Washington: The Trump administration suddenly suspended the journalists of broadcasters funded by the United States, notably Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, ordering them to leave their offices and put the equipment back into a decision that criticisms weaken the influence of the world’s world media.
Hundreds of journalists and other VOA staff, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other points of sale have received a weekend email saying that they would be prohibited from their offices and should abandon the press allowance, the phones issued by the office and other equipment.
On Friday, Trump, who has already avoided the aid agency and the Department of Education, published on Friday a decree listing the American agency for the world media among “the elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are not necessary”.
Kari Lake, a supporter of Firebrand Trump and former presenter of Arizona News, who was in charge of the media agency, after losing an offer from the American Senate, wrote – in an email to the media that it supervises – that the federal concession “no longer performs the agency’s priorities”.
An official of the White House press, Harrison Fields, took a much less legalistic tone in an article on X, simply writing “goodbye” in 20 languages, a sarcastic blow to the multilingual coverage of VOA.
The head of radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, which began to broadcast in the Soviet block during the Cold War, called for the cancellation of funding “a massive gift to American enemies”.
Gift to China?
“Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the disappearance of RFE / RL after 75 years,” said its president, Stephen Capus, in a statement.
“The delivery to our opponents a victory would make them stronger and America weaker,” he said.
The media funded by the United States has reoriented themselves since the end of the Cold War, abandoning a large part of the newly democratic central and eastern European and focusing countries and focusing on Russia and China.
Radio Free Asia, created in 1996, considers its mission as providing non -censored reports in countries without free media, notably China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam.
Points of sale have an editorial firewall, with an independence guarantee despite the funding of the United States government.
Politics have angry some around Trump, who has long made his journey against the media and, in his first transition to power, had suggested that the points of sale financed by the United States government should promote its policies.
