Journalist Nabila Ganinda worked for Voice of America s Indonesian-language service for two years before the Trump administration rejected her visa extension. She is now back in Indonesia. Credit: Courtesy of Nabila Ganinda
Trump Official Cited Security To Kill Visas For VOA Staffers. Emails Say Otherwise By
Nabila Ganinda was awaiting a green light from the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
The agency had hired Ganinda, a young Indonesian journalist, to work for two years at the Voice of America s Indonesian-language service, based in Washington, D.C. As those two years came to an end last fall, Ganinda s editors sought to have her specialized work visa extended. Colleagues described her as a capable multi-media producer. She had also appeared on camera in news reports. Ganinda thought she could build a successful career at VOA.
at 7:00 am NPR
One way to understand the capricious nature of life at Voice of America and its federal parent agency over the last seven months would have been to witness two men standing across a foosball table from each other, twisting knobs and shouting in the empty cubicles of the Spanish-language service.
Every day last summer, a senior agency adviser, Dan Hanlon, and an aide spent hours playing in offices abandoned for the pandemic. Their new CEO, Michael Pack, had sidelined them almost immediately after his arrival in June, telling others they were disloyal and untrustworthy. It was actually one of the most surreal times of my career in federal government, said Hanlon, who was a top aide to former President Donald Trump s chief of staff when the White House assigned him to the agency. Since they weren t talking to us, we would come in at nine o clock and stamp out at five o clock. And we played foosball all day. And we would just sit there, commentin