USAGM – State Media Monitor

The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), is a U.S. government agency tasked with overseeing five media organizations and the Open Technology Fund (OTF), which funds internet freedom tools in countries where information is suppressed. Its rebranding from BBG to USAGM in 2018 spanned roughly eighteen months, reflecting a strategic shift in identity recorded in the agency’s annual report.

USAGM runs the following media organizations:

Voice of America (VOA), a media outlet providing news in 47 languages to an audience of over 280 million people;
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a news outlet that provides content in 27 languages in 23 countries, mainly from Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union and South Asia (including Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Ukraine);
Radio Free Asia (RFA), a Washington, D.C.-headquartered news outlet that services six Asian countries;
Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), an Arabic-language news organization that targets 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region through its television networks (Alhurra and Alhurra-Iraq), Sawa radio and the news portals Alhurra.com, RadioSawa.com, Irfaasawtak.com, MaghrebVoices.com and ElSaha.com;
Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), which operates from Miami, Florida, the news outlet Radio and Television Martí, a news conglomerate that caters to the people of Cuba.

State Media Matrix Typology

Media assets

Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Office for Cuba Broadcasting, Middle East Broadcasting Networks

Ownership and governance

USAGM supervises two federal organizations (the Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting), and three non-profit organizations (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks).

Its mandate and governance are rooted in key legislation:

The Smith-Mundt Act (U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948) established VOA and was amended in 2013 to allow domestic access to USAGM programming.
The International Broadcasting Act (1994, later amended) unified U.S. international broadcasters under one agency, now known as USAGM.
The VOA Charter, drafted in 1960 and enacted in 1976, guarantees VOA’s editorial integrity by mandating accurate, objective, and comprehensive representation of U.S. policies. (See Editorial Independence below)

Oversight rests with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which review budget ceilings, vote on changes to administrative authority, and provide policy direction. The Senate committee also considers presidential nominations to senior USAGM posts.

Since 2017, the USAGM CEO has been appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Until 2016, governance was vested in a nine-member bipartisan board, eight appointed by the President (confirmed by the Senate) and one ex officio, the Secretary of State (added via a 1998 amendment to the International Broadcasting Act). No more than four board members could belong to the same political party, and the President selected the chair (excluding the Secretary of State).

The National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2017 replaced this board with a presidentially appointed CEO, and renamed it the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, reducing it to a purely advisory role. The board now comprises up to six presidentially appointed members confirmed by the Senate, plus the Secretary of State ex officio.

In June 2018, President Donald Trump nominated documentary filmmaker Michael Pack as CEO. Confirmed in June 2020, Pack disbanded the boards of the grantee broadcasters and embarked on sweeping leadership purges, including dismissals at OTF. Reports indicated that President Trump appointed Pack with this aim in mind, having voiced dissatisfaction with USAGM coverage of his administration. VOA Director Amanda Bennett and Deputy Director Sandy Sugawara resigned immediately after Pack’s confirmation. In July 2020, Pack began reviewing senior officials’ contracts across RFA, RFE/RL, and MBN, prompting fears of further purges.

Pack’s actions faced legal and congressional resistance. On 21 July 2020, a federal appeals court blocked his attempt to impose a new OTF board, citing the fund’s distinct statutory status. Key members of the appropriations subcommittee overseeing State Department spending also froze some USAGM funds.

All in all, although there were still mechanisms (such as the release of payments that can be approved only by the appropriations committees) that could be used to prevent the management (CEO) of USAGM from acting discretionarily, the measures taken by Pack were worrying as, according to existing legal provisions (adopted in 2017), the USAGM CEO has expansive powers over all of the U.S. government-funded civilian broadcasters. The CEO, for example, has the power to set budgets and slash funding of any of the media run by the USAGM and appoint himself to the boards of the individual media outlets run by the USAGM. In fact, in an “unprecedented” move, Pack replaced after his appointment all the bipartisan boards of the media outlets operated by USAGM with six people, including himself, “who appear to have been selected for no discernible reason beyond ideological purity,” Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic in June 2020.

