The Former Voice Of What Still Calls Itself America Is Winding Down

     If you were a radio-minded kid in the 1970s -- and I certainly was -- the shortwave presence of the Voice of America was impossible to miss.  Impartial but patriotic, the government-run (but largely independent) international broadcaster was a massive operation and you could scarcely spin the dial without tuning across their powerful signals on multiple frequencies.

     The VOA newsroom was first-rate.  They tended to report positive stories, without shying away from uncomfortable truths.  VOA reporters were respected throughout the free world, feared and hated by autocrats.

     In recent years, shortwave broadcasting has scaled back nearly everywhere, and VOA was no exception, transitioning to Internet delivery and, in countries where it was permitted, local FM stations.  The Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station in North Carolina was the last transmitter site VOA owned and operated. It was shut down this past March and the nature of big shortwave transmitters is such that if they are sitting cold, all the way off, it will be a major effort to ever make the site operational again.

     There are still plenty of shortwave transmitting installations around the world, and many of them are for hire; the loss of transmitter sites is hardly the end.  The heart of the Voice of America is their newsroom, which has been laboring under budget cuts.  The most recent were the most drastic; some 700 employees remain on the payroll and they are now waiting for the ax to fall.

     US Agency for Global Media (the Federal agency that oversees VOA) Special Advisor Kari Lake -- yes, that Kari Lake -- has floated plans to source news from the right-wing One America News Network for distribution through VOA's online network.

     The damage being done to our country -- and our country's international influence -- is generational.  It will not be repaired quickly, if it ever is.

     This is typical of the Trump administration; you can take the part for the whole, and be assured that as Trumpism runs its course, our country will be left impoverished, morally, culturally, intellectually and financially.  Many of the perpetrators will move on afterward, untouched and wealthy almost beyond measure, leaving a corporal's guard of saps and patsys to take the blame.  Kari Lake will probably be among them, but she is much more symptom than cause.