US President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Kari Lake to be the new director of Voice of America, the state-funded international media organisation.
_VOA_ has reach around the world, with programming in a slew of African, Asian and European languages, including Somali, Dari and French.
It receives US funding but is generally considered a reliable, independent media operation, covering global and US news for international audiences.
However, previous leadership under Trump's first administration came under fire for politicising the outlet.
Lake, a former television news anchor, is a hard-line conservative who ran in 2022 as the Republican candidate for governor of the southwestern state of Arizona and for US Senate in 2024, losing both times.
She has repeatedly refused to accept her past election defeats, as well as Trump's 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
As he prepares to take office in January, Trump's staffing announcements have consisted of close allies.
"I am pleased to announce that Kari Lake will serve as our next Director of the Voice of America," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social website.
In his first term, Michael Pack, Trump's head of the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, raised concerns when he moved in 2020 to strip an internal firewall at the organisation meant to insulate the newsroom from political interference.
A _VOA_ White House reporter was also investigated for supposed anti-Trump biases during Trump's first administration.