Senior advisor to United States Agency for Global Media Kari Lake has announced that One America Network (OAN) will provide “newsfeed services” for free to USAGM networks, including Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), Radio Martí, and Voice of America (VOA).
The announcement came after weeks of efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle the agency. President Donald Trump has issued an executive order mandating that USAGM “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”
That resulted in more than 1,000 employees being placed on leave and the termination of 600 contracts. But U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction in April blocking it.
The decision to offer OAN could greatly expand the potential reach of content from the cable network, which has been a plaintiff in several high profile libel lawsuits and was dropped by DirecTV and Verizon in 2022. OAN is no longer carried by a major pay TV provider.
But the agreement has proved controversial and was immediately condemned by VOA staffers. “VOA is not to be the voice of left America nor the voice of right America,” said Steve Herman, chief national correspondent for VOA, who was quoted by the Washington Post. “USAGM cannot dictate [that] VOA run OAN content. It would be a violation of our fire wall and our charter, which are laws,” he said.
In a social media post on X, Lake admitted that “In my current role as Senior Advisor to USAGM, I don't have editorial control over the content of VOA and OCB programming, but I can ensure our outlets have reliable and credible options as they work to craft their reporting and news programs.”
Lake explained that “This idea came about after OCB suggested we explore OAN as a newsfeed option for the Miami-based, U.S. Government-funded news operation broadcasting to Cuba. At their suggestion, I reached out to OAN, and they offered to provide their newsfeed and video service free-of-charge."
"This is an enormous benefit to the American taxpayer, who is the sole-source of funding for USAGM's news outlets, which broadcast only to international audiences," Lake said. "And every day I look for ways to save American taxpayers money. Bringing in OAN as a video/news source does both.”
Lake described “OAN is one of the few family-owned American media networks left in the United States,” but did not mention controversies surrounding the network.
The network’s promotion of conspiracy theories promoting the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump prompted libel suits from Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic and a Dominion executive. OAN settled the suits by Smartmatic and the Dominion executive; the Dominion suit is ongoing.
Following the settlement of the two cases, OAN did not issue a public apologies but OAN did quietly delete the articles advancing conspiracy theories about Dominion from its website in 2021.
A Southern Poverty Law Center investigation into commentator Jack Posobiec, who was a host on OAN between 2018 and 2021, found that “Posobiec—a Trump favorite—has collaborated with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites for years, while producing propaganda that Trump and his inner circle have publicly celebrated.”
“Jack Posobiec’s extensive ties to white supremacists should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who hasn’t made the connection between Trump’s MAGA movement and hate,” said Michael Edison Hayden, the SPLC senior investigative reporter who covered the story about Posobiec and his ties to white supremacy and the White House.
In recent years, OAN has worked to find an audience with content to the right of Fox News.
A 2021 Pew Research survey found that only 7% of Americans got political news each week from OAN and that their viewers skewed older and less educated.
It found that while Fox News has a core audience of conservative Republicans it also has large audiences among Democrats. “The much smaller Newsmax and OAN audiences are made up largely of older and White Americans and conservative Republicans,” the 2021 survey found.
