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Podcast: Witness History
Episode: The start of Voice of America
Description: In March 2025, radio frequencies worldwide stopped carrying Voice of America broadcasts for the first time in 83 years. President Donald Trump’s administration had imposed funding cuts on the US Agency for Global Media with the White House accusing the broadcaster of being "anti-Trump", "radical" and "leftist”. While the cuts are being disputed in courts, Josephine McDermott traces the beginnings of the overseas broadcaster which was designed to counter Nazi propaganda. In the first Voice of America broadcast in February 1942 it promised, “The news may be good or bad; we shall tell you the truth”. We hear the...