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The Association for International Broadcasting has called on the Trump administration to reverse its decision to slash federal funding to Voice of America and several other pro-democracy news media, warning it would embolden authoritarian regimes worldwide.
The UK-based broadcasting trade association said the decision to “effectively cease funding” Voice of America and place hundreds of employees on administrative leave was a significant setback for media freedom and would damage America’s global credibility.
“At a time when the world is looking to the US to be a global player for peace and freedom, cutting funding for US international media — one of the main instruments underpinning this goal — seems the wrong direction to take,” said Simon Spanswick, the association’s chief executive.
Voice of America was established during World War Two to counter Nazi propaganda and now reaches 360mn people weekly with domestic news translated into 48 languages.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, which are also affected by the Trump’s administration’s funding cuts, broadcast independent news to audiences in eastern Europe, Russia, China and North Korea, which are subject to censorship and state-controlled media.
A statement on Saturday from the White House said that Trump’s executive order would ensure that US “taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”.
It included quotes from Republican politicians and rightwing media groups, which described Voice of America as “exceedingly partisan” and “radical”. It also accused some of the broadcaster’s reporters of posting “anti-Trump comments” on their professional social media accounts.
Mike Abramowitz, Voice of America’s director, said in a social media post that he learned on Saturday morning that virtually all the broadcaster’s 1,300 journalists, producers and support staff had been placed on administrative leave.
“Even if the agency survives in some form, the actions being take today by the administration will severely damage Voice of America’s ability to foster a world that is safe and free and in doing so is failing to protect US interests,” he said.
The deep cuts to Voice of America and other federally funded broadcasters such as Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio and Television Marti, which broadcasts Spanish language news into Cuba, are the latest in a string of savage cutbacks to government services by the Trump administration.
Tens of thousands of federal employees have so far been affected by the cutbacks, which are being spearheaded by Elon Musk, who is leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) within the Trump administration.
The Tesla chief executive, who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump’s re-election campaign, had previously called for the closure of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which he said no one listened to any more.
“It’s just radical crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1bn/year of US taxpayer money,” Musk said in a tweet on February 9.
The actions against Voice of America and other broadcasters follow controversy sparked by Musk on Friday when he shared a post on social media platform X which falsely claimed that “Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did”. Musk later deleted the post.
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