Chinese state media hails Trump’s cuts to Voice of America
WASHINGTON: Chinese state media has welcomed Donald Trump’s move to cut public funding for news outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have long reported on authoritarian regimes.
The decison affects thousands of employees – some 1,300 staff have been put on paid leave at Voice Of America (VOA) alone since Friday’s executive order.
Critics have called the move a setback for democracy but Beijing’s state newspaper Global Times denounced VOA for its “appalling track record” in reporting on China and said it has “now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag”.
The White House defended the move, saying it will “ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”. Trump’s cuts target the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is supported by Congress and funds the affected news outlets, such as VOA, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe.
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They have won acclaim and international recognition for their reporting in places where press freedom is severely curtailed or non-existent, from China and Cambodia to Russia and North Korea.
Although authorities in some of these countries block the broadcasts – VOA, for instance, is banned in China – people can listen to them on shortwave radio, or get around the restrictions via VPNs.
RFA has often reported on the crackdown on human rights in Cambodia, whose former authoritarian ruler Hun Sen has hailed the cuts as a “big contribution to eliminating fake news”.
It was also among the first news outlets to report on China’s network of detention centres in Xinjiang, where the authorities are accused of locking up hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims without trial. Beijing denies the claims, saying people willingly attend “re-education camps” which combat “terrorism and religious extremism”.
VOA’s reporting on North Korean defectors and the Chinese Communist Party’s alleged cover-up of Covid fatalities has won awards.
