New Yorker: How Donald Trump Silenced the Voice of AmericaThis excerpt was originally published here and features Government Accountability Project’s Voice of America whistleblower clients. Voice of America’s Persian Service began airing in its current form in 1979, shortly after the Iranian Revolution toppled the Shah and installed the Islamist clerics who rule the country to this day. In February, when the United States and Israel launched coördinated air strikes on Iran, the Persian Service had no journalists reporting in the region. journalist who has worked closely with the Persian Service told me. (A spokesman for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees V.O.A., said that the Persian Service had provided substantial original reporting at the start of the war.)