HONG KONG — Chinese state media are celebrating President Donald Trump’s move to gut Voice of America and other U.S. government-funded news outlets that push back against authoritarian regimes.
His executive order Friday dismantling Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and other outlets has been criticized as another blow to longstanding U.S. soft power efforts, amid fears that eroding U.S. influence abroad could create opportunities for governments such as China and Russia to promote their values instead.
The government of China, where media is tightly controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, has long criticized coverage by VOA and other U.S. government-funded news outlets. In an editorial Monday, the state-backed nationalist tabloid Global Times called VOA a “lie factory” with an “appalling track record” when it comes to China-related reporting.
From alleged human rights violations in the Chinese region of Xinjiang to the origins of the coronavirus and Chinese military aggression in the South China Sea, “almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it,” the editorial read, calling the news outlet a “frontline propaganda tool.”
VOA, which some Republicans had criticized as being biased against conservatives, has been in Trump’s crosshairs since his first term.
Fears for the outlet were raised last year when he said he wanted it to be led by ally Kari Lake, a former news anchor who accused journalists of anti-Trump bias during her two failed runs for statewide office in Arizona. Instead she was made a special adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the independent U.S. government agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, Radio Free Asia and other editorially independent outlets.
“From top-to-bottom this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer — a national security risk for this nation — and irretrievably broken,” Lake said in a statement Saturday.
Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s government cost-cutting initiative, called for VOA to be shut down last month, saying, “Nobody listens to them anymore” and “it’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching” taxpayer money.
That language was reflected in a White House news release on Saturday touting the dismantling of VOA.
“Taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda,” it said.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media is one of seven government entities designated in the executive order to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The others are the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, and the Minority Business Development Agency.
VOA’s director, Michael Abramowitz, said Saturday that the outlet’s more than 1,300 employees had been placed on administrative leave.
VOA, which was founded in 1942, “promotes freedom and democracy around the world by telling America’s story,” Abramowitz said on LinkedIn, “providing objective and balanced news and information, especially for those living under tyranny.”
Chinese nationalist commentators were exuberant.
“Almost all Chinese people know about VOA because it is a symbolic tool of the U.S. for ideological infiltration into China,” Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of Global Times, wrote Sunday on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, calling the closure of VOA and Radio Free Asia “truly gratifying.”
The dismantling of VOA, whose award-winning journalism reached nearly 360 million people every week in almost 50 languages including Mandarin and Cantonese, comes as China is aggressively expanding the global reach of its own state-funded media.
“The disappearance of this kind of Chinese-language media will definitely leave a hole in the information supply,” Rose Luqiu, associate head of the journalism department at Hong Kong Baptist University, said, adding that VOA has provided “a lot of Chinese news stories.”
“Most people in China consume news in Chinese, not English, and not many media outlets provided Chinese content,” she added.
Press freedom organizations called on Congress to intervene.
The dismantling of VOA “threatens press freedom worldwide and negates 80 years of American history in supporting a free flow of information,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement, adding that the decision endangered the 10 employees of the U.S. Agency for Global Media who are currently detained abroad in connection with their journalistic work.
Stephen Capus, president and chief executive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said in a statement on Saturday that closing his organization “would be a massive gift to America’s enemies.”
“Handing our adversaries a win would make them stronger and America weaker,” he said.
Peter Guo reported from Hong Kong, and Mithil Aggarwal from New Delhi.
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