[24] Direct programming began a week after the United States' entry into World War II in December 1941, with the first broadcast from the San Francisco office of the FIS via General Electric's KGEI transmitting to the Philippines in English (other languages followed).

VOA reached an agreement with the British Broadcasting Corporation to share medium-wave transmitters in Great Britain, and expanded into Tunis in North Africa and Palermo and Bari, Italy, as the Allies captured these territories.

It also influenced the UN in their decision to condemn communist actions in Korea, and was a major factor in the decline of communism in the "free world, including key countries such as Italy and France.

Based on Soviet responses, it can be presumed that the most effective programs were ones that compared the lives of those behind and outside the Iron Curtain, questions on the practice of slave labor, as well as lies and errors in Stalin's version of Marxism.

[42] Control of VOA passed from the State Department to the U.S. Information Agency when the latter was established in 1953[29] to transmit worldwide, including to the countries behind the Iron Curtain and to the People's Republic of China.

Brown's program ended due to its popularity: his "chatty narratives" attracted so much fan mail, VOA couldn't afford the $500 a month in clerical and postage costs required to respond to listeners' letters.

[49] However, after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, interviews with participants in anti-Soviet movements verified the effectiveness of VOA broadcasts in transmitting information to socialist societies.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, VOA covered some of the era's most important news, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech,[54] the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, and Neil Armstrong's 1969 first walk on the Moon, which drew an audience estimated at between 615 and 750 million people.

With a contemporary format including live disc jockeys, the network presented top musical hits as well as VOA news and features of local interest (such as "EuroFax") 24 hours a day.

[72] In 2013, VOA ended foreign-language transmissions on shortwave and medium wave to Albania, Georgia, Iran, and Latin America, as well as English-language broadcasts to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

An offer to continue the broadcasts on a contract basis was declined, so a follow-on show called Shortwave Radiogram began transmission on June 25, 2017, from the WRMI transmitting site in Okeechobee, Florida.

On April 2, 2007, Abdul Malik Rigi, the leader of Jundullah, an Iranian Muslim Sunni Salafi militant group with possible links to al-Qaeda, appeared on Voice of America's Persian-language service.

[129] After the January 2017 inauguration of US President Donald Trump, tweets by Voice of America (one of which was later removed) seemed to support the widely criticized statements by White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the crowd size and biased media coverage.

"[136] On June 3, 2020, the US Senate confirmed Michael Pack, a conservative documentaries filmmaker and close ally of Steve Bannon, to serve as head of the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA.

[138] On June 17, the heads of VOA's Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Open Technology Fund were all fired, their boards were dissolved, and external communications from VOA employees were made to require approval from senior agency personnel in what one source described as an "unprecedented" move, while Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, like Pack a Bannon ally, was rumored to be in line to head the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

[141] In late July, four contractors and the head of VOA's Urdu-language service were suspended after a video featuring extensive clips from a Muslim-American voter conference, including a campaign message from then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, was determined not to meet editorial standards and taken down.

[143] Politico reported on August 13 that Trump administration official and former shock jock Frank Wuco had been hired as a USAGM senior advisor, responsible for auditing the agency's office of policy and research.

[144] As a radio host, Wuco issued insults and groundless claims against former US President Barack Obama, CIA Director John O. Brennan, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

[156] On September 29, six senior USAGM officials filed a whistleblower complaint in which they alleged that Pack or one of his aides had ordered research conducted into the voting history of at least one agency employee, which would be a violation of laws protecting civil servants from undue political influence.

They accused Pack of using Voice of America as a vehicle to promote the personal agenda of President Trump and of violating a statutory firewall intended to prevent political interference with the agency, and they sought their reinstatement.

[174] In response, dozens of VOA journalists, including Widakuswara, wrote and circulated a petition calling on Reilly and public affairs specialist Elizabeth Robbins to resign.

[175] In a statement, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks and ranking member Michael McCaul said, "Absent a legitimate reason for this move, which has not been provided, we believe she should be reinstated".

[170] On January 19, the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, representing fired USAGM employees and whistleblowers, sent a letter to the congressional foreign affairs committees, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and the Inspector General of the US Department of State.

[177] Also on January 19, the last full day of the Trump presidency, Pack named a slate of five directors to head each of the three USAGM boards for RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks: conservative radio talk show host Blanquita Cullum, Liberty Counsel officer Johnathan Alexander, former White House staffer Amanda Milius, conservative writer Roger Simon, and Center for the National Interest Fellow Christian Whiton.

[180] On January 22, the Biden administration fired Victoria Coates and her deputy Robert Greenway from the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, naming Kelley Sullivan as acting head.

[189] The OIG investigation concluded that the VOA leadership decision to curtail the Guo interview was based solely on journalistic best practices, rather than due to any pressure from the Chinese government.

The VOA Mandarin Service interview team apparently "demonstrated greater loyalty to its source than to its employer  –  at the expense of basic journalistic standards of accuracy, verification, and fairness," the Feldstein report concluded.

[196] The service was mostly seen as anti-Ethiopian government until 2018, when Negussie Mengesha, the head of the VOA Africa division for several years, met the newly appointed Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed.

[196] In May 2021, several former employees accused VOA's Amharic service, under the leadership of Negussie Mengesha, of being biased in favor of the government of Abiy Ahmed, including failing to report on atrocities committed during the Tigray War.

[196] In June 2021, Mail & Guardian reported on an investigation based on "hundreds of internal memos and interviews with about a dozen former and current members" of the VOA Horn of Africa service.