Friend of the Court, Friend of VOA, Friend of Press Freedom
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lambert will hear arguments in a motion for a preliminary junction seeking restoration of Voice of America’s staff and a resumption of its news operation, which went dark pursuant to a White House decree on March 14.
The lead plaintiff is VOA director Michael Abramowitz. The defendants are Trump administration appointees Kari Lake and Victor Morales, along with the U.S. Agency for Global Media. USAGM is the congressionally created organization overseeing VOA, Radio Free Europe, Radio Marti, and the other federal government news outlets. Created during World War II and expanded during the Cold War, their mission was to counter the propaganda of America’s adversaries.
Abramowitz’s case is not the only such litigation – VOA employees filed a similar lawsuit in New York City – and challenges were anticipated by President Trump and his aides. “We’re going to get lawsuits,” Kari Lake said at the time. “This is par for the course.”
Lake also gave voice to the prevailing view in Trump’s orbit. “We want to make sure these agencies are in line with what our American values are,” Lake said. “We’re telling America’s story. We’re not telling our adversaries’ story. By God, we’re not going to be putting out anti-American garbage.”
That’s one view. The opposite perspective has been reflected in numerous friend-of-the-court briefs filed in Lambert’s court by free press proponents. The most compelling such brief comes from an 81-year-old Chinese champion of core “American values” – if you believe those values include liberty and freedom of expression.
Gao Yu is not a name known to U.S. audiences, but it should be: Yu is a heroine in the international free speech community. Abramowitz described her to me as “one of the most courageous and influential voices in China’s fight for press freedom.”
Yu, who is 81, has battled the Chinese Communist Party for decades, first as a reporter for China News Service and later as deputy editor of Economics Weekly, where she fearlessly covered the CCP’s internal politics. For covering the pro-democracy movement in the runup to the 1989 Tiananmen Square showdown, Yu was imprisoned for more than a year. In 1993, she was arrested again and sentenced to six years in prison – for the crime of writing about her nation’s government.
In 2014, at age 70, she was arrested on a charge of leaking Beijing’s notorious “Document No. 9,” a secret directive warning against promoting Western ideas, and this time received a prison sentence of seven years. Paroled for medical reasons, she was essentially kept under house arrest. Last summer, authorities abruptly cut off all her connections to the outside world: Internet, telephone, and mobile devices. Although allowed to remain in her home, at 80 years of age she was unable to access medical care, shop online, or even contact members of her family.
Yet, she somehow managed to file an amicus brief in VOA’s lawsuit. It’s a compelling testimonial. It’s also clear from reading it that Yu considers the gesture an obligation to an agency that has been steadfast in its support for her – and other journalists, dissidents, and freedom-loving people persecuted by authoritarian regimes.
“Through years of reporting and investigation, I came to deeply understand how critical VOA’s attention and reporting were to Chinese political prisoners,” she wrote. “VOA was not only a spiritual lifeline to the prisoners themselves, but also to their families.”
She added:
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, VOA has been classified by the Communist government as a ‘hostile station.’ Generations of Chinese citizens risked their lives to listen to VOA just to access truthful information. After the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, the Chinese Communist Party somewhat loosened its jamming of VOA broadcasts. Like many others in China, I was able to regularly tune in to VOA’s Mandarin programs. Its reporting was accurate, comprehensive, and objective. Every program clearly and powerfully conveyed U.S. policies and ideals. VOA’s programming not only challenged my outdated knowledge, but also subtly reshaped my worldview, outlook on life, and core values.
Voice of America wasn’t perfect, as even its defenders acknowledge. But this testimony from the front lines of the universal fight for liberty surely seems like it’s something worth saving, doesn’t it?