May 3 (UPI) — The taxpayer-funded Voice of America is scheduled to resume broadcasting next week for at least a little while longer.
The Department of Justice emailed VOA staff on Friday to tell them a “phased return” of the radio broadcast will occur next week while a federal appeals court weighs the matter, Politico and The Guardian reported.
“The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) currently expects staff to begin to return to the office next week, as security, building space and equipment issues require a phased return,” U.S. Attorney Brenda Gonzalez Horowitz said in an email to attorneys who are representing VOA employees in the federal legal challenge, The Washington Post reported.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Thursday temporarily stopped the Trump administration from blocking USAGM’s and VOA’s funding, but affirmed the administration could continue withholding funds from Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
The VOA is a federal entity, but the other broadcasting platforms are privately owned non-profits that mostly were funded by Congress.
Thursday’s ruling enables the VOA to resume broadcasting while he appellate court weighs the merits of the case, which might take several weeks or months to decide.
President Donald Trump on March 14 signed an executive order to reduce the scope of the federal government, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees the VOA.
A day later, the White House newsletter published an article called “The Voice of Radical America,” which says “taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”
The unattributed article quotes former 34-year VOA correspondent Dan Robinson in an earlier opinion piece saying the VOA “has essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias aligned with partisan national media.”
Robinson argues the USAGM and VOA “are rightly in budget cut bull’s-eye” and accuses VOA of “violations of journalistic standards and mismanagement.”
The VOA began as an international radio broadcast more than 80 years ago and more recently included television, mobile, internet and social media formats in more than 40 languages.