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Kari Lake Slams 'Propaganda' On Voice Of America Airwaves: 'Wasteful' To Support Voice Of America
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'Not How A Newsroom Should Be Run': Kari Lake Makes Shock Claim About VOA To Christopher Smith
Forbes Breaking News
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yesterday
At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) questioned Kari Lake about editorial oversight at VOA.
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Transcript
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00:00
Smith, for five minutes of question. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to the
00:04
committee. Ms. Lake, I chair the Congressional Executive Commission on China. We've held many,
00:12
many hearings. We've worked on legislation. One of my bills that passed just a few weeks ago
00:16
was to combat the heinous practice of forced organ harvesting, where 50,000, 70,000 young people,
00:25
average age 28, get their organs taken. Their Uyghurs, their Falun Gong practitioners,
00:30
it passed 406 to one. Second time it passed, it passed last year as well. I've had four hearings
00:34
on it. Xi Jinping is committing atrocities like almost no one else in the world, and whether it be
00:41
what he's done to Hong Kong, the pervasive use of torture, religious persecution, everywhere you
00:47
look, genocide against the Uyghurs, and then in your testimony, and I would ask you if you could
00:54
maybe elaborate on this, you point out that the past leadership of VOA Mandarin Language Services
00:58
conducted annual meetings with the Chinese Embassy in Washington. Well, I go to the Chinese Embassy
01:03
myself, outside picketing. We try to meet, I've invited Chinese leaders here from the embassy and
01:09
from the government many times to testify, every time they turn us down. But if you could elaborate
01:15
on those meetings, whatever you could tell us. You also pointed out that VOA's Mandarin Language Service
01:21
personalities have hosted events at the Chinese Embassy. And one of VOA's television editors even
01:27
publicly pledged his allegiance to the PRC at a Chinese Embassy event. And finally, you said VOA allowed the
01:33
Communist Vietnamese and Chinese embassies in DC to pressure them into removing videos, cutting short,
01:41
live interviews, or changing story angles so that coverage was more supportive of the Chinese governments
01:47
of Hanoi and Beijing. If you could elaborate on that, I deeply appreciate it. I'd be happy to. And I just
01:52
actually read an article that was very interesting. It's called Chinese Influence at Voice of America.
01:58
And I mentioned that there's a firewall, an editorial firewall, that members of the management at USAGM and
02:06
Voice of America cannot tell the reporters what to report. They can't talk about what should be in the newscast.
02:15
And so if a reporter decides to go rogue and do pro-CCP coverage, I can't do anything about it. That's
02:23
not how a newsroom should be run. I've worked in newsrooms my whole life. There's always some
02:27
editorial control that management has so that you're making sure that what goes out of the airway
02:32
is accurate. And frankly, in an agency such as this, it should be telling America's story. That's our
02:38
charter, telling America's story, being authoritative, not telling China's story. But I want to talk to you a
02:44
little bit about what you just mentioned. If I may read this, because it was really shocking when I
02:49
read this. And sorry, I've got to put my reading glasses on for this one, guys.
02:54
Starting in the first decade of the 2000s, the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., and the
02:58
leadership of VOA's Mandarin service began an annual meeting to allow embassy officials to voice their
03:04
opinions about VOA's content. So management at USAGM has no say in what content it goes on, but the folks
03:13
over the CCP and the Chinese embassy do have say about what goes on our air. CCP embassy officials
03:20
have also reached out to VOA hosts to convince them to be more supportive of the regime. VOA
03:25
personalities have hosted events at the embassy. VOA TV editor, one of them, publicly pledged his
03:31
allegiance to China at a Chinese embassy event. This is absurd. This is insane. And the American taxpayers are
03:40
footing the bill for this. You know, they also ran a two-minute CCP propaganda. They produced it at VOA.
03:48
And the management agreed that it was CCP propaganda. Frankly, two seconds of CCP propaganda is too much.
03:55
The American people are footing the bill. And so things have to change there. We need to make sure
04:00
that firewall is gone. We should be able to have control over what kind of content goes out. It should
04:05
be in alignment with our foreign policy. And unfortunately, the only people that seem to have
04:11
any influence are our adversaries on what is going out on VOA's airwaves. It's outrageous and it has to
04:18
stop. And thankfully, President Trump issued that executive order to bring this agency down to its
04:24
statutory minimum. And he has called for this agency to be eliminated starting in the fiscal year 2026.
04:31
Well, thank you for your testimony. Thank you for highlighting that important complicity with
04:38
the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party. You know, I'm barred from going to China. I used to lead
04:42
human rights missions there frequently. The Global Times put me on their so-called hit list. And I can
04:48
tell you, you know, I can't go to China. And yet we had people collaborating with their top leadership
04:54
here in DC and elsewhere. And that is outrageous. We need to reform this. And I agree. You can judge a man by
05:00
his enemies and you've got good enemies. Thank you very much. Yield back.
05:04
Representative yields back. Representative Keating is now recognized.
05:07
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here. I think if we look at
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Up next
Kari Lake Slams 'Propaganda' On Voice Of America Airwaves: 'Wasteful' To Support Voice Of America
Forbes Breaking News
yesterday
6:58
Kari Lake Details 'Totally Inappropriate' She Was Shocked To Find Voice Of America Had Published
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6/25/2025
5:31
Bill Keating Erupts At Kari Lake Over Threats To Journalists At Risk Overseas
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8:36
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