Notes: 
Tianna Jameswhite is a young Black journalist based in Baltimore who concerns themselves with the situation of African people across the diaspora. Currently, they serve as the Editor-in-Chief of Morgan State University’s student led newspaper, The Spokesman.

Notes:

Lawrence Grandpre is a political commentator for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, or LBS, a grassroots think tank out of Baltimore, focused on advancing self-determination for working class Black communities in Maryland. He is host of the Political Commentary Corner podcast, co-host the In Search of Black Power Podcast, and co-author of The Black Book: Reflections from the Baltimore Grassroots.

Notes:

Kasey Meehan is the Director for Freedom to Read at PEN America.
Meehan has authored numerous reports for PEN America, including the seminal Banned in the USA report series, documenting an ongoing rise in book bans across public schools in the United States. She has written opinion pieces on trends in the book banning movement and regularly provides commentary to news media pertaining to book censorship, free expression, and democracy appearing in The New York Times, NPR, TIME, and NBC. Meehan has also advised on several pieces of state legislation, including Freedom to Read Acts signed in Maryland and Delaware, and participated in roundtables with congressmembers on the topic of book bans.

Notes: 

Madeline Peltz is a writer and journalist born in Chicago, llinois. Her reporting has appeared in Media Matters for America, NPR, MSNOW, More Perfect Union and more. She has been quoted as an expert on right-wing media and the conservative movement in The New York Times, CNN, Democracy Now!, The Washington Post, BBC, The Guardian and elsewhere. You can find her @peltzmadeline on all platforms.

On March 21, 2025, WhyNot magazine, a Chinese-language news outlet “created for a new generation of readers,” announced in a letter that it would suspend operations following the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM)’s termination of funding for Radio Free Asia (RFA), with which WhyNot was affiliated. Founded in September 2020 under the banner of being “in-depth, visual, uncensored” and “independent and without borders,” the magazine had sought to “offer readers an alternative perspective on the world.”

The editors’ letter, published on WhyNot‘s website and Instagram, sparked mixed reactions. The letter reflected on the magazine’s founding mission and highlighted its reporting over the past five years, including coverage of the June 4 commemoration, Hong Kong’s deteriorating political climate following the 2019 pro-democracy movement, and developments in Chinese civil society. It also documented the crackdown on human rights lawyers, efforts to recover the history of China’s feminist movement, and the White Paper Movement (when, in 2022, nationwide protests erupted against China’s strict Zero-COVID policy, protesters held up blank sheets of white paper as a symbol of government repression and the lack of freedom of speech) —subjects that cannot be freely reported within China.

While many readers expressed gratitude for WhyNot‘s reporting and hoped to “see you again,” others questioned the magazine’s claim to independence. “Why don’t you label your account as U.S. state-controlled media?” one commenter asked, continuing, “You claim to be independent while your funding comes from Congress.”  Another reader wrote, “Compared to VOA and RFA, WhyNot is relatively more objective. The articles from Voice of America (VOA) and RFA in recent years… hard to comment.” One reader suggested, “If you have to halt operations as soon as your funding is cut, can you really claim to be objective?”

The Outdated Framework of Reporting 

VOA, founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda, and RFA, which was created in response to the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square and which began broadcasting to China in 1996, have been major sources for Chinese readers to gain access to news, especially on topics such as politics and human rights, which cannot be freely reported in China.

However, in the digital media era, Chinese readers still rely on VOA and RFA for news coverage but no longer consider them indispensable. Other sources accessible from overseas, or with the use of a VPN within China, include the BBC and the New York Times, which provide reporting in Chinese, as well as independent, overseas Chinese publications such as Initium Media (based in Singapore) and Mangmang magazine (based in Amsterdam) that emerged in the past decade. With more coverage on diverse topics and in-depth reporting, from cultural critics and features on China’s feminist movement and LGBTQ rights to overseas Chinese diaspora and international civil society organizations, they have been an alternative, if not a preferable choice, to VOA and RFA for readers with more liberal and progressive politics.

John Tsang, a former editor at WhyNot and contributor to RFA and VOA, argued that RFA had become constrained by bureaucratic structures and an increasingly outdated editorial framework.

