As part of its ongoing mission to The president of the United States, Donald Trump, recently announced the main cuts to foreign stations in the United States.
The White House announced last week that it ended the federal subsidies that support the operations of Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
Rights activists say that the media, of which thousands have been sent with license, have long served as a rare source of reliable news in authoritarian countries such as Russia, China and North Korea.
A White House spokesman cited the US government debt burden. Uu. By explaining the move and said Trump was “committed to making our government more efficient.”
“We are sure that our reorganization efforts will strengthen US diplomatic efforts abroad,” said the National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes.
In a publication on its X platform last month, the billionaire and Trump Elon Musk’s assistant, who has been supervising the He said the points of sale were “only the radical crazy people who had spoken to themselves.”
The politicians and commentators of the US media have said that the measure is a body blow for the soft power abroad of the United States. And would lead to the exits sponsored by the Russian and China government expand its influence to fill the void.
An opportunity for Australia
In terms of scope and popularity, VOA was classified as the most powerful foreign radio station in Asia by a significant margin in the Lowy Institute’s Energy Index last year.
The author of the index, Susannah Patton, told SBS News that the following most influential emitters were Russian and would probably benefit from the withdrawal of the United States.
Patton, who is also director of the Southeast Asia program of the foreign policy tank, said that Australia was in a good position to expand his influence of transmission in Asia and particularly in the Pacific, if there was a political will to do so.
“I would absolutely argue Australia has great advantages in terms of our media, the fact that we have high quality and reliable news sources and the fact that we are publishing in English means that we are really well positioned to have a greater impact in terms of transmission and dissemination of news and other media content in Asia and the Pacific.
“Unfortunately, many of these initiatives have really been insufficient for a long time, and have also been again, again. And so, in some cases, it has prevented the Australian content from really building a strong follow -up,” said Patton.
But he warned that, given Australia’s position, much lower in the media energy index, it should “be realistic” about the fact that he could not “be able to enter immediately and connect the gap.”
The Federal Government has committed $ 68 million for five years to offer its Indo-Pacific transmission strategy, which will greatly imply additional funds for the transmission of ABC in the region.
Some Chinese state media have praised Trump’s clippings to the United States issuers, with China’s global times calling a “lies factory.”
“As more Americans begin to break their information and see a real world and a multidimensional China, demonizing narratives propagated by VOA will finally become a laughter,” he said in an editorial published on Monday.
Hu Xijin, who was the former editor in chief of the Global Times, wrote: “Voice of America has been paralyzed! And Radio Free Asia has also done so, who has been so vicious to China. This is great news.”
Patton said that Chinese broadcasts publish “a true mixture” of pro-china stories, as well as neutral and local reports, “but when it reaches a problem that is a priority of foreign policy for China, they have the tools that are ready to go to the wheel of their favorite stories.”
What does Voice of America mean to the world?
Since its beginning of combating Nazi propaganda in the apogee of World War II, VOA has become an international media station, which operates in more than 40 online languages, on radio and television, spreading the narratives of the news in countries that lack a free press.
Rights activists have said that multilingual reporters of VOA and Radio Free Asia have given birth for decades to the abuses of China and other authoritarian countries, creating awareness about the difficult situation of oppressed minorities such as Muslims Uigures in China.
The National Press Club, a leading representative group for American journalists, said the order “undermines the United States long -standing commitment to a free and independent press.”
Mon mon myat, a Burmese journalist, remembers when he heard a VOA transmission for the first time during the 2021 coup in Myanmar, when the government closed the Internet. “I felt that a light had been lit” in the dark, he told Reuters.
“These programs were created to provide information to people who live under dictatorships. Close them only helps the dictatorship and regimes of the Board,” he said.
Raja Krishnamoorthi, the main Democrat in the select committee of the Chamber on strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, said that the movements against VOA and other broadcasters “would severely weaken the capacity of the United States to compete” with the ruling party of China and “finally would make us less safe.”
Patton said that, although times have changed and people do not sit around the radio every night to consume news, recent cuts would still leave a significant gap.
“Radio Free Asia and VOA in particular really covered stories that nobody else was watching: about human rights defenders, about illegal and corrupt activities that take place in authoritarian and repressive regimes,” he said.
“So it also helped give life to some of those stories and problems, but in a way that I don’t see that any other way out.”
With additional Reuters reports.
