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EXCLUSIVE: As protests erupted in Iran and a dramatic U.S. operation unfolded in Venezuela, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) moved quickly to push information into some of the world’s most tightly controlled media environments, the agency’s head, Kari Lake, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
In the early morning hours of Jan. 3, reports began to trickle out about a law enforcement operation carried out by the U.S. military to remove Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, prompting USAGM, the agency responsible for broadcasting U.S. news in areas where press freedom is restricted, to take immediate action.
“I found out about the situation in Venezuela, the incredible bravery of our service members who extracted Maduro,” Lake said. “And the minute I heard about it, I had the team down in Miami that operates our office of Cuba broadcasting on the phone.”
Lake described a rapid expansion of coverage, with the agency ramping up broadcasts, expanding language services and surging personnel within hours to reach audiences via Radio Martí and Martí Noticias out of Miami, broadcasting directly into Cuba, Venezuela, and across Latin America.
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“They were immediately deployed into the newsroom and they started coverage right away, bringing out exactly what was happening,” Lake explained. “They were covering it in Spanish to the folks in Cuba, and then we also have affiliates all around the Caribbean. We’re taking our broadcast and pushing it in and pumping it in so that more people in Cuba were able to hear it.”
“When people in Cuba hear that Maduro has been taken down, it gives them hope that they too can one day have that freedom. What we want to see is the people rising up and saying, we want freedom, we want conditions that are improved. We don’t want to live this way any longer. So we’ve been doing incredible nonstop coverage.”
USAGM’s Voice of America carried Trump’s major addresses on Venezuela live while covering the latest developments, congressional reaction, and responses within Venezuela, reaching more than 6.6 million global audience impressions.
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Roughly a week before explosions rocked Venezuela during the Maduro extraction, USAGM sprung into action in another global crisis when protests erupted on the streets of Iran as citizens mobilized against the Khomeini regime in one of the world’s most media-restricted regions.
Lake spoke to Fox News Digital about how her team took action in that instance as well and immediately began trying to reach as many Iranians as possible with U.S.-backed coverage.
“Think about the people on the ground in Iran,” Lake said. “Iranian people have been subjected to such horrible conditions with a dictator and a regime that has been just cruel for 47 years. They don’t get fair media. They don’t get honest coverage over there. We’ve been able to provide them with honest coverage.”
“We’re working to get more of it in. We’re hiring contractors to up our coverage and add more additional hours to coverage. What we’re watching on the streets in the country of Iran is historic. The people are rising up saying we don’t care anymore. We have to get our freedom back and we’re there to do that coverage.”
After protests erupted in Iran, the USAGM moved quickly to expand coverage through Voice of America’s Persian-language service, significantly increasing satellite television programming aimed at Iranian audiences. Over the first 12 days of unrest, the service added seven additional hours of live broadcasts, including two hour-long primetime breaking newscasts on Jan. 3 and Jan. 4, while extending its regular evening newscasts from one hour to two as demonstrations spread.
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As the unrest continued, VOA’s Persian-language service also ramped up its digital and social media footprint, publishing 52 web stories focused on the protests by Jan. 7. During that same period, the service pushed more than 1,700 pieces of content across six social media platforms, including over 170 user-generated videos sent from inside Iran that showed demonstrations and documented the regime’s crackdown.
The surge in coverage, according to the agency, resulted in a surge in audience engagement in the form of VOA’s Persian website recording a record 1.69 million daily visits on Dec. 28. Over the first 12 days of protests, video views jumped more than 160 percent and article views rose nearly 80 percent, driving a total of roughly 13 million visits to the site during that period representing a 15% increase.
Lake told Fox News Digital that there is overlap between their Iran and Cuba coverage, explaining that they are pumping information about what’s happening in Venezuela to the people of Iran.
“People in Iran are very interested in what happened in Venezuela, and so we’re using both our Office of Cuba broadcasting with our Persian Farsi language services, and we’re kind of combining forces and making sure that everyone realizes, everybody living under these regimes realizes that the people are rising up all over the world right now.”
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“This is such a historic moment and the people in Cuba know what’s happening in Venezuela. The people in Cuba now know what is happening in Iran and vice versa. Iran realizes what happened in Venezuela and what’s happened in Cuba as well. It’s amazing. We’re at the precipice, I believe, of not only just a peaceful world, but one where the people are free in places where they haven’t experienced that lovely feeling of freedom for a long time. I’m happy with the work that we’re doing. We’re doing it with a smaller staff and it shows that the federal government doesn’t have to be bloated, slow-moving dinosaur anymore.”
Lake’s reference to the agency no longer being a “dinosaur” stems from her efforts to streamline an agency she says was wasting taxpayer dollars and not delivering a message across the world that was defending America’s interests.
“We came into the agency and I had a very tough job to go in and right-size the agency,” Lake explained, telling Fox News Digital that the previous administration’s USAGM was inefficient and at times put out messaging that was not “aligned” with the best interests of American foreign policy.
“It was bloated. The president put out an executive order saying, ‘bring this agency down to its statutory minimum,’ which means, go back to what is statutorily required and not more than that. Get rid of the bloat and just do what’s statutorily required and we were able to do that, and our detractors sued us and said, oh, you’ll never be able to cover the news. What happens if a big story breaks?”
“Well, I worked in the media for 30 years,” Lake said. “I know that when a big story breaks, you ramp up coverage and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
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