A horrifying new report from the New York Times has now confirmed that a reporter employed by an outlet funded by the U.S. government, along with several of his fellow journalists, is now under investigation after finding himself in the United States president’s crosshairs after daring to be openly critical of Donald Trump’s administration.
The Times dropped the unnerving report yesterday, in which they confirmed that a longtime journalist at Voice of America (VOA) — a publication that is funded by Congress through the U.S. Agency for Global Media (AGM) — has formally been placed on an extended “excused absence” pending an investigation by human resources after Trump advisor Richard Grenell flagged one of the reporter’s tweets.
VOA chief national correspondent Steve Herman stated that the HR investigation was meant to determine whether his “social media activity has undermined VOA’s audiences’ perceptions of the objectivity and/or credibility of VOA and its news operations.”
In the offending tweet, Herman had quoted Skye Perryman, president of the Democracy Forward non-profit, who was criticizing the Trump Admin’s decision to make cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, stating that those cuts make Americans “less safe at home and abroad.”
Eliminating USAID “makes Americans less safe at home and abroad,” says Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward.
https://t.co/3xYpJwXv4v— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) February 7, 2025
Trump Advisor Richard Grenell referred to Herman’s tweet as “treasonous.”
“You don’t get to work against the official U.S. government policies while being paid by US taxpayers,” Grenell, who officially serves as the Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions, said. “You should be immediately fired.”
The NYT report confirms that Herman was called into a meeting with VOA’s human resources department shortly thereafter, where he found himself forced to acknowledge he had “improperly engaged in speculation and analysis.”
Two other VOA journalists told the publication that they found themselves on the receiving end of similar “blowback” for comments they made in the same overall vein as Herman’s.
The disturbing and clearly politically and ego-motivated investigation has raised intense concern among VOA employees, who are now being forced to take those concerns to VOA director Michael Abramowitz, as they believe these investigations will have nothing less than a chilling effect on their ability to properly report on this administration, as their publication has always been meant to remain free of political influence or bias.
Abramowitz formerly served as a reporter and editor for the Washington Post and only took on the VOA director position about a year ago — a position that he himself has said he’s only serving as a “caretaker” for until former Arizona Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, who was tapped by Donald Trump for the role, is able to officially replace him. Lake’s confirmation to this position does not lie in the hands of the US Senate, as most confirmations do, but rather with the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, consisting of seven presidential appointees that currently boasts a 4-3 Republican majority.
As it stands, leadership within the AGM is vacant. Donald Trump has already formally appointed conservative activist L. Brent Bozell to head the agency that will officially oversee VOA. Bozell is highly problematic in his own right, as the founder of Media Research Center, an organization based out of Virginia whose mission statement is to identify “left-wing bias in news media and popular culture, revealing the left’s agenda to undermine traditional values, restrict individual liberty, and stifle private enterprise.”
Read the full report from the New York Times here.
Featured image via The Resistance Report Gallery