As an Iranian American journalist covering the Iran-U.S. relationship, Negar Mortazavi is accustomed to receiving vitriol on social media. Still, she found it unusual when she saw on Twitter that someone had called her a “treasonous criminal” and “a spy and an enemy of the people.” The tweets got darker: “If the U.S. had laws of the Middle Ages like Iran, this mouthpiece of the corrupt regime would have been executed,” one read, in Farsi. What made the tweets unusual was that the person targeting her was Ali Javanmardi. Javanmardi is a prominent television journalist at the Voice of America Persian, the U.S.-owned network broadcasting to Iranians — which means that he works for the U.S. government. Mortazavi is a former VOA Persian reporter herself and was a colleague of Javanmardi’s, and she was shocked enough by his tweets to complain to VOA editors. An editor told her that he had reminded Javanmardi that personal attacks online were unacceptable to the agency, Mortazavi said in an email to The Intercept. But Javanmardi did not remove his attacks, and they are still available. The online tirade directed at Mortazavi is part of a pattern: Journalists at VOA Persian have been lashing out at Americans they deem unsupportive of President Donald Trump’s Iran policy, in apparent violation of VOA’s declared standards.

Journalists at VOA Persian have been lashing out at Americans they deem unsupportive of Trump’s Iran policy.

“It’s pro-Trump in a way that disregards the way Trump’s polices are hurting Iranians, whether through sanctions or anything else.”

A spokesperson for VOA declined to discuss “individual personnel matters” but told The Intercept that “all VOA journalists, be it federal government employees or contractors, are expected to adhere to VOA’s social media policy as delineated clearly in its Best Practices Guide. When potential policy violations are brought to the attention of VOA management, employees are reminded of the policy and expected to ensure that their social media accounts comply.” She added, “VOA pursues its mission by producing accurate, balanced and comprehensive reporting, programming, as well as online and social media content for a global audience, particularly for those who are denied access to open and free media.” Azadeh Moaveni, an Iran expert at the Crisis Group, says that VOA’s decline worsens the possibilities for engagement between the U.S. and Iran. “It’s pro-Trump in a way that disregards the way Trump’s polices are hurting Iranians, whether through sanctions or anything else,” she told The Intercept. “To the extent that it might have served as a medium through which Iranians learned about the U.S. and better understood its policies, its present condition as a naked propaganda mouthpiece doesn’t help relations.” Several people interviewed for this article described VOA Persian’s shift toward becoming a Trump administration PR service as one that was mostly motivated by internal factors. Careerists, anti-regime journalists, and staff members sought to curry favor with the Trump administration. Some saw an opportunity to promote their like-minded views. For others, “the only reason” to push Trump’s policies “is because they want to save their jobs,” said Vafa Azarbahari, a former writer at VOA Persian. At the same time, soon after Trump was elected, his allies began campaigning to change VOA Persian. Right-wing pundit Kenneth Timmerman penned an op-ed saying the station had “long been a disaster;” he soon wrote another column calling it “The Voice of Tehran.” Other op-eds followed suit, in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Examiner. In December 2016, Republicans in Congress disbanded the board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent agency that oversees VOA, and concentrated its power in the hands of a politically appointed CEO. It was clear that things would change: In January 2017, VOA’s Twitter account shared then-White House spokesperson Sean Spicer’s infamous claims that Trump’s inauguration crowds were the largest ever. Days later, two aides from Trump’s campaign visited the VOA studios, sending a conspicuous message about who was in charge.

Republicans disbanded the board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent agency that oversaw VOA, and concentrated its power in the hands of a politically appointed CEO.

In 2017, the new BBG chair, Kenneth Weinstein — who is also CEO of the Hudson Institute — asked a different conservative think tank, the hawkish American Foreign Policy Council, to review the BBG’s Iran programs. Unsurprisingly, the resulting report determined that VOA had not been critical enough of the regime or the nuclear deal signed in 2015 by President Barack Obama and Iran — even while acknowledging that the station frequently devoted attention to the plight of minorities inside Iran. “Significant coverage of the state of U.S.-Iranian relations reflected the mistaken notion that the Iranian regime is now friendlier to the United States,” the report read. The analysis lamented that sometimes the United States and Iran were treated as equals, stating “reportage on bilateral relations between the U.S. government and the Iranian regime conveyed an impression of equivalence between the parties, a position that is both surprising and improper for broadcasting that is funded by the U.S. government.” Perhaps most consequentially, in 2018, the Senate Committee on Appropriations cleared legislation directing Pompeo to use the BBG to counter Iranian influence. The law directed the BBG to devote its resources to highlighting the Iranian government’s proxies in Syria and Yemen and the damage caused by the Iranians’ foreign policy. In February 2019, Masih Alinejad, who hosts a show on VOA Persian, appeared with Pompeo in Washington to do a photo op purportedly demonstrating the administration’s concern for women’s rights inside Iran. (The BBG, which in 2018 rebranded as the U.S. Agency for Global Media, did not respond to requests for comment.)