U.S. Agency for Global Media employs foreign journalists who send America’s message in their native languages to countries without a free press. Don’t betray them to authoritarian regimes.
Trump to shut down Voice of America, cites ‘radical propaganda’
Trump’s executive order disbands the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including Voice of America. The order also impacts global broadcasts.
Straight Arrow News
President Donald Trump has rightly described America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan under his predecessor, Joe Biden, as “a shame.” He might want to take extra care to avoid the similar scenario threatening to unfold on his watch.
When he talked about the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul in a rambling Friday speech at the U.S. Department of Justice, Trump oddly fixated on the dogs that U.S. troops left behind in 2021. Other Americans – including Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser ‒ have focused on providing lifelines to the Afghan people who worked for Americans and who got left behind in the mad dash for the exits.
Given the administration’s seemingly genuine and understandable outrage over all this, it does seem curious that the White House seems to be deliberately creating an even grimmer scenario.
Maybe Trump doesn’t realize it, but his administration’s effort to shutter news outlets operated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media raises the possibility of the United States going one worse than abandoning people: We could end up betraying people who worked for us to their would-be jailers and torturers.
Silencing Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia
That is what will happen if the president doesn’t come up with means for assisting USAGM’s foreign-born journalists. The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and other agency outlets employ dozens of journalists who help send America’s message in their native languages to countries without a free press.
As a result, a significant number of them are marked men and women in the countries where they will have to return absent authorization to live and stay in America and other countries where the United States has posted them.
Among the potential return destinations: Afghanistan, Belarus, China, Cambodia, Iran, Russia and Vietnam ‒ all notorious jailers of journalists on the World Press Freedom Index.
The reporters are in the United States under various work visas; some will only have a matter of weeks to find new employment or face deportation.
In some of those countries where they’d have to return, their work already has put targets on the USAGM journalists’ backs. Some authoritarian regimes have labeled specific USAGM reporters as terrorists. Others have outstanding warrants for their arrests.
How bad could it get for these journalists?
Ask Alsu Kurmasheva, a Prague-based Radio Free Europe reporter, arrested as an alleged spy while on a trip to Russia to visit her elderly mother and sentenced to six years in prison. It took high-level diplomacy and a prisoner swap to free her in August.
Meanwhile, according to Reporters Without Borders, nine USAGM journalists are imprisoned in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Myanmar, Russia and Vietnam. Who will negotiate for their freedom if their employers disappear?
Sunshine Week: How to counter propaganda of China and Russia
Why Trump has developed such an implacable hostility to broadcasters who have proved such an effective counter to the propaganda of Russia and China remains a mystery. The Voice of America and its sister outlets represent one of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of democracy because they embody American values: the right to speak freely and honestly, even when it is to tell hard truths to power.
People from countries that don’t enjoy such freedoms are always amazed and impressed by the fact that our government pays broadcasters who report news that’s sometimes critical of our government, and to report facts and circumstances that the government would wish were otherwise.
“Daily at this time, we shall speak to you about America and the war,” Voice of America, the oldest of the USAGM entities, intoned in its very first broadcast, delivered in 1942 to the people of Germany. “The news may be good, or bad. We shall tell you the truth.”
A dedication to that mission has vastly enhanced the credibility not only of America’s broadcast entities but also of our nation.
This is Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of the openness in government that has made our government the envy of the world. It would be sad if this year’s observance marked the beginning of the end of that grand tradition.
Ultimately, it should be up to Congress to determine whether the plug can be pulled on agencies that it has authorized and funded for decades. But at the very least, one would hope that the lawmakers – and the president – would make sure that the zeal for cutting costs doesn’t cause this nation to break faith again with people who put their faith in us.
Kathy Kiely, who formerly covered Congress and national politics for USA TODAY, is the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism.
