Russia and China are ecstatic over President Donald Trump’s cuts to United States-funded media including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
The outlets are well-known for their independent reporting from places with curtailed freedom of press, including Russia and China.
The Global Times, a Chinese state media outlet reporting in English, published an editorial on Monday in which it called VOA “a lie factory.”
“The so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag,” the Global Times said.
“When it comes to China-related reporting, VOA has an appalling track record,” it said, adding that “almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it.”
VOA has reported on human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which are well-documented, and debunked China’s disinformation efforts in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A columnist for the regime-friendly Beijing Daily said VOA “has been notorious for spreading lies” and that the “world is waking up.”
‘Undoubtedly caused us harm’
Moscow, for its part, was also quick to pour cold water on the outlets’ reporting.
“These media outlets can hardly be called popular or in demand in Russia; they are purely propagandistic. This is an internal sovereign matter of the United States; it does not particularly concern us,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
RFE/RL has critically covered Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, political dissidents and corruption at the highest political levels.
Four current and former Kremlin officials told Russian newspaper The Moscow Times that these outlets have been damaging for Kremlin’s image in post-Soviet states.
“They undoubtedly caused us harm in post-Soviet countries, as their work was aimed at dividing us and our allies,” one diplomat told The Moscow Times.
The Kremlin designated RFE/RL and VOA as undesirable foreign organizations in 2017, with increasing pressure leading RFE/RL to close its Moscow bureau in 2022.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the state broadcaster RT sanctioned by the European Union for spreading propaganda, welcomed Trump’s decision.
“Today is a holiday for me and my colleagues at RT and Sputnik. This is an awesome decision by Trump!” said Simonyan, accusing RFE/RL and VOA of spreading fake news and brainwashing Russian citizens.
“We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself,” she said Sunday evening on state television’s prime weekly talk show.
VOA was founded during World War II to counter Nazi propaganda. RFE was founded during the Cold War with the mission of broadcasting uncensored news to people living in restrictive regimes.
Radio Free Asia was founded in 1996 on a similar mission and has been a thorn in the eye of the Chinese communist regime in particular.
Moscow and Beijing rejoice at looming death of Radio Free Europe, VOA
Source: Viral Showbiz Pinay
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