Pack’s resignation in January 2021 at President Joe Biden’s request ended this phase of conflict, and stability returned under acting CEO Kelu Chao and later Amanda Bennett (confirmed September 2022).

But the most sweeping overhaul, one that effectively dismantled the organization, came during President Trump’s second term. In March 2025, he signed an executive order directing the administration to “dismantle USAGM to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” This move ousted CEO Bennett, replacing her with conservative media activist L. Brent Bozell III, and brought in former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake as a senior adviser.

The administration swiftly froze funding to RFE/RL, RFA, and MBN, triggering mass layoffs, including notices to 639 VOA employees and more than 500 contractors, while OCB was largely spared. Although federal courts issued injunctions blocking parts of the dismantling, appellate stays allowed much of the downsizing to proceed. By June 2025, USAGM still existed on paper, but operated with drastically reduced staffing and only a fraction of its former broadcasting capacity.

Source of budget and funding

USAGM is wholly funded by congressional appropriations, determined annually by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, which also direct how funds may be used. VOA and OCB receive funds directly; RFE/RL, RFA, and MBN are financed through USAGM-administered grants. The organization has received the following budgets in recent years: 2018: US $794 million (30 % to VOA); 2019: US $797 million; 2023: US $830 million; 2024 request: US $944 million, citing the need to counter authoritarian disinformation; 2025 request: US $950 million; authorised spending of approximately US $922 million.

In 2025, USAGM entered its most severe funding crisis since its creation. Although Congress authorised approximately US $922 million for FY 2025, with a request originally set at US $950 million, the Trump administration moved in March to freeze large portions of the budget, particularly the grants supporting the non-federal broadcasters RFE/RL, RFA, and MBN. These grantees collectively received over US $372 million in FY 2024, roughly a third of USAGM’s total funding. The freeze triggered immediate service shutdowns, mass layoffs, and the closure of several language services, with OCB remaining largely unaffected.

As of August 2025, the agency still exists in law but operates with drastically reduced capacity. Federal court rulings have found parts of the defunding unlawful, ordering the restoration of some services, but appellate stays have delayed full reinstatement. VOA continues limited operations with a fraction of its pre-March workforce, while RFA and MBN remain largely dormant, awaiting resolution of ongoing litigation. The prolonged budgetary restrictions have not only crippled broadcasting output but also raised concerns among lawmakers and press freedom groups about the erosion of USAGM’s mission and the weakening of America’s international media presence.

Editorial independence

USAGM outlets follow formal editorial safeguards, including the VOA Charter (requiring accuracy, objectivity, comprehensiveness, and balanced representation of U.S. opinion) and internal ethical codes. A statutory “firewall” in the 1994 International Broadcasting Act prohibits government interference in editorial content.

But although statutory mechanisms to protect editorial independence remain in place, the centralization of power in a single CEO after 2017 left these safeguards more vulnerable in practice. Pack’s 2020 interventions were widely condemned by journalists and staff, with Politico reporting that “veterans of the organisations have said the massive leadership change undermined their traditional independence.” The resignation of Pack in January 2021 ended that immediate crisis.

Yet, the attacks launched by the American president in 2025 destabilized the organization and led to a near-total erosion of its independence. The March 2025 dismantling order, followed by sweeping funding freezes, mass layoffs, and the installation of politically aligned appointees, placed unprecedented strain on USAGM’s editorial autonomy. While federal courts have ruled parts of the shutdown unlawful and ordered the restoration of VOA, RFA, and MBN operations, appellate stays have delayed any meaningful enforcement.

Many language services have gone dark, VOA’s global footprint has shrunk dramatically, and budgetary levers have been wielded in ways critics say amount to indirect political control. Press freedom advocates, including Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, warn that the agency’s statutory “firewall” is being undermined, not through overt censorship, but by systematically depriving its outlets of the resources and staffing they need to carry out their mandate.

August 2025