commission has opened investigations into whether broadcasters are acting in the public interest. And Mr. Trump has filed or threatened lawsuits against news outlets whose coverage he objected to.

Journalists at Voice of America have been fretting about their future ever since Mr. Trump said he would appoint Kari Lake, a former television news anchor and failed Republican Senate candidate who has frequently spread lies and conspiracy theories, to lead the broadcaster.

Ms. Lake has rebuffed calls from Elon Musk and Mr. Grenell to abolish Voice of America altogether. But she has said the broadcaster’s coverage will be free from what she described as “Trump derangement syndrome,” or T.D.S.

“It won’t become Trump TV,” Ms. Lake said during a speech this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an influential gathering of conservatives. “But it sure as hell will not be T.D.S.”

Under federal law, the Voice of America’s director must be approved by a bipartisan board that oversees the Agency for Global Media. The board has not voted on Ms. Lake’s nomination.

Advertisement

The Agency for Global Media told employees in an email on Thursday that, pending her formal approval by the board, Ms. Lake had been named a senior adviser to the media agency and to Voice of America.

“In this capacity she will oversee and advise agency leadership on administration priorities,” the email said.

Mr. Trump has nominated Brent Bozell, a conservative activist and media critic, to run the Agency for Global Media. Mr. Bozell needs to be confirmed by the Senate.

Even before Ms. Lake’s and Mr. Bozell’s arrivals, officials at Voice of America and its parent agency were tamping down on anti-Trump sentiment.

Shortly after the presidential election in November, Mr. Herman, who is the broadcaster’s chief national correspondent, was interviewed on a Voice of America program and was asked about the criteria that Mr. Trump was using to select cabinet nominees.

Advertisement

“What we’re seeing, again, loyalty being the No. 1 attribute rather than experience,” Mr. Herman responded.

Mr. Herman was soon summoned to a meeting with human resources officials at the Agency for Global Media, according to people familiar with what transpired. He was pressured to acknowledge that he had improperly engaged in speculation and analysis. Two other Voice of America journalists said they had encountered similar blowback.

The official at Voice of America, who wasn’t authorized to talk to the media, defended the investigations as part of an effort to safeguard the perceived objectivity and neutrality of Voice of America’s journalism when it is under intense scrutiny by Republicans in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

David Z. Seide, a lawyer at the Government Accountability Project who defends federal whistle-blowers, represents Mr. Herman and other Voice of America employees who face human resources investigations for what they wrote or said about Mr. Trump and his administration. He said it was notable that those investigations were taking place before Ms. Lake or other senior Trump appointees took the helm.

“They’re acting pre-emptively,” Mr. Seide said. “They can read the handwriting on the wall.” He added that he saw the social media investigation into Mr. Herman as a pretext for ousting one of Voice of America’s most prominent journalists.

Advertisement

Longtime Voice of America journalists said they were surprised and alarmed that the Agency for Global Media was scrutinizing their editorial decisions. To preserve Voice of America’s independence, the agency is supposed to be walled off from questions about its journalism.

At a meeting this week in Voice of America’s newsroom in Washington, the broadcaster’s director, Michael Abramowitz, faced questions from employees who worried that the human resources investigations would have a chilling effect on Voice of America journalists, leading them to mute any criticisms of the Trump administration, people who attended the meeting said.

Mr. Abramowitz, a longtime and well-regarded reporter and editor at The Washington Post who took the Voice of America job less than a year ago, responded by noting that he was acting as “a caretaker” and that Ms. Lake would soon replace him, the attendees said.

In his first term, Mr. Trump’s White House publicly criticized Voice of America’s editorial decisions. In 2020, Mr. Trump appointed Michael Pack, an ally of his former aide Stephen K. Bannon, to run the Agency for Global Media.

Mr. Pack was accused of trying to turn Voice of America into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration, and a federal judge ruled that Mr. Pack had violated the First Amendment rights of the outlet’s journalists. A federal investigation later found that he had mismanaged the Agency for Global Media, repeatedly abusing his power by sidelining executives he felt did not sufficiently support Mr. Trump.

Advertisement

Business

Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

Published

on

Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

President Trump’s social media company, which has consistently lost money and struggled with a flagging share price, announced Tuesday that it was replacing Devin Nunes as its chief executive officer.