Past VOA and RFA Contributors Advocate for Reform

Wu Yang has contributed reporting to both VOA and RFA, and collaborated with VOA on a podcast series called Transpacific Calls (Yue Yang Dian Hua). Wu recalled meeting the VOA Beijing bureau chief Bill Ild in 2016 and discussing how VOA could influence young people in China. Wu pointed out that VOA was giving readers the impression that the organization sold tabloid news that read like political gossip. After Trump closed down VOA, accusing it of being “radical” and “anti-Trump,” Wu became interested in interviewing some of its veteran journalists, but he was disappointed by their outdated journalistic practices, such as the tendency to explain developments in China primarily through elite politics and leadership changes, and thus producing a binary and overly simplified account of Chinese society.

In a March 2025 interview that appeared on the popular Chinese politics podcast Bumingbai, hosted independently by New York Times journalist Yuan Li and WhyNot‘s Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief Alex Zhang, Zhang explained that while RFA had been built in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, WhyNot was conceived to respond to a different media environment, one in which Chinese readers had no shortage of breaking news but relatively little access to long-form reporting, dialogue, or analytical journalism.

Another former WhyNot editor, who asked to be identified as “Li,” told Project Censored that the magazine was conceived from the outset as a distinct brand from Radio Free Asia (RFA), rather than another RFA news outlet. WhyNot targeted Chinese-speaking readers in China and abroad, particularly those aged 20 to 40.

Attempts at Renovation

The strategy appears to have been successful. At the time of writing, WhyNot‘s Instagram account had more than fifty-eight thousand followers, compared with approximately twenty-one thousand for RFA Mandarin.

Beyond its digital presence, the magazine also cultivated an offline readership. It sold its print edition at Sinophone cultural spaces such as Zephyr Society in New York City, a community venue established after the 2022 White Paper Movement that has become a hub for younger Chinese-speaking communities.

Former staff members similarly emphasized the publication’s editorial culture. John Tsang, who began contributing to WhyNot as a freelance reporter before joining the magazine as an editor, described it as offering “an unimaginable degree of freedom” in deciding what to report. He was most proud of a profile of independent journalist Huang Xueqin and activist Wang Jianbing, both detained in 2021, and his reporting on the White Paper Movement in Tokyo.

He also valued WhyNot‘s willingness to publish stories unlikely to appear in traditional political news outlets, including cultural features such as “Twenty Years After My Fair Princess: Where Are the Stars Now?”

A similar editorial philosophy informed Transpacific Calls. Rather than following VOA’s conventional focus on breaking political news, the podcast promised to “use specific voices and stories,” “abandon abstract concepts and grand narratives,” and “build new connections with the world and with history from the perspective of witnesses.” Wu’s series “My Voice, Our Story: The Young Generation with White Paper in Hand” received the 2024 SOPA Award for Excellence in Audio Reporting.

Editorial independence

Tsang recalled that upon joining WhyNot, HR had emphasized the existence of the “firewall” in protecting WhyNot’s editorial independence from the US government.

According to the USAGM Firewall Factsheet, “The USAGM Networks enjoy statutory protection from interference by government entities and authorities, to include the USAGM Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the Secretary of State, who ‘shall respect the professional independence and integrity’ of VOA, OCB, RFE/RL, RFA, MBN, and any other USAGM funded network.”

Tsang felt that this was true until the second term of Trump’s administration. Zhang also said in the Bumingbai podcast, “When the new administration came into office and started shutting down USAID, people at RFA were already making all kinds of contingency plans.”

During the wave of crackdowns on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, Tsang recalled being forwarded a list compiled by Republican senators of WhyNot articles on feminism, criticizing them for containing what they deemed overly explicit descriptions of the body. Following the criticism, he said, the magazine reduced its coverage of feminist issues.

Both Tsang and Li felt that since Trump’s second term, a growing sense of self-protection had emerged within WhyNot. “There was some self-censorship,” Li said.

Li acknowledged that VOA and RFA, as US government-funded media organizations, inevitably operate within the framework of US foreign policy. He recalled reading the VOA Charter, which states that “the long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the world by radio” and that, “to be effective, the Voice of America must win the attention and respect of listeners.”

At the same time, Li said that under previous administrations, he had not regarded this institutional mission as incompatible with his professional identity as a journalist. His goal was to report news that Chinese media couldn’t report, and since he wasn’t required to write fake news or outright propaganda, it wasn’t a problem if his work aligned with American diplomatic interests.

“Before, I didn’t feel that those two aspects necessarily contradicted each other,” Li said.

Given the current political climate in the United States—with RFA having resumed broadcasting to China in February this year, but WhyNot still waiting to return to service—Li was unable to elaborate further.

