Editing Voice of America (section)

===Horn of Africa service===

The Amharic Service was started in 1982.<ref name="Sheckler1998">{{cite Q|Q122644264}}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=May 2025}} From 1982 to 1986 its staff included former members of the [[Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party]] (EPRP) and US-educated staff without strong political involvement in the 1974 [[Ethiopian Revolution]] and the associated student movement of the revolutionary period. Reporting was mostly critical of the [[Derg]] led by [[Mengistu Haile Mariam]].<ref name="Sheckler1998" /> From 1986 to 1996, the service opposed the [[Tigray People's Liberation Front]] (TPLF)/[[Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front]] (EPRDF), which took control of Ethiopia in 1991. According to Annette Sheckler, who led Horn of Africa service starting in 1998, the reporting became more politicized due to the loss of qualified staff, the anti-TPLF stance of EPRP-supporting staff, and the role of former Derg officials who were recruited to the Service. US ambassadors to Ethiopia, Mark Bass, Irvin Hicks and David Shinn, objected to what they saw as a lack of balance.<ref name="Sheckler1998" />{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=May 2025}} Sheckler described the Horn of Africa service during an 18-month period in 1996–98 as "essentially ungovernable" with a "legacy of personal animosity, hostility and complete lack of professionalism".<ref name="Sheckler1998" />{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=May 2025}} The [[Eritrean–Ethiopian War]] exacerbated ethnic conflicts within the service in 1998. Sheckler wrote memos to VOA leadership describing her assessment of serious problems in the service, and was fired on November 20, 1998, officially for "a lack of professional journalistic ethics"; she describes the reason for her firing as "telling the truth".<ref name="Sheckler1998" />{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=May 2025}} Peter Heinlein led the service from 2012 to 2014. In 2013, he wrote a complaint about the service, citing role confusion whereby non-journalist translators took on the role of journalists.<ref name="MailGuardian_VOA_is_airing_ET">{{cite Q|Q122546796|url-status=live}}</ref> 

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]].<ref name="MailGuardian_VOA_is_airing_ET" /> In May 2021, several former employees accused VOA's [[Amharic]] service, under Mengesha, of being biased in favor of the government of Ahmed and failing to report on [[war crimes in the Tigray war|atrocities]] committed during the [[Tigray War]].<ref>{{cite news |author=Nick Turse |date=May 21, 2021 |title=Propaganda Machine: Voice of America Is Accused of Ignoring Government Atrocities in Ethiopia |url=https://theintercept.com/2021/05/21/voice-of-america-ethiopia-bias |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230914230416/https://theintercept.com/2021/05/21/voice-of-america-ethiopia-bias |archive-date=2023-09-14 |newspaper=[[The Intercept]]}}</ref> VOA journalist Jason Patinkin reported the problems "at every level of the VOA hierarchy" and resigned, saying it had "sided with the perpetrators both by commission and omission" of "potential crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and perhaps even genocide".<ref name="MailGuardian_VOA_is_airing_ET" /> In June 2021, ''[[Mail & Guardian]]'' reported on an investigation which found that during the Tigray War, the only major foreign news service that was not harassed by Ethiopian security services was VOA.<ref name="MailGuardian_VOA_is_airing_ET" /> VOA frequently covered the [[Mai Kadra massacre]], mostly attributed to Tigrayan youth and documented by [[Amnesty International]], while later focusing on the Ethiopian government's dismissal of Amnesty International's report on the [[Axum massacre]] rather than on the methods and content of the report itself. A majority of the stories about the war only showed government or military officials' points of view.<ref name="MailGuardian_VOA_is_airing_ET" /> Instructions emailed to staff stated that the terms "civil war" and "war" were forbidden in reporting on the Tigray War, with Scott Stearns writing on 14 November, according to ''Mail & Guardian'', "There are to be no deviations from these instructions by any member of any Africa division language service on any platform."<ref name="MailGuardian_VOA_is_airing_ET" />