The announcement offered no reason for the sudden departure of Mr. Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California. Mr. Trump had tapped him to run the company, Trump Media & Technology, in late 2021.

The announcement was made in a news release by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is a company board member and oversees a trust that controls his father’s 115-million-share stake in Trump Media. President Trump is not an officer or director of the company.

Mr. Nunes said in a statement on Truth Social, which is Trump Media’s flagship product, that it was an “appropriate time” for a new leader with experience in media and mergers to “steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”

Trump Media has incurred hundreds of millions in losses, and its shares have performed poorly since the company went public by completing a merger with a cash-rich special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in March 2024. The stock, which ended its first day of trading around $58 a share, closed Tuesday at $9.82.

Advertisement

Shares of Trump Media trade under the symbol DJT, which are President Trump’s initials. Truth Social has emerged as the main social media platform for Mr. Trump to communicate his policy decisions and opinions to the world.

Last year, Trump Media took in $3.7 million in revenue and recorded a $712 million net loss.

In December, Trump Media announced a plan to merge with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company. The all-stock deal, which was valued at $6 billion at the time, would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.

Trump Media said in February that it was considering spinning off its Truth Social platform in a merger with another cash-rich SPAC, Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp.

Mr. Nunes is being replaced on an interim basis by Kevin McGurn, who has been an adviser to Trump Media since the end of 2024. Mr. McGurn, a former executive at Hulu, the streaming service, was listed in a recent regulatory filing as the chief executive of Texas Ventures.

Advertisement

The Trump Media release announcing the management change provided no update on the merger with TAE Technologies or the proposed SPAC deal for Truth Social.

Continue Reading

Business

Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

Published

on

Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

Streaming entertainment giant Netflix is in negotiations to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot in Studio City.

Netflix plans to purchase the Los Angeles studio that has been home to generations of landmark television shows, including “Gunsmoke” and “Seinfeld,” according to two people with knowledge of the pending deal who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

The studio’s previous operator, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January. Investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property and is in talks with Netflix to sell it for between $330 million and $400 million.

Representatives for Hackman and Netflix declined to comment on the planned sale.

Advertisement

Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to buy the Radford Avenue property from ViacomCBS in 2021 with a winning bid of $1.85 billion, after a competitive battle for the 55-acre studio beloved by the television industry.

At the time, the staggering price tag underscored the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scrambled for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. It was one of the largest-ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.

Since then, production has substantially declined in Southern California. L.A. continues to battle the loss of production to other states and countries, as well as the lingering effects on the industry of the pandemic and the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Cutbacks in spending at the major studios after a surge in streaming-fueled TV production have further damped film activity in the region.

Founded by silent film comedy legend Mack Sennett in 1928, the lot became known as “Hit City” in the decades after World War II as popular TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Will & Grace” were made there. The storied lot gave the Studio City neighborhood its name,

Netflix, which has a market cap of about $455 billion — more than double that of Walt Disney Co. — has maintained its dominance in the global streaming business with more than 325 million subscribers.

Advertisement

The Los Gatos-based company has production offices worldwide, including facilities in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, London, Madrid and Toronto.

Netflix had secured an $82.7-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. studios and streaming services in December, but withdrew from the bidding war in late February after Paramount Skydance offered $31 a share. As part of the switch, Netflix was paid a $2.8-billion termination fee.

Continue Reading

Business

Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

Published

on

Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, has spent years refining his pitch for why he should get one of the most powerful economic jobs in the world.

At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he will have to convince Senate lawmakers that he is ready to step into the role, which has become politically explosive amid Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the institution and its current chair, Jerome H. Powell.

Mr. Warsh, who is scheduled to testify before the Banking Committee at 10 a.m., plans to commit to being “strictly independent” on decisions related to interest rates, according to his prepared remarks. He also plans to tell lawmakers that he is unbothered by Mr. Trump’s incessant calls for substantially lower borrowing costs. And he will use his opening statement to underscore his focus on disrupting the “status quo” at an institution he said just last year was in need of “regime change.”

“In a time that will rank among the most consequential in our nation’s history, I believe a reform-oriented Federal Reserve can make a real difference to the American people,” he plans to tell lawmakers, adding: “The stakes could scarcely be higher.”

Mr. Warsh, 56, faces significant hurdles to winning confirmation. He has broad support among Republicans, who control the Senate and can confirm him along party lines. Yet his candidacy has stalled because of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Mr. Powell and his handling of the Fed’s headquarters renovations.

