'Maduro did not close our bureau - Trump did': Voice of America journalists speak out
Source: The Guardian
Carolina Valladares Pérez, a Washington-based correspondent for the government-funded international news service Voice of America, has reported from places where press freedom is severely restricted – war zones and autocratic states – in the Middle East and across Latin America. Intimidation and threats from state officials were not unusual – but she always managed to get the story out.
Now for the first time in her career, Valladares Pérez says she has been silenced – not by a faraway regime, but by the government of the United States.
“Nicolás Maduro did not close our bureau,” she said, of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader. “Donald Trump closed it. I find this astonishing.”
Valladares Pérez is one of hundreds of VoA journalists who remain shut out of their newsroom nearly two months after Donald Trump signed a late-night executive order aimed at dismantling their parent company, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The journalists had been hopeful they might be able to return to their broadcasts this week – VoA was even included in the rotation of news outlets assigned to cover the president as part of the White House press pool. But whiplashing court orders and a newly announced “partnership” to broadcast a hard-right, pro-Trump news outlet have clouded their path forward.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/07/voice-of-america-journalists-trump