By Michael Martina and Shoon Naing
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers and rights advocates say the Trump administration’s drive to dismantle U.S. government-funded news outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, is a major blow to Washington’s hard-earned soft power globally at a time when Beijing is rushing to expand its sphere of influence.
Since its inception to combat Nazi propaganda at the height of World War Two, Voice of America (VOA) grew to become an international media broadcaster, operating in more than 40 languages online, on radio and television, spreading U.S. news narratives into countries lacking a free press.
On Saturday, more than 1,300 Voice of America employees were placed on leave and funding for its sister news services was terminated, a likely fatal blow to the outlets. The cuts are part of an unprecedented push by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to shrink the federal government, which they say wastes U.S. taxpayer money on causes that do not line up with U.S. interests.
The move came after Trump ordered the gutting of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, VOA’s parent agency, forcing a termination of grants to outlets under it. They include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcasts across Eastern Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, as well as Radio Free Asia, whose coverage extends across Asia, including China and North Korea.
Rights activists say the multilingual reporters of both VOA and RFA for decades shone light onto abuses by China and other authoritarian countries, raising awareness about the plight of oppressed minorities such as China’s Uyghur Muslims.
Trump’s domestic critics call it a strategic blunder in U.S. competition with China, which has poured billions of dollars into pushing Beijing’s narrative around the globe.
“The only people cheering for this are adversaries and authoritarians around the world, certainly in places like China and North Korea, where press freedoms are nonexistent,” Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Democratic ranking member of the U.S. House of Representative’s select committee on China, told Reuters.
The move also drew criticism from the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on East Asia and Pacific, Young Kim, while Michael McCaul, the Republican former chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, praised the RFA for transparent reporting and countering Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
“Gutting Radio Free Asia and other U.S. Agency for Global Media platforms counters the principles of freedom our nation was founded on and cedes leverage to the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea and other regimes,” Kim told China Watcher, a Politico newsletter.
In an editorial on Monday, China’s Global Times tabloid rejoiced at VOA’s closure, calling it a “lie factory.”
Cambodia’s longtime authoritarian leader Hun Sen, who now serves as Senate president after his son became prime minister in 2023, praised Trump’s move to dismantle the news outlets, saying in a Facebook post that they were a “major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement and chaos around the world.”
USAGM’s website notes that a number of its affiliated journalists have been jailed in countries where “threats to a free press persist.” Under Hun Sen’s government in 2017, two RFA journalists were arrested and charged with espionage.
A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
Journalists and activists in Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos who had for decades come to rely on the U.S. outlets for news in the middle of coups, media blackouts and state censorship, lamented their demise.
Mon Mon Myat, a Burmese journalist, remembers when she first heard a Voice of America broadcast during the 2021 coup in Myanmar, when the government shut down the internet. It “felt like a light had been switched on” in the darkness, she told Reuters.
“These programs were created to provide information to people living under dictatorships. Shutting them down only helps dictatorship and junta regimes grow,” she said.
Chinese democracy activist Gao Yu, who has been jailed in China, said on X on Sunday that she was “heartbroken” by the cuts to the U.S. news agencies, noting that Chinese authorities had previously warned her not to accept VOA or RFA interviews.
“This made me realize that the Chinese Communist authorities are most afraid of these two American media outlets,” she said.
RFA, in particular, had been a thorn in Beijing’s side, with its roster of Uyghur-speaking journalists helping to document what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said is the Chinese government’s “genocide” against the Muslim minority group, a claim Beijing vehemently denies.
In a 2023 report, the State Department said that China has spent billions of dollars annually on information manipulation efforts, including by acquiring stakes in foreign media through “public and non-public means.”
That’s part of Beijing’s effort to expand the global footprint of its government-controlled media, especially as geopolitical competition between Beijing and Washington has intensified.
Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur activist and human rights lawyer at the Atlantic Council, said RFA’s coverage amplified individual stories to prevent the abuses from becoming mere statistics.
“Defunding would be devastating to the Uyghur cause and a gift to their oppressors. When appointing Secretary Rubio, President Trump highlighted his leadership in combating Uyghur forced labor. I hope he reverses this decision,” she said.
A staunch supporter of the Uyghurs during his time as a U.S. senator, Rubio last week imposed sanctions on Thai officials that he said facilitated the deportations of Uyghurs to China.
When asked on Monday whether he supports the move to dismantle RFA, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce did not say where the top U.S. diplomat stood on the issue but said the use of taxpayer money was “serious business.”
“Right now, it’s new, it’s a fluid situation, and we’ll have more for you as it unfolds,” Bruce said.
(Reporting by Michael Martina, Shoon Naing, Poppy McPherson, and Kay Johnson; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and Deepa Babington)
Comments