Advertisement

Mr. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but Mr. Warsh looks increasingly unlikely to be in place by then. That’s because Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a Republican on the Banking Committee who has expressed support for Mr. Warsh — has vowed to block any attempt to confirm a new Fed chair until the legal threats into Mr. Powell are resolved. For Mr. Tillis, the investigation is a blatant attempt to coerce Mr. Powell into lowering rates, undermining the Fed’s independence and confirming the politicization of the Justice Department.

“I’m not going to condone bad decision-making and bad behavior,” Mr. Tillis told reporters on Monday in reference to the Justice Department’s lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.

The department has vowed to continue its investigation, despite numerous legal setbacks.

“I think ultimately, he will be confirmed,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another Republican on the committee, told reporters on Monday. “I just don’t know what decade.”

Mr. Warsh’s ascent would mark a homecoming for the Wall Street financier, who served as a Fed governor from 2006-11.

Advertisement

Since leaving the Fed, he has amassed assets worth well in excess of $100 million, according to financial disclosures submitted before his hearing. Those have drawn scrutiny because Mr. Warsh repeatedly invoked “pre-existing confidentiality agreements” to avoid disclosing the details behind several of his investments. He has said he would divest a substantial amount of his assets before taking the job.

The global financial crisis dominated Mr. Warsh’s first tenure at the Fed, thrusting him into the middle of discussions about how the central bank should respond to the threat of bank failures, turmoil in financial markets and a painful recession that followed. Mr. Warsh, then the youngest-ever member of the Board of Governors, was initially supportive of the Fed’s efforts to shore up financial markets by buying enormous quantities of government bonds and expanding its balance sheet to ease strains in financial markets and support growth by keeping market-based rates low.

But he soon soured on subsequent efforts to buy more bonds and resigned in protest. That experience has stuck with Mr. Warsh, who has made a smaller balance sheet a pillar of his plans if he takes over as chair.

Mr. Warsh would also be likely to usher in changes to how the Fed communicates its policy views, having expressed misgivings about its strategy of providing so-called forward guidance, or hints about how interest rates may change in the future to guide expectations. He has also suggested that policymakers across the Fed system should speak far less. Mr. Powell held a news conference after each rate decision, or eight a year, and delivered speeches with regularity. Mr. Trump’s pick to join the Fed last year, Stephen I. Miran, often speaks multiple times a week.

“Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words,” Mr. Warsh said in a speech last year. “Fed leaders would be well served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings. The swivel-chair problem, rhetorically waxing and waning with the latest data release, is common and counterproductive.”

Advertisement

What is far less clear is how much Mr. Warsh would heed the president’s demands for lower interest rates. Mr. Trump said he would not pick someone for chair who did not support lower borrowing costs.

Mr. Warsh sought in his opening statement to downplay the costs of a president’s voicing his opinions about rates, saying central bankers must be “strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.”

Earlier this year, many officials at the Fed saw a path to gradually lower rates as the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs faded and inflation restarted its slide back toward 2 percent after almost of year of stalling out. The war in Iran — and the energy shock it has unleashed — has upended those forecasts, however, prompting officials to turn wary about lowering rates.

Mr. Warsh will face questions on Tuesday about the economic impact of the war and how it has changed his thinking around the Fed’s ability to lower rates. While at the Fed, he was known as an inflation hawk who often argued against providing policy relief for fear that it could stoke price pressures. He also said the Fed should aspire to engage in rule-based policymaking that stems from formulas that prescribe how officials should set rates based on levels of inflation and employment.

While campaigning to be chair, Mr. Warsh embraced the need for rate cuts, arguing that there was a path for lower borrowing costs because of his plans to shrink the balance sheet, which would lift longer-term rates that then could be offset by lowering short-term ones. He also argued that higher productivity from the boom in artificial intelligence could unleash higher growth without stoking inflation, which could give the Fed more space to lower rates than otherwise would be the case.

Advertisement

In his opening statement, Mr. Warsh made clear, however, that a failure to bring down inflation, which has been stuck above the Fed’s 2 percent target for roughly five years, would strictly be the Fed’s fault, suggesting that he would shoulder the blame if he did not bring it back down during his tenure.

“Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it,” he will tell lawmakers.

Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending