She announced via social media on Thursday that she was ending the “expensive and unnecessary contracts” with the wire services.
“We should not be paying outside news organizations to tell us what the news is,” said Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for Arizona governor. “With a nearly billion-dollar budget, we should be producing news ourselves. And if that's not possible, the American taxpayer should demand to know why.”
In a meeting on Friday, VOA staffers were told to stop using wire service material for their reports, according to journalists who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
At many news organizations, audio, video and text reports from wire services are used to supplement reports from locations where the company's own journalists are not located.