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Judge blocks Trump effort to dismantle Voice of America

WASHINGTON (NYT) — A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from dismantling Voice of America, a government-funded news organization that President Donald Trump has accused of being biased against him, and mandated that its journalists be allowed to resume their work.

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The judge, Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also ordered the administration to halt its effort to shut down two other federally funded outlets, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

The judge’s carefully worded decision appeared aimed at closing loopholes in previous court rulings that allowed Trump officials to keep the Voice of America newsroom shuttered and its programming on hold. Voice of America, founded in 1942, had operated without interruption until March 14, when Trump signed an executive order seeking to gut its parent organization, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Lamberth is overseeing multiple court challenges to Trump’s order brought by Voice of America journalists and organizations that promote press freedoms.

The Trump administration is “likely in direct violation of numerous federal laws,” the judge wrote in his ruling.

Nearly all of Voice of America’s staff members were placed on paid leave after the March 15 executive order, abruptly halting news programming in 49 languages that more than 425 million listeners across the world tuned into every week.

Top producer of ‘60 Minutes’ quits, citing a loss of independence

(NYT) — CBS News entered a new period of turmoil Tuesday after the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, said that he would resign from the long-running Sunday news program, citing encroachments on his journalistic independence.

In an extraordinary declaration, Owens — only the third person to run the program in its 57-year history — told his staff in a memo that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

“So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.

“60 Minutes” has faced mounting pressure in recent months from President Donald Trump, who sued CBS for $10 billion and has accused the program of “unlawful and illegal behavior,” and its own corporate ownership at Paramount, the parent company of CBS News.

Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”

Legal experts have dismissed that suit as baseless and far-fetched. Many journalists at CBS News — the former home of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace — believe that a settlement would amount to a capitulation to Trump over what they consider standard-issue gripes about editorial judgment.