OPINION:
Voice of America’s breaking news coverage has problems. The latest examples demonstrate this ongoing problem at VOA, which consumes more than a third of the $950 million taxpayers provide for the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
VOA has frequently been slower than other media in reporting breaking news right on its doorstep and stories elsewhere across the country — not just a little slower, but stunningly so.
Managers of VOA and its central newsroom often cite a lack of financial and staffing resources in rejecting comparisons with BBC and other media. As true as this may be, it doesn’t explain multiple examples of lame performance.
BBC arguably remains VOA’s major competition in reaching global audiences. On the Potomac midair collision, BBC posted a breaking story on its main website well before VOA. A separate “LIVE” page formed the basis of ongoing, multifaceted coverage with multiple anchors, reporters and contributors. With BBC, you can depend on seeing live video. Its programs are tenacious in following stories for hours, if not days.
Time and time again, VOA uses a familiar approach. It throws Associated Press or Reuters stories online. This is especially so if its central newsroom, which has been a shell of what it was decades ago, is understaffed, but that’s no excuse in 2025. VOA’s reliance on the “wires” has become a running joke.
The day after the midair collision, we did a multihour comparison. We found BBC coverage anchored not just from London but from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport by multiple anchors. There were live video shots of the Potomac recovery effort, interviews with onlookers, aviation experts and former pilots, press conferences from the White House and Wichita, Kansas, and by the National Transportation Safety Board, and a report on business market reaction. There was more, but space doesn’t allow.
In recent years, VOA has sharply increased its use of social media platforms, including X, to give the impression that it has more depth and datelines than it does. VOA has its correspondents but frequently throws up Reuters or AP content. Many VOA video items (often labeled “shorts”) on social media are often links to AP and Reuters stories used in part or in full on the VOA website.
On the night of the Potomac crash, VOA posted AP and later Reuters. There was no live video. It continued this way when checked as of 10:15 p.m. We couldn’t help but notice that VOA does a lot of promotion for Reuters — a large box describing Reuters and its content, complete with an RSS link.
Meanwhile, on the crash in Philadelphia of a medical Learjet, VOA was outcompeted yet again:
- BBC got a story up on the crash well before VOA’s main English homepage.
- BBC’s 18-paragraph story, with bylines of two BBC News writers, was topped with video from the scene provided by Citizen.com.
- When a story on the Philadelphia crash finally became visible on VOA’s sites 15 to 20 minutes after 9 p.m. EST, it contained an 8:49 p.m. time mark. The same story was still up at 10:42 p.m.
- As VOA stuck with this earlier AP story, BBC updated its report with 23 paragraphs combined with video and photos.
With Benjamin Netanyahu, the first high-level foreign leader, visiting the White House for talks with President Trump, we hoped VOA might snap out of its stupor. We were wrong.
As BBC carried the event live, VOA’s main English webpage displayed “Trump, Xi to Discuss Tariffs Imposed on Each Other’s Exports.” This continued for the entire White House event, which was astonishing.
How many people were in VOA’s main newsroom at the time? Was the head of VOA’s news division physically present? Perhaps his shift was over. Was management aware that VOA’s main front-facing website still had a U.S.-China story when one of the major news leads of the week played out at the White House?
VOA likes to portray itself as a 24/7 global news force. It is not. Its central news operation suffers from multiple failures in management, judgment, execution and imagination. It’s good enough for government media … that’s not even good enough for the government.
Without a more extensive examination, it’s hard to know how VOA’s 48 language services covered the events above. But it’s likely their websites simply mirrored what was being carried by the central newsroom. For someone with a mobile phone in Cambodia or Kenya who has a choice between BBC News coverage and VOA, I think I know what choice they would make.
There is a possibility that some improvements can be made under Kari Lake, Mr. Trump’s choice to be VOA director. Ms. Lake comes from the commercial television world and has lots of determination. But she faces an uphill slog, and it’s unlikely that the new administration would support a major cash infusion that might turn around the VOA News ship.
Add to all of this the high level of politicization in the VOA central newsroom, where a core group of Trump-hating federal employees is using every possible opportunity to attack the president and his appointees — including people he wants heading VOA and its parent agency — and it’s a bad situation.
• Dan Robinson spent 34 years with Voice of America as chief White House, congressional and foreign correspondent and head of its Myanmar service.
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