Republican US Senate candidate Kari Lake (R) speaks alongside former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump throughout a marketing campaign rally at Findlay Toyota Area in Prescott Valley, Arizona, on October 13, 2024. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON — US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday appointed election denier Kari Lake to be the brand new director of Voice of America, the state-funded worldwide media group.
VOA has attain world wide, with programming in a slew of African, Asian and European languages, together with Somali, Dari and French.
It receives US funding however is mostly thought of a dependable, unbiased media operation, masking international and US information for worldwide audiences.
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Nevertheless, earlier management below Trump’s first administration got here below hearth for politicizing the outlet.
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Lake, a former tv information anchor, is a hard-line conservative who ran in 2022 because the Republican candidate for governor of the southwestern state of Arizona and for US Senate in 2024, shedding each instances.
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She has repeatedly refused to simply accept her previous election defeats, in addition to Trump’s 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
As he prepares to take workplace in January, Trump’s staffing bulletins have consisted of shut allies.
READ: Trump international media chief probes pro-Biden VOA content material
“I’m happy to announce that Kari Lake will function our subsequent Director of the Voice of America,” Trump mentioned in a publish on his Reality Social web site.
“She will probably be appointed by, and work intently with, our subsequent head of the US Company for World Media… to make sure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast across the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, not like the lies unfold by the Faux Information Media.”
In his first time period, Michael Pack, Trump’s head of the US Company for World Media, which oversees VOA, raised considerations when he moved in 2020 to strip an inside firewall on the group meant to insulate the newsroom from political interference.
A VOA White Home reporter was additionally investigated for supposed anti-Trump biases throughout Trump’s first administration.