After Trump begins dismantling U.S.-funded broadcast organizations, the director says, “The Voice of America Is Being Silenced.”

The director of Voice of America said that more than 1,300 journalists, producers and support staff have been placed on administrative leave following Donald Trump‘s executive order to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

“I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the stories Voice of America is being silenced,” VOA Director Michael Abramowitz wrote in a statement.

“VOA needs thoughtful reform, and we have made progress in that regard. But today’s action will leave Voice of America unable to carry out its vital mission. That mission is especially critical today, when America’s adversaries, like Iran, China and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating fallse narratives to discredit the United States.”

Trump’s executive order was aimed at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA and other U.S.-funded broadcast entities including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. That was followed by an email sent to all employees that they were being put on paid administrative leave.

The White House issued a statement today calling VOA the “voice of radical America,” arguing that it harbored a leftist point of view. But the administration is trying to punish news outlets for editorial decisions they don’t like, including the Associated Press, which has been banned from White House events because it did not change its style guidance to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. visit Deadline for more