The Future of Reporting on China

For media outlets, funding sources matter most, Tsang said. “I admit that these media serve to carry some American soft power; of course, you can criticize it this way from a left-wing perspective. But we’re not talking about the same problem. My problem is the China problem. The stories I’ve written should’ve appeared in a China with a free press. But it’s not possible, and that’s the problem.”

Wu’s podcast collaboration ended at the end of 2024, after a new editor-in-chief shifted VOA’s priorities toward short-form video. Wu believed the change reflected a preference for content that met the demands of the attention economy, prioritizing engagement over narrative, long-form podcasts.

“It’s a shame,” Wu said. “VOA isn’t a for-profit business, so why pursue traffic? Maybe the numbers simply look better on paper for USAGM.”

Wu now works as an independent journalist and has started a new Chinese narrative podcast, Secret Forest in the West Suburbs (Xi Jiao Mi Lin).

“When a news outlet is shut down like this, regardless of its political orientation, whether it leans liberal or conservative, we lose a channel through which we can access information,” Zilu, a reader of VOA and RFA, said in the Bumingbai podcast. “Those of us in the United States can still rely on English-language media for news and information. But we also need to think about people elsewhere in the world, especially in China, many of whom do not speak English.”

Cathy Cai was born and raised in China, and currently lives in the US, covering the Chinese diaspora and migration, as well as human rights in China. For fear of government repercussions, the author uses a pseudonym.

Notes:
Mosaab Baba is a researcher and analyst on Sudan, and has been a lead consultant for the Ayin Network (@AyinSudan)

Notes:
Stephanie Koithan is the Digital Editor of the San Antonio Current, where she covers politics, music, and other topics for the leftist alternative weekly. She also covers voter suppression, homelessness and ICE actions in the area, among other areas of focus.

Notes:
Marshall Romero is a senior in high school, and an active member of the Texas student advocacy group SEAT. (Students Engaged in Advancing Texas) They have led opposition to anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation in Texas, from the local level to the state legislature, and are a current Youth Honorary Chair of Banned Books Week 2026.

Notes:

Dr. Maria McCauley is a transformational leader committed to expanding what communities can achieve through equitable access to information, learning opportunities, and human connection.  She is Director of Libraries for the City of Cambridge, and is elected ALA (American Library Association) 2026-2027 President.

A recently published five-year report compiled by the American Library Association (ALA), Book Riot, Florida Freedom to Read Project, and the Freedom to Read Project chronicled an explosion of book bans beginning in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The surge was the result of what they called “a full-blown, organized political movement” led by groups such as Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education. Censors have had the most success in Florida and Texas, where state legislatures have passed laws requiring schools to purge their libraries of books that attract complaints from parents. But they have increasingly targeted local school board positions across the country to embed members who advance their censorious policies.

While book challenges were once focused primarily on individual books or authors and were brought by concerned parents or family members acting on their own behalf, the past half-decade shows a shift to sweeping challenges from organized interest groups. These efforts have been successful in red states and beyond, which should alarm anyone who supports the right to read and learn.

According to Betsy Gomez, coordinator of the Banned Books Week Coalition, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom “tracked 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025, the second highest ever documented by ALA,” and “713 attempts to censor library materials and services, 487 of which targeted books.” In 2025, the ALA found that “92 percent of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials and decision makers, up from 72 percent in 2024” and “less than 3 percent of challenges originated from individual parents.”

Tactics and Targets

Books being yanked off the shelves at schools around the country include a number of acknowledged literary classics such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, usually singled out for their violent or sexual content. But the most challenged books in recent years invariably tell stories about people of color or LGBTQ+ characters.

According to PEN America, public school libraries banned 3,743 unique titles during the 2024–2025 school year. Roughly 44 percent of those titles featured characters identified as people of color. Another 36 percent featured characters identified as LGBTQ+, and some 19 percent of the banned titles dealt with characters depicted as trans or genderqueer. A typical book targeted for featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes is Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club, a National Book Award-winning young adult novel about two women who fall in love in San Francisco’s Chinatown against the backdrop of the Cold War. According to PEN America, it was banned nineteen times in 2024–25.

Some books have been banned merely for acknowledging that the United States has a past marred by slavery, oppression, and exploitation, or for depicting struggles for social justice. For instance, Veronica Arreola’s J is for Justice: An Activism Alphabet, an illustrated picture book introducing youngsters to social justice activism, was one of nearly 596 titles removed from Department of Defense school libraries earlier this year. It was also removed from a Virginia school library.

Book banning at the K-12 level is bad enough, but increasingly brazen censors are also trying to restrict the sort of books that can be read in college as well. Early this year, Texas A&M University barred a philosophy professor from assigning an excerpt from Plato’s Symposium, his famous dialogue about the nature of love, because it allegedly contained “gender ideology.” The University of Nebraska at Kearney announced in June that it would discontinue the textbook Discovering Human Sexuality in courses after fielding multiple complaints from conservative critics, including Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen. The critics particularly bemoaned a training module in the book about empowering transgender students.

Although most of the book challenges around the country in the past few years have been perpetrated by right-wing groups and politicians, not all the titles being targeted are “progressive” or “woke.” For instance, two books by former Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly, about Jesus and Ronald Reagan, were removed from shelves in one Florida school district.

These extraordinary efforts to control student access to works about specific academic subjects or marginalized identities are problematic on their own, but a separate challenge exacerbates all of this: declining literacy and interest in reading.

A Decline in Literacy

Ray Bradbury once said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” Over the past two decades, the United States has seen a decline in multiple literacies. As Rose Horowitch noted in The Atlantic, “According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022.” The decline was measured across all demographics, including among those most likely to read.

These days, Americans are reading shorter works and more pop culture pap than serious content. When it comes to news consumption, fewer than 10 percent of young people now read a daily newspaper. More than half of adults get news from social media in what media scholars have called news snacking, the misguided belief that important news will just find them while they scroll through their corporate, Big-Tech, algorithmically controlled social media feeds. As Horowitch put it, the United States is in the midst of a “literacy crisis.”

UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf went further, telling The Atlantic that America isn’t illiterate; it’s “postliterate.” The latest research corroborates this assessment. Scholars at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth recently conducted a broad study of more than 5,000 schools in 38 states and concluded that “only five states plus the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025. Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores and only slightly better in math.”

We have our work cut out for us.

Make America Read Again

One way to fight back against censors and declining literacy is to center the importance of the right to read for civic engagement and the health of our republic. Each year, the organizers of Banned Books Week select several Honorary Chairs to help raise awareness—authors, activists, and students who champion inclusivity and intellectual curiosity, leading by example through their work and teaching. These ambassadors for literacy and intellectual freedom remind us that democracy is stronger when we hear more voices from diverse perspectives and when everyone has access to the insights and ideas that books especially make available. One of this year’s Youth Honorary Chairs is high school senior Marshall Romero, who is also involved in Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT). In an interview on the Project Censored Show, Romero observed that

when it comes to a lot of conversations surrounding banned books or media … things happening directly [in] the classroom, there’s not a lot of youth voice or youth perspective on it. Rather, it’s a lot of partisans or parents concerned about what their kids want to learn or what the classroom should look like. … But students are not being considered as stakeholders. … It’s people that haven’t been in the classroom for 30 years. … It’s just been a big hurdle being taken seriously by legislators, but also being able to say, Hey, we’re the primary stakeholder, and you should listen to us.

As a member of SEAT, Romero believes students deserve a seat at legislative and school board tables when decisions that directly impact young people are being made.

Maria McCauley, president of the American Library Association, connected attacks on libraries to broader assaults on democratic institutions. In an appearance on the Project Censored Show, McCauley said that libraries are “foundational to the health of our democracy” and “offer agency and freedom for all of our community members to be able to thrive and flourish.” This is why it is imperative not only to protect libraries and the librarians who staff them, but also to celebrate them, a primary mission of Banned Books Week.

There are many ways for people to get involved during Banned Books Week, including hosting a BBW trivia night (see here for a program kit) or organizing a Right to Read Night, in cooperation with the National Coalition Against Censorship, where people can learn about the most challenged book titles and authors. Project Censored has been a proud member of the BBW Coalition since 2013, and we do our part each year to promote the shared mission of protecting the right to read while fighting censorship in its many guises.

In addition to these efforts, we need people like you, dear reader, to join in the cause. Support your local library and librarian. Visit your local independent bookstore or subscribe to your local news outlet (if you’re lucky enough to have either). Attend school or library board meetings and make it known that censorship has no place in our classrooms or communities. Download the Unite Against Book Bans action toolkit, which features tips about lobbying decision makers, participating in meetings, and organizing protests in support of the right to read. Project Censored also has an action guide for BBW where you can get involved in as little as five to ten minutes. We can stem the tide of book bans and other assaults on our democracy, but we need to work together, and we must do it now.